patrick.net

klarek says

But since some people think that unions are more important than providing a quality level of education for our next generation, this will continue to rot away at our country’s core.

Brilliant. Unions and providing a good education to our kids are mutually exclusive. Why, because some retarded puppet told you so ?

Darrr, "your either with us, or your against us."

Bill Cosby points out the self-destructive nature of inner-city American black culture here:

http://www.harisingh.com/newsCosby.htm

You think he doesn’t know what he’s talking about?

I think he's an old timer, multimillionaire, very smart, and somewhat conservative African American. I respect what he's saying, but there is a lack of tolerance there. Obama's example will do 1000 times more to influence black kids than what Cosby says there.

By the way, I love Cosby. My dad had a couple of his early albums. Extremely funny stuff. He's a gifted dude.

I don't care for the generalizations, but I don't really want to get in to this one further.

marcus says

My dad had a couple of his early albums.

Fire 1 torpedo!

klarek says

They can also fire bad teachers. When you have school systems with an unhealthy symbiotic relationship with corrupt local officials and the unions they support, it’s going to continue to unravel no matter how much money you throw at it. But since some people think that unions are more important than providing a quality level of education for our next generation, this will continue to rot away at our country’s core.

Eduction lately has crumbled under union greed and fear and will continue to do so at least until unions go.

Is it just me, or is it annoying when people who truly know zero or even less than zero (yes that's possible - it's called lies), talk as if they are actually knowledgeable about a subject?

Chris, please give me some credible sources for this knowledge of yours, about the damage that unions are doing. Who knows, maybe even one source could be something other than an opinion piece from a right wing extremist.

I won't hold my breath. You worked this out all by yourself, maybe with a little help from talk radio. Imressive. I know, I know, you just feel it in your gut. I have no respect for lying %^&*bags, so please Chris, show me you aren't one. Give us some evidence. You can make your assertions, but it's pretty pathetic if that's all you've got.

Are you smart enough to acknowledge that if you don't have sources other than right wing extremists, for these ugly hateful assertions, that you might just be full of sh&^.

Let me guess. "Well, umm, I just know,...because unions,...all they do is demand more more more, none of them actually work hard. With them it's all about getting paid for doing nothing.....blah, blah bah," bs on top of bs on top of more bs lies.

I guess you can make stuff up, just like your heroes on talk radio, and magically it becomes true for you. That's a real service your heroes are doing for this country.

Have you no shame for the lies you make up? Can you show some studies or objective reporting that backs up what you say?

Probably not. But I guess that's probably the fault of the left wing communist dominated media.

marcus, if you're insinuating that unions aren't harming our public schools, you couldn't be more wrong. They square teachers and administrative staff against the interests of our kids and the taxpaying public. They marginalize young teachers who have to accept substandard salaries because of their tenured, seniority-based system which promotes the interests of shitty teachers and redundant administrative staff. The sheer amount of waste in terms of dollars is one thing, but being unable to fire non-performing teachers is an absolute disgrace.

For you to seek sources on this suggests you've never bothered reading into it at all. If literature bores you, I suggest two documentaries: "Waiting for Superman" and "The Cartel". If you feel up to the challenge and want a good book, I recommend Terry Moe's "Special Interest". Before you accuse others of "lies", you ought to at least have some background knowledge on the topic.

It's been shown in school districts - from good to outright horrible - that throwing money at the problem will not make it go away and in fact can exacerbate it. Look at DC and NJ where the cost per student has skyrocketed while performance has sunk to the worst in the nation.

There's so much corruption and outright theft going on, and kids are being used as disposable pawns for these union cretins. This isn't like the NUMMI plant where the negative consequences of unions' poison are limited to shitty cars. This is a poison to our kids' futures, and it's insulting for union suck-ups such as yourself to pull the whole "derp derp that's just what right wingers tell you to believe". Ask any good school teacher and they'll confirm for you what you're incapable of believing.

Or you can just hang onto your stupid fucking partisan talking points which is all you seem capable of doing.

klarek says

Before you accuse others of “lies”, you ought to at least have some background knowledge on the topic.

I have far more knowledge on the topic than you. I am a teacher at a great school, so I guess it is at least one counter example to your propaganda.

klarek says

Or you can just hang onto your stupid fucking partisan talking points which is all you seem capable of doing.

Every source you listed is by someone with an anti union or pro charter agenda.

Either you also have a right wing agenda, because of what AM talk radio or fox news has told you, or,...oh wait, that would be redundant, nevermind.

klarek says

t’s been shown in school districts - from good to outright horrible - that throwing money at the problem will not make it go away and in fact can exacerbate it.

