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- farkdog, on 05/24/2009, -5/+55Here is the classic quote from the article:
"Linda Plack, executive vice president of San Francisco's teachers union, was not pleased with Duncan's support for gathering data on the effectiveness of individual teachers.
"Gather data so you can decide who the good teachers are? Wrong!" she said. "You don't need to attack teachers when talking about schools. We need more data, but not to use it as a basis of teachers' pay.""
Well there you go. Linda Plack, vice president of the TEACHERS' UNION, says that it is WRONG TO GATHER DATA SO YOU CAN DECIDE WHO THE GOOD TEACHERS ARE!
Color me ***** surprised. - ifruit, on 05/24/2009, -10/+59Step 1. Get rid of teachers unions.
That is all. - MissOthmar, on 05/23/2009, -2/+42More than just schools have lost their way in California.
- Pinkertinkle, on 05/24/2009, -7/+35lol four year film school, good luck getting a job
- mojofomoro, on 05/24/2009, -2/+27The public schools were failing way before Arnold just like most of the country.
- codyman, on 05/24/2009, -7/+29I went to public school here in California from K-12 and I guess I turned out alright seeing that I am now at a 4 year film school on scholarship
Then again, I speak English and actually went to school where I actually tried (new word to most students these days) rather than playing hooky / being a lazy ***** that a lot of kids I went to school with did whom now all work ***** dead end jobs in cubicles or warehouses - Jashobeam5, on 05/24/2009, -5/+26Step 2. Get the government out of the business of education.
- BlackJackJester, on 05/24/2009, -3/+23You can't make children and their families value an education - and a big problem is that Mexicans, in general, don't value education. They also happen to be the majority in California. I see a correlation.
One of my neighbors growing up was a Mexican family. They were well off because the father owned a concrete company. Of four children, only one was going to college, and only because he got a full-ride baseball scholarship. It's not that he couldn't afford it (he was easily making 6 figures), but it wasn't a priority. Culture plays a huge role in education. - Pinkertinkle, on 05/24/2009, -0/+18Article was rather short on specifics, only pointing to the budget crisis. Otherwise it has lots of generalizations. Not the best news article I've read.
- RonPauls, on 05/24/2009, -3/+19Step 3: Make sure step 2 is done cause it's really important
- DrNemo, on 05/24/2009, -9/+235 billion experiment? How about dropping the public system and letting a private system take place? That would save us some money, and the education would be far superior. Schooling under free market conditions would be cheap as any other service. You may think public schools are free, but don't forget where the money comes from; either directly from your pocket or from the federal reserve inflating the money supply, hurting your savings and creating inflation. What the government provides is never free and you always pay a price.
Home schooling should also be more prevalent than it is now. - x713, on 05/24/2009, -1/+15I am a democrat but I would not be the first to blame the Governor. All his measures to change the way things are done in California have failed when we vote for them. We as a state have bankrupt this state. We are lucky enough to be a state where we vote for state measures as a state. Little do people know that all we have been voting in, is billions of dollars for school measures and other stuff, but none of it seems to be working. We have not let the Governor do what he was voted in to do. We have not supported him in any of his ideas. That and nobody in our state works with him to get things done the way he wants to change things. We need to stop voting the same ***** people in that prevent change and stop voting on measures that bankrupt our state. Most of our money is locked up in these ***** measures that we approve.
- valarking, on 05/24/2009, -1/+14Anecdotal evidence on the internet never gets old.
- bigplrbear, on 05/24/2009, -1/+13Over here in California, budget problems can be felt EVERYWHERE, right down to the classrooms where the teachers have to purchase most of their supplies without being reimbursed.
If we're not careful, California will go bankrupt, and when that happens, the world economic ***** will hit the fan - Jashobeam5, on 05/24/2009, -2/+13Let parents make the decisions for their own children? The libs will never stand for that!
- miroki, on 05/24/2009, -3/+13I blame MTV
- inactive, on 05/24/2009, -1/+10lol, why are you getting dugg down?
- CptCold, on 05/24/2009, -1/+10Captain Obvious to the rescue!
- trevor98, on 05/24/2009, -2/+10California's education system is a jobs program for teachers not a program designed to educate children. California spends near the most per student but gets some of the worst return. It has one of the highest tail to teeth ratio of support to teachers in the country. My elementary/middle school has quadrupled the administration since I left 20 years ago with a shrinking student population. Prop 13 turned educational funding into political leverage by funneling it all through the state instead of local money staying local (as it is everywhere else). I'm so glad I left the state years ago.
