Time magazine has clearly kicked up a hornet's nest with its downright insulting cover headlined "Rotten Apples," and coupled with the blurb, "It's nearly impossible to fire a bad teacher. Some tech millionaires may have found a way to change that."Absolutely, violently wrong, Donna. Taking years to fire a bad teacher is the slap in the face to the rest of us.
The cover is a slap in the face to every teacher who has dedicated his or her life to bettering the lives of children.
Of course I'm not against due process. I'm against what I call undue process, wherein it really does take years to fire a bad teacher. And if unions were any more than parasites they'd want to get rid of the bad teachers, but instead teachers unions defend them and help them try to keep their jobs. That, too, is a slap in the face to the rest of us.
I second that, Darren. The teacher's unions are unions FIRST, and teachers second. Your kid is educated accordingly. I myself am a member of AFT--but that's just so I can know who they endorse so I can vote otherwise.
ReplyDeleteIn 2001, the conservative led congress made a major change to federal education policy requiring testing to show 100% of students be proficient or advanced in reading and math by 2014. The bill was signed into law by the conservative president George W. Bush. Now, it is 2014 and the goals of the law have not been met.
ReplyDeleteA search of this website shows that darren last wrote about NCLB in 2007. Nothing this year.
So, how does TIME magazine, a weekly news magazine, report on the failure of this major law?
By running the cover “Rotten Apples: It’s Nearly Impossible to Fire a Bad Teacher: Some Tech Millionaires May Have Found a Way to Change That.”
So, the failure of NCLB can be pegged to how supposedly hard it is to fire a teacher.
But darren is not "violently" upset by that.
Keep believing that, click your heels three times, and it will be Lake Wobegon time.
You mean the NCLB that was written by Ted Kennedy, the "Lion of the Senate"?
ReplyDeleteYes, *that* is the one you mean. The one that passed with bipartisan support, including Senators Kerry, Clinton, Feinstein...well, you get the idea.
The reason I haven't written about the law since 2007 is that it is essentially a dead law. Waiver after waiver granted to excuse states from its mandates, and the imposition of Race to the Top, made NCLB dead.
How is it you're trying to tie NCLB to firing bad teachers? That law wasn't *about* firing teachers.
Is your point that if we didn't have NCLB, there would be no teachers?
I'm not quite sure what your point is, except for the one on top of your head, but you're kind of what the French call a "jacques-ass". Perhaps if you stated your point clearly we could have a discussion about it. Just sayin'.
It's good you repeated your comment twice.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise, it would have been hard to tell what you meant.
The point, as made over at JoanneJacobs, is spare me your complaint that it takes too long to fire a teacher.
As the Russians might say, fignya.
One, it doesn't.
But if you believe tenure and unions has prevented bad teachers from being fired and that's why there is a gap between the economic and ethnic groups, click your heels three times and say, "I am right."
The Russians have a word for the way you are arguing here: осел
дурак
PM,
the child of a University of Cal-Berkeley graduate.
What are you smoking? Where do you get the idea that the *fact* that it takes too long to fire bad teachers--*un*due process, as I call it--has anything at all to do with some gap between economic and ethnic groups? Where did I say that, or even imply it, in this post?
ReplyDeleteYou have made an extremely strange straw man.
Based on your comment here and over at Joanne's, it seems you have some odd fetish about attributing to others some obscure racial belief you have. It seems pretty intentional, which makes you a foul human being.
Darren,
ReplyDeleteAs you acknowledge, there are achievement gaps between racial, ethnic, and economic groups in American public schools. The response of TIME magazine is to ignore that and focus on what one rich guy thinks about tenure and bad teachers. Why, I don't know. Probably has to do with the bias of press that you noticed and recently wrote about.
Many teachers, like my spouse, saw the TIME cover, and felt like Bradley Cooper's character in Silver Linings Playbook after he finished A Farewell To Arms. Your own self admitted "violent" objection was to Donna Brasile's comment, not TIME's focus.
