You are evidently not holding up your end of the social contract.
*****************
Why do you say that ? If you read the post, it is clear that all of my students who want to learn are doing well in their standardized tests, treat me with affection and respect, and may well work at Apple Inc. someday.
Less well than their Belgian counterparts evidently. In any case, it would be difficult to show that you are on the cutting edge of your profession given your attitude toward change.
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Lots of NASA people ( my best friend included ) have masters degrees, publish papers, read them at conferences, etc. Many have been responsible for the great stuff you see from "out there" -- as Kirk says.
Mkay...sure. And the last time someone without a PhD was a principle investigator of a significant experiment at NASA was?
The fact remains that in many disciplines a PhD is entry grade.
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Maybe yours wasn't.
But my degree is very close to a Ph.D. because an M.S. requires a lot more than an M.A. and our University was very demanding of it's M.A. and M.S. degrees. In fact, we had to go to the Mathematics department to find profs who could understand my oral examination and ask good questions. Also, I have done research and I have co-authored papers ( just not as much as if I had not gone into teaching ).
Then you should have just gotten a PhD or an EdD then eh? But you didn't so...
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No one has denigrated you. Your "protection" is not to allow bad teachers to continue to draw salary regardless of performance but to provide the ability to teach unpopular topics without undue interference.
*************************
That is not my only protection and if you give it a second of thought you will see that it can not be. Else, anytime a principal disliked a teacher's politics, the teacher would be accused of some other infraction and summarily dismissed. So, there must be DUE PROCESS for any dismissal and that , for better or for worse, means CONTRACT, UNION, COLLECTIVE BARGAINING, STRIKES, etc.
The NY contract and the flow chart fails the "reasonable person" test. It appears impossible to let an incompetent teacher go. To the point they have buildings to house teachers they don't want in the classroom but pay anyway.
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And why ? Because teachers were not allowed to date, were required to tithe 10 % or more of their salaries to the church, were almost all single women abused by the male rooster in the main office, etc. What is new about any of this Vinny ? What are you -- an anti-labor fascist ?
Nope. Just stating that you cannot argue that tenue is a fundamental requirement for teaching in as much as teaching occured before tenure was in place.
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Obviously your skills as a researcher has deteriorated or you could do better than undocumented assertion...
**********************
Jeeezzz, I've told you tons about what I base my statements on .... you call it "name dropping".
This is completely out of context. The assertion you made was:
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Vouchers (even if sufficient to actually get these underachieving students to the "better" teachers: they are far from sufficient) would simply dump masses of ill-mannered punks and well mannered but unschooled students into the "better schools" to detroy them absolutely.
This completely ignores the possibility of moving these kids to either vocational school or placing them in a more appropriate setting. And as an assertion it is completely unsupported except with ancedotal commentary from you.
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Which assertion is that ? Maybe it was just a suspicion or an opinion ---- could've been true -- never know.
You'll never know because you failed to "research" how the quote function works.
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In comparison to a system like Belgium its a no brainer...their system is superior to ours with their general, technical, professional, artistic and vocational tracks. That they couple that with financial accountability in the form of "vouchers" makes it more difficult to determine which factor is more important but who cares? Adopt both.
Your assumption is that with vouchers no new schools would appear. This appears to be incorrect. Also, wouldn't it be nice if private school teachers could be paid as much as their public school counterparts?
************************
What on Earth ? Why would new schools not simply deteriorate academically with the same lack of support now given to the schools we have ? Do you think all the old, bad teachers and bad students and bad parents are going to go to the moon ? When those kids I have who behave like punks go to your nice voucher school, they will crap all over your school - you will need to triple the custodial staff; you will have false fire alarm claxons splitting your ears several times per day; you will get cussed out on the phone by the parent; your administrators will be overwhelmed and will begin playing politics and placing beaurocratic blocks in front of you as you try to deal with the misbehavior; your good students' grades will plummet; ....... AAAhhhhh wait ... I think I know what you want :
Yes, this is EXACTLY what happened in Belgium. It was a total failure. Not.
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How about if those parents who are the poorest or are undocumented CAN'T take the vouchers because of distance, not a large enough voucher, or fear of detection & deportation ????? AAhhh, Then you could skim the cream of the crop out of my classes; leave me with a totally failing score -- you will make your accusation true --- I won't be able to respond that I DO carry my weight in the social contract: simply because you now have my only cooperative students and have created a cesspool for me to work in --- right ? A separate but equal system -- no ?
Complete strawman.
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Oddly, none of the teachers in my family has described kids quite like that.
****************************
Nothing odd there, you are clearly not one to soil your shoes in a school like the ones with the lowest scores and, not by coincidence, the greatest need for help.
Gee really? So every teacher that doesn't believe that kids are punks have avoided all the tough kids and have never worked in schools with low scores? Riiight.
Or perhaps the truth is you're jaded and a clear example of the kind of teacher we should weed out of the system? Because I sure don't want a teacher that thinks that kids are terrorist punks even in a discussion forum.
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But truly Vinny, no one can ever disabuse you of your vaporous notions about kids, teachers, etc. on a forum.
And you sure can't convince anyone in this forum you aren't a punk yourself since you seem incapable of an adult conversation.
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Why don't you come on down to South Central with us and help us out. I would love to emulate whatever it is that you have on the shelf if it will make everything alright. Are you coming soon ? I'll fix you a plate .... tic...toc....tic...toc...tic...toc .... Vinny ? Are you there ? ... Happy Meal coupon ? ........ where are you ? OK, I'll tell you how to get into the teachers' rest room... now come on ! that's valuable info !! ....... I'll tell you how to turn off the fire claxon ... and the space heater ....
For someone who returns after a month to a dead thread to be impatient is pretty funny.
In any case, your offer is false in as much as teacher unions have steadfastly resisted any alternatives like vouchers.
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So just give it up , Vinny. I win, you lose. Sign here,
Why do you ask ? Would that be a put down ? I thought you liked kids ? I'd love to be 12
Vinny, don't come to a war of wits unarmed.
Priceless. A 12 year old having this conversation would be interesting...for a teacher to be this incoherent in a thread discussing why teacher unions have to go is absurdly funny in a very sad way.
Less well than their Belgian counterparts evidently. In any case, it would be difficult to show that you are on the cutting edge of your profession given your attitude toward change.
Mkay...sure. And the last time someone without a PhD was a principle investigator of a significant experiment at NASA was?
The fact remains that in many disciplines a PhD is entry grade.
Then you should have just gotten a PhD or an EdD then eh? But you didn't so...
The NY contract and the flow chart fails the "reasonable person" test. It appears impossible to let an incompetent teacher go. To the point they have buildings to house teachers they don't want in the classroom but pay anyway.
Nope. Just stating that you cannot argue that tenue is a fundamental requirement for teaching in as much as teaching occured before tenure was in place.
This is completely out of context. The assertion you made was:
This completely ignores the possibility of moving these kids to either vocational school or placing them in a more appropriate setting. And as an assertion it is completely unsupported except with ancedotal commentary from you.
You'll never know because you failed to "research" how the quote function works.
Yes, this is EXACTLY what happened in Belgium. It was a total failure. Not.
Complete strawman.
Gee really? So every teacher that doesn't believe that kids are punks have avoided all the tough kids and have never worked in schools with low scores? Riiight.
Or perhaps the truth is you're jaded and a clear example of the kind of teacher we should weed out of the system? Because I sure don't want a teacher that thinks that kids are terrorist punks even in a discussion forum.
And you sure can't convince anyone in this forum you aren't a punk yourself since you seem incapable of an adult conversation.
For someone who returns after a month to a dead thread to be impatient is pretty funny.
In any case, your offer is false in as much as teacher unions have steadfastly resisted any alternatives like vouchers.
Priceless. A 12 year old having this conversation would be interesting...for a teacher to be this incoherent in a thread discussing why teacher unions have to go is absurdly funny in a very sad way.
Vinea
In other words, he enjoys the status quo that his union is giving him and he resents anything or anybody that will take it away from him.
My desires to shut you up stem less from wanting to force nonsensical ideals on Middle Eastern countries and everything to do with the fact that you're completely obnoxious, unreadable, and you violate several posting guidelines.
Home again !
Let's see .... ah, yes ! the neo-con-men who snipe at decent people. Well, here we go ...
So, you can't handle a little push-back on a PC screen and you want to solve the schools problems by firing teachers as the principal sees fit ?
This is why you would not last a week in a school with difficult kids : SHUT UP and YOU ARE FIRED are your only
tools because you are stuffed with O'Reilly feathers and Trump sauce.
I just had my largest class score and average of 97 % in their practice CST quiz. Guess who taught them , in spite of all difficulties and punks ..... ( HINT : sure as hell not you , champ ).
Let's see .... ah, yes ! the neo-con-men who snipe at decent people. Well, here we go ...
So, you can't handle a little push-back on a PC screen and you want to solve the schools problems by firing teaches as the principal sees fit ?
This is why you would not last a week in a school with difficult kids : SHUT UP and YOU ARE FIRED are your only
tools because you are stuffed with O'Reilly feathers and Trump sauce.
I just had my largest class score and average of 97 % in their practice CST quiz. Guess who taught them , in spite of all difficulties and punks ..... ( HINT : sure as hell not you , champ ).
Way to call the gay liberal art kid a neo-con. You've certainly nailed me to a tee.
I'm so proud that you're such a good teacher, since you don't seem to be able to read or write. I haven't even said anything about your viewpoints, other than that there were too many asterisks in it for me to pay you any heed.
Less well than their Belgian counterparts evidently. In any case, it would be difficult to show that you are on the cutting edge of your profession given your attitude toward change.
Mkay...sure. And the last time someone without a PhD was a principle investigator of a significant experiment at NASA was?
The fact remains that in many disciplines a PhD is entry grade.
Then you should have just gotten a PhD or an EdD then eh? But you didn't so...
The NY contract and the flow chart fails the "reasonable person" test. It appears impossible to let an incompetent teacher go. To the point they have buildings to house teachers they don't want in the classroom but pay anyway.
Nope. Just stating that you cannot argue that tenue is a fundamental requirement for teaching in as much as teaching occured before tenure was in place.
This is completely out of context. The assertion you made was:
This completely ignores the possibility of moving these kids to either vocational school or placing them in a more appropriate setting. And as an assertion it is completely unsupported except with ancedotal commentary from you.
You'll never know because you failed to "research" how the quote function works.
Yes, this is EXACTLY what happened in Belgium. It was a total failure. Not.
Complete strawman.
Gee really? So every teacher that doesn't believe that kids are punks have avoided all the tough kids and have never worked in schools with low scores? Riiight.
Or perhaps the truth is you're jaded and a clear example of the kind of teacher we should weed out of the system? Because I sure don't want a teacher that thinks that kids are terrorist punks even in a discussion forum.
And you sure can't convince anyone in this forum you aren't a punk yourself since you seem incapable of an adult conversation.
For someone who returns after a month to a dead thread to be impatient is pretty funny.
In any case, your offer is false in as much as teacher unions have steadfastly resisted any alternatives like vouchers.
Priceless. A 12 year old having this conversation would be interesting...for a teacher to be this incoherent in a thread discussing why teacher unions have to go is absurdly funny in a very sad way.
Vinea
Still no substance to your whining , huh .....
I'm not surprised. This is how you rack up your number of posts ----- little, vacuous snipes...
Tell us what you will do to fill all of those vacated positions for teachers in punk infested schools, Vinny .
You seem to leave out in the cold all of those kids and could-be kids now punkin' the classroom.
Say something that isn't impossibly snooty and fantastical.
Say anything that might be taken seriously by a real teacher, in the real world we are given.
So far, you sound truly ignorant, vicious, heartless, evasive, snarky, elitist, and soooooo neo-con-man that I wouldn't be surprised if you turned out to be just one of those paid liars on whom the WH occupant spends billions of dollars. It would not surprise me if half the posts that sound like you ARE you in various larval stages.
Are you a fascist Vinny ?
Do you like to screw teachers, nurses, dissidents, librarians, and the like out of house and home ?
Sure sounds like it to me.
We notice that your posts are all about threatening people's peace of mind and that you actually offer NOTHING , NADA , toward a credible solution.
The need for teachers ( not snipes ) is huge and growing.
What did you do today to help anyone ?
I taught 86 students to do mathematics. I made them smile and laugh. I told them about college life and how to get financial help. I practiced them in fractions, percents, scientific notation, translating English to algebraic expressions and Spanish to same. I volunteered for the detention hall supervision. I called a parent on my cell time to tell her her kid was screwing off and I might drop an F the size of a horse on him. This mother answered the phone immediatelly, said "Got you", "I see, yes", and "Thank you so much for the call - I will definitely take care of this." Kid came back next hour and scored 90% from 18% prior to my intervention: I risked a reprimand in doing this --- we are not allowed to call parents during class time, ostensibly to not interrupt instruction. The fact that Jr. IS INTERRUPTING INSTRUCTION ALREADY escapes the brilliant administrators whom you want to empower with the Donald ray gun.
I gave the quiz, graded them, had them anotate their errors and good moves, posted them on the bulletin board, refered a girl with head lice to the nurse without embarrassing her, stopped three inter-gang fist fights before they started --- without touching either kid ( forbidden too ) and thereby prevented a three-day suspension for both. I donated money to charities and helped my homeroom do the same. I helped two new teachers to work their MacBooks , I signed up for another bullshit staff development that is required. I cleaned up my classroom. I explained to a student where American Easter egg and bunny symbolism come from and what it doesn't have to do with christianity. I googled and projected pictures of Fabergé Eggs . I did same for the Aljambra and Moorish influence in mathematics. I lent my last three dollars to three kids who had their lunch tickets stolen -- I won't get those back and more I can't remember.
I sued five Instructors for discrimination and 13 other causes of action --- very successfully. I won hands down.
Three of them called themselves Liberals and affected all the trappings of sensitivity -- down to the natural cotton apparel and Birky sandals ( all of which are great stuff, mind you ). But their veneers peeled off when they found themselves across the table from my attorneys and under oath. Even the president of the college testified that they were discriminating against my ethnicity - and we were suing him too ! Little things give them away : like calling me a "professional Cuban" instead of a Cuban professional. And saying " Who ever heard of a Cuban physicist ?! " and " You belong in East LA among people of your own cultural background -- if you remain here, we will give you a very hard time ."
How about that, eh ? Even I was shocked. And the last came from a guy who looks like Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul, and Mary.
Years earlier, I had my life saved by a stereotypical Southern Pig Cop with paunch, mirrored glasses and impenetrable drawl ---- almost beaten to death by a pick-up truck load of "good old boys" . Cop just wasn't a racist creep.
The California Lib dude was. And helped to ruin my career , against the wishes of virtually all of my students and the rest of the Math/Science Department faculty.
Real life is very deceptive. I lived in Miami and Tampa for 33 years without discrimination. I was recruited to northern California and was suing 16 biggots within one year.
Wow, people are still talking about this? I just wanted to say that I think the major problem is lack of funding, mainly federal funding, we need lots of that. Taxes need to be raised, we need to get out of a couple wars, the whole government needs to be reorganized financially-and I think retirement age for teachers needs to be lowered.
I sued five Instructors for discrimination and 13 other causes of action --- very successfully. I won hands down.
Three of them called themselves Liberals and affected all the trappings of sensitivity -- down to the natural cotton apparel and Birky sandals ( all of which are great stuff, mind you ). But their veneers peeled off when they found themselves across the table from my attorneys and under oath. Even the president of the college testified that they were discriminating against my ethnicity - and we were suing him too ! Little things give them away : like calling me a "professional Cuban" instead of a Cuban professional. And saying " Who ever heard of a Cuban physicist ?! " and " You belong in East LA among people of your own cultural background -- if you remain here, we will give you a very hard time ."
