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Are Teacher Unions a good thing?

Are Teacher Unions a good thing?


  • Total voters
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Except we don't get paid to bring our work back home. I have to work off the clock to create lesson plans, grade papers, call parents, etc. I work off the clock on average of 2-3 hours a day depending on how much homework I give out, and whether or not there was a test this week. Do I get paid overtime? No. Do I get any compensation for it? No.

Many people do that. I did for years. When you work for salary and not hourly, you do the job, for as long as the job requires, without getting paid extra for doing it. I used to work 12 hour days and then bring paperwork home for another 2-3 hours a night, 6 days a week and never got an extra penny for it. That's the choice you make when you take a salaried job.

And if I had a choice, I rather work during the summer. I have to save up enough money throughout the year so I can break even in those horrible 3 months of no income.

Nothing stops you from getting a job for the summer or trying to teach summer school. You don't *HAVE* to take that time off if you don't want to.
 
Wrong. There are hundreds of teachers in California who are paid full salaries to sit around all day and do nothing because the union will not allow them to be fired and the schools will not allow them to teach. There are some who have been sitting in empty classrooms daily for 5 years or more now and the latest development is they aren't being required to show up at school, they just call in the morning to say they're "working" and again in the evening to say they're done.

Do you have any back up for that astounding and unbelievable assertion, or did it just get plucked out of thin air?
 
Detroits problem was management not employees or Unions. GM 10 and a changing market brought havoc on Gm for example. Had nothing to do with the fine employees or their union but management..

Yeah, paying men to turn screws for $40 an hour had absolutely nothing to do with the exorbitant costs of the cars GM produces and hence nothing to do with the refusal of people to buy them.
 
Yeah, paying men to turn screws for $40 an hour had absolutely nothing to do with the exorbitant costs of the cars GM produces and hence nothing to do with the refusal of people to buy them.

Not to mention, the unions have a stranglehold on whole industries. As an example, the Longshoreman union. Try getting into that one. You practically need to inherit a job.
 
Do you have any back up for that astounding and unbelievable assertion, or did it just get plucked out of thin air?

Teachers on 'detention' get full pay | Staten Island Featured Entries - Breaking News - - SILive.com

Every school day, about 100 Staten Island teachers and other staff clock in for work, sit down and entertain themselves in whatever way they can.
That might mean surfing the Web on a laptop, doing a crossword puzzle, chatting with a colleague or just staring at the wall -- basically, anything that doesn't involve education.

This is what goes on inside of the Department of Education's 14 "temporary reassignment centers," where teachers, principals and other school staff who have been accused of wrongdoing wait months, sometimes years, while getting a full salary, benefits and paid sick days.


Often called "rubber rooms" because those trapped inside are bouncing off the walls in boredom, the centers have been around since the 1990s and are holding pens for teachers awaiting a hearing. On Staten Island, they sit day after day at 1 Edgewater Plaza, in a building with a pleasant view of the Narrows. Citywide, the number of staffers in rubber rooms is an estimated 550.

The allegations vary greatly: A teacher who got on a principal's bad side could be seated alongside a teacher accused of having sex with a student.


One of the most recent additions is Dolores Rabins, a school psychologist at Totten Intermediate School, Tottenville, who is still earning her $98,341 salary, even after having been accused of bilking two victims of as much as $1 million in an alleged Ponzi scheme, court documents show.

But no matter the case, just about everyone in the rubber room spends months twiddling their thumbs, trying to pass the time without even knowing why they're there or whether they'll get back into the classroom.

And with the slumping economy, the threat of teacher layoffs and extreme budget cuts at schools, many outside the system are wondering why they're paying taxes for teachers to languish while still collecting a paycheck.

"There's dead wood sitting in those rooms collecting an average of $70,000 a year," said a special ed teacher on Staten Island who was told not to order certain supplies last year because her school couldn't afford it. "Don't tell me I can't have copy paper while other teachers are sitting on their butts playing mahjong."

One teacher, who taught social studies, said he was in the former Staten Island rubber room -- at the Petrides Educational Complex in Sunnyside -- for nearly six months before he was presented with charges of stealing money from the school, an allegation he refuted. The teacher, who asked not to be named, said it was miserable to come in every day and listen to teachers joke about how happy they were to be getting paid for doing nothing while awaiting their hearings.

"I thought, 'This is just ridiculous -- I have to get out of here,'" he said. "I just brought my Walkman and my newspapers and I sat in a corner and didn't talk to anyone."

Worse, he watched the room get more and more crowded as teachers' hearings continued to drag on.

