Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Comments

  2. …for what they do have.  I’d hate to think of the teaching profession without a union!

    • Like the audience did when he boasted of the hundreds of millions of dollars per year they use to buy power?  Or when he said that collective bargaining is more important than closing the achievement gap, teacher quality etc.?

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      p>I guess thats your choice right there if you are a liberal.  He laid it right out for you.  If it really came down to either A, or B, then he’s going with choice B.

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      p>What is more important to you: A: kids, good teachers, closing the achievement gap?

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      p>Or B: collective bargaining?

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      p>I’m going with A.

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      • I can’t comment directly directly on the video since I have no way to play it, though I did skim the Slate article you link.

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        p>I don’t always agree with the teachers unions, but my response was essentially to your simplisticly worded title question.

    • This is BLUE Mass Group not RED Mass Group. Anti-union posts are more suitable on forums where fair wages and right to organize aren’t supported. And of course, the scintillating commentary from his fellow traveler includes compelling arguments such as “I’m going to barf!” These kinds of posts really raise the level of discourse on BMG.  

      • He forgot, it’s BMG for an argument. RMG for name-calling, sticking out your tongue, and Bronx cheers.

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        p>Unfortunately,

        Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.

        The GOP really is on the right track!

        • By making the argument that this posting belongs on RMG,  the poster has fallen for this “human tendency”.

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          • Pointing out that someone resorts to name calling, taunting and swearing is observant, not partisan.

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            p>I challenge you to find a liberal who resorts to this kind of behaviour on RMG. Chances are, you won’t.  

            • But, this isn’t “barf”

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              p>”Anti-union posts are more suitable on forums where fair wages and right to organize aren’t supported”

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              p>A conversation restricted to one side is awfully boring.

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              • I don’t see a lot of liberals posting on RED Mass Group. Liberals can find plenty of issues to argue about amongst themselves, but the difference is that most agree on core values and a core platform of sorts, which I mentioned above (workers rights and pro-union). BLUE implies partisanship much like RED does.

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                p>Most of what our differently winged visitors post consists of easily-debunked Fox News talking points, lies, taunts, and poutrage. It’s not restricting the discussion to one side. We would all welcome reasoned, cogent, and factual discussions. Some of you actually make decent points once in a while.

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                p>Most of us are sick of having to constantly put up with the GOP ‘Magical Thinking’ approach, where your pals present baseless assertions without facts and then get bent out of shape when your ass is handed to you. If I wanted to put up with this kind of crap, I’d hang out on the Yahoo and AOL message boards, or some other cesspool of wingnuttery.    

                • BMG has become home to the dumbest commentary this side of the Globe comment section.  Very sad.

                • on actual policy no longer participate here. I enjoyed learning something new about our state goverment, policies, education, and issues that I may not have been aware of. It was nice to see lightiris again, but so many others probably got sick of the idiocy and left.

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                  p>Re-posts here from RMG and crackpot right-wing sites now outnumber threads of actual substance.  

                • RMG is the better blog at this point – the conservative commentators are a lot more entertaining when they’re not trying to “rattle chains.”  It’s a bit of an echo chamber, but, unlike BMG, there aren’t people whose sole purpose is to disrupt and distort.  I don’t have an account there, but it’s a better read.

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                  p>For actual discussion, Media Nation has a higher quality of discourse all around (and FAR better moderation).  And surprisingly, FaceBook.  My friends come in all political stripes and some of the recent discussions, especially of local politics, have been amazing.  

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                  p>All of which stands in stark contrast to recent BMG. As you say, there’s little actual substance and a lot of blanket unsupported statements and liberal bashing.  Worse, calling people on it is just going to get you a nastygram from a certain NYC based editor.  BMG is the only progressive site in the world where it’s OK to rant about “faggots” as long as it doesn’t get “personal.”

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                  p>Why provide free content for editors that don’t respect you?

                • Aside from obvious differences in viewpoints, what you say confirms something I’ve always felt – that liberals as a rule are more interested in elevated debate.  In my experience liberals are less likely to sling mud for its own sake; witness concurrent discussion on another thread about who tends to go negative in their advertising.

