patrick.net

shrekgrinch says

No, it's because those schools are not unionized. The military doesn't mess around with that crap.

Did you read the article? They are unionized:

"A 2001 study on the success of the military base schools by researchers at Vanderbilt University cites the importance of the smooth relations between the teachers’ union and management, and Ms. Fitzgerald said that continued to be true."

Um...I'm not saying I'm a fan of standardized tests but without any testing how can grades be judged? This isn't a creative writing class...

You have to have some sort of test as a barometer. Otherwise the sampling is hard to determine. There is no real national "test" although there are entry tests for various forms of education like the SAT, GRE, GMAT etc.

On the state level is where you would have given standards.

Teachers unions can be a mixed bag. Tenure should not exist on a k-12 level. (I've seen waiting for superman). I've heard arguments of some teachers a year or two from retiring that frankly don't care because they can't get fired so what is the incentive to perform. Meanwhile people that are reaching the kids are the first to be let go if there are cuts.

In Mass we have a ballot question next year that awards teachers based on performance rather than time.

It can be argued that in private schools anyone acting up can be kicked out since they have a right to refuse service. Public schools don't have that luxury but their teachers make much more than private...which is ironic given that people pay money to send kids to private school so they would assume the opposite.

Why are people so focused on teachers being paid for performance?

Are cops paid for performance? Firefighters?

mdovell says

Tenure should not exist on a k-12 level. (I've seen waiting for superman).

So you based your opinions on a movie filled of falsehoods that profiled someone who became famous by inflating test scores by erasing the wrong answeers and replacing them with the correct one (Michele Rhee).

The problem with education is the parents and environment.

While there are some hardships in military families (being moved around, long deployments, stress, fatality rates), I suspect that the culture of discipline, respect, service, and low rates of bad influences on base all play a major role here.

I found the same thing in "good" school districts in California. The reason that cupertino students do better than san jose students isn't because the teachers are better, it's because the parents are better.

Kevin I don't know if you got any kids or not. But schools have been lowering their standards for a long time now. George Carlin hit it on the head when he said that pretty soon all you'll need to graduate is a pencil.

Combine liberal policies of everyone must graduate, with complacency and ineptness of the passively almost working half asleep union workers and you get exactly what we have. A horrible education system where no matter how much money you throw at it, fails horribly.

FortWayne says

Kevin I don't know if you got any kids or not. But schools have been lowering their standards for a long time now. George Carlin hit it on the head when he said that pretty soon all you'll need to graduate is a pencil.

I have three children, one of which is school age. His third-grade material looks more or less like the third grade material I was doing at his age. Arithmetic, spelling, grammar, basic science and history.

George Carlin was a very funny man, but he wasn't an education expert.

Contrary to what you may have read on right wing blogs, kids today are actually better educated than their parents. There has been a gap in standardized test scores between the U.S. and other countries since they started measuring it -- but that gap has been shrinking steadily for the last 20 years.

Combine liberal policies of everyone must graduate, with complacency and ineptness of the passively almost working half asleep union workers and you get exactly what we have. A horrible education system where no matter how much money you throw at it, fails horribly.

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Only not.

Why do kids at Cupertino do better than kids at San Jose? Does Cupertino have a wildly different situation with regards to unions, teacher pay, or testing policy?

Or, perhaps, is it that Cupertino is full of financially successful, well educated parents, whereas San Jose is full of poorer, less educated ones?

The correlation between school performance and poverty is staggering. Study after study after study confirms it. Schools in wealthy neighborhoods with stable households don't need help.

That's not to say that I have any good solutions for making sure that poor kids from broken homes get a good education, but I know that the solution has nothing to do with unions or the lack thereof. There are are experts on these issues with better ideas.

Why do states without unionized teachers consistently perform near the bottom of the pack? Only Virginia manages to be even average.

At the very best, you can conclude that unions have no impact whatsoever on performance (other than Texas, the non union states are pretty poor). At worst, you can say that not having unions is actually harmful.

HousingWatcher says

So you based your opinions on a movie filled of falsehoods that profiled someone who became famous by inflating test scores by erasing the wrong answeers and replacing them with the correct one (Michele Rhee)

Um..no. Did you see the movie or not? It wasn't all about the DC schools as it showed in NYC an area where teachers are not fired but have this odd processing time where they don't work but still get a check.

Even the daily cos states that she probably didn't do or authorize that
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/28/960859/-Investigation-shows-questionable-test-results-under-Michelle-Rhee

Did you even see the part about Geoffrey Canada? It seems to me you didn't see the film or only saw parts of it.

Technically speaking with unions it is usually bad jobs that are unionized. If a job pays people a good wage with benefits then there's not much of a reason to unionize it. That's why walmart workers beg for it but you hardly hear anyone mention it in Ikea, Wegmans or Publix.

Any time we make a presumption that a given service can ONLY be given by a group of people we can end up with higher prices. The AMA will block attempts for states to legalize drug store clinics. The teachers unions would block any attempt for charter schools. Why have monopolies?

And it isn't based on the amount of money spent per student for performance because there are schools in mass that spend 9k vs some at 27k and perform much better.

In Mass it is like Kafka because it is illegal for teachers to go on strike. However, it takes a week to determine if they are on strike (last one as I think '94).

Back in the day there was shame in some staying back...now they generally don't do that. Now it might be summer school but what if they fail that as well? Parents also do have to step up. One thing that teachers are afraid of ever saying is that someone is a bad parent..as if parenting as a concept is somehow untouchable. Video games are not babysitters.