How about that, eh ? Even I was shocked. And the last came from a guy who looks like Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul, and Mary.
Years earlier, I had my life saved by a stereotypical Southern Pig Cop with paunch, mirrored glasses and impenetrable drawl ---- almost beaten to death by a pick-up truck load of "good old boys" . Cop just wasn't a racist creep.
The California Lib dude was. And helped to ruin my career , against the wishes of virtually all of my students and the rest of the Math/Science Department faculty.
Real life is very deceptive. I lived in Miami and Tampa for 33 years without discrimination. I was recruited to northern California and was suing 16 biggots within one year.
OK, I think it's safe to say this guy is a troll...
Less well than their Belgian counterparts evidently. In any case, it would be difficult to show that you are on the cutting edge of your profession given your attitude toward change.
What is it with you and the Belgians ? Are you nuts ? We live in the USA , planet Earth.
Not "change" Vinny, "your crap".
You overuse the macho, hyper-competitive , bravado jargon. You are not on the cutting edge of anything, kid.
I am happy to be a teacher. What are you ?
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Mkay...sure. And the last time someone without a PhD was a principle investigator of a significant experiment at NASA was?
Every day. There you go with your elitist crap again. Do you recognize any distinction between "Principal Investigator" and "folks with Master degrees doing most of the real work" ? This happens every day , all over the world. When Lise Meitner discovered fission and first "split the atom", her "Principal Investigator" , Otto Hahn insisted that it was merely a chemical reaction. It was she who carried out the experiments and interpreted them correctly !!! His behavior, her love for him not withstanding, was disgraceful - especially after the hitler threat was removed from German academia. I know this is long ago, but I site it because it is typical. Many Principal Investigators spend most of their time scrounging for Congressional support, grants, publicity, writing specs, and in political wrangling. All University research , by graduate students, is siphoned off by the grad's committee chair who gets top billing in the thesis even if he did nothing of substance. You must be as ignorant of scientific research as you are of public school teaching.
I can't name names here because it would hurt their careers, but I have very close friends who were robbed of their work by superiors who simply erased my friend's name and replaced it with theirs. Attempts to rectify this injustice through established channels lead to a round-robbin tongue lashing of my friend at a disciplinary meeting and he almost lost his job ! And , yes he has a Masters degree and ,yes, you see his work on the Discovery Channel and could read it in the top professional journals of his field. This crap is very common.
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The fact remains that in many disciplines a PhD is entry grade.
Sure, no quarrel with that. But what does it really mean ?
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Then you should have just gotten a PhD or an EdD then eh? But you didn't so...
Why ? I had enough for teaching community college physics ( actually would not want University because you can't teach for all the grant writing, research trickling, political fighting, etc. --- if you love to teach, community college is the filet mignon of careers ).
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The NY contract and the flow chart fails the "reasonable person" test. It appears impossible to let an incompetent teacher go. To the point they have buildings to house teachers they don't want in the classroom but pay anyway.
But the way to fix that is to first find a way to keep the teachers protected from all the petty politics that passes for "teacher review" and only then think of procedures for dismissal.
BTW, in LA, teachers can be dismissed and have been.
If anyone thinks that principals or superintendents are fit ethically or pedagogically to do this, then they are insane. The political demands on principals, as the face of the school to the community, are overwhelming and I don't blame them for not throwing their lifetime's work into the can and get canned anytime an incident happens or a persistent socio-economic problem dumps her school's scores. Principals are, by training and profession, cover-up experts. This is why standardized testing is used. From making failure notice forms impossible to obtain, to using thinly veiled threats ( i.e., " Well, if you have that many Fails, we will have to visit your classroom to see what you are doing wrong.") that really threaten administrative reprisal, there are a million ways to pressure the teachers to pass kids who don't perform. How about : Any student with a D cannot go up on stage to receive the diploma. You know how that one works ?
Well, many parents who will not answer a phone call or Fail warning notice ALL YEAR LONG, will show up ten minutes before the end of the semester ( I am not kidding you here -- TEN ) demanding to know why his angel will miss the photo opportunity ( more valued than the learning Jr. spat on ) and who will return his money for the film, camera, cap and gown, gas, baby sitter etc. A policy like this pits the teacher against hundreds of angry parents. You think justice will prevail ? And if that administrator is the same one who STULL's you ( evaluates you ) --- you wanna get an UNSATISFACTORY EVALUATION ? It's only a few steps from there to dismissal. And you neglect COMPLETELY the salient FACT that most of these schools are overloaded with teachers on Emergency Credentials and on Probationary status for as much as eight years as they burn the candle at both ends to get the "Clear" credential. This ruined my health.
It scuttles a large number of potentially excellent teachers. These newbies are totally intimidated by being subject to dismissal without cause , at any time.
I have seen three go this route -- albeit there was good reason to dismiss them. I did not defend them.
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Nope. Just stating that you cannot argue that tenue is a fundamental requirement for teaching in as much as teaching occured before tenure was in place.
Good lord !!! What is that ? Logic ? Monty Python could hardly top that one
Here's a news flash : surgery occured before washed hands were required of the surgeons.
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This is completely out of context. The assertion you made was:
After that last gem you want context ???!!!
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This completely ignores the possibility of moving these kids to either vocational school or placing them in a more appropriate setting. And as an assertion it is completely unsupported except with ancedotal commentary from you.
More appropriate setting ? Details please ---
Oh, say, while you are at it, could you tell my admin to not
"mainstream" 23 special ed kids into my 26 - student classroom. It seems that the 3 kids who can meet standard don't get enough of my atention while the others yell F__ Y____ at each other for 108 minutes non-stop.
See, I am not a special ed teacher( SAINTS ALL OF THEM).
And it's not fair to demand CST standards of kids who can't read numbers, say the times tables, nor control their emotions. I am not refering to punks here. These kids are truly incapable of controlling themselves enough to meet the same standards as the others. They need "Individual Academic Plans" suited to each kids capacity and three adults to ten students in a true special ed environment.
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You'll never know because you failed to "research" how the quote function works.
I told you, I only have an MS degree.
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Yes, this is EXACTLY what happened in Belgium. It was a total failure. Not.
Here we go again. Do you want a waffle ? Is that it ?
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Complete strawman.
How can you say that ? Look Vinny, kids are given the 800 number to turn their parents in with any accusation they want. This HAS to result in a house visit by CPS officers and police. If you are undocumented, your whole world is turned upside down. A mother visited me, afraid to be seen there by her daughter who had threatened to report het to CPS if she kept her from partying or made her improve her grades. Another girl was absent for weeks. I investigated and she, along with her mom, had been assured by the brutal, unwanted father that he would use his hunting knife to skin both of their faces and heads so no man will ever want them. They were terrified, stayed at home, lost her job, COULD NOT GO TO THE POLICE FOR FEAR OF DEPORTATION -- you ass -- and I had to report the "man" myself at the same risk.
Vinny, you insensitive neo-con-man-can't-believe-you-are-gay-and-so-blind-to-injustice-piece-of-Belgian-waffle !!!!
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Gee really? So every teacher that doesn't believe that kids are punks have avoided all the tough kids and have never worked in schools with low scores? Riiight.
Yes, every teacher who doesn't believe that punks can make a good teacher totally ineffectual in the classroom has avoided all the tough kids and has never worked in a school with punk-induced low scores. Right.
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Or perhaps the truth is you're jaded and a clear example of the kind of teacher we should weed out of the system? Because I sure don't want a teacher that thinks that kids are terrorist punks even in a discussion forum.
Ah, the cowardly, unmanly censor calls on daddy again. It is really developing into a major personality disorder with you neo-con-men isn't it ?
Why do you hate America, Vinny ?
Never mind, I accept your apology.
All you have to do is ask Junior if he is a terrorist punk.
He will say, "Yes, I am a terrorist punk".
Then, tell him you don't believe him and he will slice your
tamales off for you, hand them to you and say, "See ?"
And when you ask them what they think of phoney-baloney "child advocates" like you, they spit and say, "Man, that dude is weak ! He deserves what he got. He's not like you Mr. J, he's all ... messed up, he's a liar. He doesn't make us do our work, he doesn't respect himself, ... he's a pen___o."
That, dear Vinny, is the punk as he is given to you.
So far, all you offer is Belgian waffles.
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And you sure can't convince anyone in this forum you aren't a punk yourself since you seem incapable of an adult conversation.
Of course I am capable.... with adults.
Waazzamatter Vinny, can't take the heat ? How you gonna make it in da classroom baby ? No fear , brother. The crap I've been handing back to you is just day 1 of a new teacher's day.
Got waffle ?
How else can some one rouse you out of your bullshit neo-con-man reverie without physically rubbing your snout in the dirt ?
I have to perforate your bubble, don't I ?
I must let some air out of your head to make room for
the facts I deal with at work.
Nothin' personal bro .... izzz just bizzzznezzz, that's all.
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For someone who returns after a month to a dead thread to be impatient is pretty funny.
In any case, your offer is false in as much as teacher unions have steadfastly resisted any alternatives like vouchers.
So have private schools when they smell FEDERAL REGULATIONS, PROVISIONS, etc. on that voucher money.
It's a neo-con-man hot button, a vote getter, a boogy-man ... they would BLANCHE Vinny !!!, BLANCHE !!!! Do you hear me ? BLANCHE !!!
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Priceless. A 12 year old having this conversation would be interesting...for a teacher to be this incoherent in a thread discussing why teacher unions have to go is absurdly funny in a very sad way.
Incoherent eh, I think you understand all too well.
What is it with you and the Belgians ? Are you nuts ? We live in the USA , planet Earth.
Maybe because it was the Belgian system that was compared against the US system and the US system found lacking?
No, that would be too logical.
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Not "change" Vinny, "your crap".
Because everything you disagree with is "crap"? The US system has flaws. There are other systems that seem to do better. Trying to introduce those systems have run into the brick wall of teacher's unions. So the comment that teacher's unions stand in the way of change and improvement has merit.
That you are steadfastly unable to consider that point of view without name calling indicates that you aren't a big favor of change in any form.
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Every day. There you go with your elitist crap again.
I find it amusing to defend the value of PhDs given I'm usually on the opposite side of the argument...however...
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Do you recognize any distinction between "Principal Investigator" and "folks with Master degrees doing most of the real work"? This happens every day , all over the world. When Lise Meitner discovered fission and first "split the atom", her "Principal Investigator" , Otto Hahn insisted that it was merely a chemical reaction.
Meitner attained her PhD in 1906 from the University of Vienna. I brought up PIs simply because while there are folks with masters supporting research at NASA usually the folks designing and running the actual experiment have more formal training in research (meaning a PhD).
There's nothing special about a PhD other than a) the ability to grind through the work to attain one and b) that the individual with one has shown ONCE that they can do independent research of some kind.
But you're diverting the issue: a master's degree is nothing special. Neither is your experience at NASA. In any case, on the internet such claims are unverifiable and rather pointless.
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All University research , by graduate students, is siphoned off by the grad's committee chair who gets top billing in the thesis even if he did nothing of substance. You must be as ignorant of scientific research as you are of public school teaching.
It's well known that if a very busy Professor is listed first on a paper that typically it's the second name that wrote it if it was a grad student. In any case, you still get to list that publication (i.e. you get credit).
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I can't name names here because it would hurt their careers, but I have very close friends who were robbed of their work by superiors who simply erased my friend's name and replaced it with theirs. Attempts to rectify this injustice through established channels lead to a round-robbin tongue lashing of my friend at a disciplinary meeting and he almost lost his job ! And , yes he has a Masters degree and ,yes, you see his work on the Discovery Channel and could read it in the top professional journals of his field. This crap is very common.
Less common than you make it out to be. Theft of research, once widely known, destroys the only thing of real value to a researcher: their reputation. Horror stories exist but are the rare exception rather than the rule in academia.
In any case, they can't steal your brain unless you let them (by getting bitter about it). The truth emerges eventually because your own work will show what you can do.
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Why ? I had enough for teaching community college physics ( actually would not want University because you can't teach for all the grant writing, research trickling, political fighting, etc. --- if you love to teach, community college is the filet mignon of careers ).
The point is you've been carrying on about your purported credentials as if they were meaningful to the discussion or all that noteworthy. They aren't.
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But the way to fix that is to first find a way to keep the teachers protected from all the petty politics that passes for "teacher review" and only then think of procedures for dismissal.
BTW, in LA, teachers can be dismissed and have been.
Sure. Given that each school system has its own rules one should be able to find examples of anything. But NY has a very powerful union and was the example in the documentary (or simply show if you prefer not to call it a documentary).
LA's teachers union has opposed more charter schools and amazingly the three board of ed members that voted against more charter schools got $1M in campaing contributions from the UTLA.
Gee.
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If anyone thinks that principals or superintendents are fit ethically or pedagogically to do this, then they are insane.
I would think that the impact of vouchers would be felt up the entire food chain to do better. The least impact would hopefully be on teachers since they would still be needed and would have more opportunities to move to a school run by a competent administrator.
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Good lord !!! What is that ? Logic ? Monty Python could hardly top that one
Here's a news flash : surgery occured before washed hands were required of the surgeons.
Very true so you have a point. So sanitary operating procedures have improved the survival rates of the patients. What can we say of the tenure system in US public schools?
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More appropriate setting ? Details please ---
Oh, say, while you are at it, could you tell my admin to not
"mainstream" 23 special ed kids into my 26 - student classroom. It seems that the 3 kids who can meet standard don't get enough of my atention while the others yell F__ Y____ at each other for 108 minutes non-stop.
See, I am not a special ed teacher( SAINTS ALL OF THEM).
Mainstreaming is typically implemented poorly. Arguably mainstreaming is bad for everyone except a portion of the mainstreamed kids.
However, I can see the point of view of parents that insist on mainstreaming for their kids. The problem lies in that there are not enough resources to provide 100% coverage on a 1-1 basis for mainstreamed kids.
Now, my wife had mainstreamed kids in her class with 1-3 ratio of helpers (she had 3 with an aide) but it was still a disruption in the class.
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And it's not fair to demand CST standards of kids who can't read numbers, say the times tables, nor control their emotions. I am not refering to punks here. These kids are truly incapable of controlling themselves enough to meet the same standards as the others. They need "Individual Academic Plans" suited to each kids capacity and three adults to ten students in a true special ed environment.
No disagreement. Each district implements this differently...some still maintain special ed schools but some have completely (or almost completely) closed them.
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I told you, I only have an MS degree.
You seemed to have figured it out. Its easier to maintain context this way no?
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How can you say that ? Look Vinny, kids are given the 800 number to turn their parents in with any accusation they want. This HAS to result in a house visit by CPS officers and police. If you are undocumented, your whole world is turned upside down. A mother visited me, afraid to be seen there by her daughter who had threatened to report het to CPS if she kept her from partying or made her improve her grades. Another girl was absent for weeks. I investigated and she, along with her mom, had been assured by the brutal, unwanted father that he would use his hunting knife to skin both of their faces and heads so no man will ever want them. They were terrified, stayed at home, lost her job, COULD NOT GO TO THE POLICE FOR FEAR OF DEPORTATION -- you ass -- and I had to report the "man" myself at the same risk.
Vinny, you insensitive neo-con-man-can't-believe-you-are-gay-and-so-blind-to-injustice-piece-of-Belgian-waffle !!!!
Its a strawman because for every one of these stories you provide there's another equally disadvantaged family that would benefit from vouchers. These are the same ones who camp out for days hoping to get their kids into a charter school.
The story you provide is simply argumentum ad misericrodiam. The end result of vouchers will not be a system where poor parents can't find better schools for their kids if they are motivated to. Rich parents already do that.