Well, I guess if we don't want to spend more money on educating our children, then that insane assertion will be convenient for you and your super rich corporate overlords.

If there were one thing I would suggest you read, it would be this.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-charter-schools/

By the way, Ravitch has turned 180 degrees, she was in the Bush admin, and previously advocated many of the things you do.

ANother piece from the new yorker that might put things in perspective for you, but hey, don't read it, you know the lies you want to believe, with zero evidence.

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2010/09/27/100927taco_talk_lemann

Fact: "The annual Gallup poll about education shows that Americans are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the quality of the nation’s schools, but 77 percent of public school parents award their own child’s public school a grade of A or B, the highest level of approval since the question was first asked in 1985."

klarek says

stupid fucking partisan talking points

Indeed.

Ravitch's most recent book: "The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education"

Isn't it interesting that if one is a republican, and doesn't like that unions often back democrats, that SOME republicans will conveniently spout made up bs anti-union bullcrap.

I would be the first to advocate for certain reforms of unions. It's tricky business though. The big one is altering the degree to which "bad" teachers are overly protected, while maintaining protections for teachers who for example have a legitimate conflict with a "bad" administrator. But over all, the idea that all of the challenges in public education can be solved by eliminating unions and then paying teachers less, is laughably transparent. Are you really that gullible? Or is it that the end justifies the means ? (and do you really understand the end that you are advocating?)

Here's another one for you.

"The high Cost of Low Teacher Salaries"
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/opinion/01eggers.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

"Imagine a novice teacher, thrown into an urban school, told to teach five classes a day, with up to 40 students each."

I like that, up to 40 students each. Try up to 50.

klarek says

marcus, if you’re insinuating that unions aren’t harming our public schools, you couldn’t be more wrong. They square teachers and administrative staff against the interests of our kids and the taxpaying public. They marginalize young teachers who have to accept substandard salaries because of their tenured, seniority-based system which promotes the interests of shitty teachers and redundant administrative staff. The sheer amount of waste in terms of dollars is one thing, but being unable to fire non-performing teachers is an absolute disgrace.

Marcus is just protecting his own union hiney. He feels very defensive about unions in general being a member himself.

marcus says

Is it just me, or is it annoying when people who truly know zero or even less than zero (yes that’s possible - it’s called lies), talk as if they are actually knowledgeable about a subject?

No, it's not just you. I've been saying this lately on other threads around here. It's quite astounding how people who know so little about a topic feel that they are "experts" in that very topic simply because they saw or heard something about it on a news program or read it on the Internet somewhere.

I firmly believe that the dismantling of public education has been planned since at least Reagan:

RayAmerica says

Ronald Reagan said at the end of his 2nd. term his biggest regret was not closing down the Department of Education.

The reason why conservatives want vouchers and charter schools is to deprive those poor disadvantaged (black, hispanic, etc.) children of any kind of real education while providing their white privileged children a good education. This maintains the status quo where privileged people maintain all of the power and wealth in the country. It creates a Plutocratic Oligarchy by keeping an underclass uneducated and therefore easily manipulated through propaganda and lies. It allows the conservatives to keep lying to their disadvantaged poor white constituents in order to keep their votes because these people are too uneducated to see through the lies.

Public education, done well and equitably, has the chance of educating an entire society where everyone has a basic knowledge of how society functions and how government should function. This is a dangerous idea to conservatives because if all people in this country had a basic knowledge of how things are supposed to work, the conservatives and their privileged elite would no longer be in power.

The reality of this country is that conservatives elites talk about an alleged meritocracy while actively working against anyone not of their class so that only they and theirs can continue to rule in wealth and power over the rude masses of uneducated cretins.

I won't get too deeply into the blatant racism and bigotry contained in this thread because conservatives get all upset when you point out their obvious racism and bigotry claiming that they are simply misunderstood and that liberals are engaging in character assassination. Someone else did a great job of explaining how generations of oppresion has kept black people down in our society in this thread. I'm not going to repeat it. I doubt that conservatives would dare to acknowledge the truth of those statements. Truth isn't a conservative value. Maintaining power and wealth in the hands of an elite few is the only conservative value.

Destroying public education is the best way to eliminate any chance that the under-classes will ever displace the conservative elite. Public eduction is enemy #1 for a conservative elitist.

George Carlin would agree with out about public education being the enemy of conservative elitists:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?source=patrick.net&v=rsL6mKxtOlQ#watch-headline

simchaland says

The reason why conservatives want vouchers and charter schools is to deprive those poor disadvantaged (black, hispanic, etc.) children of any kind of real education while providing their white privileged children a good education.