"There we were in a small, little room," he said. "Once you were there, you didn't want to get up because, if you did, you would lose your seat."
Eventually, he was reassigned to another school. But it wasn't easy to get acclimated there.

"You know, rumors fly," he said. "But fortunately I'm in a situation where the principal likes me and the assistant principal likes me and things are good now."

Since he was in the reassignment center a few years ago, some things have changed. The center moved to Edgewater Plaza to accommodate more people. While the former reassignment center housed about 30 teachers from Staten Island, the new center has about 100 teachers from Staten Island and Brooklyn.

:roll:
 
Yeah, paying men to turn screws for $40 an hour had absolutely nothing to do with the exorbitant costs of the cars GM produces and hence nothing to do with the refusal of people to buy them.
you have no idea what you're talking about here. nobody makes 40 an hour to turn screws.
 
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you have no idea what you're talking about here. nobody makes 40 an hour to turn screws.

That's right.

They fill the screw hopper in the robots these days.

Regardless, the fact of the matter is that essentially unskilled people, because of their goonion, are being paid wages skilled laborers find difficult to earn.

The other fact of the matter is that the largest single overhead item of any company, including GM, is employee compensation, which isn't just current wages and benefits but amazing retirement packages as well. And the United Auto Workers goonion has priced themselves so far out into the stratosphere that their golden goose is dying.
 
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Yeah, paying men to turn screws for $40 an hour had absolutely nothing to do with the exorbitant costs of the cars GM produces and hence nothing to do with the refusal of people to buy them.

Show me a link that shows everyone there made 40 a yr. Bennies are not to be included as most places have benefits yet no one ever counts them in their own wages. I see many cars on the road that costs far more then the big 3. They sell cars despite costing more..
 
Teachers on 'detention' get full pay | Staten Island Featured Entries - Breaking News - - SILive.com

Every school day, about 100 Staten Island teachers and other staff clock in for work, sit down and entertain themselves in whatever way they can.
That might mean surfing the Web on a laptop, doing a crossword puzzle, chatting with a colleague or just staring at the wall -- basically, anything that doesn't involve education.

This is what goes on inside of the Department of Education's 14 "temporary reassignment centers," where teachers, principals and other school staff who have been accused of wrongdoing wait months, sometimes years, while getting a full salary, benefits and paid sick days.


Often called "rubber rooms" because those trapped inside are bouncing off the walls in boredom, the centers have been around since the 1990s and are holding pens for teachers awaiting a hearing. On Staten Island, they sit day after day at 1 Edgewater Plaza, in a building with a pleasant view of the Narrows. Citywide, the number of staffers in rubber rooms is an estimated 550.

The allegations vary greatly: A teacher who got on a principal's bad side could be seated alongside a teacher accused of having sex with a student.


One of the most recent additions is Dolores Rabins, a school psychologist at Totten Intermediate School, Tottenville, who is still earning her $98,341 salary, even after having been accused of bilking two victims of as much as $1 million in an alleged Ponzi scheme, court documents show.

But no matter the case, just about everyone in the rubber room spends months twiddling their thumbs, trying to pass the time without even knowing why they're there or whether they'll get back into the classroom.

And with the slumping economy, the threat of teacher layoffs and extreme budget cuts at schools, many outside the system are wondering why they're paying taxes for teachers to languish while still collecting a paycheck.

"There's dead wood sitting in those rooms collecting an average of $70,000 a year," said a special ed teacher on Staten Island who was told not to order certain supplies last year because her school couldn't afford it. "Don't tell me I can't have copy paper while other teachers are sitting on their butts playing mahjong."

One teacher, who taught social studies, said he was in the former Staten Island rubber room -- at the Petrides Educational Complex in Sunnyside -- for nearly six months before he was presented with charges of stealing money from the school, an allegation he refuted. The teacher, who asked not to be named, said it was miserable to come in every day and listen to teachers joke about how happy they were to be getting paid for doing nothing while awaiting their hearings.

"I thought, 'This is just ridiculous -- I have to get out of here,'" he said. "I just brought my Walkman and my newspapers and I sat in a corner and didn't talk to anyone."

Worse, he watched the room get more and more crowded as teachers' hearings continued to drag on.

"There we were in a small, little room," he said. "Once you were there, you didn't want to get up because, if you did, you would lose your seat."
Eventually, he was reassigned to another school. But it wasn't easy to get acclimated there.

"You know, rumors fly," he said. "But fortunately I'm in a situation where the principal likes me and the assistant principal likes me and things are good now."

