Educated By Unionized Public School Teachers... and I'm Doing Well (stats, Obama)

[mlassoff]

Seems like most of you folks here on CD are doing great-- I've never met so many other successful people on an internet forum. Almost everyone claims to be in the highest tax bracket, many business owners, and a couple who have claimed a net worth in the millions...

So for all you successful CD'ers: How many others were educated by Unionized Public School Teachers? I was-- and I got in to a good college and have had a successful business career. I have common sense and can navigate every day life. I write fairly well, and have a good grasp of math.

I assume all of you, who are so damned successful, and keep deriding the quality of unionized public school teachers went to private school?

[HappyTexan]

Catholic school from 1-12 and public college for BS degree.
No K here as it was optional and only 1/2 day when I went to school.

[InformedConsent]

Originally Posted by mlassoff

Seems like most of you folks here on CD are doing great-- I've never met so many other successful people on an internet forum.

Many successful people? I see a LOT of people here on c-d wanting others to pay for the government services and benefits they receive. Why? Because they claim they earn too little to pay their fair share of taxes.

[A&M_Indie_08]

Originally Posted by mlassoff

Seems like most of you folks here on CD are doing great-- I've never met so many other successful people on an internet forum. Almost everyone claims to be in the highest tax bracket, many business owners, and a couple who have claimed a net worth in the millions...

So for all you successful CD'ers: How many others were educated by Unionized Public School Teachers? I was-- and I got in to a good college and have had a successful business career. I have common sense and can navigate every day life. I write fairly well, and have a good grasp of math.

I assume all of you, who are so damned successful, and keep deriding the quality of unionized public school teachers went to private school?

How was your family situation at home as a child?

I ask because this is the single biggest factor in a childs success, not how much spending on education takes place as certain folks want to believe

And, just as many kids fail with those "unionized public school teachers" ...... not good..... the point is that unionized or not, it really does not play that big of a role in child success

Stable family home life does

[tinman01]

Public school educated and I would be hard pressed to claim I am successful because of it. Yes I learned to read and got some math out of the deal. Mechanics I learned on the farm.
The problem isn't people are anti unionized teachers. The problem is lack of accountability after tenure and of course the unions (in my area) refusing to compromise in anyway on benefits and measures to hold the dead weight accountable. How can anyone claim that they never had a worthless teacher? I had several. A biology teacher who was also the football coach. Would assign pages to in the book to write down and then leave the classroom. At the end of class he would collect the work. never had a test.
A history teacher in 12th grade. We never opened a book that entire year and never had a test. But then we never had a class on history either.
Do we really need such as they teaching our children?

[wutitiz]

I did K-12 in pubilc schools, but long ago, before teachers were unionized. Most of the teachers were competent, and some great. My one complaint is that they wasted so much of my time. It should not have taken 13 years to get through that. But I guess that's what you get with 'one size fits all' gov't schools, and why Pres. Obama does not send Sasha & Malia to gov't schools.

Anyway, both my tale and that of the OP are strictly anecdotal. There is no question that as a whole, the US public schools perform poorly. We spend more per student than any nation except for Switzerland. According to the PISA stats in 2011 we ranked 17th in reading, 31st in math, and 23rd in science.
OECD Education Rankings –*2011 « Signs of Our Times

[unounehana]

Originally Posted by A&M_Indie_08

How was your family situation at home as a child?

I ask because this is the single biggest factor in a childs success, not how much spending on education takes place as certain folks want to believe

And, just as many kids fail with those "unionized public school teachers" ...... not good..... the point is that unionized or not, it really does not play that big of a role in child success

Stable family home life does

Also teacher quality is a factor. The best teachers I had were the ones that were in the district the longest. The newer teachers that left shortly after were the worst. My dad was a teacher at my high school and my mom was a playground attendant at my elementary school. They tried their best to put my in classes with the most senior teachers.

A union can help in fostering longevity, if implemented properly. So instead of schools firing after a few years so they don't pay more (this sacrifices teacher quality A LOT...foreign teachers in Korea are on 1 year contracts and you can see that the people that are BRAND new are pretty bad...meanwhile those that have been here a while are able to control our classes more effectively and are able to decrease the amount of discipline needed, thus allowing for more instruction time).

Simply put unions and tenure have their purpose. Let's not deride them, but rather make sure that they actually benefit our children as well.

[mackinac81]

I credit my public school (in a unionized state) partially with my success. I had good teachers who viewed it as a career, and my experience inspired me to become a teacher myself, where I'm doing something I love and where met with quite a bit of professional success.

[unounehana]

Originally Posted by tinman01

Public school educated and I would be hard pressed to claim I am successful because of it. Yes I learned to read and got some math out of the deal. Mechanics I learned on the farm.
The problem isn't people are anti unionized teachers. The problem is lack of accountability after tenure and of course the unions (in my area) refusing to compromise in anyway on benefits and measures to hold the dead weight accountable. How can anyone claim that they never had a worthless teacher? I had several. A biology teacher who was also the football coach. Would assign pages to in the book to write down and then leave the classroom. At the end of class he would collect the work. never had a test.
A history teacher in 12th grade. We never opened a book that entire year and never had a test. But then we never had a class on history either.
Do we really need such as they teaching our children?

See, I tend to not believe such stories about teachers. That implies the principal wasn't evaluating the teacher (most teaching contracts stipulate that they are observed, they can be fired with too many poor evaluations). Teachers also usually like teaching. If you got to talk about your favorite subject, wouldn't you want to? Usually it doesn't add up.

[wutitiz]

Just yesterday I was talking to a friend about my experience w/ US history. I took it as a junior in high school. The teacher was not very good, and the textbook was so dumbed down that it was boring and painful to read. I came away thinking that US history just wasn't exotic enough for my tastes, and therefore did not interest me.

In college I didn't have to take US history, so I didn't. Western civ was required, which I took. We also had to take one year of non-western civ, choosing from African, Chinese, and Islamic, IIRC. I took Islamic civ.

It wasn't till years later that I started reading US history, due to my interest in politics. I started with Henry Commager Steele, then Howard Zinn, Paul Johnson, and other US history surveys. It didn't cost $10,000 per year either, just $20 or $30 here and there for a book.

I love the US history quizzes that come up from time to time in news stories about how bad students are on this subject, because invariably I score in the high 90's. No thanks to the public schools, and no thanks to thousands of taxpayer dollars.