Wrong again. It's getting to be a habit for you. What this conservative wants (I can' speak for all the others like you seem to able to) is for the free market to enter into education. Why? So that ALL education is improved via competition. Why you would bring race into the equation is beyond me. It has absolutely nothing to do with it. If anything, competition will help up the standards for the public schools, something they for the most part do not fear under the current system.

Yes, and "competition" has done wonders with health care and our economy. Wrong! There is no such thing as a completely free market. That "free market" that magically fixes things exists only in Conservative Fantasyland. Keep barkin', Sparky...

I can cite thousands of examples showing that the market fails in providing certain services, but you'd deny the actual facts and the truth, so I'm not going to even bother. Proof, facts, and the truth mean nothing to conservatives. They demonstrate this so elegantly when they demand proof from liberals while never bothering to deliver any proof on their side that is based in actual facts. It's so pitifully transparent.

And I expected denials and howling from conservatives as I casually mention their blatant racism and bigotry. It's nothing new.

What improves education is involved parents and stable home life. Money helps up to a point, but it can't take it all the way. All privatizing education does is add a profit motive that incentivizes behaviors that cripple education standards and end results. The only way that private education ends up with better results than public education is when they can be selective about what students they teach.

Standardized testing does not produce better results. It produces teaching practices where teachers teach to the test. "Competition" isn't really competition when one school MUST take all comers regardless of ability and special needs and the other school can choose who to admit.

The biggest indicator for education level in children is the education level of their parents. Economic stability of the family also plays a major role. The biggest indicator of how much economic stability and prosperity a family has is the economic stability and prosperity of the previous family.

When you start from nothing it takes a pretty long time to go anywhere. That's why minorities are typically at the bottom in education and economic status. It's not because they want to be there and it's not because they don't want others in their social group to remain there. It's because social mobility is largely a myth. Social safety nets and affirmative action act to mitigate some of these issues.

And that's why conservatives want to eliminate every public social program under the sun and privatize it all. Once everyone was allowed to play and guarenteed a spot freedom stopped being fun.

simchaland says

I can cite thousands of examples showing that the market fails in providing certain services

I'm sure you meant that to be an exaggeration, so why not cite the top ten examples in which the free market fails in "providing certain services?"

omgbacon says

Once everyone was allowed to play and guarenteed a spot freedom stopped being fun.

Interesting way of putting it.

RayAmerica says

simchaland says

I can cite thousands of examples showing that the market fails in providing certain services

I’m sure you meant that to be an exaggeration, so why not cite the top ten examples in which the free market fails in “providing certain services?”

I know you won't ever reciprocate because you never cite any examples based in fact about anything ever. I'm not doing your work for you Rayray...

Show yours first, then I'll you show mine. I'm sure you know that's how it works.

NYC Teachers Counter 'Waiting For Superman' With Film Of Their Own

What did "Waiting For 'Superman'" get wrong?

A grassroots group of parents and teachers pokes big holes in last year's blockbuster documentary about America's schools -- insisting that real reform will require more than brand-conscious initiatives such as increased testing standards and access to charter schools.

The result is a new documentary, wryly titled "The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting For Superman."

http://www.waitingforsupermantruth.org/

also, heres the latest news from the poster child of education privatization:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/24/michelle-rhee-ohio-teachers-bill_n_866252.html

simchaland says

I can cite thousands of examples showing that the market fails in providing certain services,

also also, only one article, but bad news for your point:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/24/germany-economic-recovery-recession-lessons_n_692534.html

"High taxes, heavy regulation, powerful unions and a big welfare state are turnoffs for pretty much any true blue (and especially red) American, but they are also the four cornerstones that have led Germany to its strongest quarter in 20 years."

state says

How will privately run schools make better use of money than public schools?

Ray won't answer, so let me tell you what he and his overlords think (or rather feel - it's all about the emotion with these people).

Ray figures that the first thing that they will do is kill unions and cut teachers pay, because as expensive as college is these days, we all know that the talented people who go in to teaching have trust funds and don't need to paid as well as any other professions.

(or maybe he will tell you as Chris has said in the past - if teachers stop paying that $50/month to the union, then they can be paid many hundreds per month more. It's hard to explain - but it has to do with the wasteful ways that $50 is spent (hint - a little bit goes to politics)

The savings they get from cutting teacher pay, can go to paying principals 3 or 400K, and to high salaries for other administrators. Anyone who has ever been around schools, knows that if the administrators are paid enough, attracting the highly motivated talent, that everything else will fall in to line. The teachers, that is the ones that that actually children interact with all day are irrelevant.