Undocumented parents are a seperate but related social issue. One that vouchers shouldn't impact because if its already legal for you to treat undocumented parents as the legal guardians without reporting them, then sending them a voucher in the mail to apply to their kids education is more of the same.
Will there be kids that are poorly served under a system that has vouchers? Sure. Will there be problems? Sure. Will there be disasters? Sure.
But the system already sucks. Keeping the status quo is already a mess. Tell me this: why are class sizes still so large even though we are pouring more money than ever into the system?
Because maybe we spend $84 per pupil on textbooks but $107 per student on supervisor salaries (not counting principles and other school staff) in the LA Unified School District (2004ish numbers)?
So what if vouchers resulted in a PUBLIC school system that isn't top heavy and wasteful which allows you to have a lower punk/class ratio?
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Yes, every teacher who doesn't believe that punks can make a good teacher totally ineffectual in the classroom has avoided all the tough kids and has never worked in a school with punk-induced low scores. Right.
The primary difference appears that you think that the majority (if not all) kids are punks or proto-punks. Given that my wife taught in the worst school in her district I'd say that she had experience with "punks" but didn't speak as you do regarding kids.
Yes there are punks. But more teachers I know complain about class size as a root cause of many problems. Unless you feel nearly every kid is a punk smaller classes would allow you to teach more and perform "classroom management" less.
Thus far your comments make you seem jaded and feel that almost all kids are punks. So reducing class size wouldn't help you much there would it?
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Ah, the cowardly, unmanly censor calls on daddy again. It is really developing into a major personality disorder with you neo-con-men isn't it ?
No one is censoring you...you plead victimhood far too easily. That you come across as a bitter and jaded teacher on this forum is no ones fault but your own.
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Waazzamatter Vinny, can't take the heat ? How you gonna make it in da classroom baby ? No fear , brother. The crap I've been handing back to you is just day 1 of a new teacher's day.
Its not crap...it's just stupid. If you want to act the part...be my guest but it certainly doesn't advance the idea that some teachers need to be removed but cannot because the unions prevent that.
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So have private schools when they smell FEDERAL REGULATIONS, PROVISIONS, etc. on that voucher money.
And other schools do accept regulations, provisions, etc. If no private schools will accept vouchers then there should be no problems correct?
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Incoherent eh, I think you understand all too well.
You are busted, biggot. That's all I am saying.
Bigot? Dude, if you hadn't said you were a minority of some kind who on earth would know? You have no clue my background or ethnicity so claiming some wierd bigotry accusation is just another appeal of victimhood. Get over yourself. I wrote you were incoherent because your posts were frothing and poorly written.
That you think it's because of your skin color is just sad. The internet is one place that can be colorblind unless you inject it in yourself.
What can we say of the tenure system in US public schools?
You know, I've never really understood why the secondary schools now have a tenure system. What, precisely, is it there for?
And lord have mercy, this thread makes me want to go through the archives, dig up some 6 month old dead thread, and revive it as if it had never stopped.
Home again, home again ..... let's see what new crap
came in ......
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Maybe because it was the Belgian system that was compared against the US system and the US system found lacking?
It's a lousy comparison.
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No, that would be too logical.
That wouldn't be logical at all.
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Because everything you disagree with is "crap"?
No. Your crap is crap.
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The US system has flaws. There are other systems that seem to do better. Trying to introduce those systems have run into the brick wall of teacher's unions. So the comment that teacher's unions stand in the way of change and improvement has merit.
The crony system you would replace it with has always been far worse. Again, principals and superintendents have shown themselves to be ethically, professionally, and pedagogically incompetent to wield such power. Today my class was chosen , by my supervisor, to host visiting observers from the District ( I wonder why he would chose a jaded, incompetent like me to make a good impression on these powerful suits. )
One of them, a breathtakingly beautiful lady and a very nice person, I'm sure, and a couple of friendly and polite principals from other schools were amazed at my WACOM graphics tablet and asked me what it was, how it worked, and the same re. my digital camera that I have mounted on a home-made copy stand , all connected to my 12" G4 Powerbook and media projector that I use with AppleWorks as a super chalk board . Now it was a pleasant enough exchange , but are you the least bit amazed at their lack of familiarity with such a simple set-up ? And yet they were there to check up on our use of technology. I didn't dislike any of them personally. But can you see why I don't want them to have the power to fire me without due process and a real trial? As you know, if you read my post above, I have already tasted the arrogance and injustice of "tenure denial" without due process. I know, in my heart, exactly what dirty bastards people with such power can be. You really expect me to take seriously any suggestion that disarms me and empowers them ? BTW, by everyone's accounting, especially his students and colleagues, the most incompetent, indolent, and irresponsible of the people I sued, at that college, had a Ph.D. from Stanford. We had to sue him for his student reviews after he claimed that my excellent reviews were not up to par. After a year of fighting him, we got the reviews --- they were awful compared to mine. And he had decades of time to improve at that school.
In Cuba, we call such a parasite a "yam with a necktie".
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That you are steadfastly unable to consider that point of view without name calling indicates that you aren't a big favor of change in any form.
Don't fool yourself. I have not only considered it : unlike you, I have lived it. And I have rejected it. All bulwarks against injustice, cronyism, and nepotism have obstructed efficiency in some ways , throughout history. Our Constitution is just such a bulwark. In a dictatorship , like Castro's Cuba, I experienced the efficiency you dream of when illiteracy was taken from about 85 % to under 3 % in about a year. In fact, my older brother taught me to read Spanish at the age of three ( Spanish is very easy to read ) on a chalk board our uncle made for us so we could play school . Later , the drive for literacy began. An adult friend of the family sat me on his lap and I helped him to sound out the words on his text. That was my first teaching experience. Cuba now has a far greater literacy rate than we do here. And they read Marx and Cervantes --- not My Pet Goat.
You know who was cut out of that true miracle ? Not the teachers. Nobody screwed the teachers like you are itching to do. It was the administrators, rectors, directors, superintendents, and other yams with neckties who were canned. And, of course, as for the truly dangerous punks who had bred in the squalor of USA's Batista's police state, ... well, from my living room, we could hear the firing squads going all night long for a few weeks. Even I would not condone that.
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I find it amusing to defend the value of PhDs given I'm usually on the opposite side of the argument...however...
I value them too. They have been my mentors at university and supporters in my law suit. But we all know a Ph.D. has little to do with the holder's ethics.
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Meitner attained her PhD in 1906 from the University of Vienna.
Hahn behaved like a worm. He was almost as good a researcher as Meitner, but a lousy guardian of academic excellence and civic duty; especially after the war -- get it?
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I brought up PIs simply because while there are folks with masters supporting research
Don't try manipulative language with me V. Not "supporting" --- I said DOING --- that means designing, testing, running, inventing, perfecting, ALL OF IT.
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at NASA usually the folks designing and running the actual experiment have more formal training in research (meaning a PhD).
I don't deny the Ph.D.'s their due. But, you minimize the role of the Masters far too much. This is due to the fact that you are ignorant and evil. You must reform. You ought to give all the little people what they are due.
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There's nothing special about a PhD other than a) the ability to grind through the work to attain one and b) that the individual with one has shown ONCE that they can do independent research of some kind.
As a junior at university, I invented a laser trapping cell. The Ph.D. in charge of me had won every prize imaginable in his studies. He told me that the ray-tracing model I was embarking on was extremely difficult and, for my system, impossible. I did it in two days. He had no imput in it. That was research. I did it without a B.A. and I am not, in the least, persuaded by your points a) and b) above.
Many WWII Ph.D.'s had to "grind" through about as much work as a middling B.A. does today. The M.A. at my Alma Matter was far more challenging than many Ph.D.'s at other schools. One Ph.D. from U of Illinois at Urbana ( the crony who had been chosen, originally, by the dept. I sued ) taught his students that "thoughts travel faster than light", that "quantum mechanics is identical to classical statistical mechanics", and that "Poisson brackets are identical to Dirac bra-kets". As for the Ph.D. from Stanford
in the office adjacent to mine; I heard him tell a student that the 4pi factor in the "h-bar" constant ( sorry no character in my fonts here ) of QM is "a great source of controversy" , "the jury is still out as to it's use and meaning" and other BS. I was amazed. Now, Vinny, I know you are an ignoramus in this. But I post it so that maybe some Ph.D. will post and tell you ( with the snooty authority you require ) that the factor is simply the result of a closed angular integration ( whence 4pi steradians ) in the normalization of the probability density function of the system. And the other three barbarities are equally appalling. Not that I wouldn't give my right arm for a Ph.D. from such schools as UI and Stanford. It's just that in real life ( not your bubble world ) most Ph.D.'s are honest enough to tell you themselves that the degree guarantees little of what you imagine. Most of them will get a real chuckle out of your pretended naiveté.
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But you're diverting the issue: a master's degree is nothing special. Neither is your experience at NASA. In any case, on the internet such claims are unverifiable and rather pointless.
Oh, don't be hurt Vinny. Your neo-con-man intentions are quite transparent in the internet. All of our experiences are quite special. For example, mine made me a real expert in this area. Yours made you really stupid in yours.
It is obvious that you are begining to feel the weight of my arguments : you have reduced yourself to denying my veracity rather than countering with something resembling reason. That was a real give-away, Vinny.
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It's well known that if a very busy Professor is listed first on a paper that typically it's the second name that wrote it if it was a grad student. In any case, you still get to list that publication (i.e. you get credit).
Well, it's good to see that you know it. Apply this fact to your occiput and rub it in. Rinse and repeat.
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Less common than you make it out to be. Theft of research, once widely known, destroys the only thing of real value to a researcher: their reputation. Horror stories exist but are the rare exception rather than the rule in academia.
Less...more.... Bah, don't waste our time. Cronyistic systems that you prefer to unionized ones REWARD thieves.
Don't you keep up with current affairs ? None of the thieves in my friend's case lost a damn thing. Plagiarism is rampant in research -- not rare. Jeeezzz !!!
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In any case, they can't steal your brain unless you let them (by getting bitter about it). The truth emerges eventually because your own work will show what you can do.
More fantasy bull crap from neo-con-man planet.
Don't worry so much about flavors and try to show a little morality once in a while.
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The point is you've been carrying on about your purported credentials as if they were meaningful to the discussion or all that noteworthy. They aren't.
Don't try your ludicrous pronouncements of grand edicts re. what my facts are worth. If they were worthless you would not snipe at their authenticity : you would counter the argument. Again, a real give-away, Vinny .
For all we know, you are an 18 year old loser with not a single clue about the real world , failing in artsy-fartsy land, collecting 50¢ per post from the neo-con-man internet propaganda army, and posting under a dozen names to seem bigger than a louse.
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Sure. Given that each school system has its own rules one should be able to find examples of anything. But NY has a very powerful union and was the example in the documentary (or simply show if you prefer not to call it a documentary).
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LA's teachers union has opposed more charter schools and amazingly the three board of ed members that voted against more charter schools got $1M in campaing contributions from the UTLA.
And UTLA never said why they opposed it ? Why isn't that just awful ? !
I contributed to those millions. I am a UTLA member. What of it ? It balances the neo-con-man funding of biggots. You don't like the turnabout ?
The times, they are-a-changing , republican. Eat it.
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Gee.
Yes.
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I would think that the impact of vouchers would be felt up the entire food chain to do better. The least impact would hopefully be on teachers since they would still be needed and would have more opportunities to move to a school run by a competent administrator.
Yes, I guess you would think that. Your schools and "competent administrators" seem to materialize, deus ex machina, at your beck and call. Whence these saviors, Vinny ? Any idea ?
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Very true so you have a point. So sanitary operating procedures have improved the survival rates of the patients. What can we say of the tenure system in US public schools?
It has made it safe for teachers to teach science instead of fundamentalist stupidity. It has made it possible for teachers to expose fraudulent programs foisted by admin politicos at the expense of tax payers and kids. It has attracted the majority of teachers ( read --- good teachers ) to risk a commitment to teaching that is seldom reversible in fields like science, engineering, mathematics, and such. It has made it possible for history teachers to include the contributions of women and minorities in their lessons as well as exposing the revisionist, neo-con-man bull crap that passed for history and current events previously. It keeps countless women from having to lay the fat principal unless she wants to. Oh, and don't forget the aqueducts !
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Mainstreaming is typically implemented poorly. Arguably mainstreaming is bad for everyone except a portion of the mainstreamed kids.
Thank you. You get a cookie, vinea.
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However, I can see the point of view of parents that insist on mainstreaming for their kids. The problem lies in that there are not enough resources to provide 100% coverage on a 1-1 basis for mainstreamed kids.
No fair !!! If you get on my side we can't argue.
I am certainly not going to trade sides with you!
BTW, why must you always manipulate ? Did I say "1-1" ?
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Now, my wife had mainstreamed kids in her class with 1-3 ratio of helpers (she had 3 with an aide) but it was still a disruption in the class.
No disagreement. Each district implements this differently...some still maintain special ed schools but some have completely (or almost completely) closed them.
Ughhh ! This is terrible ! Get back to your side this minute!
Anyway, it takes fewer than five disruptive kids ( SE or punk , doesn't matter ) to kill a class.
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You seemed to have figured it out. Its easier to maintain context this way no?
I don't "seemed" to have figured it out. I had to call a Ph.D. from a very prestigious university without tenure or funding or teachers or even buildings to do it for me. They are protected, from yams-with-neckties, by their sheer trust in the fictitious, competitive market of neo-con-men with huge phalluses and really great morals.
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Its a strawman because for every one of these stories you provide there's another equally disadvantaged family that would benefit from vouchers. These are the same ones who camp out for days hoping to get their kids into a charter school.
OK, so you only screw half of the families.
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The story you provide is simply argumentum ad misericrodiam. The end result of vouchers will not be a system where poor parents can't find better schools for their kids if they are motivated to. Rich parents already do that.
More bull crap pronouncements from Nostradamus.
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Undocumented parents are a seperate but related social issue. One that vouchers shouldn't impact because if its already legal for you to treat undocumented parents as the legal guardians without reporting them, then sending them a voucher in the mail to apply to their kids education is more of the same.
Tell it to the parents. Private schools do as they will. A report to the MIGRA can be made for other "reasons" just as a lousy principal might ( under your crony system ) fire you for "reasons" other than, say, your being gay. Never heard of that trick ? The college I sued changed their "reason" for denying tenure as often as their private investigators came back to them with news that all witnesses had laughed in their faces and the latest "reason" had back-fired on them in a big way. I would say about twenty times. Once, they accused me of teaching voodoo in the physics class ( literally --- as per the college president's testimony ) .
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Will there be kids that are poorly served under a system that has vouchers? Sure. Will there be problems? Sure. Will there be disasters? Sure.
Hey !!! Hey !!! Who let Rumsfeld in here ?
Be gone, foul demon of darkness!!!. It is the power of christ that compells you! It is he who hurls you back to the pit of perdition. The blood of the saints compells you ! The tears of the angels compell you! The torments of the martyrs compell you !!! .... \ .... is he gone ?
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But the system already sucks. Keeping the status quo is already a mess. Tell me this: why are class sizes still so large even though we are pouring more money than ever into the system?
Because nobody wants to be pissed on by you ?
Because corporate-fascist worms squander trillions on murder abroad so we can't afford enough schools and teachers ?
Because without tenure, you have to live in fear of being canned by an idiot admin regardless of your skills ?
Because it's really hard for a man to get laid if he is identified as a school teacher ( unlike college profs -- need I relate anecdotes ? -- got the scoop on both sides, you know ) ?
Because most of you barbarians don't like kids nearly as much as you advertise ?
Because whorehouses are funded better than schools and visited more frequently as well ? Wanna hear about my years in the bordello ?
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Because maybe we spend $84 per pupil on textbooks but $107 per student on supervisor salaries (not counting principles and other school staff) in the LA Unified School District (2004ish numbers)?
