Currently viewing the tag: “Teachers”
The clock ran out on the transgender non-discrimination bill on Wednesday but lawmakers said they expect the issue will come up again in the Judiciary Committee next week.
The bill would make it illegal to discriminate based on gender identity and expression. It is facing opposition from the Family Institute of Connecticut, among other groups.
Spurred by a concern raised by the FIC, legislators will offer an amendment that would allow school districts to transfer teachers who are transitioning between genders to another school against their will.
Transgender activists say they will not support such an amendment and are launching an all-out effort to win approval for the bill as drafted.
“We must take this opportunity to remind Judiciary Committee members to vote in favor of our bill as written,” Jerimarie Liesegang, director of the CT TransAdvocacy Coalition, said in an email. “We will not support a bill that allows anyone to be discriminated against.”
The Standards Review Committee of the ABA will conduct a hearing this weekend on proposed changes to law school accreditation standards. The proposed changes have been sharply criticized in recent weeks-especially by the Association of American Law Schools (AALS)-for posing a serious threat to the quality of legal education in the United States. The proposal that provokes the most opposition would allow law schools to choose (if they so desire) to hire full-time faculty in non-tenure positions.
The purpose of the proposed changes is to allow law schools greater flexibility in finding cost efficient ways to train lawyers. According to the AALS, that’s an erroneous view of what law schools are about. “Lawyers are not ‘produced’ or even ‘trained’ by law schools,” declared former AALS President Reese Hansen in opposition to the changes (critics who excoriate law schools for doing a poor job of training lawyers would heartily agree, though Hansen undoubtedly did not mean to imply that). “What lawyers must ultimately deliver is judgment….That kind of mature judgment is primarily created by personal interaction between individual faculty and individual students in countless educational settings.” The argument of the AALS appears to boil down to the assertion that law students can obtain sound lawyerly judgment only if law schools are staffed by full time law professors with tenure.
Current AALS President Michael Olivas repeated this argument in his recent lengthy criticism of the proposed changes. We impart something more valuable and subtle than knowledge of legal doctrine and practice skills, Olivas insists:
The high quality and distinctiveness of American legal education are based largely on the work of career, full-time [tenure-track] faculty who engage fully in the law school’s teaching, scholarship, and service missions….Given that law is fundamentally a public profession, law school faculty should perform public service that both models for law students the selflessness encouraged for all lawyers, and helps fulfill the role of law schools in contributing to the improvement of law, lawyers, the legal system, and the system of justice. The scholarship and public service of career, full-time [tenure-track] faculty do not merely supplement their teaching role. Both scholarship and public service underlie teaching and give it an authority that teachers who merely pass on received understanding or transmit skills cannot match.
Frankly, these claims about what we do as law professors are embarrassing. I’m not selfless. Exceedingly few of the many law professors I know strike me as selfless. This is a fantastic job, for which we are generously compensated. Law school deans-many of whom earn between $ 200,000 and $ 400,000-are definitely not selfless. We don’t model selflessness for our students. And the truth, contrary to Hansen’s above assertion, is that many law professors engage in scant interaction with law students, so in reality we do very little modeling of any kind outside of the classroom. (I should add that lawyers today are anything but selfless, which further belies the assertion that we influence our students in this fashion.)
I also don’t see how “public service underlie[s] teaching.” Teaching in a law school is not a public service. A few law professors on every faculty work on bar committees and such, but not the majority of us. A legal aid lawyer and a public defender are doing public service, perhaps also prosecutors and judges, but not law professors. We teach, we write, we serve on law school committees, and we engage in consulting of various sorts. To claim that this standard package of law professor activities constitutes “public service” is false posturing or self-delusional.
Since we are not modeling selflessness to students and not engaging in public service (our claims of moral rectitude ring especially dubious when an ABA Committee recently concluded that law schools misleadingly report employment data), then, notwithstanding our claims to be imparting “mature judgment,” it’s not evident that we are doing anything more than teaching students legal doctrine and legal skills. If that is correct, it makes sense to allow law schools to explore ways to deliver legal training in more cost efficient ways.