Since he was in the reassignment center a few years ago, some things have changed. The center moved to Edgewater Plaza to accommodate more people. While the former reassignment center housed about 30 teachers from Staten Island, the new center has about 100 teachers from Staten Island and Brooklyn.

:roll:


What should happen then? should they be fired? The article said they are ACCUSED not that they were GUILTY. Lets think this thru. A teacher is accused of wrong doing and is fired. Loses his house, car and files bankrupty despite the fact he was INNOCENT. See being accused doesn't mean he really did the act. A hearing or trial will determine rather or not guilt or innocent. If guilty then a job is lost maybe even jail/prison time. BUT if innocent then why should he have faced financial hardship due to lost job???
 
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As I said, it would be based on the AVERAGE performance of all the students in a teacher's class, not any individual student. So none of these variables would actually influence the outcome.

You're still assuming that a students output is a direct correlation to a teacher's output. This is an erroneous assumption. No matter how well or how poor a teacher does in their own classroom, it does not guarantee that a student will do well or do poorly. What evidence of merit is there?

What's more damning is the fact that administrators get to decide which teachers students will get. Favoritism already abound in every campus, merit pay will exacerbate the already troubled relationship between teachers and the administration. The cooperative teachers will get the good students, therefore better pay, and those who oppose the administration will get the problem students, and therefore lower pay.

There are standardized tests that measure critical thinking and analytical skills. And why don't you think they measure the effectiveness of the teacher? If the students in a certain math teacher's class can't do math, it's fair to say that the teacher is ineffective.

Because one does not cause the other, it's as simple as that. A student's effort is what determines their test scores, not how well a teacher can use their pedagogy. The student's choice to study at night, do their homework, pay attention in class, are all choices that a student makes. The teacher is not responsible for a student who chooses NOT to do these things. Student success does not rely on a teacher's pedagogy, it's is merely a part of it. And that's a weak foundation for supporting the merit pay system.

Furthermore, to measure critical thinking, you have to review written exams and not multiple choice itemized exams. Given how much money is already spent on the latter type of exams, much more money and time will need be spent on the former type of exams, considering how much more reading must be done for review. Given that you are using baseline values, you'll likely have to test these students at the end of every quarter to measure their improvement and update their baselines. You think this may actually be viable?? There's not enough time in the 9 months of the school year to do this, let alone the budget to afford it.
 
What should happen then? should they be fired? The article said they are ACCUSED not that they were GUILTY. Lets think this thru. A teacher is accused of wrong doing and is fired. Loses his house, car and files bankrupty despite the fact he was INNOCENT. See being accused doesn't mean he really did the act. A hearing or trial will determine rather or not guilt or innocent. If guilty then a job is lost maybe even jail/prison time. BUT if innocent then why should he have faced financial hardship due to lost job???

another instance where inept management is at work
the contract will provide for the process to follow to proceed with termination
all management has to do is follow that process and prove the employee has performed unacceptably. if that is the fact, then there should be evidence to prove it

but it is easier for management to let the accused collect their salaries while offering no positive contribution to the school system. it costs the administrator nothing to do nothing. if management would be graded on its performance, such as how quickly and effectively it processes disciplinary actions, to include terminations, where doing that poorly would diminish the managers' incomes, then prompt action would be taken
 
another instance where inept management is at work
the contract will provide for the process to follow to proceed with termination
all management has to do is follow that process and prove the employee has performed unacceptably. if that is the fact, then there should be evidence to prove it

but it is easier for management to let the accused collect their salaries while offering no positive contribution to the school system. it costs the administrator nothing to do nothing. if management would be graded on its performance, such as how quickly and effectively it processes disciplinary actions, to include terminations, where doing that poorly would diminish the managers' incomes, then prompt action would be taken


I question that in the case of Criminal instances. A court of law needs to be the ones to judge in those cases.
 
Show me a link that shows everyone there made 40 a yr. Bennies are not to be included as most places have benefits yet no one ever counts them in their own wages. I see many cars on the road that costs far more then the big 3. They sell cars despite costing more..

Hello?

You can bet your ass that the company paying those benefits counts every single penny of them.

And, gee, did I say 40 a year? No, I said 40 an hour.

Hmm....let's see....what IS a fair wage for a screw turner....minimum wage?

Yeah, that's fair, since no skills are needed.

How many line workers in the UAW are paid mininum wage?
 