                • The person barfing all over this discussion spends the time he’s not here posting nastiness about chapter 70, liberals, Deval, and Doug Rubin on Deval Patrick’s FaceBook page.

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                  p>The difference is someone over there deletes the outright falsehoods.  

  4. Union expresses (correct) opinion that money and power help them to advocate for their members.

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    p>In other news: dog bites man.

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    p>The conservative solution, of course, is that teachers shouldn’t have any organization looking out for their interests.  

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    p>Mmmmm… yeah, right.

  5. By this argument, you might as well get rid of corporations too: they have much more power than the teacher’s union.

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    p>A less naive argument is: can we afford to have powerful non-democratic interests so deeply involved in our system of government.

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    p>(This, of course, is where bloggers on the left and the right have a lot of common ground).

    • By this argument, you might as well get rid of corporations too: they have much more power than the teacher’s union.

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      p>…and get far more government subsidies.

    • I’ll give your misdirection slightly more credit than the rest of the tribal onarism that has characterized this thread – but by golly if you strip out the junk I think you just said unions are powerful nondemocratic interests…

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      p>And 2 suckers gave you a 6 too!

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      p>It is amazing how much higher in the pecking order unions are over children etc here on bmg – I really expected some debate.  I thought maybe the extra article would help.

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  6. that purpose has become misguided.  We do need to get rid of the awful teachers, and there are plenty of them.  There are so many substitute teachers looking for permanent work but they are kept off the roles in order to protect the awful teacher’s jobs, those teachers that are breaking our kids and could very well be the driving force in ruining their lives.  I know teachers who are like that, and I’ve had to home-school my child after school in order to get him through those awful classrooms.

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    p>When you agree that your child needs afterschool help and then make arrangements for your child to do so only to find out that your child was given some hand-outs to complete while the teacher sat at her desk and interviewed someone for some purpose during the entire 40 minutes instead of helping your child.  It’s rather infuriating.  When I think of afterschool help, I think that the teacher is taking the time to go over problems one on one with a child so they can understand the process.  That’s not what happens (at least not always), so I just gave up on afterschool help. I home-schooled my child at night and taught him what he was suppose to have learned that day.

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    p>I also want to share one teacher’s way to avoid being bothered by children’s questions.  It’s called: “One, two, three, then ask me.” In other words, ask other students for help three times before you go to the teacher for help.  I love that one.  She is the same teacher who told me I had to make an appointment to talk to her even though I was standing right in front of her at that moment. It was at the end of the appointment I did make to sit in class to watch my son work, since he had been having difficulty getting things done. Apparently, observing and talking with the teacher has to be done at separate appointments, even though the whole class had just been dropped off at the library, so it appeared to me the teacher had a few minutes to spare.  What I do know is that it’s a lot harder for me to get a morning off from work than it would have been for her to give me 5 minutes of her time on that morning.

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    p>Tired of hearing all of the complaining about how hard it is to teach.  There are not too many 6.5 hour/day jobs with 11 weeks vacation. Plus they are all given a 40 minute block everyday to complete work that they can’t seem to accomplish in the 1.5 hours they have after school, should they desire to work an 8 hour shift. Those teachers are flying out the door 10 minutes after the kids leave the classroom.

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    p>So, yes, it’s time to reform the school systems.  We need to get rid of the awful tenured teachers and give the new, enthusiastic, motivated substitutes a chance to prove themselves – bring the standards of excellence up.  Give the excellent teachers the rewards that they deserve, since it seems to me they get no more than the awful ones. I always give the excellent, caring, dedicated, hard-working teachers a very nice gift at the end of the year. It is so worth it to give to the good ones.  What would we do without them?

    • the difficulty of getting rid of bad teachers. They can be let go without cause in the first three years of their employment. In my experience, you know by the time three years is up whether or not the teacher is any good. It’s an administrative, not a union problem, that such teachers are not let go.