Unfortunately, Olivas gave short-shrift to the issue of cost. Tuition for law school is spiraling ever higher. A half dozen law schools now charge $ 50,000 per year for tuition alone, with more poised to follow. As this sobering chart shows, tuition at many public law schools has doubled in the past 7 years, and tuition at many private law schools has increased by $ 10,000 or more in the same period.
Acknowledging concerns about cost in passing, Olivas responds, “We can all agree that a low-cost legal education that does not produce a good lawyer, capable of complex work, will be money foolishly spent.” Sure. But ten years ago, when tuition was substantially lower, were our graduates incompetent? Of course not. It is implausible to suggest that high-cost (in contrast to low-cost) is necessary to train capable lawyers.
It is essential to understand what drives tuition increases. Although faculty compensation and expenses typically comprise half or more of the annual budget, Olivas points the finger at other factors: “As the recent GAO Report suggested, it may be that current accreditation standards have not been the primary drivers of costs. Institutional advertising, scholarships aimed at raising a law school’s U.S. News ranking, and a variety of student services, may prove to be even more significant drivers of cost.” Olivas is right that these factors also fuel the rise in tuition, but the faculty portion of the budget must be controlled because it is a large percentage of the total.
In closing, Olivas suggests that the proposed changes may “lead to a ‘race to the bottom,’ as schools find that they can reduce their offerings and services while still remaining accredited.” That’s a stretch.
The likely consequence of the proposed changes is that law schools will become more differentiated in a way that better serves prospective students. Today, all non-profit law schools must follow the same (expensive) model. But consider undergraduate education, which consists of research universities as well as local teaching colleges. With the changes, law schools will likely shake out along similar lines: there will be research oriented law schools and law schools that focus on training capable lawyers at a lower cost. This would not be a race to the bottom. Schools that choose to serve local legal markets can opt out of the U.S. News rat race, which perverts incentives for law schools; schools can then reduce their expenditures on advertising and scholarships, while imposing an affordable tuition on students, the bulk of whom are likely to earn $ 40,000 to $ 60,000 upon graduation.
Many difficult and uncertain issues are involved, and I don’t pretend to know the answers. But it seems clear-given the rising cost and uncertain returns on a law degree-that law schools must change their economic model. Law professors constantly mention justice (as Olivas repeatedly does in his letter), while failing to consider the negative social consequences of erecting a huge economic barrier to entry to the legal profession. How many young people from the poor and middle classes will be willing or able to take on $ 200,000 in debt to attend law school?
What’s most disappointing about the opposition of the AALS is that, in the end, it sounds like we law professors are determined to hang on to the status quo, doggedly unwilling to consider changes in our working circumstances. To defend our current position, we spout self-aggrandizing claims about our selfless behavior and public service activities.
Howard Wainer, a statistician who’s worked in education research for decades, writing at the Statistics Forum:
In recent weeks the budget crises that affect the Federal, state and local governments have led to a number of proposals that are remarkable in one way or another. It seems apropos at this time to examine New Jersey’s governor Christie’s campaign to get rid of tenure for teachers. . . .
The fiscal goal of removing tenure is to make it easier, during periods of limited funds, for school administrators to lay-off more expensive (i.e. more senior/tenured) teachers in favor of keeping less experienced/cheaper ones.
What’s tenure all about?
The reason that most teachers would want tenure is because it provides them with increased job security in general, and, in particular, as protection against capricious personnel decisions.
A more interesting question is why did states agree to grant tenure in the first place?
Howard guesses at an answer to his own question:
Why is tenure almost uniformly agreed to in all public education? . . . Education officials recognize that for teachers, tenure is a job benefit, much like health insurance, pensions and sick time. As such it has a cash value. But it is a different kind of benefit, for unlike the others, it has no direct cost. Sure there are expenses associated with tenure when a teacher with it is to be terminated. But if reasonable care is exercised in hiring and promotion, such expenses occur very rarely. So, I conclude, tenure was instituted to save money, exactly the opposite of what is being claimed by those who seek to abolish it. [emphasis added]
The next step is to bring in the numbers:
Who is right, Governor Christie or me [Howard Wainer]? Happily this is a question that, once phrased carefully, is susceptible to empirical investigation. The answer has two parts. The first part is the title of this essay: How much is Tenure Worth? The second part is: Do we save enough by shifting the salary distribution of staff to compensate for the cost of its removal? I have no data on the latter and so will focus on the former.