We buy them books and we buy them books, and all they do is eat the covers. How long do you think it takes a punk to trash a $50 book or a $700 computer ? About 3 seconds in both cases. So, fire the teachers ?
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So what if vouchers resulted in a PUBLIC school system that isn't top heavy and wasteful which allows you to have a lower punk/class ratio?
No, no --- it will result in a concentration of punks in schools where parents can't pay the balance of the private school, or parents are crackheads, or parents don't dare risk deportation, or parents can't travel the distance, etc.
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The primary difference appears that you think that the majority (if not all) kids are punks or proto-punks. Given that my wife taught in the worst school in her district I'd say that she had experience with "punks" but didn't speak as you do regarding kids.
Again, it only takes three punks or so to ruin the education of thirty kids. The kids will tell you this themselves. Are you from Earth ? And the punk virus is transmitted by air.
Your wife must be much kinder than I.
I hope you remained good friends.
I like to call things by their proper names.
Punks are proud to be called punks.
They practice in front of the mirror.
It is "school boy" that will separate you from your tamales.
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Yes there are punks. But more teachers I know complain about class size as a root cause of many problems. Unless you feel nearly every kid is a punk smaller classes would allow you to teach more and perform "classroom management" less.
Are you planning to exterminate them or is it that you can't count ?
Where is the parachute drop of new schools going to be ?
Or do you plan to use them for sausage ?
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Thus far your comments make you seem jaded and feel that almost all kids are punks. So reducing class size wouldn't help you much there would it?
Oh, I know ! You expect the crops to fail and a plague to sweep the little darlings away !!! Or will they be taken up on the mother ship ? ... Oh, I need to re-jade before I go back to teach tomorrow.
And whom did you teach today ?
You know, all this time you spend lying on the web could be spent volunteering to tutor kids, read to them, make parent contacts, .... you know ... helping ???
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No one is censoring you
Sorry, I imagined a call for me to be banned.... must be all that jade.
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...you plead victimhood far too easily. That you come across as a bitter and jaded teacher on this forum is no ones fault but your own.
Oh, how precious ! Just like a teenee republican. You must disapprove of your own life style right ?
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Its not crap...it's just stupid. If you want to act the part...be my guest but it certainly doesn't advance the idea that some teachers need to be removed but cannot because the unions prevent that.
What ? You again ? !!! Get back on your side. This is my side. What kind of coherence is that ? I'm the one who can't write, not you ! Get your own disability !!!!
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And other schools do accept regulations, provisions, etc. If no private schools will accept vouchers then there should be no problems correct?
Again, MAKE MY DAY
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Bigot? Dude, if you hadn't said you were a minority of some kind who on earth would know? You have no clue my background or ethnicity so claiming some wierd bigotry accusation is just another appeal of victimhood. Get over yourself. I wrote you were incoherent because your posts were frothing and poorly written.
Quite the Hemmingway aren't you
Anyway, neo-con-men who screw teachers, minority kids and parents, and other decent working-class people, with phoney benevolence, are biggots.
Nothing to do with my ethnicity.
It's your biggotry.
I know you O'Reilly types love to wheel out the hackneyed "victim syndrome" crap when you run out of talking points. And you like to make brave demands for terribly competitive excellence from everyone but yourselves : maybe you hope to be falsely associated with excellence by sheer volume and repetition of that word. Give it up.
The times they-are-a-changing
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That you think it's because of your skin color is just sad. The internet is one place that can be colorblind unless you inject it in yourself.
That you think I am Black is a real give-away, Vinny.
But one under discussion...if you prefer to compare the US system to Cuba that's fine. I would think that a system that allows kids to read marx vs my pet goat and a 97% literacy rate would be considered by some to be superior...but not me.
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The crony system you would replace it with has always been far worse. Again, principals and superintendents have shown themselves to be ethically, professionally, and pedagogically incompetent to wield such power.
Yes, every principle, superintendent, etc is incompetent and the nature of the job precludes anyone from doing it well.
However, it seems in a free market system that companies with abusive, cronyistic, incompetent managers get clobbered by companies with less-incompetent managers (abusive or cronyistic or otherwise).
One would hope that competition in the education system would weed out some of the incompetents you decry and since they add questionable value the number of useless consultants would be reduced too.
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In Cuba, we call such a parasite a "yam with a necktie".
The current system promotes having more yams. Why NOT change it?
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Don't fool yourself. I have not only considered it : unlike you, I have lived it. And I have rejected it. All bulwarks against injustice, cronyism, and nepotism have obstructed efficiency in some ways , throughout history. Our Constitution is just such a bulwark. In a dictatorship , like Castro's Cuba, I experienced the efficiency you dream of when illiteracy was taken from about 85 % to under 3 % in about a year.
This isn't Cuba. There is a constitution. Vouchers wouldn't change that.
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Hahn behaved like a worm. He was almost as good a researcher as Meitner, but a lousy guardian of academic excellence and civic duty; especially after the war -- get it?
You touted Meitner as an example of a researcher. She had a PhD. Get it?
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Don't try manipulative language with me V. Not "supporting" --- I said DOING --- that means designing, testing, running, inventing, perfecting, ALL OF IT.
/shrug
The argument has been that typically folks without a PhD don't have the formal training to perform research with the rigor required for scientific study.
My counterarguement is that some disciplines, by their nature, conduct research....in the sense that they systematically have a way of solving problems. But it is true that most folks, even with masters, do not get the formal training for conducting scientific research.
Hence most folks doing real research (scientific inquiry) at NASA have PhDs. Its not like its THAT hard to get a PhD. All it takes is a little perseverance and tolerance for BS.
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I don't deny the Ph.D.'s their due. But, you minimize the role of the Masters far too much. This is due to the fact that you are ignorant and evil. You must reform. You ought to give all the little people what they are due.
Ad hominem and silly. Being of the "little people" I give us plenty of credit and due. I simply stuck the PhD thing at you because you kept puffing yourself up and I figured it would annoy you. It seems to have.
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Many WWII Ph.D.'s had to "grind" through about as much work as a middling B.A. does today. The M.A. at my Alma Matter was far more challenging than many Ph.D.'s at other schools.
See...you keep trying to justify that your MA is as valuable as someone else's PhD. It doesn't matter...and perhaps I shouldn't have jabbed you with the PhD stick but hey...
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It's just that in real life ( not your bubble world ) most Ph.D.'s are honest enough to tell you themselves that the degree guarantees little of what you imagine. Most of them will get a real chuckle out of your pretended naiveté.
Most PhDs would disagree that the only thing that a PhD signifies is that someone stuck to getting a PhD and that the person showed that they could do independent research once?
It's not exactly what I would call a very high bar. But it seems that despite your great intellect you read what you want to read rather than what is actually written.
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It is obvious that you are begining to feel the weight of my arguments : you have reduced yourself to denying my veracity rather than countering with something resembling reason. That was a real give-away, Vinny.
The point is on the internet folks are anonymous. Any purported credentials are as often false as true. The only thing that matters is what you say, not who you say you are.
On the rare occasion you had points to counter, I have either done so or agreed with your point. Terrible isn't it?
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Less...more.... Bah, don't waste our time. Cronyistic systems that you prefer to unionized ones REWARD thieves.
Don't you keep up with current affairs ? None of the thieves in my friend's case lost a damn thing. Plagiarism is rampant in research -- not rare. Jeeezzz !!!
Sorry, my own experienced indicates otherwise. Given that you don't know who I am or my background it would be as impossible for you to refute my experiences as it is for me to refute yours.
Meaning...our personal experiences don't really matter when debating any issue on the net.
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More fantasy bull crap from neo-con-man planet.
Don't worry so much about flavors and try to show a little morality once in a while.
Right. Because your friend isn't currently successful as you claim with work on the Discovery channel and papers. The theft of any particular item of work is annoying, unjust and unethical but the only way it's debilitating is if you let it embitter you (or you decide to fight a battle you can't win and manage to destroy yourself in the process).
Nothing too controversial about that.
Odds are, while there was no official impact word has gotten around. It always does. What? In your vast experience far superior to mine that you've found that grad students don't talk to each other? Odd...
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Don't try your ludicrous pronouncements of grand edicts re. what my facts are worth. If they were worthless you would not snipe at their authenticity : you would counter the argument. Again, a real give-away, Vinny .
For all we know, you are an 18 year old loser with not a single clue about the real world , failing in artsy-fartsy land, collecting 50¢ per post from the neo-con-man internet propaganda army, and posting under a dozen names to seem bigger than a louse.
EXACTLY. I could be an 18 year old loser without a clue. Only the strength (or lack thereof) of my argument has any merit. Not who I might or might not be.
But you should hope I am not an 18 year old loser without a clue...in as much as one of us looks better than the other at the moment.
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And UTLA never said why they opposed it ? Why isn't that just awful ? !
Given that you are a member then perhaps rather than my possibly biased synopis you could provide your own? Seriously. After all, I agreed on the tenure issue to a point.
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I contributed to those millions. I am a UTLA member. What of it ? It balances the neo-con-man funding of biggots. You don't like the turnabout ?
I just like charter schools from the good they seem to do from a parent perspective.
Besides, two wrongs hardly makes a right. The conservative money and influence is a corruptive influence on the political process. That doesn't mean that union activities are any more justified.
The funny thing about being a moderate is that you get called neo-cons by liberals and um...liberals by neo-cons. Both sides are so polarized that everyone not an extremist on their side is an enemy.
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Yes, I guess you would think that. Your schools and "competent administrators" seem to materialize, deus ex machina, at your beck and call. Whence these saviors, Vinny ? Any idea ?
If your position is that there are no competent administrators then your conclusion would be correct. None could appear.
Given that your premise is incorrect, it would seem that if there were market forces that would reward competent administration of schools some competent folks might apply for the job. Perhaps even you.
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It has made it safe for teachers to teach science instead of fundamentalist stupidity. It has made it possible for teachers to expose fraudulent programs foisted by admin politicos at the expense of tax payers and kids. It has attracted the majority of teachers ( read --- good teachers ) to risk a commitment to teaching that is seldom reversible in fields like science, engineering, mathematics, and such. It has made it possible for history teachers to include the contributions of women and minorities in their lessons as well as exposing the revisionist, neo-con-man bull crap that passed for history and current events previously. It keeps countless women from having to lay the fat principal unless she wants to. Oh, and don't forget the aqueducts !
See...here's a reasonable argument. Yes, you are correct. Tenure has produced these things and they are valuable. On the other hand tenure also give you the hidebound old and untouchable professors that you decry and in my opinion broken public school system.
So, how can we protect teachers from fundamentalist stupidity without the resulting ills?
The points I disagree with is that teaching is any more irreversible as a career as any other that requires commitment to some kind of specialization and that normal employment laws cannot protect against sexual abuse/misconduct (which they have).
But if it really is a requirement, you can keep your tenure system as long as you allow alternative education systems to be tried. Things like vouchers and charter schools. Fair?
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No fair !!! If you get on my side we can't argue.
I am certainly not going to trade sides with you!
Not everyone belongs on a "side".
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BTW, why must you always manipulate ? Did I say "1-1" ?
You didn't say 1-1, I said 1-1. Its not manipulative to offer my opinion on what is doing mainstreaming correctly. 3-1 didn't seem to work completely. 1-1 may not either.
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Anyway, it takes fewer than five disruptive kids ( SE or punk , doesn't matter ) to kill a class.
Well, if class sizes dropped 25%-30% I would hope you also have 25%-30% fewer punks.
If every SE had an aide that could remove/handle them when they were disruptive that would minimize the impact to you and your primary desire to teach. Hence 1-1.
5 SE's in one class is too many anyway, even if you had 6 adults.
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OK, so you only screw half of the families.
Better than screwing all of them.
Education is the one of the few things that can break the poverty cycle. There are families that desire to break the cycle and there are ones that don't care.
Helping families that want to break the cycle is more important to me than continuing a system that tries to provide equally bad opportunities all around.
Sounds rather harsh but frankly avoiding 1 crying mother and child that didn't make it into a charter school via lottery is worth screwing 10 punks AND you. That's one more potential leader getting a fair chance. Enough of them and what do you know...even the Republican party will start looking a little more tan and they wont be tokens...
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Because nobody wants to be pissed on by you ?
Because corporate-fascist worms squander trillions on murder abroad so we can't afford enough schools and teachers ?
Because without tenure, you have to live in fear of being canned by an idiot admin regardless of your skills ?
Because it's really hard for a man to get laid if he is identified as a school teacher ( unlike college profs -- need I relate anecdotes ? -- got the scoop on both sides, you know ) ?
Because most of you barbarians don't like kids nearly as much as you advertise ?
Because whorehouses are funded better than schools and visited more frequently as well ? Wanna hear about my years in the bordello ?
So these are reasons that class sizes are still so large despite spending more money than ever?
At least we can now understand one reason you seem so angry all the time.
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We buy them books and we buy them books, and all they do is eat the covers. How long do you think it takes a punk to trash a $50 book or a $700 computer ? About 3 seconds in both cases. So, fire the teachers ?
And the high price consultants are helping you how? At least you'd get 6 seconds of use...or maybe you could take all that money spent on admins and consultants and hire...OMG...more teachers?
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No, no --- it will result in a concentration of punks in schools where parents can't pay the balance of the private school, or parents are crackheads, or parents don't dare risk deportation, or parents can't travel the distance, etc.
Or perhaps the public school system will be forced to improve so they get something other than punks? I would hope that the vouchers would provide sufficient funds to cover the entiere tuition. I wouldn't be opposed to the idea that any school accepting vouchers could not charge any additional tuition to level the playing field.
The objective is to provide better education at a lower cost. Not make some private school owner richer.
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Again, it only takes three punks or so to ruin the education of thirty kids. The kids will tell you this themselves. Are you from Earth ? And the punk virus is transmitted by air.
And 30 kids is around 10 too many. Can you handle 2 punks?
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Your wife must be much kinder than I.
I hope you remained good friends.
Evidently. All her friends too. Yes, we did.
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And whom did you teach today ?
You know, all this time you spend lying on the web could be spent volunteering to tutor kids, read to them, make parent contacts, .... you know ... helping ???
And you know I do none of these how? Would you be surprised that spouses of teachers get volunteered to help out? And some folks actually keep doing it?
But no, I don't do as much as I used to (since I'm not married to her anymore AND I live far away from her old school where I knew folks) which was refurbing old donated computers for use in their school.
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Sorry, I imagined a call for me to be banned.... must be all that jade.
If you do get banned it will be because you continue to be abusive. Not because of any particular view you support.
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Anyway, neo-con-men who screw teachers, minority kids and parents, and other decent working-class people, with phoney benevolence, are biggots.
Nothing to do with my ethnicity.
It's your biggotry.
Yeah right. Or perhaps some minorities are kinda tired of the whole spiel? Nah. Everyone that disagrees is a neo-con...or worse...a sellout. Care to call me a vendido? You seem to like namecalling.
Oddly, given that you're part of the system, that label might more accurately be applied to you no? After all, to your kids you are the representative of Da Man.
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I know you O'Reilly types love to wheel out the hackneyed "victim syndrome" crap when you run out of talking points.
You know, you can't really piss me off by calling me something I'm not.
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That you think I am Black is a real give-away, Vinny.
Did you pilfer my injector ? Shame on you!
Well, I suppose some Cubans are black but it never occured to me since you made it pretty clear a few posts ago that you were hispanic, specifically Cuban.
What makes you think I'm not a black hispanic irish navajo chinese arab persian mix? But no, I'm not. As far as I know anyway. Mom would have some serious questions to answer if so.
Comments
You are evidently not holding up your end of the social contract.
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Why do you say that ? If you read the post, it is clear that all of my students who want to learn are doing well in their standardized tests, treat me with affection and respect, and may well work at Apple Inc. someday.