What should happen then? should they be fired? The article said they are ACCUSED not that they were GUILTY. Lets think this thru. A teacher is accused of wrong doing and is fired. Loses his house, car and files bankrupty despite the fact he was INNOCENT. See being accused doesn't mean he really did the act. A hearing or trial will determine rather or not guilt or innocent. If guilty then a job is lost maybe even jail/prison time. BUT if innocent then why should he have faced financial hardship due to lost job???

Yes, the sympathetic article doesn't go into any details and wants to pretend all these people are as pure as the driven snow.

Fact of the matter is the goonions prevent the dismissal of these people, which is what would happen in the real world outside of goonionland, where employees are actually expected to produce something for their wages.
 
When did I say I opposed giving them more funding? Stop changing the subject. The point was that the teachers' unions only advocate for those things because it benefits their members, not because they care about improving the education system.

Bull crap! I listed the program goals being pursued by the VEA this year ~

If your concern is about improving education, please explain how you would address these issues:

Virginia Preschool Initiative?

Comprehensive School Reform??

Enhanced Career and Technical Education (Fine Arts - STEM)?

Increased teacher participation in instructional decisions?

Dropout prevention?

Class size reduction?
 
Hello?

You can bet your ass that the company paying those benefits counts every single penny of them.

And, gee, did I say 40 a year? No, I said 40 an hour.

Hmm....let's see....what IS a fair wage for a screw turner....minimum wage?

Yeah, that's fair, since no skills are needed.

How many line workers in the UAW are paid mininum wage?

yr was a typo...get over it.

minimum wage?? Yet a CEO of a Corp losing money gets multi million is fair??? LMAO Denial must be a great state of mind for Repubs...
 
Yes, the sympathetic article doesn't go into any details and wants to pretend all these people are as pure as the driven snow.

Fact of the matter is the goonions prevent the dismissal of these people, which is what would happen in the real world outside of goonionland, where employees are actually expected to produce something for their wages.

No the FACT is they are innocent until PROVEN guilty. They deserve a paycheck UNTIL PROVEN guilty at which time they can be held accountable in a court of law.
 
Wrong. There are hundreds of teachers in California who are paid full salaries to sit around all day and do nothing because the union will not allow them to be fired and the schools will not allow them to teach. There are some who have been sitting in empty classrooms daily for 5 years or more now and the latest development is they aren't being required to show up at school, they just call in the morning to say they're "working" and again in the evening to say they're done.
Do you have any back up for that astounding and unbelievable assertion, or did it just get plucked out of thin air?
I was thinking about the NYC situation that Scarecrow mentions, but that's not California. One of the most common illegitimate debating tactics is to cite an isolated problem and make it seem widespread. I suspect there are lots of situations in NYC that are not typical of the whole country.
 
Wrong. There are hundreds of teachers in California who are paid full salaries to sit around all day and do nothing because the union will not allow them to be fired and the schools will not allow them to teach. There are some who have been sitting in empty classrooms daily for 5 years or more now and the latest development is they aren't being required to show up at school, they just call in the morning to say they're "working" and again in the evening to say they're done.

We have no such conditions in Virginia. Perhaps you should get involved locally with the PTA.
 
I don't blame the teachers for the failure of students. That's entirely the parents' fault.

My problem is that public school teachers are generally overcompensated and hard to terminate. Unionization and labor laws have served to insulate them from the pressure of the free market.

I agree with both points...
 
We have no such conditions in Virginia. Perhaps you should get involved locally with the PTA.

The PTA has no control whatsoever over the unions.
 
I was thinking about the NYC situation that Scarecrow mentions, but that's not California. One of the most common illegitimate debating tactics is to cite an isolated problem and make it seem widespread. I suspect there are lots of situations in NYC that are not typical of the whole country.

There are lots of situations EVERYWHERE that are not typical of the whole country, but people usually only care about situations that affect them directly. I'm not affected by what happens in NYC, I am, however, affected by what happens in California. Just because different unions are causing different problems in different places doesn't mean the common cause of all of them isn't the same: the unions.
 
I agree with both points...

Good to know...:2razz:

I'm all for good teachers making more money. I just wish we could separate the good ones from the bad; I think labor laws make this exceedingly difficult, though...
 
There are lots of situations EVERYWHERE that are not typical of the whole country, but people usually only care about situations that affect them directly. I'm not affected by what happens in NYC, I am, however, affected by what happens in California. Just because different unions are causing different problems in different places doesn't mean the common cause of all of them isn't the same: the unions.
Well, then, terrific. Why not back up your original claim with some evidence? See, that's what people do when they want to be taken seriously.
 
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