Unfortunately there are no clean experimental or observational data available, so Howard pulls in some data from New Jersey, where tenure for school superintendents was eliminated in 1991, and a couple years after their salaries started shooting up:
In 1975 the average superintendent in NJ earned about 2.25 times as much as the average teacher, but this disparity was diminishing, so that in the early 1990s the average superintendent was earning just twice what the average teacher earned. Then the disparity began to increase sharply, so that by 2010 superintendents’ pay was two-and-a-half that of teachers.
This is just one state, but it suggests that removing tenure for teachers while maintaining quality may not be such a budget-saver in the medium or long-term.
Details (including graphs) are at Howard’s article, which appears in the Statistics Forum, the new blog sponsored by Chance magazine and the American Statistical Association.
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Governors in cash strapped states and so-called education reformers who scapegoat teachers for schools’ failures are doing the exact opposite of what needs to be done to make our schools better, according to a new report.
In countries with successful public education systems, teaching is held in much higher esteem as a profession than in the United States. Becoming a teacher in these countries is difficult, and candidates are recruited from the top of their college and university classes, the report says. These countries also provide more resources for teacher training and they give teachers more responsibility for professional development and leading reform.
The report, “What the U.S. Can Learn from the World’s Most Successful Education Reform Efforts” by the McGraw-Hill Research Foundation, found three other major differences between the successful countries and the United States:
Continue reading »
State Reps. Bill Rogers (R-Genoa Township) and Paul Scott (R-Grand Blanc) have introduced bills to fine the Michigan Education Association and penalize teachers in the event of a strike.
According to House Republicans:
HB 4466, sponsored by Scott, will fine the Michigan Education Association $ 5,000 per teacher for each full or partial day that public school employees are engaged in a strike or strike like activities. The bill also orders employees to pay a fine in the amount equal to one day of pay for every day or partial day in which an employee participates in a strike.
House Bill 4465, sponsored by Rogers, directs state superintendents to suspend a teacher’s license for a period of two years or permanently revoke their license, if caught breaking existing strike laws.
The bills were referred to the House Committee on Education.
In a recent letter to teachers MEA President Iris Salters asked locals to vote by April on whether the union should “initiate crisis activities up to and including job action.”
“The legislation being considered on a daily basis at the Capitol (emergency managers, step freezes, mandatory privatization, mandatory health insurance payments, budget cuts, etc.) are outright attacks on our students, our members, our communities and our future,” she wrote. “And we must take action accordingly.”
This week the Michigan Education Association encouraged its local affiliates to consider whether the union should have the power to consider “job actions” – code words for a sick-out, strike, or other childish antics – to get its way in Lansing.
While MEA President Iris Salters and her hefty six-figure salary wouldn’t suffer if teachers chose not show up for class, the union’s proposed “job actions” would put Michigan teachers at risk of losing their jobs if school districts made the appropriate decision to terminate those who refuse to come to work.
Does Salters view the state’s hard-working teachers as mere pawns in the union’s power game?
There is no doubt that Michigan is in a perilous situation, and if a good education is key to fixing the state’s problems – as the MEA claims – it would make much more sense to put the needs of students first, and avoid the foolish games.
On the other hand, a strike in some the state’s worst districts could finally provide the motivation for parents pull their kids from failing schools, and enroll them in schools that put their needs ahead of the MEA’s special interests.
The MEA’s agenda of unrestricted collective bargaining, iron-clad tenure protections and strict “last in-first out” seniority policies is as outdated as powdered wigs. But one question remains: how hard will the MEA push – and what kinds of radical “job actions” will it resort to – in order to protect its power, influence and, of course, its prized cash cow – MESSA.
This idea of a statewide strike as an opportunity to separate the wheat from the chaff. Parents and taxpayers could learn a lot – including which teachers are truly committed to educating, preparing and inspiring the state’s students. That’s because those who are more interested in looking out for themselves will be found marching on the steps of the Capitol in solidarity with Ms. Salters.
Over the past few months, conservatives have beat a steady drum accusing public servants, particularly public school teachers, of being a blight on the nation. Republicans governors from across the county, along with a chorus of Fox News personalities, have scapegoated teachers as overpaid workers who receive too many benefits on the taxpayers’ dime.
