In the many articles you can find about the Madison protests, of all that is insulting and angers me the most is when I hear the various unions, protesters and teachers say, "We're fighting for democracy."
No you aren't.
Democracy is where the majority rules.
You are by default tyrants and oppressors.
The majority of the population in Wisconsin has voted in Republicans and, among other things, they are going to reel back what is frankly huge overpayment to a corrupt union. Fighting against it, to the point cowards flee from their responsibility to "hide" is the DEFINITION of TYRANNY. Of course these corrupt officials and the idiot protesters who support them, frankly do not have the maturity or intellectual honesty to adhere to democracy.
Additionally, I will post two charts that should be in every state capitol and in the hands of every state legislator and every governor, so please feel free to send them. They are for Minnesota, but I'm quite sure the statistics would hold for any state;
Do not tell me you need more money or that it's horrible you have to pay for your own damn pensions.
I've always found those spending per pupil to test result things interesting.
ReplyDeleteESPECIALLY interesting if you compare them internationally.
What always comes out is that there is no particular relationship betwen money spent anf results. ( within reasonable bounds)
Now it would be interesting to normalize for prevailing local wages and what not ( that were available, obviously earning 5000$ in Country X means something different in Y)
Also would interesting to have a social cohesion number, i.e. somewhere like Finland or Japan usually get good results and have low diversity, low idicators of things like cultural viruses like having children whenyou are 15.
Dio I have time to research this? NO. Not my job. Besides Studies in my head already show the answers.
The comparison of test scores to salary is an interesting perspective, but I think we would learn more from a look at test score improvements over a school year by salary. For example, a teacher who takes kids who are two years behind to .5 years behind over a year has done a phenomenal job, but still have underperforming students. Is that good or bad? I'd say the work should be rewarded.
ReplyDeleteAre more experienced (thus higher paid under the current system) teachers more capable of achieving results like that? Not necessarily, although there is likely a decent correlation between experience and efficacy.
Ed,
ReplyDeleteI'm frankly done caring about children that aren't mine, teachers who choose to be teachers because they get 3 months off, and parents who are indifferent to their children's education and behavior.
Overall, improvements considered, experience of the teacher considered, it doesn't change the fact that more money does not equal better education and I'm sick of paying for it when it's nothing but a glorified baby sitting operation.
There's a reason I'm looking to move out of the state. I suggest you at LEAST consider getting out of Minneapolis because you have to bend over the most in the state with those property taxes.
I was on a forum recently where teachers and their apologists seriously argued that teachers are underpaid and that summer and winter breaks for teachers are unpaid because they didn't get a paycheck during that time. They also argued that "teachers are only getting 10 days of vacation time". They were surprisingly immune to suggestions that is economic nonsense. Credentialism was another common fallacy being bandied about.
ReplyDeleteIf I were on a WI school board, we'd be having an emergency meeting and would be giving notice to all staff that abandoned their jobs to protest under the false pretense of being sick.
ReplyDeleteAnd if they're out three days, they'd better have a excuse signed by their Doctor, else you're fired.
Insubordination and lying is not to be tolerated - and its a bad example for the children the teachers don't give a rat's ass about.
And if there was evidence the union advocated such behavior, I'd sue them for damages - namely for the loss in state per pupil/day aid for having forced school to close for two days.
More power to Gov. Walker! He gets it.
This is gonna get real ugly. The governor is taking on several sacred cows-a decaying educational gulag built to make womyn with useless degrees think they are "contributing" and "valuable". Listen to their howls about how "valuable" their work is-hahaha-kids are graduating with worse credentials than the kids who only attended a one-room shed in the middle of the prairies in the 1800's when they did not even have books or pencils.
ReplyDeleteUnions are gonna lose check-off dues and have to lay-off graduates of human-resources and poli-sci "degree programs".
Huge numbers of administrators and helping staff will also fall by the wayside, again from the more useless faculties of unversities. And thats just the school related losses, hopefully the cuts will be just as severe in the ranks of fire-fighters (yes I said it) a more useless and underutilized trade is hard to find.
Let the games begin. Of course maybe Oblama would find the need to "stimulate" the economy again to rescue their under-worked, sorry asses.
Calling in sick when you are not is a grounds for firing. It is dishonest and sets a bad example for the children. It would also probably be considered an illegal strike. Of course it's never really been about the children has it.
ReplyDeleteParasitic unions have never seemed to be smart enough to realize that if they kill their host, they die too. If not for government bailouts, the UAW would be dead or dying along with GM and Chrysler. Unfortunately with public employee unions is they are part of a government monopoly that can't go out-of-business if the politicians (many bought and paid for by the unions) cave in to unreasonable union demands.
In the end, it comes down to the un-Constitutional violation of freedom of association that allows these unions to have so much power in the first place. By what right should a business or government be forced to deal with a union and be prevented from permanently replacing union workers who make unreasonable demands?
Even FDR, creator of that un-Constitutional National Labor Relations Act, prohibited government employees from unionizing. Unfortunately, Kennedy caved and allowed federal government employees to unionize.