Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The "parent trigger" is when "Under the law, if 51% of parents in a failing school sign a petition, they can trigger a forcible transformation of the school--either by inviting a charter operator to take it over, by forcing certain administrative changes, or by shutting it down outright."
David Feith is an assistant editorial features editor at the Journal.
Under the law, district officials will decide which strategies will be taken at a targeted school, but unlike in the past, officials will not have the option of delaying action.
So, just what happens? The problem isn't that people won't take action, it is that any action they take is bound to be ineffective unless we get rid of the focus on test scores. Despite the hype, MOST charter schools do not actually improve learning. Neither do vouchers.
Only 17 percent of charter schools produced results that were significantly better than traditional public schools, CREDO found, and 37 percent performed worse.
It goes to show that it's not so easy to fix things especially when private companies *think* they know something about education and don't and especially if the school is supposed to turn a profit.
The "parent trigger" is when "Under the law, if 51% of parents in a failing school sign a petition, they can trigger a forcible transformation of the school--either by inviting a charter operator to take it over, by forcing certain administrative changes, or by shutting it down outright."
David Feith is an assistant editorial features editor at the Journal.
Power to the Parents! If nothing else, it can put a little pressure on a unionized/tenured staff. Maybe...
Right-to-Work States Have Higher Poverty and Infant Mortality Rates Right-to-Work states have an overall poverty rate of 12.9 percent and a child poverty rate of 17.4 percent, compared with 11.3 percent and 15.2 percent, respectively, in free bargaining states. Moreover, the infant mortality rate is 14 percent higher in Right-to-Work states.
Right-to-Work States Spend Less on Education Right-to-Work states spend $2,260 less per pupil on elementary and secondary education than free-bargaining states. The lack of spending is reflected in low teacher salaries as Right-to-Work states pay teachers an average of $7,681 less per year than free-bargaining states.
A public school teacher I know, who has worked in both a unionized state; California and in a non-unionized public school in Texas relayed to me that California teaching was better for teachers but Texas was better for the students.
I believe there is a lot more to providing a good education than money. And the kind of power the unions can flaunt is not always good. The power of a truly bad and even harmful teacher to keep from getting fired thanks to the union is one example I have personally seen. Having experienced both, I'll stick with the non-unionized schools, myself.
The "parent trigger" is when "Under the law, if 51% of parents in a failing school sign a petition, they can trigger a forcible transformation of the school--either by inviting a charter operator to take it over, by forcing certain administrative changes, or by shutting it down outright."
David Feith is an assistant editorial features editor at the Journal.
I bet that in many cases, at least 51% of the parents whose children attend a "failing school" are failures themselves and could care less.
A public school teacher I know, who has worked in both a unionized state; California and in a non-unionized public school in Texas relayed to me that California teaching was better for teachers but Texas was better for the students.
I believe there is a lot more to providing a good education than money. And the kind of power the unions can flaunt is not always good. The power of a truly bad and even harmful teacher to keep from getting fired thanks to the union is one example I have personally seen. Having experienced both, I'll stick with the non-unionized schools, myself.
Sorry, but Texas is crap for the students.
I live here. Kids get an inferior education because the Texas BOE is nutty. Also, the way the state funds the schools is entirely unfair to some districts and great for others. It's a crap shoot.
There IS no way for harmful teachers to not be fired *if* admins do their jobs. The problem is not the unions but bad admins. First of all, all teachers regardless of the union can be fired before they get tenure. Second of all, any teacher who is doing a bad job can be fired if admins document the bad teaching or harmful actions. What the union does protect teachers from is the situation where a principal or admin fires them without cause or because they complained about the state of the school. It also means that teachers cannot be fired for giving failing grades to students who deserve them as they can in non-union schools. I taught in the math department at an union inner city high school and the pressures to pass students was high, but the department always resisted and insisted that the kids had to actually do the work to pass. I still remember one jr. high teacher who quit after her principal allowed students who she failed to not only graduate to go on to high school, but to walk across the stage to receive diplomas they did not deserve.
Texas’ standards for what schoolchildren should learn in math are “clearly inferior” to recently written national benchmarks, though the state earned high marks for its language arts curriculum, according to a new study.
The report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, officially released today, gives Texas a grade of C for its math standards and an A-minus for language arts.
Texas and Alaska were the only states not to participate last year in an effort to write national, or common, curriculum standards that spell out what students should learn no matter where they live.
Look at how Texas A and M takes people into the education school
Texas A&M International University Department of Education in Laredo, Texas - Big Hat, No Cattle (http://thelastamericannewspaper.com/welcome-to-tamiu-if-you-have-scored-at-least-a-on-the-act-well-take-ya-p1882-443.htm - broken link)
Quote:
How is it possible that the 133 students with ACT scores of 16 and lower have the same average high school GPAs as the 89 students with ACT scores of 17-20. This indicates that teachers at both United ISD and Laredo ISD are giving students high grades that do not deserve them. As a former UISD teacher, I can assert that this is indeed the case. Up until the beginning of the 2009-2010 school year, UISD and LISD had grading policies that forced teachers to give minimum grades of 50. The Texas State Legislature passed a law last year making this type of grading policy illegal. Good school districts willingly accepted the change. Weak school districts complained to their State Representatives and attempted to thwart the policy. At UISD in Laredo, they simply failed to make it clear to teachers that the policy had changed. At the beginning of this year the local paper informed the community a year after the law was passed.
Teachers that do not pass students are being blamed for the failures. According to teachers working for UISD teachers are called into their principals' offices every 6 or 9 weeks and raked over the coals for giving students grades lower than 70. The best teachers take the most heat. Somehow, the districts seem to believe by doing this that it translates into "holding teachers accountable".
Many teachers in order to protect their jobs simply cave in to administrator demands and give students higher grades than they deserve. Honest teachers will tell you that this happens at schools all over United ISD and and LISD. TAMIU Department of Education data validates this as fact.
A couple reasons I am not a fan of teachers' unions:
The first is from the L.A. times and discusses just how difficult a procedure it is to fire not only ineffective, but harmful teachers. The second tells of the recent expose of Buffalo, NY teachers' union covering millions of dollars of cosmetic surgery; money that could have gone to students but didn't.
A couple reasons I am not a fan of teachers' unions:
The first is from the L.A. times and discusses just how difficult a procedure it is to fire not only ineffective, but harmful teachers. The second tells of the recent expose of Buffalo, NY teachers' union covering millions of dollars of cosmetic surgery; money that could have gone to students but didn't.
And you are one of the reasons I left teaching. My kids were not the problem. Some of their parents were. The administration was more of a problem in that they would not back up teachers for the most part. I have a masters degree in mathematics, not in education, but I will not go back and teach without some assurance that teaching conditions will be improved. It was those of us who were good teachers who cared about the kids who took most of the flack especially from those who would never dare to step food into a classroom to teach.
The fact is that teachers can easily be fired. Administrators must document and must supervise.
Oh but that will take power away from the government officials. Can't have that!
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