- trevor98, on 05/24/2009, -1/+9When the majority of a year's budget is mandated by proposition mandated laws based on emotional arguments of yesteryear then a state will always have problems.
- purpled1, on 05/24/2009, -8/+16lol @ film school... want some fries with that?
- DrNemo, on 05/24/2009, -0/+8Schooling is not something mystic that only the State knows how to provide. The market works efficiently, rewarding the successful with profits and the unsuccessful with losses. This is the process why which you eliminate waste. Does the market provide awful and sporadic services as a whole? Why should it be different with education? If I can fly cheaply I can certainly get a cheap education for my kids, if only there isn't a pesky government meddling with everything, and of course, no unions. Perfect equality is unachievable and not very desirable. I had my share of "equality" in public schools and it's not something I'd want for my kids.
For those who cannot afford any type of education, there is always charity. Why do statists always conveniently ignore charity? I'd rather give some money to an efficient private organization helping people than to the government wasting it on stupid projects like this 5 billion experiment. - SoCalCove, on 05/24/2009, -1/+8Yup, too many illegal aliens here are going to be skewering the statistics for analysis in California.
For good or bad we got basically a second culture/nation forming in California, its not going to be long before their demographic (not the legal hispanics here) becomes the main driving force in California politics.
In many ways, that demographic is already quite powerful for a mostly 'illegal' worker. - NinjaJoshy, on 05/24/2009, -1/+8I agree with you on not letting illegal aliens take part in publicly funded classes as it doesn't make sense to spend the tax dollars of legal citizens on those who may not contribute anything back to society.
- endgame, on 05/24/2009, -4/+11I'm not sure why you are getting dugg down your comments about tenure & highest paid teachers in the country are spot on.
- babbitblob, on 05/24/2009, -2/+9Step 4: Hey you. Look up.
- Unreal030, on 05/25/2009, -0/+7He wasn't speaking about race. He was speaking about the culture that usually ties into specific races. Different races tend to have different cultures due to their origins, which means they have different value systems and so forth.
Yes I agree it is important not to make too many correlations, and naturally, there are going to be exceptions, just like with anything, however, statistics in this respect do not lie. Like he said there is a reason that most people with higher degrees are White or Asian. The emphasis on education tends to be stronger on a family to family ratio. He also never said anything about making Mexicans value education, he said you can't make children and their families value education. You have convinced me with your posts on this article alone that you are by far one of the most retarded people on digg. You twisted his words around to make it out that his argument was based on something that is normally considered socially unacceptable (race discrimination) rather then actually addressing the points he was making. Why? Because for some reason or another you don't agree with him but don't want to have a proper dialogue with him. - RonPauls, on 05/24/2009, -2/+8the unions are flush with so much cash that they can hire digg users...
- Unreal030, on 05/25/2009, -0/+6You and your black and white partisan antics are what have made this country "fall behind". Let us not judge a party by its general policies or it's bad eggs, but each individual politician on his or her own merit, choices, and decisions.
Also, you seem to be placing an unusually high amount of credibility to California. Leaders of the world? Please. The only things they have been in the leaders' rankings for are celebrity douchebags, sub-prime mortgages, and (thankfully) social-issues progress. Although Prop 8 kind of brought them down a few notches on that one. - inactive, on 05/24/2009, -3/+9exactly.dugg for common sense
- radioactive21, on 05/24/2009, -3/+9California is not as bad as this article makes it out to be. California has a very very large immigrant population, I am not just speaking of Hispanics. California has large groups of immigrants in most of the populated cities, and of course they carry with them, minimal or no education whatsoever. This makes things very slow to improve, its not an excuse but it does make the situation seem worst than it is.
I went from pre school through 4 years of college all in California and it wasnt hard. The #1 reason that i saw for drop outs was students who have no value for education, this can be because of their up bringing. Seeing parents not have an education but still have jobs gives you a false sense of "hey if they can make it without a degree, I can too."
The biggest obstacle to good education is the mentality of the students and how they feel about school. Right now ask any student and they all give you the same line "I hate school." When you have to fight with a "I dont want to go to school" mentality from the get-go that's almost impossible to create change. I dont know how you would solve that but that is something that has to change. Maybe a total collapse of the system will allow people to see what they miss? That's the only thing i can think of. - juankovo, on 05/25/2009, -0/+6You are deluded if you think the housing industry and medical profession are "private sector". There is so much government interference in both of those it drastically alters the normal functioning of the market.
- andrewtheart, on 05/24/2009, -4/+10When the entire country loses it way, everything follows. This is not particularly suprising.
