It was ironic that Leonard Pitts Jr.’s column (TNT, 2-16) about the Marines posing with an SS flag would appear the same day as Peter Callaghan’s column putting the best face on the latest pathetic efforts to pass a please all/solve nothing education reform.
Pitts rightly deplores history no longer being taught. Sadly, it was a necessary sacrifice to make room for all the trendy edu-gimmicks that have brought modern education down to the level it wallows in today.
As long as the Washington Education Association maintains its stranglehold on the process and the politicians who fund it, no amount of tweaking and fine-tuning will make a flawed system work. When the Legislature makes charter schools possible, I’ll believe it’s serious about quality education.
Charter schools do not work any better than regular public schools. Try some other n..brai..d idea.
What will work is getting rid of the current system of curriculum and having teachers use the EALR’s as a guide for what to teach. Have teachers design their own curriculum.
cclngthr? For FREE?!?! How about teachers get to use their desired curriculum as long as the EALR’s are met. Geeze, would teachers get paid extra for designing and creating a curriculum that districts pay $1000′s for?! I’m hoping that you meant they get to pick their chosen curriculum and not create it.
Creating (for any teacher who is expert in their field) a curriculum is not rocket science…if you don’t have to fill in and submit a few dozen turgid and jargon encrusted forms justifying every lesson.
Creating a curriculum should be fairly straight forward and easy to do. Use the EALR’s for each grade level and task analyse them to determine what should be taught when.
When I student taught, I was given a similar task of designing a program that taught a work vocational skill to developmental disabled students at a high school. The end product was to teach them real work skills that transferred to a real job. I was asked to create a program the school district could use.
What I created was a auto detail program that students learned a real work skill, plus they were able to transfer that knowledge of working to other types of employment. The kids were beginning their resumes and in the program I designed, got paid for their work. The program was self sustaining, meaning it paid for itself, the kids learned a skill, and started something that easily transferred to a working condition.
Trying to connect the military scum that somehow the Marines have not, in their training and culture, been able to prevent from infecting the Corps in a public fashion (I suspect these types have always been there – the technology and the internet just expose them much more readily) to local school issues is strained at best.
David
Can you tell us your qualifications for judging the state go education in the country today? Or are you just spouting anti-education nonsense? Also, please give some examples of how the evil WEA has a “stranglehold”on education? Do they tell teachers how and what to teach? And what “trendy edu-gimmicks” are you talking about? I suspect that you, like most anti-school “experts” actually have not been IN a school since you were a student. And charter schools? I bet you don’t actually even know what they are or how they work.
The letter writer is correct; Competition will always improve negative conditions inherent with all monopoly strangle-holds. But were at the point where alternatives wouldn’t guarantee the the turn around required to right the disaster that has become of our public education system. Any attempts at comprehensive reform are futile without the extraction of the union or at minimum the corruptive bargaining process.
The unprecedented anomaly of education’s massive rabbit hole of tax funds vs results, isn’t hard to decipher after linking it to facts like that teacher’s pay, out of all occupations, is the least linked to results. Unions have also neutered principals and elected boards, taking the power while forgetting the culpability. Since 1989 NEA has contributed more money to political campaigns than every evil corporation except for AT&T.
http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php
Below is an example of the poisonous attitude and perverted narcissism that encompasses the NEA/WEA and their monopoly on public education.
The priorities of the unionist teachers, straight from the horses mouth itself. Big Shocker : It’s not the kids.
__________________________________
NEA Bob Chanin 2009 – It’s Money & Power, Not Education
After 41 years as the nation’s top education union boss, Chanin, closes his last Representative Assembly
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=OwxiRXqH_hQ
Long version 25:32min
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=bqn1rvv7Fis
Pacman
News flash –the WEA has a purpose,to represent teachers about WORKING conditions, not curriculum, therefore you are correct, it is NOT about the kids, so what? With that said, since they have nothing to do with kids, what they do is hardly harmful. I am still waiting doe one of you “experts” to tell me how the “union” has neutered principals and school boards. The answer is that you can’t because it is not true.
“it is NOT about the kids, so what?”
You can’t see how that selfish attitude, which has transformed an education system into an employment system, might take away from their performance? That explains you making a fool of yourself, asking the same feckless question letter after letter, no matter how many times, how many people answer it.
Just in my comment directly above your sad pitiful attempt :
- The union’s monopoly and the common issues with all monopolies; No Competition = High Cost and Low Quality. Elected Reps of parents and taxpayers are forced to accept unions destructive demands due to lack of an alternative. “Choice” = Pretentious teachers poisoned by union greed and political priorities or nothing.
- Teacher’s Priorities: The Union not kids; Poisonous attitude responsible for the near extinction of private sector unions and the public union’s nationwide bankrupting of state and local budgets along with being the laughing stock of work ethics. Same destructive mindset is the source of failure for public education, not particular adopted standards or curricula.
- Collective Bargaining; The corrupt process where union reps sit across the bargaining table from political cronies of union agenda/priorities, even former unionist, referred to as “negotiations”. What was and should be the voice of parents and voters, the authority of administrators and school boards to affect the quality of learning, has been gradually extracted with this vile anti-democratic process. After decades of corruption and manipulation, this un-American process has given the union the power to determine much of the policy and operations of procedures in districts. Today, teacher’s asinine contract provisions dictate hiring, firing, layoff and transfer criteria, the number of sick and furlough days, seniority stymies quality, class size, how and if their performance will be evaluated, pay rate, the teacher’s assignment in district, etc. One of many secondary effects of these provisions have led to, is teacher’s pay being the least linked to results of all occupations.
Factors from other comments/letters include:
- The propaganda attack unleashed by unions to discredit alternatives and any data used to back alternatives such as charter schools, vouchers or privatization.
- Leftist politicians and lobbyists that are compensated to sabotage efforts to introduce reform or competing alternatives to public schools with the goal of maintaining the union monopoly on public education.
- Segregation at schools in various district’s low income neighborhoods that are unfairly neglected with a deficiency of a balanced teaching staff in experience and/or expertise. Staffing rules in union contracts allow teachers, instead of administration, to dictate teacher’s assignments. Teachers with more seniority opt to stay planted at, or transfer to schools that serve more middle to upper-class children. Thus, manifesting the disparity skill/experience stemming from individual racism and other prejudices of teachers.
Only a fool can’t see the epidemic, which is the disease of unions. It’s demise in the private sector that would be concurrent in public unions if not for their lap-dog Dem crony’s ability to milk the taxpayer to sustain their existence. Even a teacher could put two & two together and see the correlation in the plague of the union and the Public Education Debacle. For the possibility of a turn around of the union’s damage, the goals and priorities of the teachers must be academic excellence, professional development and the well being of the students.
The teacher’s unions no longer have a rational or realistic basis for their existence. They have become political lobbyists machines bent on self preservation and non-educational agendas. It is lunacy for the teachers and their apologists to suggest that union’s defense of the status quo isn’t a factor in teacher’s failure. As it is lunacy to deny the damage of the dysfunctional mindset of teachers infected by unions, who make many decisions, they’ve hijacked from the representation of the parents, behind the closed doors of the union hall where students are far from priority.