Less well than their Belgian counterparts evidently. In any case, it would be difficult to show that you are on the cutting edge of your profession given your attitude toward change.
Lots of NASA people ( my best friend included ) have masters degrees, publish papers, read them at conferences, etc. Many have been responsible for the great stuff you see from "out there" -- as Kirk says.
Mkay...sure. And the last time someone without a PhD was a principle investigator of a significant experiment at NASA was?
The fact remains that in many disciplines a PhD is entry grade.
Maybe yours wasn't.
But my degree is very close to a Ph.D. because an M.S. requires a lot more than an M.A. and our University was very demanding of it's M.A. and M.S. degrees. In fact, we had to go to the Mathematics department to find profs who could understand my oral examination and ask good questions. Also, I have done research and I have co-authored papers ( just not as much as if I had not gone into teaching ).
Then you should have just gotten a PhD or an EdD then eh? But you didn't so...
No one has denigrated you. Your "protection" is not to allow bad teachers to continue to draw salary regardless of performance but to provide the ability to teach unpopular topics without undue interference.
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That is not my only protection and if you give it a second of thought you will see that it can not be. Else, anytime a principal disliked a teacher's politics, the teacher would be accused of some other infraction and summarily dismissed. So, there must be DUE PROCESS for any dismissal and that , for better or for worse, means CONTRACT, UNION, COLLECTIVE BARGAINING, STRIKES, etc.
The NY contract and the flow chart fails the "reasonable person" test. It appears impossible to let an incompetent teacher go. To the point they have buildings to house teachers they don't want in the classroom but pay anyway.
And why ? Because teachers were not allowed to date, were required to tithe 10 % or more of their salaries to the church, were almost all single women abused by the male rooster in the main office, etc. What is new about any of this Vinny ? What are you -- an anti-labor fascist ?
Nope. Just stating that you cannot argue that tenue is a fundamental requirement for teaching in as much as teaching occured before tenure was in place.
Obviously your skills as a researcher has deteriorated or you could do better than undocumented assertion...
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Jeeezzz, I've told you tons about what I base my statements on .... you call it "name dropping".
This is completely out of context. The assertion you made was:
Vouchers (even if sufficient to actually get these underachieving students to the "better" teachers: they are far from sufficient) would simply dump masses of ill-mannered punks and well mannered but unschooled students into the "better schools" to detroy them absolutely.
This completely ignores the possibility of moving these kids to either vocational school or placing them in a more appropriate setting. And as an assertion it is completely unsupported except with ancedotal commentary from you.
Which assertion is that ? Maybe it was just a suspicion or an opinion ---- could've been true -- never know.
You'll never know because you failed to "research" how the quote function works.
In comparison to a system like Belgium its a no brainer...their system is superior to ours with their general, technical, professional, artistic and vocational tracks. That they couple that with financial accountability in the form of "vouchers" makes it more difficult to determine which factor is more important but who cares? Adopt both.
Your assumption is that with vouchers no new schools would appear. This appears to be incorrect. Also, wouldn't it be nice if private school teachers could be paid as much as their public school counterparts?
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What on Earth ? Why would new schools not simply deteriorate academically with the same lack of support now given to the schools we have ? Do you think all the old, bad teachers and bad students and bad parents are going to go to the moon ? When those kids I have who behave like punks go to your nice voucher school, they will crap all over your school - you will need to triple the custodial staff; you will have false fire alarm claxons splitting your ears several times per day; you will get cussed out on the phone by the parent; your administrators will be overwhelmed and will begin playing politics and placing beaurocratic blocks in front of you as you try to deal with the misbehavior; your good students' grades will plummet; ....... AAAhhhhh wait ... I think I know what you want :
Yes, this is EXACTLY what happened in Belgium. It was a total failure. Not.
How about if those parents who are the poorest or are undocumented CAN'T take the vouchers because of distance, not a large enough voucher, or fear of detection & deportation ????? AAhhh, Then you could skim the cream of the crop out of my classes; leave me with a totally failing score -- you will make your accusation true --- I won't be able to respond that I DO carry my weight in the social contract: simply because you now have my only cooperative students and have created a cesspool for me to work in --- right ? A separate but equal system -- no ?
Complete strawman.
Oddly, none of the teachers in my family has described kids quite like that.
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Nothing odd there, you are clearly not one to soil your shoes in a school like the ones with the lowest scores and, not by coincidence, the greatest need for help.
Gee really? So every teacher that doesn't believe that kids are punks have avoided all the tough kids and have never worked in schools with low scores? Riiight.
Or perhaps the truth is you're jaded and a clear example of the kind of teacher we should weed out of the system? Because I sure don't want a teacher that thinks that kids are terrorist punks even in a discussion forum.
But truly Vinny, no one can ever disabuse you of your vaporous notions about kids, teachers, etc. on a forum.
And you sure can't convince anyone in this forum you aren't a punk yourself since you seem incapable of an adult conversation.
Why don't you come on down to South Central with us and help us out. I would love to emulate whatever it is that you have on the shelf if it will make everything alright. Are you coming soon ? I'll fix you a plate .... tic...toc....tic...toc...tic...toc .... Vinny ? Are you there ? ... Happy Meal coupon ? ........ where are you ? OK, I'll tell you how to get into the teachers' rest room... now come on ! that's valuable info !! ....... I'll tell you how to turn off the fire claxon ... and the space heater ....
For someone who returns after a month to a dead thread to be impatient is pretty funny.
In any case, your offer is false in as much as teacher unions have steadfastly resisted any alternatives like vouchers.
So just give it up , Vinny. I win, you lose. Sign here,
________________________________ ____ / ____ / _____
signature of patrician loser date
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What are you? 12?
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Why do you ask ? Would that be a put down ? I thought you liked kids ? I'd love to be 12
Vinny, don't come to a war of wits unarmed.
Priceless. A 12 year old having this conversation would be interesting...for a teacher to be this incoherent in a thread discussing why teacher unions have to go is absurdly funny in a very sad way.
Vinea
Less well than their Belgian counterparts evidently. In any case, it would be difficult to show that you are on the cutting edge of your profession given your attitude toward change.
Mkay...sure. And the last time someone without a PhD was a principle investigator of a significant experiment at NASA was?
The fact remains that in many disciplines a PhD is entry grade.
Then you should have just gotten a PhD or an EdD then eh? But you didn't so...
The NY contract and the flow chart fails the "reasonable person" test. It appears impossible to let an incompetent teacher go. To the point they have buildings to house teachers they don't want in the classroom but pay anyway.
Nope. Just stating that you cannot argue that tenue is a fundamental requirement for teaching in as much as teaching occured before tenure was in place.
This is completely out of context. The assertion you made was:
This completely ignores the possibility of moving these kids to either vocational school or placing them in a more appropriate setting. And as an assertion it is completely unsupported except with ancedotal commentary from you.
You'll never know because you failed to "research" how the quote function works.
Yes, this is EXACTLY what happened in Belgium. It was a total failure. Not.
Complete strawman.
Gee really? So every teacher that doesn't believe that kids are punks have avoided all the tough kids and have never worked in schools with low scores? Riiight.
Or perhaps the truth is you're jaded and a clear example of the kind of teacher we should weed out of the system? Because I sure don't want a teacher that thinks that kids are terrorist punks even in a discussion forum.
And you sure can't convince anyone in this forum you aren't a punk yourself since you seem incapable of an adult conversation.
For someone who returns after a month to a dead thread to be impatient is pretty funny.
In any case, your offer is false in as much as teacher unions have steadfastly resisted any alternatives like vouchers.
Priceless. A 12 year old having this conversation would be interesting...for a teacher to be this incoherent in a thread discussing why teacher unions have to go is absurdly funny in a very sad way.
Vinea
In other words, he enjoys the status quo that his union is giving him and he resents anything or anybody that will take it away from him.
My desires to shut you up stem less from wanting to force nonsensical ideals on Middle Eastern countries and everything to do with the fact that you're completely obnoxious, unreadable, and you violate several posting guidelines.
Home again !
Let's see .... ah, yes ! the neo-con-men who snipe at decent people. Well, here we go ...
So, you can't handle a little push-back on a PC screen and you want to solve the schools problems by firing teachers as the principal sees fit ?
This is why you would not last a week in a school with difficult kids : SHUT UP and YOU ARE FIRED are your only
tools because you are stuffed with O'Reilly feathers and Trump sauce.
I just had my largest class score and average of 97 % in their practice CST quiz. Guess who taught them , in spite of all difficulties and punks ..... ( HINT : sure as hell not you , champ ).
Home again !
Let's see .... ah, yes ! the neo-con-men who snipe at decent people. Well, here we go ...
So, you can't handle a little push-back on a PC screen and you want to solve the schools problems by firing teaches as the principal sees fit ?
This is why you would not last a week in a school with difficult kids : SHUT UP and YOU ARE FIRED are your only
tools because you are stuffed with O'Reilly feathers and Trump sauce.
I just had my largest class score and average of 97 % in their practice CST quiz. Guess who taught them , in spite of all difficulties and punks ..... ( HINT : sure as hell not you , champ ).
Way to call the gay liberal art kid a neo-con. You've certainly nailed me to a tee.
I'm so proud that you're such a good teacher, since you don't seem to be able to read or write. I haven't even said anything about your viewpoints, other than that there were too many asterisks in it for me to pay you any heed.
Way to call the gay liberal art kid a neo-con. You've certainly nailed me to a tee.
Whoa. You're an art guy?
Whoa. You're an art guy?
Sorta
Less well than their Belgian counterparts evidently. In any case, it would be difficult to show that you are on the cutting edge of your profession given your attitude toward change.
Mkay...sure. And the last time someone without a PhD was a principle investigator of a significant experiment at NASA was?
The fact remains that in many disciplines a PhD is entry grade.
Then you should have just gotten a PhD or an EdD then eh? But you didn't so...
The NY contract and the flow chart fails the "reasonable person" test. It appears impossible to let an incompetent teacher go. To the point they have buildings to house teachers they don't want in the classroom but pay anyway.
Nope. Just stating that you cannot argue that tenue is a fundamental requirement for teaching in as much as teaching occured before tenure was in place.
This is completely out of context. The assertion you made was:
This completely ignores the possibility of moving these kids to either vocational school or placing them in a more appropriate setting. And as an assertion it is completely unsupported except with ancedotal commentary from you.
You'll never know because you failed to "research" how the quote function works.
Yes, this is EXACTLY what happened in Belgium. It was a total failure. Not.
Complete strawman.
Gee really? So every teacher that doesn't believe that kids are punks have avoided all the tough kids and have never worked in schools with low scores? Riiight.
Or perhaps the truth is you're jaded and a clear example of the kind of teacher we should weed out of the system? Because I sure don't want a teacher that thinks that kids are terrorist punks even in a discussion forum.
And you sure can't convince anyone in this forum you aren't a punk yourself since you seem incapable of an adult conversation.
For someone who returns after a month to a dead thread to be impatient is pretty funny.
In any case, your offer is false in as much as teacher unions have steadfastly resisted any alternatives like vouchers.
Priceless. A 12 year old having this conversation would be interesting...for a teacher to be this incoherent in a thread discussing why teacher unions have to go is absurdly funny in a very sad way.
Vinea
Still no substance to your whining , huh .....
I'm not surprised. This is how you rack up your number of posts ----- little, vacuous snipes...
Tell us what you will do to fill all of those vacated positions for teachers in punk infested schools, Vinny .
You seem to leave out in the cold all of those kids and could-be kids now punkin' the classroom.
Say something that isn't impossibly snooty and fantastical.
Say anything that might be taken seriously by a real teacher, in the real world we are given.
So far, you sound truly ignorant, vicious, heartless, evasive, snarky, elitist, and soooooo neo-con-man that I wouldn't be surprised if you turned out to be just one of those paid liars on whom the WH occupant spends billions of dollars. It would not surprise me if half the posts that sound like you ARE you in various larval stages.
Are you a fascist Vinny ?
Do you like to screw teachers, nurses, dissidents, librarians, and the like out of house and home ?
Sure sounds like it to me.
We notice that your posts are all about threatening people's peace of mind and that you actually offer NOTHING , NADA , toward a credible solution.
The need for teachers ( not snipes ) is huge and growing.
What did you do today to help anyone ?
I taught 86 students to do mathematics. I made them smile and laugh. I told them about college life and how to get financial help. I practiced them in fractions, percents, scientific notation, translating English to algebraic expressions and Spanish to same. I volunteered for the detention hall supervision. I called a parent on my cell time to tell her her kid was screwing off and I might drop an F the size of a horse on him. This mother answered the phone immediatelly, said "Got you", "I see, yes", and "Thank you so much for the call - I will definitely take care of this." Kid came back next hour and scored 90% from 18% prior to my intervention: I risked a reprimand in doing this --- we are not allowed to call parents during class time, ostensibly to not interrupt instruction. The fact that Jr. IS INTERRUPTING INSTRUCTION ALREADY escapes the brilliant administrators whom you want to empower with the Donald ray gun.
I gave the quiz, graded them, had them anotate their errors and good moves, posted them on the bulletin board, refered a girl with head lice to the nurse without embarrassing her, stopped three inter-gang fist fights before they started --- without touching either kid ( forbidden too ) and thereby prevented a three-day suspension for both. I donated money to charities and helped my homeroom do the same. I helped two new teachers to work their MacBooks , I signed up for another bullshit staff development that is required. I cleaned up my classroom. I explained to a student where American Easter egg and bunny symbolism come from and what it doesn't have to do with christianity. I googled and projected pictures of Fabergé Eggs . I did same for the Aljambra and Moorish influence in mathematics. I lent my last three dollars to three kids who had their lunch tickets stolen -- I won't get those back
Then I came home and answered your stupid posts.
What did you do to help education today, Vinny ?
Oh, and before this gets out of hand,
OK, you won that one, gregmightdothat.
Whoa. You're an art guy?
Don't buy into that , midwinter !
I sued five Instructors for discrimination and 13 other causes of action --- very successfully. I won hands down.
Three of them called themselves Liberals and affected all the trappings of sensitivity -- down to the natural cotton apparel and Birky sandals ( all of which are great stuff, mind you ). But their veneers peeled off when they found themselves across the table from my attorneys and under oath. Even the president of the college testified that they were discriminating against my ethnicity - and we were suing him too ! Little things give them away : like calling me a "professional Cuban" instead of a Cuban professional. And saying " Who ever heard of a Cuban physicist ?! " and " You belong in East LA among people of your own cultural background -- if you remain here, we will give you a very hard time ."
How about that, eh ? Even I was shocked. And the last came from a guy who looks like Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul, and Mary.
Years earlier, I had my life saved by a stereotypical Southern Pig Cop with paunch, mirrored glasses and impenetrable drawl ---- almost beaten to death by a pick-up truck load of "good old boys" . Cop just wasn't a racist creep.
The California Lib dude was. And helped to ruin my career , against the wishes of virtually all of my students and the rest of the Math/Science Department faculty.
Real life is very deceptive. I lived in Miami and Tampa for 33 years without discrimination. I was recruited to northern California and was suing 16 biggots within one year.
Sorta
I was making a joke, the punchline of which was that the thing that elicited the "whoa" not your being gay.
I was making a joke, the punchline of which was that the thing that elicited the "whoa" not your being gay.
Ah, yeah, that one went over my head
I was wondering why that was surprising...
Don't buy into that , midwinter !
I sued five Instructors for discrimination and 13 other causes of action --- very successfully. I won hands down.