However, public teachers have found an unlikely ally: failed Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle (R-NV). Speaking to a class at Dutch Fork High School in South Carolina recently, the staunch conservative told students that public school teachers are dedicated public servants who are generally over worked and under paid for their profession:
ANGLE: I think that improving public education in Nevada is the same as improving public education all over the nation. […] Teachers who are really good teachers do this not because of the pay, not because of the three month vacation, and not because they work a six hour day. And if you know a good teacher you know none of those things are true.
They don’t get paid like other professionals do. Their three month vacation turns out usually to be more like two months in the summer and they’re usually going back to school so they can learn more so they can stay ahead of you. Their six hour day is more like a sixty hour work week because they have more than they do than the six hours they spend in the classroom. They are dedicated professionals and they are dedicated to you. They are usually very honest, caring individuals and they want what’s best for you. When you talk about the three people who are most vested in education, that’s where our resources should be put, that’s where our concentration should be, that’s what we should be asking ‘what would make a better school?’
Watch it:
Earlier this week, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof rebuked the Republican war on teachers and pointed out that teacher pay has been plummeting for decades. “In 1970, in New York City, a newly minted teacher at a public school earned about $ 2,000 less in salary than a starting lawyer at a prominent law firm,” Kristof noted. “These days the lawyer takes home, including bonus, $ 115,000 more than the teacher, the McKinsey study found.”
Our guest blogger is Theodora Chang, Education Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
House Education Committee Chairman John Kline (R-MN)
Yesterday, President Obama called on Congress to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), currently known as No Child Left Behind, before the start of the next school year. “I want every child in this country to head back to school in the fall knowing that their education is America’s priority. Let’s seize this education moment. Let’s fix No Child Left Behind.”
However, House Education and Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline (R-MN) ignored the President’s sense of urgency, saying:
We need to take the time to get this right — we cannot allow an arbitrary timeline to undermine quality reforms that encourage innovation, flexibility, and parental involvement.
The start of the school year is far from an “arbitrary timeline.” Districts and schools plan several months ahead for the next school year, so failure to reauthorize the law will have very real consequences for students and teachers.
The law’s accountability requirements, for example, have not kept pace with local efforts to meet higher achievement standards. McPherson School District in Kansas received a waiver earlier this month from the U.S. Department of Education because it wanted to develop student assessments that were more rigorous than the state assessment required under NCLB.
The law is also overdue for an overhaul of its Title I provisions. New research shows that several pieces of the Title I program are not serving the disadvantaged students they were meant to help. One key example is the “supplemental education services” provision, which mandates tutoring for students in schools that do not make adequate yearly progress. Although hailed as a central tenet of NCLB, studies now show that these tutoring programs are minimally effective, with small improvements for a small fraction of students who receive at least 40 hours of tutoring.
Thoughtful proposals from President Obama and several lawmakers acknowledge the limitations of the current law and identify specific revisions. Many of these ideas were first introduced back in 2010, and students should not have to wait any longer for Congress to act. It’s time to regain momentum and tackle reauthorization now — before the outdated provisions of the law render it entirely arbitrary and obsolete.
But teachers won’t be paid for the days they missed and those with fraudulent sick notes will be suspended.
American Thinker Blog
This video ”Teachers Unions Explained” isn’t particularly fair but it’s nonetheless amusing:
via Dan from Madison
The old saw, “If you want to get rich, don’t become a teacher” appears to no longer be true.
American Thinker Blog
If you’ve noticed over the last few days, the protests in Madison have gotten smaller. They’ve actually shrunk in size. Despite a visit from Fidel Castro Michael Moore over the weekend, the three-week old protests have just sort of begun to peter out. Now, there could be a perfectly good explanation for this, or it could just be they’ve decided fighting over the small things isn’t keeping their members energized enough, because on Monday…
The Milwaukee teachers union has dropped a lawsuit seeking to get its taxpayer-funded Viagra back.
The union sued in July 2010 to force the school board to again include the erectile dysfunction drug and similar pills in its health insurance plans.
Wait a minute! You mean you didn’t know that the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association was fighting to save their $ 786,000 (per year) purple pill-popping habit?
Two years ago [in 2008], the Milwaukee school district decided that it was more interested in enhancing teacher performance in the classroom than the bedroom.