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      p>Maybe there’s more to what you’re talking about with your child’s teacher, but you haven’t given any evidence that she’s not effective in the classroom. Rude? Yes. Lazy? Maybe. The 1-2-3, ask me sounds like a cooperative learning strategy being used to prevent elementary school kids from seeking the teacher’s attention for attention’s sake.  

        • constructive comment. Your reply was about as thoughtful as… well, a conservative troll’s comment usually is.

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          p>I’m not surprised you’re not persuaded by information that doesn’t confirm your world view. A thoughtful response would consider this information and refute it. But being a conservative troll, your response is predictably ad hominem–a trademark of most conservative discourse. It isn’t what a person says or thinks that matters, your response suggests, it’s who you are.

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          p>Liveandletlive described a teacher who might be an a**hole, but provided no evidence that she is an ineffective teacher. Even if she could be fired at will, it would take more than the examples provided to do so. Bottomline: Is the teacher instructionally effective?

      • in form of experiences, shoddy handouts, unreasonable expectations, lack of flexibility with regard to learning style and lack of communication. Whether or not she is effective can only be determined by how many students pass her class, I guess.  Whether or not she is effective should not be the entire criteria.  Does the teacher inspire and energize?  Encourage and support?  Or does the teacher create an environment where the child learns to hate school? Is the teacher confusing, unclear and inconsistent?
        Is the teacher bored, uninterested, and unmotivated?

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        p>Yes, we can have confusing, unclear, inconsistent, uninterested, uninspiring teachers who can manage to get students through the year in a haphazard struggling sort of way. But why would we want to do that.  

        • can you replace her with someone better? Right now, the market is good enough to find someone good. I’ve gone through rounds of interviews in my desirable district where there wasn’t a good candidate. From a systemic point of view, most employees are going to have good and bad points and even replacing an obnoxious clunker could deliver a whole new set of problems.

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          p>On a parental level, I know what you’re talking about. One of my daughters had issues with a paraprofessional who was supposed to work one-on-one with a kid and extend her domain to include the whole class. She was trying to incentivize the class of 4th graders to do their homework by saying if they all did it–and no one forgot–the kids would get a party. Group punishment for the oversight of one or two kids; you can guess the effect on the kids who forgot their homework. Where was the teacher in all this? You know the one who went to college and trained as a teacher, not the one with the high school education and gets paid $8.00 an hour…

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          p>Of course, you need a principal who supervises his teachers…

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          p>It’s really frustrating when you know how things are supposed to work from a professional standpoint.

    • If you consider lesson plans, homework, all the extra fun stuff that comes along with really dedicated teachers, it can add up to a lot more than 6.5 hours a day.

      • the really good teachers do spend plenty of time using their talent to create an interesting, engaging learning experience for their students.  These teachers take the time to get to know the students, appreciate and respect their differences.  They understand the value of treating each student as an individual that is coming to class with his or her own learning style.  They modify their plans to accommodate and take great effort to excite the whole class about learning.  Teachers like that bring tears to my eyes when they talk about how they want to see each child succeed and will do the hard work to make sure that it happens.  They do it because it means something to them. We need more teachers like that.  But first we must get rid of the teachers who could care less.

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        p>All it takes is one bad teacher to ruin a child. Especially if that child does not have a supportive home environment to pick him up, dust him off, and move him forward.

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        p>I always make a point of telling my son’s teachers that they are the one of the most important people in his life, that what they do will impact his future in a significant way.  Often, I think they forget that. Unfortunately, some of them could care less.  It’s really sad and those teachers have no business in a classroom.  They are not doing us any favors by choosing to be a teacher. They need to just get out and move on.  

        • Last week an old friend told me a story – a charter school where his wife works fired a teacher for contradicting the director at a board meeting.  This teacher, from his account is exactly the kind that you talk about, caring, resourceful, loved by students and parents – but because he doesn’t have tenure, because he doesn’t have any due process to protect him, he can just be fired – maybe the director’s right, maybe she’s not – we’ll never know because this guy has no rights.  