If you and TIME want to focus on tenure and due process as the most severe ills afflicting and crippling American public schools, that fine. Totally wrong headed, but fine. Meanwhile those who what to improve schools will work and what ails them while you, TIME, and David Welch play in the sandbox.
(If you have don't have objections to the racist foulness of Jim Hoft, as does one of your and Joanne's regulars commentators, Allen in Michigan, that tells a lot about you and is a great explanation for your retromingent vitriol.
Sloppy polemic trick there trying to project Hoft's vileness on me.
And is funny that you evenly balance the liberal Ted Kennedy with the conservative House, Senate and President Bush.
Wow, I never knew he was that powerful.
The one thing I get from this exchange with you is that Charles Johnson over at Little Green Footballs has it right- the conservative end of our political spectrum has gone way off the cliffs of Normandy.)
You're a one-note-Charlie, aren't you? Dude, not everything is about race. My post certainly wasn't.
ReplyDeleteI made no comment on the content of Time's article. It's from TIME, forchrissake! I took aim at Brazile's comment, nothing more.
I gave a list of people who signed onto NCLB, and we can add Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to that list. You don't have to like it, but you don't get to choose your own facts.
I have no idea who Jim Hoft is, and don't really care. He's not someone *I* pay any attention to, so don't try to associate me with him.
As for going off cliffs, I've already identified which side *I* think has :
http://rightontheleftcoast.blogspot.com/2014/11/this-is-why-bill-maher-is-batst-insane.html
Thanks for playing :-)
Well, except for the ignorant comment about race, your tone is much better. My opinion of you has gone up.
ReplyDeleteSince your screed in the previous comment reference my attack on allen in Michigan, I explained that allen gives credence and promotes Jim Hoft, aka the Gateway Pundit, a racist nutcake.
But had allen given credence to and promoted defenders of David Duke or Oliver Cromwell, to name two other, more famous, psychopaths, I would have pointed that out, as I imagine you would have.
While Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi signed onto NLCB as well,(and we mustn't forget George Miller) it was still the brainchild of the conservatives based upon the conservative policies of George Bush while he was the conservative governor of the conservative state of Texas. Obviously, you find that discomforting, thus the need to try and redirect to the liberals as though they were controlling the presidency and congress. I believe you when you say you haven't gone off the cliff with the right wing nutcakes and Bill Maher, so I don't think you believe there was a liberal cabal controlling things from behind the scenes in 2001.
You're welcome for playing as well.
I'll let you be now.
;)
Ted Kennedy is given credit for writing NCLB. You can't wish that away. There was no "liberal cabal" running things in 2001; rather, NCLB was what we used to call "bipartisan", as evidenced by the scores and scores of Democrats (including those I mentioned previously) who voted for it.
ReplyDeleteAs for the rest--well, feel free to believe whatever you want.
The problem is … the people in charge of firing teachers don't have any real way to evaluate them fairly. They don't have the time to do extensive observations of the teachers in their classes; standardized tests aren't a fair measure since students have no by in; and, for the most part, they have very little say over who they have in their classes. And … if you have a problem student in a public school, having him removed is very similar to the process for firing a teacher.
ReplyDeleteRace might be an issue, but not for the reason you think, PM … I have a long standing belief that the family of the student is much more important than the teacher; also, that the vast majority of teachers who make it through student teaching and their first two years are at the very least competent. But …beginning teachers tend to the ones assigned to the worst schools, and those tend to be in heavily minority communities. And, like it or not, if you are a minority (other than most Asians) you are more likely not to have an intact family; you may also have grown up in a culture where education was not valued, or maybe even mocked. I speak from personal experience. Anyone can teach students whose parents want them to succeed and have the time to make sure that assignments are completed and homework done. But … you can lead a student to knowledge but not make him think. IF the students and their parents don't care, you are almost never going to have any success. I think 2 years for tenure is fine … but the union should acknowledge the problem of mandatory notification by exempting that need for probationary teachers …I do agree that they should need to make it through a full 2 years.