Waiting for Superman

| December 23, 2011

So, Netflix put the documentary “Waiting for Superman” on it’s wireless list, so that’s what I’m watching this afternoon. It’s about the “education””system” in this country. If you can watch this documentary and not walk away hating the government, unions and liberalism in general, you’re a brainless moron.

This is how liberalism promises to make everything in the country “better”. Somehow throwing money at problems is doing something beneficial. When I graduated from high school, I CLEPed out of my first year of college without studying a lick – just based on what I learned in high school. But now, New York liberalism has made the education system “better”. Twenty years later when I went to the State University of New York to finish my education, I didn’t learn a thing I hadn’t learned in high school.

Most of the freshman class was enrolled in remedial classes for reading and writing and math…in college, they were learning to read. New York used to have the best education system in the country…until liberalism made it “better”. They leveled the playing field nationally with Jimmy Carter’s Department of Education, so the leveling leveled New York State’s system down. And since we’ve placed such a high valueon colelge education, the public education system can teach more important shit like putting condoms on bananas and let the colleges take up the slack….when the public schools used to teach a college level education, now they teach up to a grade school level and stop.

And throwing money at the problem isn’t going to help that illiterate high school senior headed for college next Fall. or that high school senior who will start looking for a job in June.

Category: Schools

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2-17 AirCav

You have my sympathy. Had I known you would be watching that documentary, I’d have warned you that you would be cussing at the screen, muttering to yourself, and elevating your blood pressure. Education, standardized testing, the dumbing down of teachers, the union priorities couched in the “for the children” mantra…I gotta stop. It is all so infuriating. The winners are the kids in privaye grade school, some home schoolers, and a tiny percentage of public school kids whose parents (plural) augment the garbage taught in school with challenging and appropriate lessons.

NSOM

The education in this country will not be fixed until either the system is fedralized (which will never happen) or the abusive teacher’s unions are crushed. As it stands now, in our hyper-localizd education system, the most powerful force in the room is always the unions. Having the most poweful force in your education system being leftwing, ideology driven and corrupt organzations whose stated number one priority is NOT the welfare and education of children in said system is a monstrous failure for our republic.

UpNorth

“being leftwing, ideology driven and corrupt organzations whose stated number one priority is NOT the welfare and education of children”. Exactly, the latest, most glaring example being the teacher’s union in Oakland helping out the Occutards in “occupying” the port. Any superintendent with the brains God gave a gnat would have and should have decertified the union, and fired every teacher that called in sick, or called in demonstrating, and replaced them. Never happen, I know. But it’s what should have been done.
Teachers should be a whole lot more interested in why Johnnie can’t read than why Johnnie has “low self-esteem”.

CI

I haven’t had the time or the masochistic streak to watch the documentary….but there’s a reason we home-schooled for a few years. I’m quite sure the video encapsulates the reasons well…

Doc Bailey

it is a little disturbing.

Cedo Alteram

#2 Nicely put, thats my state in microcosm. Your from Jersey too?

Anyone kid who READS on their own or is just slightly intellectually curious, can see through the lies they call content. It was part of the reason I never did anything more then the bare minimum in school. Do whats required and no more to get the hell out of there.

Joe

That movie shamelessly shills for the corporatization of public education and you fell for it. You respond with the typical knee jerk right wing response – beat up on the teachers. The corporations are sniffing around for the next big windfall, and they think they’ve found it in education funding. Thus this slick, misleading movie. Think they give a rat’s ass about kids? I don’t know where to begin, not enough time or space, except that movie is bulls**t.

NR Pax

So Joe, are you implying that government funding of schools is the solution to the problems we have? If so, then why hasn’t it worked yet?

CI

Somewhere in there, Joe has a point. It’s not so much the teachers as it’s the bloated administration.

NHSparky

Joe…adjusted for inflation, we spend nearly four times as much per student as we did 50 years ago. Pray tell, where are the results?

UpNorth

Granted, some schools do have bloated admins, most do not. At least around here. Those in Michigan that do, reside along the I-75 corridor. Detroit furnished a driver and limo to school board members. They wonder why they ended up with an emergency manager? Of course, they let Kwame’s mom walk off with a Best Buy’s worth of lap tops, too.
But, Joey’s plaintive cry that it’s “coporatism” ignores the fact that many teachers don’t teach, if they do anything, they indoctrinate.
So, as Sparky asks, we’ve sunk enough money into education to float the continent of Africa, where ARE the results?

DaveO

Joe, I don’t think “corporatization” means what you think it means.

From Wikipedia:
“Corporatization refers to the transformation of state assets or agencies into state-owned corporations in order to introduce corporate management techniques to their administration. Corporatization is sometimes a precursor to partial or full privatization, which almost always refers to a process by which formerly public assets or functions are sold or given to corporate entities by listing the shares of the state-owned corporation on publicly-traded stock exchanges. A common model is for state institutions to be corporatized and operated as autonomous joint-stock companies, while still being majority state-owned and run by state entities separate from a central government.[1] This concept is a major feature of the socialist market economy.”

So the State (any local, county, or state government) has sold their education assets to teachers unions (essentially, the teachers unions run the schools, and the government exists to collect taxes to keep it all going).

Corporatization “is a major feature of the socialist market economy.”

Without knowing it Joe, you described the movie exactly, and everything that is wrong with public education today. Well done!

Joe

“…public assets or functions are sold or given to corporate entities…” Just what I said.