Three of them called themselves Liberals and affected all the trappings of sensitivity -- down to the natural cotton apparel and Birky sandals ( all of which are great stuff, mind you ). But their veneers peeled off when they found themselves across the table from my attorneys and under oath. Even the president of the college testified that they were discriminating against my ethnicity - and we were suing him too ! Little things give them away : like calling me a "professional Cuban" instead of a Cuban professional. And saying " Who ever heard of a Cuban physicist ?! " and " You belong in East LA among people of your own cultural background -- if you remain here, we will give you a very hard time ."
How about that, eh ? Even I was shocked. And the last came from a guy who looks like Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul, and Mary.
Years earlier, I had my life saved by a stereotypical Southern Pig Cop with paunch, mirrored glasses and impenetrable drawl ---- almost beaten to death by a pick-up truck load of "good old boys" . Cop just wasn't a racist creep.
The California Lib dude was. And helped to ruin my career , against the wishes of virtually all of my students and the rest of the Math/Science Department faculty.
Real life is very deceptive. I lived in Miami and Tampa for 33 years without discrimination. I was recruited to northern California and was suing 16 biggots within one year.
OK, I think it's safe to say this guy is a troll...
Hopefully he won't sue anyone here.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going go play Grand Theft Auto.
Less well than their Belgian counterparts evidently. In any case, it would be difficult to show that you are on the cutting edge of your profession given your attitude toward change.
What is it with you and the Belgians ? Are you nuts ? We live in the USA , planet Earth.
Not "change" Vinny, "your crap".
You overuse the macho, hyper-competitive , bravado jargon. You are not on the cutting edge of anything, kid.
I am happy to be a teacher. What are you ?
Mkay...sure. And the last time someone without a PhD was a principle investigator of a significant experiment at NASA was?
Every day. There you go with your elitist crap again. Do you recognize any distinction between "Principal Investigator" and "folks with Master degrees doing most of the real work" ? This happens every day , all over the world. When Lise Meitner discovered fission and first "split the atom", her "Principal Investigator" , Otto Hahn insisted that it was merely a chemical reaction. It was she who carried out the experiments and interpreted them correctly !!! His behavior, her love for him not withstanding, was disgraceful - especially after the hitler threat was removed from German academia. I know this is long ago, but I site it because it is typical. Many Principal Investigators spend most of their time scrounging for Congressional support, grants, publicity, writing specs, and in political wrangling. All University research , by graduate students, is siphoned off by the grad's committee chair who gets top billing in the thesis even if he did nothing of substance. You must be as ignorant of scientific research as you are of public school teaching.
I can't name names here because it would hurt their careers, but I have very close friends who were robbed of their work by superiors who simply erased my friend's name and replaced it with theirs. Attempts to rectify this injustice through established channels lead to a round-robbin tongue lashing of my friend at a disciplinary meeting and he almost lost his job ! And , yes he has a Masters degree and ,yes, you see his work on the Discovery Channel and could read it in the top professional journals of his field. This crap is very common.
The fact remains that in many disciplines a PhD is entry grade.
Sure, no quarrel with that. But what does it really mean ?
Then you should have just gotten a PhD or an EdD then eh? But you didn't so...
Why ? I had enough for teaching community college physics ( actually would not want University because you can't teach for all the grant writing, research trickling, political fighting, etc. --- if you love to teach, community college is the filet mignon of careers ).
The NY contract and the flow chart fails the "reasonable person" test. It appears impossible to let an incompetent teacher go. To the point they have buildings to house teachers they don't want in the classroom but pay anyway.
But the way to fix that is to first find a way to keep the teachers protected from all the petty politics that passes for "teacher review" and only then think of procedures for dismissal.
BTW, in LA, teachers can be dismissed and have been.
If anyone thinks that principals or superintendents are fit ethically or pedagogically to do this, then they are insane. The political demands on principals, as the face of the school to the community, are overwhelming and I don't blame them for not throwing their lifetime's work into the can and get canned anytime an incident happens or a persistent socio-economic problem dumps her school's scores. Principals are, by training and profession, cover-up experts. This is why standardized testing is used. From making failure notice forms impossible to obtain, to using thinly veiled threats ( i.e., " Well, if you have that many Fails, we will have to visit your classroom to see what you are doing wrong.") that really threaten administrative reprisal, there are a million ways to pressure the teachers to pass kids who don't perform. How about : Any student with a D cannot go up on stage to receive the diploma. You know how that one works ?
Well, many parents who will not answer a phone call or Fail warning notice ALL YEAR LONG, will show up ten minutes before the end of the semester ( I am not kidding you here -- TEN ) demanding to know why his angel will miss the photo opportunity ( more valued than the learning Jr. spat on ) and who will return his money for the film, camera, cap and gown, gas, baby sitter etc. A policy like this pits the teacher against hundreds of angry parents. You think justice will prevail ? And if that administrator is the same one who STULL's you ( evaluates you ) --- you wanna get an UNSATISFACTORY EVALUATION ? It's only a few steps from there to dismissal. And you neglect COMPLETELY the salient FACT that most of these schools are overloaded with teachers on Emergency Credentials and on Probationary status for as much as eight years as they burn the candle at both ends to get the "Clear" credential. This ruined my health.
It scuttles a large number of potentially excellent teachers. These newbies are totally intimidated by being subject to dismissal without cause , at any time.
I have seen three go this route -- albeit there was good reason to dismiss them. I did not defend them.
Nope. Just stating that you cannot argue that tenue is a fundamental requirement for teaching in as much as teaching occured before tenure was in place.
Good lord !!! What is that ? Logic ? Monty Python could hardly top that one
Here's a news flash : surgery occured before washed hands were required of the surgeons.
This is completely out of context. The assertion you made was:
After that last gem you want context ???!!!
This completely ignores the possibility of moving these kids to either vocational school or placing them in a more appropriate setting. And as an assertion it is completely unsupported except with ancedotal commentary from you.
More appropriate setting ? Details please ---
Oh, say, while you are at it, could you tell my admin to not
"mainstream" 23 special ed kids into my 26 - student classroom. It seems that the 3 kids who can meet standard don't get enough of my atention while the others yell F__ Y____ at each other for 108 minutes non-stop.
See, I am not a special ed teacher( SAINTS ALL OF THEM).
And it's not fair to demand CST standards of kids who can't read numbers, say the times tables, nor control their emotions. I am not refering to punks here. These kids are truly incapable of controlling themselves enough to meet the same standards as the others. They need "Individual Academic Plans" suited to each kids capacity and three adults to ten students in a true special ed environment.
You'll never know because you failed to "research" how the quote function works.
I told you, I only have an MS degree.
Yes, this is EXACTLY what happened in Belgium. It was a total failure. Not.
Here we go again. Do you want a waffle ? Is that it ?
Complete strawman.
How can you say that ? Look Vinny, kids are given the 800 number to turn their parents in with any accusation they want. This HAS to result in a house visit by CPS officers and police. If you are undocumented, your whole world is turned upside down. A mother visited me, afraid to be seen there by her daughter who had threatened to report het to CPS if she kept her from partying or made her improve her grades. Another girl was absent for weeks. I investigated and she, along with her mom, had been assured by the brutal, unwanted father that he would use his hunting knife to skin both of their faces and heads so no man will ever want them. They were terrified, stayed at home, lost her job, COULD NOT GO TO THE POLICE FOR FEAR OF DEPORTATION -- you ass -- and I had to report the "man" myself at the same risk.
Vinny, you insensitive neo-con-man-can't-believe-you-are-gay-and-so-blind-to-injustice-piece-of-Belgian-waffle !!!!
Gee really? So every teacher that doesn't believe that kids are punks have avoided all the tough kids and have never worked in schools with low scores? Riiight.
Yes, every teacher who doesn't believe that punks can make a good teacher totally ineffectual in the classroom has avoided all the tough kids and has never worked in a school with punk-induced low scores. Right.
Or perhaps the truth is you're jaded and a clear example of the kind of teacher we should weed out of the system? Because I sure don't want a teacher that thinks that kids are terrorist punks even in a discussion forum.
Ah, the cowardly, unmanly censor calls on daddy again. It is really developing into a major personality disorder with you neo-con-men isn't it ?
Why do you hate America, Vinny ?
Never mind, I accept your apology.
All you have to do is ask Junior if he is a terrorist punk.
He will say, "Yes, I am a terrorist punk".
Then, tell him you don't believe him and he will slice your
tamales off for you, hand them to you and say, "See ?"
And when you ask them what they think of phoney-baloney "child advocates" like you, they spit and say, "Man, that dude is weak ! He deserves what he got. He's not like you Mr. J, he's all ... messed up, he's a liar. He doesn't make us do our work, he doesn't respect himself, ... he's a pen___o."
That, dear Vinny, is the punk as he is given to you.
So far, all you offer is Belgian waffles.
And you sure can't convince anyone in this forum you aren't a punk yourself since you seem incapable of an adult conversation.
Of course I am capable.... with adults.
Waazzamatter Vinny, can't take the heat ? How you gonna make it in da classroom baby ? No fear , brother. The crap I've been handing back to you is just day 1 of a new teacher's day.
Got waffle ?
How else can some one rouse you out of your bullshit neo-con-man reverie without physically rubbing your snout in the dirt ?
I have to perforate your bubble, don't I ?
I must let some air out of your head to make room for
the facts I deal with at work.
Nothin' personal bro .... izzz just bizzzznezzz, that's all.
For someone who returns after a month to a dead thread to be impatient is pretty funny.
In any case, your offer is false in as much as teacher unions have steadfastly resisted any alternatives like vouchers.
So have private schools when they smell FEDERAL REGULATIONS, PROVISIONS, etc. on that voucher money.
It's a neo-con-man hot button, a vote getter, a boogy-man ... they would BLANCHE Vinny !!!, BLANCHE !!!! Do you hear me ? BLANCHE !!!
Priceless. A 12 year old having this conversation would be interesting...for a teacher to be this incoherent in a thread discussing why teacher unions have to go is absurdly funny in a very sad way.
Incoherent eh, I think you understand all too well.
You are busted, biggot. That's all I am saying.
Ah, yeah, that one went over my head
I was wondering why that was surprising...
Well, I have a strange sense of humor.
What is it with you and the Belgians ? Are you nuts ? We live in the USA , planet Earth.
Maybe because it was the Belgian system that was compared against the US system and the US system found lacking?
No, that would be too logical.
Not "change" Vinny, "your crap".
Because everything you disagree with is "crap"? The US system has flaws. There are other systems that seem to do better. Trying to introduce those systems have run into the brick wall of teacher's unions. So the comment that teacher's unions stand in the way of change and improvement has merit.
That you are steadfastly unable to consider that point of view without name calling indicates that you aren't a big favor of change in any form.
Every day. There you go with your elitist crap again.
I find it amusing to defend the value of PhDs given I'm usually on the opposite side of the argument...however...
Do you recognize any distinction between "Principal Investigator" and "folks with Master degrees doing most of the real work"? This happens every day , all over the world. When Lise Meitner discovered fission and first "split the atom", her "Principal Investigator" , Otto Hahn insisted that it was merely a chemical reaction.
Meitner attained her PhD in 1906 from the University of Vienna. I brought up PIs simply because while there are folks with masters supporting research at NASA usually the folks designing and running the actual experiment have more formal training in research (meaning a PhD).
There's nothing special about a PhD other than a) the ability to grind through the work to attain one and b) that the individual with one has shown ONCE that they can do independent research of some kind.
But you're diverting the issue: a master's degree is nothing special. Neither is your experience at NASA. In any case, on the internet such claims are unverifiable and rather pointless.
All University research , by graduate students, is siphoned off by the grad's committee chair who gets top billing in the thesis even if he did nothing of substance. You must be as ignorant of scientific research as you are of public school teaching.
It's well known that if a very busy Professor is listed first on a paper that typically it's the second name that wrote it if it was a grad student. In any case, you still get to list that publication (i.e. you get credit).
I can't name names here because it would hurt their careers, but I have very close friends who were robbed of their work by superiors who simply erased my friend's name and replaced it with theirs. Attempts to rectify this injustice through established channels lead to a round-robbin tongue lashing of my friend at a disciplinary meeting and he almost lost his job ! And , yes he has a Masters degree and ,yes, you see his work on the Discovery Channel and could read it in the top professional journals of his field. This crap is very common.
Less common than you make it out to be. Theft of research, once widely known, destroys the only thing of real value to a researcher: their reputation. Horror stories exist but are the rare exception rather than the rule in academia.
In any case, they can't steal your brain unless you let them (by getting bitter about it). The truth emerges eventually because your own work will show what you can do.
Why ? I had enough for teaching community college physics ( actually would not want University because you can't teach for all the grant writing, research trickling, political fighting, etc. --- if you love to teach, community college is the filet mignon of careers ).
The point is you've been carrying on about your purported credentials as if they were meaningful to the discussion or all that noteworthy. They aren't.
But the way to fix that is to first find a way to keep the teachers protected from all the petty politics that passes for "teacher review" and only then think of procedures for dismissal.
BTW, in LA, teachers can be dismissed and have been.
Sure. Given that each school system has its own rules one should be able to find examples of anything. But NY has a very powerful union and was the example in the documentary (or simply show if you prefer not to call it a documentary).
LA's teachers union has opposed more charter schools and amazingly the three board of ed members that voted against more charter schools got $1M in campaing contributions from the UTLA.
Gee.
If anyone thinks that principals or superintendents are fit ethically or pedagogically to do this, then they are insane.
I would think that the impact of vouchers would be felt up the entire food chain to do better. The least impact would hopefully be on teachers since they would still be needed and would have more opportunities to move to a school run by a competent administrator.
Good lord !!! What is that ? Logic ? Monty Python could hardly top that one
Here's a news flash : surgery occured before washed hands were required of the surgeons.
Very true so you have a point. So sanitary operating procedures have improved the survival rates of the patients. What can we say of the tenure system in US public schools?
More appropriate setting ? Details please ---
Oh, say, while you are at it, could you tell my admin to not
"mainstream" 23 special ed kids into my 26 - student classroom. It seems that the 3 kids who can meet standard don't get enough of my atention while the others yell F__ Y____ at each other for 108 minutes non-stop.
See, I am not a special ed teacher( SAINTS ALL OF THEM).
Mainstreaming is typically implemented poorly. Arguably mainstreaming is bad for everyone except a portion of the mainstreamed kids.
However, I can see the point of view of parents that insist on mainstreaming for their kids. The problem lies in that there are not enough resources to provide 100% coverage on a 1-1 basis for mainstreamed kids.
Now, my wife had mainstreamed kids in her class with 1-3 ratio of helpers (she had 3 with an aide) but it was still a disruption in the class.
And it's not fair to demand CST standards of kids who can't read numbers, say the times tables, nor control their emotions. I am not refering to punks here. These kids are truly incapable of controlling themselves enough to meet the same standards as the others. They need "Individual Academic Plans" suited to each kids capacity and three adults to ten students in a true special ed environment.
No disagreement. Each district implements this differently...some still maintain special ed schools but some have completely (or almost completely) closed them.
I told you, I only have an MS degree.
You seemed to have figured it out. Its easier to maintain context this way no?
How can you say that ? Look Vinny, kids are given the 800 number to turn their parents in with any accusation they want. This HAS to result in a house visit by CPS officers and police. If you are undocumented, your whole world is turned upside down. A mother visited me, afraid to be seen there by her daughter who had threatened to report het to CPS if she kept her from partying or made her improve her grades. Another girl was absent for weeks. I investigated and she, along with her mom, had been assured by the brutal, unwanted father that he would use his hunting knife to skin both of their faces and heads so no man will ever want them. They were terrified, stayed at home, lost her job, COULD NOT GO TO THE POLICE FOR FEAR OF DEPORTATION -- you ass -- and I had to report the "man" myself at the same risk.
Vinny, you insensitive neo-con-man-can't-believe-you-are-gay-and-so-blind-to-injustice-piece-of-Belgian-waffle !!!!
