More teacher bashing from the GOP-controlled media.

(trying to post this again...)


A couple days ago, I linked to an editorial from the LA Times that discussed the subject of "bad teachers."

The comment I posted along with an excerpt was this:

The following article shows that while individual articles may be even-handed, the overall reporting on education is not. I posted the first article not because I knew ahead of time that the LA Times was going to publish another article

Behold, yet another teacher-bashing article miraculously published by the GOP-controlled media!



Apparently an accusation is a sign of failure and should result in an immediate firing.

I wonder if that's how things will be once public schools are fully privatized?

Still waiting for articles about superstitious beliefs disguised as science and privatization as part of the problem with education in America ... not stupid enough to hold my breath while I wait ...

They did it when I was growing up also. I do not think it ever stops.

They moved the people who ran the schools out of the schools and put them in fancy building which the tax payer had to pay for. They should have been left to run the schools right in the schools. When I was in high school the man who ran the district came to the school and used the head masters office and stayed the day. Once they put all these people in their own building it was a bad deal for the schools. It is the same trouble we have when the CEO sits in NY and never gets to the corp. he is running or the people in Congress move to DC and stay there for years with a few days in his dist. I also think that once the parents felt they could tell the teachers how to run the teaching the kids were not so well off. Some thing has gone wrong with some of it for sure. Here is a thing that I do not understand. In the 50's about 25 percent of us were very good student and got on the list and now in that same school it is like 75 percent are the good student. Has the IQ gone up or some thing. I can not seem to reason in any way that is good. When I first went to college my SAT's were so so and when I re-turned 20 years later they were very good yet the numbers were the same as they used my first results. Did the college make it easy or what? Yes I once was in a college class in the 70's and was the only one that had heard of the Ottoman Em. and could also pin-point the years of the Civil War in our own country. Course I was just hearing about DNA when every one, not my age, had heard of that. So some is the times we live in, but I still think we should know something of the world we come from.

Shouldn't they have a problem with the school district for taking 7 years to investigate the allegations? Even if this teacher did something wrong, how is it his fault that this is taking so long to be investigated?

The thing that hit me first was the use of the word FAILURE in the "subtitle" (or whatever that's called).

But, yeah, you're correct. The length of time they're taking to do this is ridiculous!

7 years is ridiculous.

There are a few doctors, police officers, etc sitting on the pine while they are being reviewed for various reasons.

Accusations are just that...accusations.

They are not proof

... that all that money is being waste while ignoring the whole due process idea-thing.

most likely alleged to have done something wrong. It has not been proven or they would have been fired. It is ridiculous that these papers would write the "alleged" criminal for any other crime, but when it comes to teachers they are guilty from the beginning. That is one reason I belong to the union.

It's all of the GOP-controlled media.

After seven years. The misfeasance appears to be in the administrative side of the house.

Based on the story at the link, the school board/administration are secretive, slow, regularly ourmaneuvered by the teachers' union, and incompetent in defending themselves in legal proceedings. The 160 teachers held in purgatory may or may not be unsuited to be educators, but it doesn't appear to be their fault that clear determinations of that fact takes so long.

And, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAUSD">Wikip*dia there are 45,473 teachers in the district, putting the percentage of teachers in this occupational limbo at 4/10ths of 1%.

ubiquitous.

i'd bet there are problems in the district much, much more common.

for teachers.

Many Democrats get involved after they have kids and start paying attention to the policy's that will shape education. Republicans would love to end public education.

The investigation should be quick and thorough, but he should be kept away from the kids until it could be resolved, either way.

...I did it for 4 years and that was enough for me. I taught in a public school and I spent more time on bullshit that I did on things which I felt were worthwhile.

If the L.A. Times want to go after something that mega stinks: Try taking a long hard look at some of the private schools in the Los Angeles area. The requirements to teach in a private school are: Walk and chew gum at the same time 33% of the time. Not even a bachelors degree is mandatory, let alone the required 5th year that California public school teachers have to have.

There are private schools in the Los Angeles area that take students who are wards of the court IMO because they then get the welfare money that goes along with taking these students. The Administrators of these dumps live high on the hog with few students to care for and with salaries that are higher than most of the senior administrators in the L.A. public school system. One school I know of has about 125 students ~~ and the head of the school makes well over $100K/year, lives in a million-dollar home and drives a new and very expensive car. What total bullshit. The money needs to be taken away from these dumps and put back in the public school system.

With your whole reply, which is why I posted this.

What the LA Times is doing by going only after the mythological "bad teacher" is to give too much attention to the lie that the only way to solve the problems public education is having is to go after teachers.

:kick:

It's not just the GOP controlled media. DU, except for the ed forum, posts more negative threads about teachers than they do positive.

Is that a natural result of exposure to all that teacher-bashing?

Anyway, thanks for pointing this out.

Here's a few positive words:

I had not one, but two separate visits from former students after school today. They will be seniors next year.

They drop by to check in a few times a year and let me know how they're doing. Sometimes they ask for advice about college, career, etc..

Today one wanted to ask me about possible places to publish a narrative she wrote.

I'm not the only teacher I know who has former students coming back to visit. Apparently, we leave a better impression with our students than the media or the general public wants to know. ;)

Still doesn't mean you don't deserve a raise!

No raises in sight for a few years to come, though.

In my district, we took a mid-year pay-cut this year to avoid lay-offs. About $1500 each.

Now the district is working on budget cuts to manage the projected budget for next year. No more PE or Music at the elementary level, teacher lay-offs, a 4 day work week, and another bigger pay cut are in the works.