- Unreal030, on 05/25/2009, -1/+7You assume the administrators can do whatever they want with no backlash, as RonPauls highlighted.
Also in response to:
"Unions protect people."
Obviously it is not protecting the people whom should be of primary concern in education, namely:
The Students
Unions destroy and fight tooth and nail against the idea of a teacher Meritocracy.
In Connecticut the teachers union filed a grievance demanding pay for an extra 2 minutes a week that the union claimed teachers worked.
In Pennsylvania a grievance was filed because coffee and doughnuts were not provided during a teacher training day.
Jaime Escalante, a teacher whose extraordinary success in teaching calculus to inner-city Hispanics resulted in a Hollywood movie, was run out of his CALIFORNIA school district by the teachers union. Escalante, it seems, violated union rules by complaining about teachers who used the teachers’ lounge as a real estate office and called in sick to extend their weekends.
A high school principal who requested that teachers write daily objectives on the classroom board was denounced by the union as a “draconian zealot.”
Teachers can’t teach because the union won’t let them. Perhaps it is just as well. Here are some course listings in the education department at the University of Massachusetts: Embracing Diversity, Diversity and Change, Oppression and Education, Introduction to Multicultural Education, Black Identity, Classism, Racism, Sexism, Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual Oppression, Jewish Oppression, Oppression of the Disabled, Erroneous Beliefs. Our universities are being crippled too.
Indoctrination and social reconstruction have replaced the traditional emphasis on reading, writing, and arithmetic.
I remember once hearing a quote:
"Show me a strong union and I will show you a dead or dying industry."
Perfect example: Auto Industry. - Jashobeam5, on 05/24/2009, -1/+7What about the poor families who can't afford clothes, food, gas, cars. . . you name it. Why is education a "right" when clothes, food, a new car, etc. is not? FWIW I was dirt poor as a kid, but went to a small private school (my mom worked in a factory, only breadwinner in our home). We aren't rich, but our kids won't be going to government schools. Most people can afford the small private schools, just not the elite expensive schools. The reason most parents don't want to pay for private school is because they are forced through taxes to pay for public schools. If that was not an option more and more private schools would open up and be affordable to the average American.
- RonPauls, on 05/24/2009, -1/+7I hope they bankrupt - then they can renegotiate union contracts and pensions and whatnot
- BlackJackJester, on 05/24/2009, -0/+6I'm not differentiating between illegals and legals - it's more that Asian cultures stress education (almost to the extreme), European cultures rely heavily on education, but Hispanic culture does not.
It's not only racial profiling why most upper management are white/asian, but it's a lot because they are the ones getting the higher degrees. - RonPauls, on 05/25/2009, -0/+6indoctrinated much, trevor98....
- Quaestor44, on 05/25/2009, -0/+5No, you need to check yours:
Spending: Huge increases up to 2002, the majority occuring BEFORE bush took office (not saying NCLB made anything better).
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d02/dt364.asp
High School Dropout rates: VIRTUALLY UNCHANGED.
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d02/dt384.asp
Our public schools have sucked since the 50's dude. - RonPauls, on 05/24/2009, -2/+7gov. can't educate kids well in any state, not just cali.
- salstress, on 05/25/2009, -0/+5why aren't those kids kicked out of school?
- Branchex, on 05/24/2009, -2/+7To create well rounded students. Besides they be screwed in college if they decided to switch to entirely different major.
- booksnmore4you, on 05/25/2009, -0/+5Lovely. Then the teachers in inner city schools with kids who don't speak English at home will lose even more to teachers with well-educated parents in the expensive white suburbs.
- mttmcgrgr, on 05/24/2009, -0/+442 billion actually :-\
- trevor98, on 05/24/2009, -1/+5Some years ago, California schools decided that parents should share responsibility for educating the students. That's fine if you have parents' that believe in the value of education. The reality is that most cultures don't value education so when individuals come to the US they bring that with them and their children suffer. Some cultures place a high value on education even though the individual was denied the privilege- they push their children and Berkeley is full of them (so much so UCB is looking at decreasing the number of Asian girls admitted in favor of other groups including whites).
- inactive, on 05/24/2009, -0/+4who decides what is well rounded? you? some liberal democrats in washington? why can't parents and students decide? why must they be bored out of their minds and drop out because of what YOU feel is best for them. seems totalitarian to me and impractical.
- RonPauls, on 05/25/2009, -0/+4"Just how would you measure the performance of teachers."
Privatize it. Then if parents don't like it, they can go to a different school. When a school goes bankrupt, that's when you know that the teachers suck. - Quaestor44, on 05/24/2009, -2/+6tldr
troll
buried. -
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