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          p>Your post pointed out a real issue, yet totally missed the real point – the failure to correct this teacher’s behavior; to work out a resolution with you; or to at least let you know the administration thinks you’re being unreasonable is a problem with the administration.  The principal is responsible, yet you attack teacher tenure, and by extension, teacher unions.  

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          p>Your line of reasoning is problematic for two key reasons: It holds the principal totally harmless for what is arguably the most important part of their job, and it ignores the reality of the real teacher problem we have – how do you effectively manage the largest occupational group in the country?  In May 2009, there were 4.5 million kindergarten, elementary and secondary school teachers – excluding special ed and kindergarten, there are 3.5 million teachers (which by the way, also excludes the 1 million teachers assistants).  The only other occupation that has more people doing the job are retail clerks (4.1M).  Of the 15 largest occupations, besides teachers, only registered nurses at a little over 2.5 million require any post secondary degree.  At only 31,000, however, there aren’t that many chief executives and operations managers (superintendents and principals) working in education.  

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          p>In  short, we’ve got a ton of teachers and while it’s nice to imagine that we can pull from the cream of the workforce, given the location requirements; the stressful work environment; the relatively low pay; and a new federal policy that promises to remove much of the stability that teaching offered in the past, that’s just not going to happen.  We don’t have that problem with principals, however, there are only a few, so ensuring that we get only the best is a much more reasonable assumption.  A well reasoned policy approach would set higher standards for principals, would develop best practices in hiring, evaluating and granting tenure.  It would look at the problem of education management, but that’s not what the education reformers and their budget hawk masters really want.  Paying principals more doesn’t do much for a town facing a budget crisis – gutting pensions and health benefits can do wonders, however.  

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          p>Mix together the anti-worker vitriol spouted by folks like Arnie Duncan, a highly selective review of non-union charter schools that points out how one school can succeed while ignoring how charters have only ever failed at district reform (which is the level where success really matters), and a budget crisis that pits middle class tax-payers against social services (all while corporate profits continue to beat expectations) then add a dash of anecdotes like yours and you’ve got exactly what the right wing needs to justify the dismantling the last vestige of an equitable society.  I’m sympathetic to your issue, but by blaming the teachers union and not even mentioning the failure of the principal, superintendent and school committee, the people actually responsible for remedying improper teacher conduct, you fall into a trap that the right has set.    

          • as well as “No Child Left Behind”, budget cuts, and society in general, but that is not the topic.  I am not against unions. I believe the unions serve a valuable purpose, but I think the purpose has become distorted.  The mission to provide an education for our children has been lost in the mission to secure rights for educators. It’s unfortunate that it has become this and I am not alone in my disillusionment.  There are plenty of angry parents, no matter the political party.  I recommend that instead of blindly supporting the blind support of awful teachers, Democrats should acknowledge the crisis in education and work to educate the teacher’s unions on their continued distortion of their purpose.  It is about fair pay, fair benefits, and protection against wrongful discharge.  It’s not about making it difficult and nearly impossible to fire mediocre/substandard teachers who could care less about a child’s education.

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            p>I have not fallen into the right-wing anti-union trap. I am showing that the issue goes beyond politics. It’s simply a matter of common sense vs. political power and control.  Regular, non-political parents don’t look at it in the context: “Well, we can’t say anything because then the right will want to kill unions and we’ll lose union support during elections.”  They look at it in the real sense that some teachers are marginally effective, a detriment to the system and they should not be teaching in our public schools.  It’s so simple.  Why does it have to become so convoluted.  The teacher’s unions should be willing to acknowledge this, if they really care about educating our children. Instead they brag about their power and pat themeselves on the back for all the money they pull in.
            Wow! If anything is going to kill unions it’s the arrogant and self-satisfied attitude problem.

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    • There are not too many 6.5 hour/day jobs with 11 weeks vacation.

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      p>True, and teaching is not one of them. Ask a good teacher, and there are plenty of them, whether they work just 6.5 hours a day and don’t do any work during their 11 weeks of vacation.

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      p>Sorry, but this part of your post is a bit ignorant of what teachers actually do. There’s a lot more work than just the face time in front of the students.

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