Its a strawman because for every one of these stories you provide there's another equally disadvantaged family that would benefit from vouchers. These are the same ones who camp out for days hoping to get their kids into a charter school.
The story you provide is simply argumentum ad misericrodiam. The end result of vouchers will not be a system where poor parents can't find better schools for their kids if they are motivated to. Rich parents already do that.
Undocumented parents are a seperate but related social issue. One that vouchers shouldn't impact because if its already legal for you to treat undocumented parents as the legal guardians without reporting them, then sending them a voucher in the mail to apply to their kids education is more of the same.
Will there be kids that are poorly served under a system that has vouchers? Sure. Will there be problems? Sure. Will there be disasters? Sure.
But the system already sucks. Keeping the status quo is already a mess. Tell me this: why are class sizes still so large even though we are pouring more money than ever into the system?
Because maybe we spend $84 per pupil on textbooks but $107 per student on supervisor salaries (not counting principles and other school staff) in the LA Unified School District (2004ish numbers)?
So what if vouchers resulted in a PUBLIC school system that isn't top heavy and wasteful which allows you to have a lower punk/class ratio?
Yes, every teacher who doesn't believe that punks can make a good teacher totally ineffectual in the classroom has avoided all the tough kids and has never worked in a school with punk-induced low scores. Right.
The primary difference appears that you think that the majority (if not all) kids are punks or proto-punks. Given that my wife taught in the worst school in her district I'd say that she had experience with "punks" but didn't speak as you do regarding kids.
Yes there are punks. But more teachers I know complain about class size as a root cause of many problems. Unless you feel nearly every kid is a punk smaller classes would allow you to teach more and perform "classroom management" less.
Thus far your comments make you seem jaded and feel that almost all kids are punks. So reducing class size wouldn't help you much there would it?
Ah, the cowardly, unmanly censor calls on daddy again. It is really developing into a major personality disorder with you neo-con-men isn't it ?
No one is censoring you...you plead victimhood far too easily. That you come across as a bitter and jaded teacher on this forum is no ones fault but your own.
Waazzamatter Vinny, can't take the heat ? How you gonna make it in da classroom baby ? No fear , brother. The crap I've been handing back to you is just day 1 of a new teacher's day.
Its not crap...it's just stupid. If you want to act the part...be my guest but it certainly doesn't advance the idea that some teachers need to be removed but cannot because the unions prevent that.
So have private schools when they smell FEDERAL REGULATIONS, PROVISIONS, etc. on that voucher money.
And other schools do accept regulations, provisions, etc. If no private schools will accept vouchers then there should be no problems correct?
Incoherent eh, I think you understand all too well.
You are busted, biggot. That's all I am saying.
Bigot? Dude, if you hadn't said you were a minority of some kind who on earth would know? You have no clue my background or ethnicity so claiming some wierd bigotry accusation is just another appeal of victimhood. Get over yourself. I wrote you were incoherent because your posts were frothing and poorly written.
That you think it's because of your skin color is just sad. The internet is one place that can be colorblind unless you inject it in yourself.
Vinea
What can we say of the tenure system in US public schools?
You know, I've never really understood why the secondary schools now have a tenure system. What, precisely, is it there for?
And lord have mercy, this thread makes me want to go through the archives, dig up some 6 month old dead thread, and revive it as if it had never stopped.
came in ......
Maybe because it was the Belgian system that was compared against the US system and the US system found lacking?
It's a lousy comparison.
No, that would be too logical.
That wouldn't be logical at all.
Because everything you disagree with is "crap"?
No. Your crap is crap.
The US system has flaws. There are other systems that seem to do better. Trying to introduce those systems have run into the brick wall of teacher's unions. So the comment that teacher's unions stand in the way of change and improvement has merit.
The crony system you would replace it with has always been far worse. Again, principals and superintendents have shown themselves to be ethically, professionally, and pedagogically incompetent to wield such power. Today my class was chosen , by my supervisor, to host visiting observers from the District ( I wonder why he would chose a jaded, incompetent like me to make a good impression on these powerful suits. )
One of them, a breathtakingly beautiful lady and a very nice person, I'm sure, and a couple of friendly and polite principals from other schools were amazed at my WACOM graphics tablet and asked me what it was, how it worked, and the same re. my digital camera that I have mounted on a home-made copy stand , all connected to my 12" G4 Powerbook and media projector that I use with AppleWorks as a super chalk board . Now it was a pleasant enough exchange , but are you the least bit amazed at their lack of familiarity with such a simple set-up ? And yet they were there to check up on our use of technology. I didn't dislike any of them personally. But can you see why I don't want them to have the power to fire me without due process and a real trial? As you know, if you read my post above, I have already tasted the arrogance and injustice of "tenure denial" without due process. I know, in my heart, exactly what dirty bastards people with such power can be. You really expect me to take seriously any suggestion that disarms me and empowers them ? BTW, by everyone's accounting, especially his students and colleagues, the most incompetent, indolent, and irresponsible of the people I sued, at that college, had a Ph.D. from Stanford. We had to sue him for his student reviews after he claimed that my excellent reviews were not up to par. After a year of fighting him, we got the reviews ---
In Cuba, we call such a parasite a "yam with a necktie".
That you are steadfastly unable to consider that point of view without name calling indicates that you aren't a big favor of change in any form.
Don't fool yourself. I have not only considered it : unlike you, I have lived it. And I have rejected it. All bulwarks against injustice, cronyism, and nepotism have obstructed efficiency in some ways , throughout history. Our Constitution is just such a bulwark. In a dictatorship , like Castro's Cuba, I experienced the efficiency you dream of when illiteracy was taken from about 85 % to under 3 % in about a year. In fact, my older brother taught me to read Spanish at the age of three ( Spanish is very easy to read ) on a chalk board our uncle made for us so we could play school . Later , the drive for literacy began. An adult friend of the family sat me on his lap and I helped him to sound out the words on his text. That was my first teaching experience. Cuba now has a far greater literacy rate than we do here. And they read Marx and Cervantes --- not My Pet Goat.
You know who was cut out of that true miracle ? Not the teachers. Nobody screwed the teachers like you are itching to do. It was the administrators, rectors, directors, superintendents, and other yams with neckties who were canned. And, of course, as for the truly dangerous punks who had bred in the squalor of USA's Batista's police state, ... well, from my living room, we could hear the firing squads going all night long for a few weeks. Even I would not condone that.
I find it amusing to defend the value of PhDs given I'm usually on the opposite side of the argument...however...
I value them too. They have been my mentors at university and supporters in my law suit. But we all know a Ph.D. has little to do with the holder's ethics.
Meitner attained her PhD in 1906 from the University of Vienna.
Hahn behaved like a worm. He was almost as good a researcher as Meitner, but a lousy guardian of academic excellence and civic duty; especially after the war -- get it?
I brought up PIs simply because while there are folks with masters supporting research
Don't try manipulative language with me V. Not "supporting" --- I said DOING --- that means designing, testing, running, inventing, perfecting, ALL OF IT.
at NASA usually the folks designing and running the actual experiment have more formal training in research (meaning a PhD).
I don't deny the Ph.D.'s their due. But, you minimize the role of the Masters far too much. This is due to the fact that you are ignorant and evil. You must reform. You ought to give all the little people what they are due.
There's nothing special about a PhD other than a) the ability to grind through the work to attain one and b) that the individual with one has shown ONCE that they can do independent research of some kind.
As a junior at university, I invented a laser trapping cell. The Ph.D. in charge of me had won every prize imaginable in his studies. He told me that the ray-tracing model I was embarking on was extremely difficult and, for my system, impossible. I did it in two days. He had no imput in it. That was research. I did it without a B.A. and I am not, in the least, persuaded by your points a) and b) above.
Many WWII Ph.D.'s had to "grind" through about as much work as a middling B.A. does today. The M.A. at my Alma Matter was far more challenging than many Ph.D.'s at other schools. One Ph.D. from U of Illinois at Urbana ( the crony who had been chosen, originally, by the dept. I sued ) taught his students that "thoughts travel faster than light", that "quantum mechanics is identical to classical statistical mechanics", and that "Poisson brackets are identical to Dirac bra-kets". As for the Ph.D. from Stanford
in the office adjacent to mine; I heard him tell a student that the 4pi factor in the "h-bar" constant ( sorry no character in my fonts here ) of QM is "a great source of controversy" , "the jury is still out as to it's use and meaning" and other BS. I was amazed. Now, Vinny, I know you are an ignoramus in this. But I post it so that maybe some Ph.D. will post and tell you ( with the snooty authority you require ) that the factor is simply the result of a closed angular integration ( whence 4pi steradians ) in the normalization of the probability density function of the system. And the other three barbarities are equally appalling. Not that I wouldn't give my right arm for a Ph.D. from such schools as UI and Stanford. It's just that in real life ( not your bubble world ) most Ph.D.'s are honest enough to tell you themselves that the degree guarantees little of what you imagine. Most of them will get a real chuckle out of your pretended naiveté.
But you're diverting the issue: a master's degree is nothing special. Neither is your experience at NASA. In any case, on the internet such claims are unverifiable and rather pointless.
Oh, don't be hurt Vinny. Your neo-con-man intentions are quite transparent in the internet. All of our experiences are quite special. For example, mine made me a real expert in this area. Yours made you really stupid in yours.
It is obvious that you are begining to feel the weight of my arguments : you have reduced yourself to denying my veracity rather than countering with something resembling reason. That was a real give-away, Vinny.
It's well known that if a very busy Professor is listed first on a paper that typically it's the second name that wrote it if it was a grad student. In any case, you still get to list that publication (i.e. you get credit).
Well, it's good to see that you know it. Apply this fact to your occiput and rub it in. Rinse and repeat.
Less common than you make it out to be. Theft of research, once widely known, destroys the only thing of real value to a researcher: their reputation. Horror stories exist but are the rare exception rather than the rule in academia.
Less...more.... Bah, don't waste our time. Cronyistic systems that you prefer to unionized ones REWARD thieves.
Don't you keep up with current affairs ? None of the thieves in my friend's case lost a damn thing. Plagiarism is rampant in research -- not rare. Jeeezzz !!!
In any case, they can't steal your brain unless you let them (by getting bitter about it). The truth emerges eventually because your own work will show what you can do.
More fantasy bull crap from neo-con-man planet.
Don't worry so much about flavors and try to show a little morality once in a while.
The point is you've been carrying on about your purported credentials as if they were meaningful to the discussion or all that noteworthy. They aren't.
Don't try your ludicrous pronouncements of grand edicts re. what my facts are worth. If they were worthless you would not snipe at their authenticity : you would counter the argument. Again, a real give-away, Vinny .
For all we know, you are an 18 year old loser with not a single clue about the real world , failing in artsy-fartsy land, collecting 50¢ per post from the neo-con-man internet propaganda army, and posting under a dozen names to seem bigger than a louse.
Sure. Given that each school system has its own rules one should be able to find examples of anything. But NY has a very powerful union and was the example in the documentary (or simply show if you prefer not to call it a documentary).
LA's teachers union has opposed more charter schools and amazingly the three board of ed members that voted against more charter schools got $1M in campaing contributions from the UTLA.
And UTLA never said why they opposed it ? Why isn't that just awful ? !
I contributed to those millions. I am a UTLA member. What of it ? It balances the neo-con-man funding of biggots. You don't like the turnabout ?
The times, they are-a-changing , republican. Eat it.
Gee.
Yes.
I would think that the impact of vouchers would be felt up the entire food chain to do better. The least impact would hopefully be on teachers since they would still be needed and would have more opportunities to move to a school run by a competent administrator.
Yes, I guess you would think that. Your schools and "competent administrators" seem to materialize, deus ex machina, at your beck and call. Whence these saviors, Vinny ? Any idea ?
Very true so you have a point. So sanitary operating procedures have improved the survival rates of the patients. What can we say of the tenure system in US public schools?
It has made it safe for teachers to teach science instead of fundamentalist stupidity. It has made it possible for teachers to expose fraudulent programs foisted by admin politicos at the expense of tax payers and kids. It has attracted the majority of teachers ( read --- good teachers ) to risk a commitment to teaching that is seldom reversible in fields like science, engineering, mathematics, and such. It has made it possible for history teachers to include the contributions of women and minorities in their lessons as well as exposing the revisionist, neo-con-man bull crap that passed for history and current events previously. It keeps countless women from having to lay the fat principal unless she wants to. Oh, and don't forget the aqueducts !
Mainstreaming is typically implemented poorly. Arguably mainstreaming is bad for everyone except a portion of the mainstreamed kids.
Thank you. You get a cookie, vinea.
However, I can see the point of view of parents that insist on mainstreaming for their kids. The problem lies in that there are not enough resources to provide 100% coverage on a 1-1 basis for mainstreamed kids.
No fair !!! If you get on my side we can't argue.
I am certainly not going to trade sides with you!
BTW, why must you always manipulate ? Did I say "1-1" ?
Now, my wife had mainstreamed kids in her class with 1-3 ratio of helpers (she had 3 with an aide) but it was still a disruption in the class.
No disagreement. Each district implements this differently...some still maintain special ed schools but some have completely (or almost completely) closed them.
Ughhh ! This is terrible ! Get back to your side this minute!
Anyway, it takes fewer than five disruptive kids ( SE or punk , doesn't matter ) to kill a class.
You seemed to have figured it out. Its easier to maintain context this way no?
I don't "seemed" to have figured it out. I had to call a Ph.D. from a very prestigious university without tenure or funding or teachers or even buildings to do it for me. They are protected, from yams-with-neckties, by their sheer trust in the fictitious, competitive market of neo-con-men with huge phalluses and really great morals.
Its a strawman because for every one of these stories you provide there's another equally disadvantaged family that would benefit from vouchers. These are the same ones who camp out for days hoping to get their kids into a charter school.
OK, so you only screw half of the families.
The story you provide is simply argumentum ad misericrodiam. The end result of vouchers will not be a system where poor parents can't find better schools for their kids if they are motivated to. Rich parents already do that.
More bull crap pronouncements from Nostradamus.
Undocumented parents are a seperate but related social issue. One that vouchers shouldn't impact because if its already legal for you to treat undocumented parents as the legal guardians without reporting them, then sending them a voucher in the mail to apply to their kids education is more of the same.
Tell it to the parents. Private schools do as they will. A report to the MIGRA can be made for other "reasons" just as a lousy principal might ( under your crony system ) fire you for "reasons" other than, say, your being gay. Never heard of that trick ? The college I sued changed their "reason" for denying tenure as often as their private investigators came back to them with news that all witnesses had laughed in their faces and the latest "reason" had back-fired on them in a big way. I would say about twenty times. Once, they accused me of teaching voodoo in the physics class ( literally --- as per the college president's testimony ) .
Will there be kids that are poorly served under a system that has vouchers? Sure. Will there be problems? Sure. Will there be disasters? Sure.
Hey !!! Hey !!! Who let Rumsfeld in here ?
Be gone, foul demon of darkness!!!. It is the power of christ that compells you! It is he who hurls you back to the pit of perdition. The blood of the saints compells you ! The tears of the angels compell you! The torments of the martyrs compell you !!! ....
But the system already sucks. Keeping the status quo is already a mess. Tell me this: why are class sizes still so large even though we are pouring more money than ever into the system?
Because nobody wants to be pissed on by you ?
Because corporate-fascist worms squander trillions on murder abroad so we can't afford enough schools and teachers ?
Because without tenure, you have to live in fear of being canned by an idiot admin regardless of your skills ?
Because it's really hard for a man to get laid if he is identified as a school teacher ( unlike college profs -- need I relate anecdotes ? -- got the scoop on both sides, you know ) ?
Because most of you barbarians don't like kids nearly as much as you advertise ?
Because whorehouses are funded better than schools and visited more frequently as well ? Wanna hear about my years in the bordello ?
