Teacher Union Success Stories

#76
#76
nbakerld said:
I kid you not, I saw Tucker Carlson say basically these same words on CNN in an airport. I laughed out loud, mostly because I couldn't believe he said it. Then I noticed the TV I was watching was in a gate headed to Vancouver. I was the only one laughing.
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I like his style. No homo
 
#78
#78
So they have high test scores. Congrats. What do they do with them? Pick up chicks?
 
#86
#86
golfballs03 said:
What about our society? We value mad football skillz more than reading skillz
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My former high school recently renovated the football stadium, including an update to the matrix board, a jumbotron, stadium seating, and an 8 ft bronze statue of the mascot. Students are assigned days to take home text books because the school can't afford to buy enough for each child.
 
#88
#88
Dan Rather has been doing reports for a couple months now studying the stop performing countries. A few common things that he has found:

1. Their teachers are paid basically the same as they are in the US in these countries, but they're valued more. Which leads to #2..
2. They all have strong unions.
3. They all have universal health care.
4. They spend equally on every student across the country.

There were a couple interesting difference between the Asian top performers like Sigapore, and Finland, which has the top world educational system (based on scores). In the Asian countries they go to school a lot longer than we do, emphasize studying a lot more than we do, and they give standardized tests to their students very often (like we do). In Finland they don't start school until they're 7; they're at school for no more than 5 hours a day, which includes 30 min of lunch and a min of 30 min of recess (regardless of the weather, students must play); and they take their first standardized test when they're 15 and again when they graduate. At 14 in Finland you must decide if you're going on a university path or tech path.
 
#89
#89
JokermanVol said:
Dan Rather has been doing reports for a couple months now studying the stop performing countries. A few common things that he has found:

1. Their teachers are paid basically the same as they are in the US in these countries, but they're valued more. Which leads to #2..
2. They all have strong unions.
3. They all have universal health care.
4. They spend equally on every student across the country.

There were a couple interesting difference between the Asian top performers like Sigapore, and Finland, which has the top world educational system (based on scores). In the Asian countries they go to school a lot longer than we do, emphasize studying a lot more than we do, and they give standardized tests to their students very often (like we do). In Finland they don't start school until they're 7; they're at school for no more than 5 hours a day, which includes 30 min of lunch and a min of 30 min of recess (regardless of the weather, students must play); and they take their first standardized test when they're 15 and again when they graduate. At 14 in Finland you must decide if you're going on a university path or tech path.
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One question:

What does healthcare have to do with education?
 
#90
#90
dhendri said:
My former high school recently renovated the football stadium, including an update to the matrix board, a jumbotron, stadium seating, and an 8 ft bronze statue of the mascot. Students are assigned days to take home text books because the school can't afford to buy enough for each child.
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Athletic department budget.
 
#91
#91
JokermanVol said:
Dan Rather has been doing reports for a couple months now studying the stop performing countries. A few common things that he has found:

1. Their teachers are paid basically the same as they are in the US in these countries, but they're valued more. Which leads to #2..
2. They all have strong unions.
3. They all have universal health care.
4. They spend equally on every student across the country.

There were a couple interesting difference between the Asian top performers like Sigapore, and Finland, which has the top world educational system (based on scores). In the Asian countries they go to school a lot longer than we do, emphasize studying a lot more than we do, and they give standardized tests to their students very often (like we do). In Finland they don't start school until they're 7; they're at school for no more than 5 hours a day, which includes 30 min of lunch and a min of 30 min of recess (regardless of the weather, students must play); and they take their first standardized test when they're 15 and again when they graduate. At 14 in Finland you must decide if you're going on a university path or tech path.
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If they are paid the same how are they valued more? With the pensions and time off, I'd say our teachers are compensated pretty nicely. A friend of mine who teaches just spent a month in Europe travelling. Do you know when I will have a month to travel Europe? Never.
 
#93
#93
KiffinKiller said:
oh noes!
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I know, I know, I'm just jelly. But I guess the reason I don't value them as much is because it appears that they are constantly complaining and overstating the money issue. I think the compensation is fair. I will rescind a little and admit that this is probably just the vocal minority.

If you want to get into why even as an engineer I would never want to teach is because I wouldn't find it as rewarding as problem solving. Especially if the reward of being a good teacher is getting stuck with the dumb kids.
 
#94
#94
Weezy said:
I know, I know, I'm just jelly. But I guess the reason I don't value them as much is because it appears that they are constantly complaining and overstating the money issue. I think the compensation is fair. I will rescind a little and admit that this is probably just the vocal minority.

If you want to get into why even as an engineer I would never want to teach is because I wouldn't find it as rewarding as problem solving. Especially if the reward of being a good teacher is getting stuck with the dumb kids.
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It's widely accepted as gospel in America that teachers aren't paid "enough", even though nobody really can tell you what would be fair. If a teacher agrees to his salary, then it is fair. If the salary wasn't their best option then the teacher would do something else.
 
#95
#95
nbakerld said:
It's widely accepted as gospel in America that teachers aren't paid "enough", even though nobody really can tell you what would be fair. If a teacher agrees to his salary, then it is fair. If the salary wasn't their best option then the teacher would do something else.
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As a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army I made less in terms of salary than my kids 2nd grade teacher. They get paid more than enough.

For proof I look at the private and charter schools that are not controlled by the teacher's union. They pay their teachers about 25% less than the public school teachers, but have no trouble filling their vacancies and retaining skilled educators.

The public schools have to find a way to balance out the teacher's unions and have to find creative ways to increase parental interest and family involvement in the overall educational process. It takes strong leaders to turn things around and that is a huge problem for most public school districts--most principals are poor teachers who couldn't succeed in the classroom so they took the tuition money guaranteed in their contract, earned their administrator degree and moved up to a leadership position. There is not any sort of real process that identifies potential leaders, selects them for developmental training and promotes them--it is all self selection and leadership by default.

An example of success that I've seen happened a few years back in Hawaii.

My 2nd oldest graduated from a public school in Hawaii that traditionally had a lot of challenges with discipline, attendance and academic performance. They did pretty well in sports but that was about it. Then they got a new principal who set up a vision that he called "Ohana, School, Sports." What this meant was in priority order you had Family (Ohana), then your academics, then your sports. Enforcing this standard did an amazing turn around for the school. Hawaii is very family oriented, so by placing the family first, he spoke to one of the central values of most of the community. Then he made the kids take responsibility for keeping their grades up. For example, if you played a sport, it was the student's responsibility to get a weekly progress report signed by all of his/her teachers that confirmed you had turned in all of your homework and were passing all of your classes. Most other schools I've seen require you to pass your core subjects only and also require the teacher to let the coach know if someone is failing. At this school, if the starting quarterback didn't get his sheet signed on Friday, he didn't dress out.

We tried to get our school district here to adopt a similar weekly grade check but were nearly laughed out of the building!
 
#96
#96
Something like 17% of charter schools outperform public schools in their respective districts, 38% do about the same and the rest perform worse.

Pointing unions as the singular problem is at least misleading and wrong at most. Iirc massachusetts and minnesota are two of the best performing states in the country in educational outcomes and they are two of the most heavily unionized, while a number of states in the south are among the least unionized and among the worst performers. All the countries outperforming us are also unionized.

that said, they do generally present some problems (automatic tenure being the key issue), but simply abolishing them will likely do nothing to improve the situation.
 
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