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Union Boycotts LA Times Over Teacher Evaluation Disclosure
Atypical Geek writes "According to Newsweek, the local teachers union is infuriated over the disclosure of teacher performance metrics. Quoting: 'Do parents have the right to know which of their kids' teachers are the most and least effective? That's the controversy roaring in California this week with the publication of an investigative series by the Los Angeles Times's Jason Song and Jason Felch, who used seven years of math and English test data to publicly identify the best and the worst third- to fifth-grade teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District. The newspaper's announcement of its plans to release data later this month on all 6,000 of the city's elementary-school teachers has prompted the local teachers' union to rally members to organize a boycott of the newspaper.' According to the linked Times article, United Teachers Los Angeles president A.J. Duffy said the database was 'an irresponsible, offensive intrusion into your professional life that will do nothing to improve student learning.'"
The fifth-graders at Broadous Elementary School come from the same world the poorest corner of the San Fernando Valley, a Pacoima neighborhood framed by two freeways where some have lost friends to the stray bullets of rival gangs.
...
Yet year after year, one fifth-grade class learns far more than the other down the hall.
Palm trees and 8
There are definitely problems in the U.S. educational system. This article was pretty cool, and they do state that their metrics aren't perfect, but lead to some valuable insight. I'd like to see further studies on this.
Teacher's Unions are the biggest problem with the US educational system. They are more concerned with teachers' benefits than they are about students. Of course, that is their job, but they give campaign contributions and students don't, they've become a bit too good at it.
I love it when teachers bitch about pay (although, sometimes warranted) and we get the following conversation:
"Haven't teachers always been underpaid?"
"Yes, and we need to fix that once and for all."
"Then why did you take the job?"
"Because I love it!"
"!??!!!?!!?"
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
It would be nice to hope that this was the first step in recognising that (indirectly) real people pay for and therefore employ teachers. These real people would like to think the primary role of teachers is to impart knowledge, skills and abilities to the children in their charge.
I'm a prof in a school of ed, but my background is in psych, not ed. I've noticed that many teachers (and those teachers who go on to become profs of education) do not feel that imparting "knowledge, skills and abilities" is their major goal. Rather, as I see it, they envision teachers as replacing the home, family, and parents as the conduit of social morals.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
Just remember, it was management's idea to give those ridiculous retirement benefits, not the unions. The union requested a modest pay raise, and management thought they'd get away cheap by giving retirement bennies instead, thinking workers would only live to 68. In hindsight, the pay raise would have been much cheaper.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If there were a market in teacher pay, for example, I'm reasonably certain that a high school physics teacher would make a lot more than a kindergarten teacher.
I think you are badly and dangerously wrong. Correct facts are a prerequisite for a robust debate, and your facts are wrong.
According to a recent study, the true economic value of an outstanding kindergarten teacher is somewhere around $320,000 per year. As in, three hundred and twenty thousand US dollars. A high school teacher is not worth anywhere near as much. That's because, by the time students get into high school, they are too old for a teacher to change them very much. In order to make a significant difference in a student's life outcome, you have to get to them while they're young.
If schools actually start paying their best kindergarten teachers $320,000 per year, then yeah, sure, to hell with unions. Until then, however, I view them as a necessary evil.
No, they didn't get pay raises. They got the bennies in place of the pay raises.
Sorry, the best I can do is this: When I was a kid, my grandfather, who lived in the same big house with my dad and mom and sister and grandma, worked at a GM supplier on the South Side that worked under the same contract that GM had in Detroit. I remember hearing about those negotiations every single night at the dinner table.
I come from a union family. Three generations before me, from railroad-workers unions to firefighters and policeman's union to Teamsters.
If it hadn't been for those unions, I would not have grown up in a middle-class family, and I'm betting neither would you, because those gains made by organized labor did things like create the 5-day workweek, and paid vacations, and sick leave. If it wasn't for those unions, and their influence on the political system, I would never have gone to university or grad school. If it wasn't for those unions, there would be no middle-class in the US. Just an ownership class, a merchant class and a bunch of workers who lived paycheck to paycheck and owned nothing. Just look at the decades before the organized labor movement to see what I'm talking about. Women dying in shirt factories, kids working in meat packing plants instead of going to school, company stores. Starting with the Reagan administration, we've been heading back in that direction, and combined with his (and his three successors) all rewarding companies that shipped jobs overseas, we will never again have a strong manufacturing sector in the US. That's gone for good, finished. US wages are headed for China levels.
And that's going to apply to tech workers, too. Already, there are places in the US where it's cheaper to have a call center than India, because of declining pay levels. Tech workers are working longer hours, having fewer benefits, and in more and more cases they're just contract workers so they get no benefits at all, not even vacation.
Don't believe that because you're a high-flying tech worker that you're immune from the decline of the middle class. During the period from 2000-2008, your real income went down by an average of $2000. If you're still middle-class, it's largely thanks to your credit card and huge mortgage, and even those are going to be going away. The US is down to about #11 among other countries in quality of life and dropping fast. And no, it's not due to the past 19 months.
You are welcome on my lawn.