Because maybe we spend $84 per pupil on textbooks but $107 per student on supervisor salaries (not counting principles and other school staff) in the LA Unified School District (2004ish numbers)?
We buy them books and we buy them books, and all they do is eat the covers. How long do you think it takes a punk to trash a $50 book or a $700 computer ? About 3 seconds in both cases. So, fire the teachers ?
So what if vouchers resulted in a PUBLIC school system that isn't top heavy and wasteful which allows you to have a lower punk/class ratio?
No, no --- it will result in a concentration of punks in schools where parents can't pay the balance of the private school, or parents are crackheads, or parents don't dare risk deportation, or parents can't travel the distance, etc.
The primary difference appears that you think that the majority (if not all) kids are punks or proto-punks. Given that my wife taught in the worst school in her district I'd say that she had experience with "punks" but didn't speak as you do regarding kids.
Again, it only takes three punks or so to ruin the education of thirty kids. The kids will tell you this themselves. Are you from Earth ? And the punk virus is transmitted by air.
Your wife must be much kinder than I.
I hope you remained good friends.
I like to call things by their proper names.
Punks are proud to be called punks.
They practice in front of the mirror.
It is "school boy" that will separate you from your tamales.
Yes there are punks. But more teachers I know complain about class size as a root cause of many problems. Unless you feel nearly every kid is a punk smaller classes would allow you to teach more and perform "classroom management" less.
Are you planning to exterminate them or is it that you can't count ?
Where is the parachute drop of new schools going to be ?
Or do you plan to use them for sausage ?
Thus far your comments make you seem jaded and feel that almost all kids are punks. So reducing class size wouldn't help you much there would it?
Oh, I know ! You expect the crops to fail and a plague to sweep the little darlings away !!! Or will they be taken up on the mother ship ? ... Oh, I need to re-jade before I go back to teach tomorrow.
And whom did you teach today ?
You know, all this time you spend lying on the web could be spent volunteering to tutor kids, read to them, make parent contacts, .... you know ... helping ???
No one is censoring you
Sorry, I imagined a call for me to be banned.... must be all that jade.
...you plead victimhood far too easily. That you come across as a bitter and jaded teacher on this forum is no ones fault but your own.
Oh, how precious ! Just like a teenee republican. You must disapprove of your own life style right ?
Its not crap...it's just stupid. If you want to act the part...be my guest but it certainly doesn't advance the idea that some teachers need to be removed but cannot because the unions prevent that.
What ? You again ? !!! Get back on your side. This is my side. What kind of coherence is that ? I'm the one who can't write, not you ! Get your own disability !!!!
And other schools do accept regulations, provisions, etc. If no private schools will accept vouchers then there should be no problems correct?
Again, MAKE MY DAY
Bigot? Dude, if you hadn't said you were a minority of some kind who on earth would know? You have no clue my background or ethnicity so claiming some wierd bigotry accusation is just another appeal of victimhood. Get over yourself. I wrote you were incoherent because your posts were frothing and poorly written.
Quite the Hemmingway aren't you
Anyway, neo-con-men who screw teachers, minority kids and parents, and other decent working-class people, with phoney benevolence, are biggots.
Nothing to do with my ethnicity.
It's your biggotry.
I know you O'Reilly types love to wheel out the hackneyed "victim syndrome" crap when you run out of talking points. And you like to make brave demands for terribly competitive excellence from everyone but yourselves : maybe you hope to be falsely associated with excellence by sheer volume and repetition of that word. Give it up.
The times they-are-a-changing
That you think it's because of your skin color is just sad. The internet is one place that can be colorblind unless you inject it in yourself.
That you think I am Black is a real give-away, Vinny.
Did you pilfer my injector ? Shame on you!
It's a lousy comparison.
But one under discussion...if you prefer to compare the US system to Cuba that's fine. I would think that a system that allows kids to read marx vs my pet goat and a 97% literacy rate would be considered by some to be superior...but not me.
The crony system you would replace it with has always been far worse. Again, principals and superintendents have shown themselves to be ethically, professionally, and pedagogically incompetent to wield such power.
Yes, every principle, superintendent, etc is incompetent and the nature of the job precludes anyone from doing it well.
However, it seems in a free market system that companies with abusive, cronyistic, incompetent managers get clobbered by companies with less-incompetent managers (abusive or cronyistic or otherwise).
One would hope that competition in the education system would weed out some of the incompetents you decry and since they add questionable value the number of useless consultants would be reduced too.
In Cuba, we call such a parasite a "yam with a necktie".
The current system promotes having more yams. Why NOT change it?
Don't fool yourself. I have not only considered it : unlike you, I have lived it. And I have rejected it. All bulwarks against injustice, cronyism, and nepotism have obstructed efficiency in some ways , throughout history. Our Constitution is just such a bulwark. In a dictatorship , like Castro's Cuba, I experienced the efficiency you dream of when illiteracy was taken from about 85 % to under 3 % in about a year.
This isn't Cuba. There is a constitution. Vouchers wouldn't change that.
Hahn behaved like a worm. He was almost as good a researcher as Meitner, but a lousy guardian of academic excellence and civic duty; especially after the war -- get it?
You touted Meitner as an example of a researcher. She had a PhD. Get it?
Don't try manipulative language with me V. Not "supporting" --- I said DOING --- that means designing, testing, running, inventing, perfecting, ALL OF IT.
/shrug
The argument has been that typically folks without a PhD don't have the formal training to perform research with the rigor required for scientific study.
My counterarguement is that some disciplines, by their nature, conduct research....in the sense that they systematically have a way of solving problems. But it is true that most folks, even with masters, do not get the formal training for conducting scientific research.
Hence most folks doing real research (scientific inquiry) at NASA have PhDs. Its not like its THAT hard to get a PhD. All it takes is a little perseverance and tolerance for BS.
I don't deny the Ph.D.'s their due. But, you minimize the role of the Masters far too much. This is due to the fact that you are ignorant and evil. You must reform. You ought to give all the little people what they are due.
Ad hominem and silly. Being of the "little people" I give us plenty of credit and due. I simply stuck the PhD thing at you because you kept puffing yourself up and I figured it would annoy you. It seems to have.
Many WWII Ph.D.'s had to "grind" through about as much work as a middling B.A. does today. The M.A. at my Alma Matter was far more challenging than many Ph.D.'s at other schools.
See...you keep trying to justify that your MA is as valuable as someone else's PhD. It doesn't matter...and perhaps I shouldn't have jabbed you with the PhD stick but hey...
It's just that in real life ( not your bubble world ) most Ph.D.'s are honest enough to tell you themselves that the degree guarantees little of what you imagine. Most of them will get a real chuckle out of your pretended naiveté.
Most PhDs would disagree that the only thing that a PhD signifies is that someone stuck to getting a PhD and that the person showed that they could do independent research once?
It's not exactly what I would call a very high bar. But it seems that despite your great intellect you read what you want to read rather than what is actually written.
It is obvious that you are begining to feel the weight of my arguments : you have reduced yourself to denying my veracity rather than countering with something resembling reason. That was a real give-away, Vinny.
The point is on the internet folks are anonymous. Any purported credentials are as often false as true. The only thing that matters is what you say, not who you say you are.
On the rare occasion you had points to counter, I have either done so or agreed with your point. Terrible isn't it?
Less...more.... Bah, don't waste our time. Cronyistic systems that you prefer to unionized ones REWARD thieves.
Don't you keep up with current affairs ? None of the thieves in my friend's case lost a damn thing. Plagiarism is rampant in research -- not rare. Jeeezzz !!!
Sorry, my own experienced indicates otherwise. Given that you don't know who I am or my background it would be as impossible for you to refute my experiences as it is for me to refute yours.
Meaning...our personal experiences don't really matter when debating any issue on the net.
More fantasy bull crap from neo-con-man planet.
Don't worry so much about flavors and try to show a little morality once in a while.
Right. Because your friend isn't currently successful as you claim with work on the Discovery channel and papers. The theft of any particular item of work is annoying, unjust and unethical but the only way it's debilitating is if you let it embitter you (or you decide to fight a battle you can't win and manage to destroy yourself in the process).
Nothing too controversial about that.
Odds are, while there was no official impact word has gotten around. It always does. What? In your vast experience far superior to mine that you've found that grad students don't talk to each other? Odd...
Don't try your ludicrous pronouncements of grand edicts re. what my facts are worth. If they were worthless you would not snipe at their authenticity : you would counter the argument. Again, a real give-away, Vinny .
For all we know, you are an 18 year old loser with not a single clue about the real world , failing in artsy-fartsy land, collecting 50¢ per post from the neo-con-man internet propaganda army, and posting under a dozen names to seem bigger than a louse.
EXACTLY. I could be an 18 year old loser without a clue. Only the strength (or lack thereof) of my argument has any merit. Not who I might or might not be.
But you should hope I am not an 18 year old loser without a clue...in as much as one of us looks better than the other at the moment.
And UTLA never said why they opposed it ? Why isn't that just awful ? !
Given that you are a member then perhaps rather than my possibly biased synopis you could provide your own? Seriously. After all, I agreed on the tenure issue to a point.
I contributed to those millions. I am a UTLA member. What of it ? It balances the neo-con-man funding of biggots. You don't like the turnabout ?
I just like charter schools from the good they seem to do from a parent perspective.
Besides, two wrongs hardly makes a right. The conservative money and influence is a corruptive influence on the political process. That doesn't mean that union activities are any more justified.
The funny thing about being a moderate is that you get called neo-cons by liberals and um...liberals by neo-cons. Both sides are so polarized that everyone not an extremist on their side is an enemy.
Yes, I guess you would think that. Your schools and "competent administrators" seem to materialize, deus ex machina, at your beck and call. Whence these saviors, Vinny ? Any idea ?
If your position is that there are no competent administrators then your conclusion would be correct. None could appear.
Given that your premise is incorrect, it would seem that if there were market forces that would reward competent administration of schools some competent folks might apply for the job. Perhaps even you.
It has made it safe for teachers to teach science instead of fundamentalist stupidity. It has made it possible for teachers to expose fraudulent programs foisted by admin politicos at the expense of tax payers and kids. It has attracted the majority of teachers ( read --- good teachers ) to risk a commitment to teaching that is seldom reversible in fields like science, engineering, mathematics, and such. It has made it possible for history teachers to include the contributions of women and minorities in their lessons as well as exposing the revisionist, neo-con-man bull crap that passed for history and current events previously. It keeps countless women from having to lay the fat principal unless she wants to. Oh, and don't forget the aqueducts !
See...here's a reasonable argument. Yes, you are correct. Tenure has produced these things and they are valuable. On the other hand tenure also give you the hidebound old and untouchable professors that you decry and in my opinion broken public school system.
So, how can we protect teachers from fundamentalist stupidity without the resulting ills?
The points I disagree with is that teaching is any more irreversible as a career as any other that requires commitment to some kind of specialization and that normal employment laws cannot protect against sexual abuse/misconduct (which they have).
But if it really is a requirement, you can keep your tenure system as long as you allow alternative education systems to be tried. Things like vouchers and charter schools. Fair?
No fair !!! If you get on my side we can't argue.
I am certainly not going to trade sides with you!
Not everyone belongs on a "side".
BTW, why must you always manipulate ? Did I say "1-1" ?
You didn't say 1-1, I said 1-1. Its not manipulative to offer my opinion on what is doing mainstreaming correctly. 3-1 didn't seem to work completely. 1-1 may not either.
Anyway, it takes fewer than five disruptive kids ( SE or punk , doesn't matter ) to kill a class.
Well, if class sizes dropped 25%-30% I would hope you also have 25%-30% fewer punks.
If every SE had an aide that could remove/handle them when they were disruptive that would minimize the impact to you and your primary desire to teach. Hence 1-1.
5 SE's in one class is too many anyway, even if you had 6 adults.
OK, so you only screw half of the families.
Better than screwing all of them.
Education is the one of the few things that can break the poverty cycle. There are families that desire to break the cycle and there are ones that don't care.
Helping families that want to break the cycle is more important to me than continuing a system that tries to provide equally bad opportunities all around.
Sounds rather harsh but frankly avoiding 1 crying mother and child that didn't make it into a charter school via lottery is worth screwing 10 punks AND you. That's one more potential leader getting a fair chance. Enough of them and what do you know...even the Republican party will start looking a little more tan and they wont be tokens...
Because nobody wants to be pissed on by you ?
Because corporate-fascist worms squander trillions on murder abroad so we can't afford enough schools and teachers ?
Because without tenure, you have to live in fear of being canned by an idiot admin regardless of your skills ?
Because it's really hard for a man to get laid if he is identified as a school teacher ( unlike college profs -- need I relate anecdotes ? -- got the scoop on both sides, you know ) ?
Because most of you barbarians don't like kids nearly as much as you advertise ?
Because whorehouses are funded better than schools and visited more frequently as well ? Wanna hear about my years in the bordello ?
So these are reasons that class sizes are still so large despite spending more money than ever?
At least we can now understand one reason you seem so angry all the time.
We buy them books and we buy them books, and all they do is eat the covers. How long do you think it takes a punk to trash a $50 book or a $700 computer ? About 3 seconds in both cases. So, fire the teachers ?
And the high price consultants are helping you how? At least you'd get 6 seconds of use...or maybe you could take all that money spent on admins and consultants and hire...OMG...more teachers?
No, no --- it will result in a concentration of punks in schools where parents can't pay the balance of the private school, or parents are crackheads, or parents don't dare risk deportation, or parents can't travel the distance, etc.
Or perhaps the public school system will be forced to improve so they get something other than punks? I would hope that the vouchers would provide sufficient funds to cover the entiere tuition. I wouldn't be opposed to the idea that any school accepting vouchers could not charge any additional tuition to level the playing field.
The objective is to provide better education at a lower cost. Not make some private school owner richer.
Again, it only takes three punks or so to ruin the education of thirty kids. The kids will tell you this themselves. Are you from Earth ? And the punk virus is transmitted by air.
And 30 kids is around 10 too many. Can you handle 2 punks?
Your wife must be much kinder than I.
I hope you remained good friends.
Evidently. All her friends too. Yes, we did.
And whom did you teach today ?
You know, all this time you spend lying on the web could be spent volunteering to tutor kids, read to them, make parent contacts, .... you know ... helping ???
And you know I do none of these how? Would you be surprised that spouses of teachers get volunteered to help out? And some folks actually keep doing it?
But no, I don't do as much as I used to (since I'm not married to her anymore AND I live far away from her old school where I knew folks) which was refurbing old donated computers for use in their school.
Sorry, I imagined a call for me to be banned.... must be all that jade.
If you do get banned it will be because you continue to be abusive. Not because of any particular view you support.
Anyway, neo-con-men who screw teachers, minority kids and parents, and other decent working-class people, with phoney benevolence, are biggots.
Nothing to do with my ethnicity.
It's your biggotry.
Yeah right. Or perhaps some minorities are kinda tired of the whole spiel? Nah. Everyone that disagrees is a neo-con...or worse...a sellout. Care to call me a vendido? You seem to like namecalling.
Oddly, given that you're part of the system, that label might more accurately be applied to you no? After all, to your kids you are the representative of Da Man.
I know you O'Reilly types love to wheel out the hackneyed "victim syndrome" crap when you run out of talking points.
You know, you can't really piss me off by calling me something I'm not.
That you think I am Black is a real give-away, Vinny.
Did you pilfer my injector ? Shame on you!
Well, I suppose some Cubans are black but it never occured to me since you made it pretty clear a few posts ago that you were hispanic, specifically Cuban.
What makes you think I'm not a black hispanic irish navajo chinese arab persian mix? But no, I'm not. As far as I know anyway. Mom would have some serious questions to answer if so.
Vinea