It’s All About The Kids … Isn’t It?
Teachers in Manhattan Beach are embroiled in contract negotiations, and guess who suffers? According to the local weekly Easy Reader:
Manhattan Beach teachers have not announced a strike, however in recent months they have withheld more and more of their time from students.
In April teachers canceled the Advanced Placement study sessions. When the district gave no indication of settling teachers closed their classrooms to student clubs that meet during lunch and before and after school. Recently the teachers have also decided not to facilitate the end-of-the-year scholar quiz — usually an intense two-week affair where 64 student teams are narrowed down to two that compete before the entire school.
If negotiations do not improve, said Currier, teachers may decide to not help at next Thursday’s high school graduation or write letters of recommendation for students applying to college next fall.
Further proof of Independent Sources maxim #623, which is that teachers’ unions have everything to do with maximizing their current members’ welfare, and — despite their protestations — nothing to do with education.
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June 16th, 2006 at 5:05 am
I feel for these teachers. They get absolutely hammered in the number of hours they spend while school is in session. If you figured the hourly wage, it would be gahstly. On the other hand, most big city public school systems are well below average. Is this due to lack of resources? Overcrowding? Or do the teachers themselves have a hand in this underacheivement?
June 16th, 2006 at 12:15 pm
To comments to Crassisus.
1. The issue isn’t so much with the union wanting to improve their members’ lot. All unions do. What grates us is the hypocrisy that comes from the teacher’s union that more often than not cloaks their motives in that their concern is for the kids. It rarely is.
2. When factoring in their hourly wage don’t forget to factor in the summer, spring and winter breaks.
Most teachers work very hard but many don’t and because of tenure and strong-arm union tactics they sit there and hurt kids semester after semester and no one can do anything about it.
June 16th, 2006 at 12:22 pm
Absolutely, you have to factor in breaks, but more and more, these teachers are working during summertime. I have, however, been exposed to public school teachers (in Dallas,Tx.), seemingly “mailing it in”, career bureaucrats if you will, giving very little effort. There has to be a middle ground in this, as far as peformance for pay is concerned.
June 16th, 2006 at 12:54 pm
I don’t feel sorry for them at all. I used to feel that they were underpaid, and then in Washington State they began irritating me to the point I think all public schools should be closed and the teachers shipped to places like Somalia, Sudan, Iraq and Iran. (I know there are some really good teachers out there, but to bad you chose to hang around with a bad element and must suffer the consequences)
First, every year you can count on the teachers dragging out negotiations through the school year and then striking. Usually it is over more teacher pay but in a lot of the districts the teachers are already paid well above the median. If it isn’t teacher pay it is for more prep days. I swear everyday is a half day anymore because of conferences and teacher prep days.
Next, they firmly oppose any former of competition or competive pay scales. That right there is enough for me to say alright if we have to pay the suck ass teachers as much as the great ones we are going to pay all of you suck ass wages.
Third, they routinely complain that they can’t teach a 12th grader to pass a 10th grade level test with a 60% even though the student gets 5 tries.
Fourth, Their constant mantra of they are doing the most important job known to man. Teachers are important, but if they and all the teacher union officials were sucked into a giant black hole tomorrow, somehow the human race would manage to impart knowledge to it’s progeny.
Finally, and this is kind of a summation of the above, they just whine so damn much.
June 16th, 2006 at 6:13 pm
Chad,
Amen! I couldn’t agree more. I lived in NJ for 30 years and the New Jersey Education Association… No, scratch that , it is the New Jersey EXTORTION Association and their property tax racket drove me out to PA. The sad part is with each passing year the quality of education grows a little worse. Yes, and finally the whining. Never ending hand ringing… The children! Oh, the poor children! If only we had more pay, more days off, more benefits, more, more, more… Greedy bastards. We should all send our children to private schools. At least that way our kids would learn something.
June 16th, 2006 at 8:35 pm
True story: …I gotta soon to be 16 yr-old teen-age girl, that’s been on computers and the Internet since she was three years old..I PROMISE you, that she’s learned more doing that than she ever learned in school via a teacher..Braggin’ about my KID, iz the furthest thing from my mind whennit comes to that comment, and the jury’s out whether or not that’s a good thing and I’m not really sure why I bring it up ‘cept for the fact that..THESE ain’t yer DADDY’S teachers and I don’t think you’ll ever have ‘em again…EVER…
Teachers did what they did back then because..it wuz WHO they were…and even tho’ they didn’t make a lotta money…those folk’s hadda lotta RESPECT and were highly thought of in the community…teachers nowdays are bad baby sitters and clerks …I gotta high school education, at best, and I promise you that I could TEACH az well az the majority of ‘em do..Teachin’ ‘em NUTHIN’ sounds like it oughtta be a fairly easy job..
In fairness, to the baby sitters and clerks that they ARE, even THAT’S worth more dollars………Jus’ sayin’…