Ya, you know, it's those greedy high level union guys. The extra few thousand that that one guy at the top of the unions gets. We all know that the union can't see what's best for the students in a many Billion dollar school district, because that one guy is too fixated on that gravy train he gets for being president.

state says

How will privately run schools make better use of money than public schools?

Free market competition. If one is guaranteed income regardless of outcome there is no incentive to provide better or cheaper service. On the other hand if you know you'll be broke if you do not provide a better service than your competition you sure will strive to do better.

Public sector unions are very lazy and complacent groups just slowly bleeding away at the system and the taxpayers. They long ago outlived their usefulness, and if not for parasitic symbiosis with politicians to whom they donate for kickbacks in return they would have been long gone by now.

ChrisLA says

Free market competition

But there is only one public school system. So with your no union comes privatization, and with that comes a situation where the poor are screwed much more than they are now.

At least now, if you're poor, you can get an apartment in a good school district and your kids have a fighting chance. Once things are totally privatized, we know what will happen. Fact is they won't be totally privatized, there will still be public schools, but they will be just for special ed, and kids that don't want to be in school.

ChrisLA says

Public sector unions are very lazy and complacent groups just slowly bleeding away at the system and the taxpayers

This is a lie, maybe if you repeat it can become true ?

Poor will simply get cheaper and better education Marcus, thats what free market competition leads to.

I've gone to a public school and poor have terrible education chances there. Schools simply hold back the smart students until the slow students catch up, most of which have no desire to do so. I've seen students in 12th grade that couldn't add numbers together.

In free market competition if your product isn't good people won't buy it, with public education system there is no way for the poor to opt out for a better option making them stuck in a system that is right now completely failing everyone.

marcus says

This is a lie, maybe if you repeat it can become true ?

It's not a lie it's an observation.

ChrisLA says

Poor will simply get cheaper and better education Marcus, thats what free market competition leads to.

Only, not so much...

For-Profit Colleges Spend Much Less On Educating Students Than Public Universities

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/26/for-profit-colleges-spend_n_867175.html

"For-profit colleges devote less than a third of what public universities spend on educating students, even though the for-profit institutions charge nearly twice as much as their public counterparts for tuition, according to new data released Thursday."

"Students attending bachelor's degree programs at for-profit schools are also much less likely to graduate than students who attend public universities"

"Some of the most striking statistics in Thursday's report dealt with the amount of money institutions spent on teaching students. On average, for-profit schools spent $2,659 per student on instructional costs during the 2008-09 school year, compared with $9,418 per student at public universities and $15,289 per student at private non-profit colleges."

"Although for-profit schools enroll about 10 percent of the nation's college population, 45 percent of students who defaulted on their loans attended such institutions."

"One in five students graduate from for-profit bachelor's degree programs within six years, compared to more than half of students at public universities."

Seems to me a good option to consider is reform the current system rather than reinventing it based on fact-free political theories where the students are treated like a profit-making resource.

kentm says

Some of the most striking statistics in Thursday’s report dealt with the amount of money institutions spent on teaching students. On average, for-profit schools spent $2,659 per student on instructional costs during the 2008-09 school year, compared with $9,418 per student at public universities and $15,289 per student at private non-profit colleges.

It's quite impressive that private enterprise can spend so much less and accomplish same or better, and this is while there isn't much competition out there yet.

We'll see those prices and costs drop pretty fast if there will be more and more competition. And it certainly needs to happen. I've seen some college graduates out there from public universities that have no change in hell in private sector.

you shouldn't compare apples to oranges.

compared with $9,418 per student at public universities
Most of these expenditures are for instructional staff salaries and benefits. Last time I talked to someone at UC, he was saving nothing for retirement as his pension would rain down money when he retired. Now, my understanding is that there are fewer tenure track positions available as existing faculty 'got theirs' and are barring the gates (no money for newer faculty). I still think we have an education bubble to work through. That said, I'm not about to jump on the for profit bandwagon.

kentm, How about fewer posts from the Huffington Post. My eyes start to glaze over whenever I see HP (or Fox News for that matter).

state says

ChrisLA says

It’s quite impressive that private enterprise can spend so much less and accomplish same or better, and this is while there isn’t much competition out there yet.
We’ll see those prices and costs drop pretty fast if there will be more and more competition. And it certainly needs to happen. I’ve seen some college graduates out there from public universities that have no change in hell in private sector.

Chris LA here seriously thinks university of phoenix online and DeVry provide the same quality of education as U of Michigan or U of Virginia

We recently interviewed someone who "graduated" from University of Phoenix for their Bachelor's and Argosy University for her Masters in Counseling Psychology. Sorry, but we were less than impressed.

