Re: poverty and lazy
No, but jobs are available for those willing to work. Clearly some would rather live on welfare than work.
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“Yes, I am going to repeat the example of Finland. Again.”
I’m with ya on that, but I think Finland has a much more cohesive society ( never been there, so just a guess ).
As in I don’t think half the population of Finland hates the other half. But that is kind of where America is at ( and it works in both directions here in America ).
So the troll farms, and the “protected free speech” are going to continue to have a heavy hand in America’s society.
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But divide and conquer has always been part of US politics. Playing one group off against another means they cancel each others votes. That allows insiders and their lobbyists to sway things in their direction.
Opposition criticism has always been part of good government. But fake news, false facts, cynicism, no one can be trusted, its all lies . . . make good govt difficult.
Strong leadership and strong majorities work better. Thin margins make for tough times.
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Yes, but Finland is less than 2% of the US in population and about 3% the geographic area, so much less diverse geographically as well as culturally
Mike
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Correct!
But our current state of detestation is in stark contrast to where we were only a little while ago. The detesters were minorities on both sides of our civil disagreements. We have had increasing levels of poison poured into the body politic from the 80’s on as more and more media and pols went for short term market share and electoral advantage never minding the long term costs.
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Just like most other “JCs”. See? The US is being “run like a business”.
Steve
Hope is always a good strategy…
And there you have it. Let them starve and die.
I think the masters incentive is the wrong motivation. I know plenty of teachers that got masters just to boost pay level at retirement. It didn’t necessarily make them better teachers. We need to adopt performance metrics focused on student performance.
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Sounds similar to conservative leaning educators pushed out at the college level for disagreeing with the prevailing view.
We can make excuses but somehow private businesses find a way to correctly incentivize its workforce.
Great and then Grade the parents on how well they are doing? How do you grade someone when you have active participants in the home trying to undermine the teacher. There was a kid who had a learning disability, the parents blamed the teacher for their kids poor performance. So they home schooled the kid for 1 year, just 1 year, then they put him back into the public schools and never complained again.
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No they don’t. They have the same problem, 10 percent of the people do all the work while the other 90 percent slide. People might think they are doing great but that is their own biases shining through.
Re: let them starve and die
Few of the poor in USA starve. Many are over weight from junk food.
To suggest they starve is absurd!!
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They have the same problems but are not constrained by unions and management misaligned with stakeholder interests. Further, if they fail to deliver, they go out of business. We put people on the moon. We can figure this out
There will be exceptions and perhaps the benchmarks will be different for each student or it will consider different factors. Not measuring performance because it is difficult is not an acceptable excuse.
Parents play a vital role in their child’s education. It is without a doubt a challenge to teach kids where that support is lacking at home. Many teachers that I speak with in the public school sector believe it might be the single most important distinction between high and low functioning schools.
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In a perfect world that would be true but I have seen so many companies that have been misaligned with stakeholder interests. As far as being constrained by unions, I guess you mean that they do not have anyone forcing them to live up to their contractual agreements. In a perfect world we wouldn’t need unions because the companies would always keep their word but in this broken world, unfortunately, we have companies that will break a contract in an instant and then call it “just doing business”
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Unions are fine the problem is the decision maker are not the stakeholders. They have no stake in students but making educators happy.
I think the problem now with unions is it holds back rewarding high performers and protects the mediocre. For some reason, high level private schools never seem to have unions, I wonder why?
School board elections are usually held at their own times with poor voter turnout. That lets unions elect school board members giving them lots of influence many places. Unions are effective in getting their vote out.
The education complex is far larger. Textbook publishers. Teachers colleges. They with unions can hire lobbyists to influence state legislatures, licensing requirements, state aid and many regulations.
Voters have a voice but the industry is powerful.
Are you saying that there are not any Public schools that are in the top tier with union representation? Because I can google that and find many. As far as saying they have no stake in students? Don’t you think people in the unions have children? You do not think they want them to succeed? They are people just like you and me, the difference are that they get paid more and have better benefits than the average private school teachers.
I have worked in Union supported companies and Non-Union supported companies. In the Union companies what you are saying about holding back high performers? How is that possible? I worked hard, I was paid more than the mediocre ones because I was willing to work OT and they were not. I made a lot of money on Double Time which my union contract supported, If there wasn’t a Union I doubt I would have made Double Time or received a pension.
I also was in a Non-Union company. They had a plan on how to move up in pay. It was based on your level of knowledge and The Supervisors would fill out the paperwork every year rating the workers on how they were doing. Then your pay was based on that rating. I worked hard to move up the ranks, the mediocre workers would give drugs to the Supervisors to move up. Guess who was able to get better reviews? I liked the idea of the plan but the implementation was terrible. Federal Express actually sent a letter to our company President and told them if they found any more drugs in the packages they were going to send them to the FBI. This was a fortune 500 company that was doing construction across the whole United States.
So we can all find reasons behind good and bad in Union and Non-Union companies. I was in it for the money and to make the most I could. The reason I liked the Union ones is because the contract was clear and I could make money. But in non-union companies you were handicapped by the vagaries of Supervisors and Managers you were working for. Some were honorable and very good Managers, others were terrible and should never have been in the position.
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I think we know that teachers union are far more into protecting teachers than educating students. Many dedicated teachers are also union members. Not all bad.
But when conflicts arise protecting teachers is the priority. Unions can resist changes making progress slower.
When unions are able to elect school board members at contract time unions negotiate with themselves and send bill to tax payers. A conflict of interest that should be avoided. But union members are often best candidates. Busy parents with enrolled students don’t have time to serve. Best prospect is empty nester whose kids were students. And low voter turnout makes it easy for unions to dominate.
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I have a niece who has taught special ed in the Chicago Public School system for 20 years. When she first started she was a strong union supporter. Now she is, shall we say, less than enthusiastic.
DB2
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