Meanwhile, it looks like our health insurance will go up by about $100 a month next year.

Despite Arne, the privateer as Education Secretary, I'm hoping we can still help public schools.

I am intimately aware that there are good teachers, even plenty of great and inspiring teachers, but if you wish to close your eyes and not recognize the dismal 30% drop out rate, more than 50% in inner city schools, and not hang some blame on teachers, then you have no credibility.

If you want to jump on the DU politically correct bandwagon and smear EVERY fucking article that might have a hint of bias against teachers, then be my guest. I will just shake my head and laugh.

I've spent 26 years working in public education now, in large and small districts, large and small schools, city and rural, across 2 states and 1200 miles. I've talked to colleagues in every state over the years.

Of course there are poor teachers. Just like there are poor doctors, lawyers, parents, farmers, mechanics, plumbers, electricians, etc..

In my experience, which I'm guessing is a hell of a lot broader than yours, poor teachers are a small fraction of the whole.

Do I blame the dropout rate on teachers? No. I don't blame any of the obvious dysfunctions in our system on teachers.

We don't control the system. Politicians do. Ask teachers how to reform, change, or "fix" public education, and they're ideas won't sound much like a politician's "plan." We'll address the sources of dysfunction, rather than the symptoms.

We also aren't going to step forward and be accountable for any of the factors that affect student success that are out of our control, regardless of how many politicians and others would like us to.

As far as the article goes...

Teachers can be removed and accused with no evidence whatsoever. It happens. I've seen it. This article is about injustice. If the district had evidence to substantiate accusations, those teachers wouldn't be sitting in that room every day. They would have been fired.

I had an 8th grader threaten me this week. She said "My mom is going to get you fired for making me read stuff that's against my religion." The material? An article about the Civil War. It's "against her religion" because "there's racism in the Civil War, and my religion is against racism."

In LAUSD, if her parent was loud enough, and had a lawyer and a minister behind her, I might be in that room. Not that this particular threat can hold water. I get the "against my religion" threat several times a year, though, usually over novels included in district-adopted curriculum.

Thankfully, in my district there is no "dungeon" to send me to.

Bra-vo!

Well said!

Sadly, the GOP-controlled media are more concerned with sensationalism and protecting their corporate patrons that governing.

The GOP may not be in power, but they still control our courts and schools. I can't wait until they're out of public life altogether.

I hope it happens before I retire. I never thought the downgrading of education would progress steadily forward for my entire career.

Thanks for the encouragement.

If there was an accusation of this teacher harassing students, then for GOD'S sake, the teacher shouldn't be anywhere near students, until a review of his behavior has concluded, and the teacher is proven innocent.

I think the city is more than generous to pay him his full paycheck, until the issue is resolved.

Your animosity toward ANY potentially negativity toward teachers is palpable. You need perspective. From what you have presented here, there is nothing for you to get upset about. It is perfectly legitimate for a newspaper, especially one as large and as comprehensive as the L.A. Times to cover a story where teachers are getting paid full salary to do nothing.

And you think that is slanderous to teachers?

That's called journalism. Just because you don't like the subject doesn't mean it's anti-union.

The title of the article is: "L.A. Unified pays teachers not to teach," but just above that is the phrase, "FAILURE GETS A PASS"

Explain to me how that is journalism?

like shooting ducks in a barrel.

That's seven years of deciding whether the guy can be trusted around kids or if he should be shitcanned. Is the idea to just wait out the clock until he retires rather than risk a lawsuit for letting him go, or what?

It's not anti-teacher to say that paying teachers indefinitely not to teach is stupid. I'm sure the ones who actually deserve their jobs would much rather see the facts of their cases settled and get back in front of a classroom.

Where is the series on privatization?

Where is the series on superstition interfering in science?

I'm thinking no.

The silence about those issues is simply poor journalism, especially considering that recent court case allowing "home schools" to not require any kind of certification for the "teachers."

Do you remember that case? Do you remember the group that fought the hardest to protect the low standards of "home schools"?

There's no such thing as a home school under California law- California is one of the few states that does not have a separate law governing home schooling. Instead there are multiple legal methods of establishing one's home as a school, and all of them also legally apply to, and were presumably originally intended for, the establishment of traditional schools, (with the possible exception of the tutoring law, but hardly anybody uses that.

... I do remember a case in CA that would effect "home schools" http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/07/MNJDVF0F1.DTL

(And the appeal http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/08/BAE5127NLJ.DTL&tsp=1 )

My point is not the legal minutiae of what is legally considered a "home school" and what is not legally considered a "home school," but that there was a recent ruling requiring some level of competency from the so-called "teachers" of "home schools" and this ruling freaked the "home school" crowd out. They fought for the right to maintain their low-level of competency, which real teachers in public schools must meet.

Excuse me if I misspoke.

As far as I know the majority of California homeschoolers file the r-4 and register as a private school. :shrug:

... I heard more uproar over the first ruling from the "home school" crowd than from any private schools, or affiliated group. Christian "home schooler"-types made the most noise about having their so-called "teachers" held to a standard.

Whatever entity controls this puppet show is directing the main stream media's efforts. Part of the answer lies in the fact that there are many 'news people' bought and paid for by the íntelligence community'.

Google Fletcher Prouty.

I have to disagree with you; the GOP controls the media.

... http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=2468789b-84b8-4681-9d2b-9f09503aba7b&p=1

Click if you want.

myself) teachers made all the difference in my life. Period. There's no other way for me to put it.

Teachers rock.

And, I'm sure there are many people who would agree with your sentiments.

I know I do.

unfortunately