If this is the Republican vision of the future for "competitive/free market" higher education, and we allow them to implement it, we are doomed as a country. We will forever be the cheap service economy labor force that the Conservative Corporate Elites want to exploit.

If the Republicans get their way, it's likely we'll see "universities" like these in the near future:

Costco University (CU)
Sam's University (SU)
University of the Dollar Store (UDS)
Walmart University (WU)

Bargain basement prices and specials will be offered for "quality" education provided online and at convenient retail locations.

Our subservience to the Conservative Corporate Elite will be complete. We will be ripe for exploitation by the Foreign Corporate Elite too.

thunderlips11 says

Simcha, I believe that the Walton Family Foundation’s biggest grants are to Children’s Educational Opportunity Foundation America, a project of Children First America, which seeks to get rid of public schools and replace them with charter schools.

That makes sense. They want completely brain dead workers who don't understand what rights they are supposed to have. Brain dead workers can be paid minimum wage and won't ever complain about not having benefits. Walmart actively busts unions and uses illegal tactics to bully employees who attempt to organize.

Walmart instructs employees to go to the state and apply for Medicaid instead of providing health care for their employees. Also they'll help you get food stamps and WIC if you're a woman and you get pregnant.

Walmart instructs and encourages employees to use the public social safety net while working for minimum wage. Then the jerks complain about having to pay for these programs calling these programs "socialist." They have vast sums of money to hire lobbyists to rally to destroy the social safety net.

Yeah, Walton Family is one of those Conservative Corporate Elitist families who are working to enslave Americans through destroying wages, benefits, and education. But this is only one example.

The Conservative Corporate Elite have had a free ride since at least 1980. It's easy to aggregate all the wealth of a country when you control all of the levers of power. They have amassed such a great hoarde of wealth that it will be difficult, if not impossible, to unseat them from their positions of privelege that they use to destroy our country for their benefit.

simchaland says

Costco University (CU)
Sam’s University (SU)
University of the Dollar Store (UDS)
Walmart University (WU)

You forgot this important institution:

http://www.glennbeck.com/becku/

simchaland says

If this is the Republican vision of the future for “competitive/free market” higher education, and we allow them to implement it, we are doomed as a country. We will forever be the cheap service economy labor force that the Conservative Corporate Elites want to exploit.

One university does not make a trend. When Henry Ford started making cars you could only get one type and in one color and screw you if you wanted it better.

Competition works when there are a lot of universities out there competing amongst each other, I still do not see that competition yet. All I'm seeing so far is a few universities out there costing a lot less than taxpayer subsidized crap we have all around the state.

For whatever the reason internet is filled with bunch of 20somethings that have not lived a life and think they know the liberal answer to everything because they can write a post on the internet. Competition requires competitors, otherwise it might as well be called monopoly.

education loans are high because government is intent on subsidizing the education bubble. It's same as housing bubble, waiting to pop.

ch_tah says

As a parent I see schools as some dinosaur union complacent system where no one gives a damn about anything because there is no reason to care. You people don’t have to out-compete, to out-perform or out-educate. And there is this entitlement mentality of “I’ll sit on my ass for a few years with tenure and taxpayers owe me for a lifetime.”

It really is time for unions to go and education to be changed into a voucher based system so that schools start competing for students.

Please tell me you went to private school; otherwise, you are proof public schools failed at least one time. Your comments are truly uninformed and based purely on what Fox News and AM radio tell you to believe.

It's SOOO true. An example: I'm at a house party in San Jose and meet a cutie. We start talking and she tells me she's a teacher. I get her to blather on and actually brag about "surfing the web" instead of teaching the horrible kids, reporting the principle to "her union" when he tries to get her to do her job and "winning" different role, same pay, arrangements etc., except that she's now a "counselor" and just goes around pulling her favorite kids out of class for counseling - shooting the $hit and surfing the web in her office.

Complete trash... Yacked about "can't be fired" etc...

just_passing_through says

brag about “surfing the web” instead of teaching the horrible kids

Right. That sounds like a lot of teachers I know.

just_passing_through says

Complete trash… Yacked about “can’t be fired”

Why just teachers ? Police and fireman have a union too. OBviously they are all lazy and incompetent too, right ?

Listening to the stupidity and arrogance of many of our right wing dim bulbs gets so fricking tiring.

Yeah yeah, I'm a teacher, a schill for the unions. So don't listen to me.
That's like saying you're an American, so you can't have a legitimate opinion about American foreign policy (which might be true in your case - as I saw your sad attempts to confuse what it is we mean when we talk about Palestine).