Joe

There is no way we’re gonna dig up three million “highly qualified” teachers to replace the one’s you guys want to dismiss. In fact the conservatives talk out of both sides of their mouths – teachers are overpaid, job-squatting, do-nothing drains on society waiting to collect their fat pensions; we need to fire most of them, trim the paychecks and rein in their pensions and increase the hours of the rest, and oh yeah, at the same time we’re beating up on them, we have to recruit a few million more absolutely brilliant candidates who are anxious to be abused for low pay. Don’t you understand good teachers are leaving in droves because of the continuous drip, drip, drip of bad news, increasing pressure, more and more responsibilities, more testing to cram into an already full day. We need to invest in the good ones (the vast majority), not blow them out of the career. Read about Doug Lemov’s “taxonomy” as a way using NCLB data prudently, treating teachers fairly but giving them simple, learnable tools to improve their classroom performance.

NHSparky

I put it to you this way, Joe–I can take one person who does a good job and WANTS to perform, and they’ll out work, out perform, and basically run rings around a room full of people who just show up for a paycheck.

Sadly, when you have lifetime tenure and a virtually fireproof job, guess which one our glorious public educators fall into after a while.

QMC

Joe is an idiot

UpNorth

Umm Joey? The average salary for a teacher in the state of Michigan is $52,300. That’s average. So, don’t bring out the crying towel for the overworked, underpaid, just yet, ok? The total spent on salaries in Michigan is just over $6 Billion, with another $2.75 Billion on benefits.
For that we get a sizable population of graduates that end up taking remedial English and math classes in college, if they go.

Joe

$ 52,300 a year is just about the national average for income. So they are not overpaid. In my mind, they’re underpaid. Judging from NHSparky’s post, and in keeping with current conservative thinking, teachers will perform better, and have more empathy for their students, if they live in constant fear of losing their jobs. Get a clue!

CI

$52,300 seems pretty good for less than a full years work.

ROS

$52,300 for working 9 months of the year with several vacations, weekends off, less-than-8-hour workdays, plus pension is $70k annually plus benefits in any other job. Oddly, my childrens’ teachers are only required to have a bachelor’s degree to get their foot in the door and grab a job as an educator to secure that kind of package.

Joe, you’re a flaming idiot.

NHSparky

$52,300 for nine months of work. I know a lot of people who’d kill for that.

And how many of those teachers and administrators are well into six figures?

I’ll give ya a hint–more than should be. Those who can’t do, teach. I’ve seen too many examples of people who shouldn’t be anywhere near a classroom, but because of lifetime tenure, there they are.

teachers will perform better, and have more empathy for their students, if they live in constant fear of losing their jobs

See, now you’re starting to figure it out. Oh, and if they WERE in constant fear of losing their jobs like the rest of us, maybe we would see a better product coming from our schools–kids who can’t read their diplomas or fill out a job application, but by God, they feel GOOD about it when they demand six-figure salaries and corner offices for their overinflated senses of self-worth.

BooRadley

If they were in constant fear of losing their jobs, maybe only the ones that really want it would take the job.. not the ones who just wanna make 53K and get the summer off.

2-17 AirCav

If you ever want to have some fun, take a look at the Teachers’ Union positions on those things that help children learn. The fun is trying to find ONE that the union supports. What if your job performance had nothing to do with the results of your work? What if, too, customer satisfaction was not even a consideration of your organization? You could screw things up all the time, tick off those you provide goods or services to, and have no concern about retaining your job. Heck, what if you didn’t need an MA or Ph.D. to do your job but just because you have one you get paid more than co-workers who do not but are much better at the job than you are? And what if you received automatic raises just for breathing and showing up for work more often than not? So, let’s hear it for the public school teachers and their union. The poor dears have all of these things and still manage to complain.

UpNorth

Let’s see, average $52,300, start after Labor Day, by law in Michigan. 5 days off for Thanksgiving. This year, 15 days off for Christmas. A four day weekend in February for “winter break”. 10 Days off for Spring break. And, the school year ends the first week of June, 2012. Not to mention, 2 days off for Parent-teacher conferences, and a floating “professional developement” day.
And, Joey thinks they’re underpaid? Joey, you do understand the concept of average, don’t you?
And, because of what is taught, and by who, we end up with college age students who think they deserve a free ride in college and a guaranteed wage, regardless of employment status. And, they think it’s OK to take a shit against a police car, or out in the open.

ROS

Let’s make this easy for Joey to understand using simple math, shall we?

2 semesters in 1 school year.
2 quarters per semester = 4 quarters per school year (thus the term “quarters”, Joey dear)
9 weeks per quarter
5 days per week

So, that’s 45 days per quarter x 4 quarters = 180 days in school.

That’s 6 months of work, Joey. Six. Months.

Fuck off.

Joe

You think they stop working after 8 hours? After 9 months? Shows how much you know about teachers.

UpNorth

I worked with teachers for 7 years, and, yes, many of them do stop when they walk out the doors.
In #24, I showed you how “stressful” and “crowded” their year is, Joey. We note that you didn’t even attempt to address that, or what others have said. Typical for you. Out of the 8+ months they work, they get yet another 42 or more days off during the year. And, in the high school I worked in, each teacher got one free period out of each day for “class preparation”. So, out of the 5 hours of instruction in the school day, each teacher got one hour free, besides their lunch hour.
Wake up, Joey, look beyond the union talking points for once.
As ROS said, most states require 180 days of instruction, that’s it.