The district cut Viagra and other erectile dysfunction drugs like Cialis and Levitra from its health insurance plan, hoping to save $ 786,000 a year.Officials said too many teachers were using the expensive drugs for recreation, swelling their insurance rates. An estimated 1,000 of the 10,000 school’s staff, which includes employees, dependents and retirees, were using the drugs.
[snip]
Kris Collett, spokesman for the MTEA, said the union had filed a complaint with the Wisconsin Equal Rights Division in 2008, but it was dismissed on procedural grounds in 2009. Now, the union has appealed to the Labor and Industry Review Commission to go forward with the lawsuit.
“The health plan provides medications to women for similar medical conditions, but men are excluded from pharmacy treatment,” said Collett, referring to insurance coverage for female sexual dysfunction treatments like vaginal creams, estrogen and anti-bacterial medicine.
The health plan still covers options such as penile pumps and implants, but the union says they are “far less desirable than oral medication,” according to the filing.
So, just to be clear, Wisconsin taxpayers were paying for Milwaukee teachers’ Viagra (to the tune of 3/4 of a million bucks per year). Then, when it was dropped, the union sued, causing Wisconsin taxpayers to pay the legal fees to defend the suit. Now, three weeks into massive protests about reforming collective bargaining for public-sector unions, the union decides to drop its suit.
Talk about a hard argument to make with a straight face.
________________
“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776
Photo credit: El Mundo de Laura
If you’ve noticed over the last few days, the protests in Madison have gotten smaller. They’ve actually shrunk in size. Despite a visit from Fidel Castro Michael Moore over the weekend, the three-week old protests have just sort of begun to peter out. Now, there could be a perfectly good explanation for this, or it could just be they’ve decided fighting over the small things isn’t keeping their members energized enough, because on Monday…
The Milwaukee teachers union has dropped a lawsuit seeking to get its taxpayer-funded Viagra back.
The union sued in July 2010 to force the school board to again include the erectile dysfunction drug and similar pills in its health insurance plans.
Wait a minute! You mean you didn’t know that the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association was fighting to save their $ 786,000 (per year) purple pill-popping habit?
Two years ago [in 2008], the Milwaukee school district decided that it was more interested in enhancing teacher performance in the classroom than the bedroom.
The district cut Viagra and other erectile dysfunction drugs like Cialis and Levitra from its health insurance plan, hoping to save $ 786,000 a year.Officials said too many teachers were using the expensive drugs for recreation, swelling their insurance rates. An estimated 1,000 of the 10,000 school’s staff, which includes employees, dependents and retirees, were using the drugs.
[snip]
Kris Collett, spokesman for the MTEA, said the union had filed a complaint with the Wisconsin Equal Rights Division in 2008, but it was dismissed on procedural grounds in 2009. Now, the union has appealed to the Labor and Industry Review Commission to go forward with the lawsuit.
“The health plan provides medications to women for similar medical conditions, but men are excluded from pharmacy treatment,” said Collett, referring to insurance coverage for female sexual dysfunction treatments like vaginal creams, estrogen and anti-bacterial medicine.
The health plan still covers options such as penile pumps and implants, but the union says they are “far less desirable than oral medication,” according to the filing.
So, just to be clear, Wisconsin taxpayers were paying for Milwaukee teachers’ Viagra (to the tune of 3/4 of a million bucks per year). Then, when it was dropped, the union sued, causing Wisconsin taxpayers to pay the legal fees to defend the suit. Now, three weeks into massive protests about reforming collective bargaining for public-sector unions, the union decides to drop its suit.
Talk about a hard argument to make with a straight face.
________________
“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776
Photo credit: El Mundo de Laura
Is this the distempered, hatemongering that our “teachers” are teaching our children?
The video below is the last seven minutes of a townhall meeting that was held on March 7 in Wisconsin. It was hosted by Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner (R, WI) and State Senator Leah Vukmir (R-Wauwatosa). The video shows that the pols quietly listened to the whiner teacher issue her lies about what the situation is in the state but when State Sen. Vukmir went to the podium to try and respond, the crowd filled with distempered union thugs erupted and would not let her finish her points.
Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but when scenes like this were reported to the nation back in 2009 when Tea Party members were interrupting townhalls because they were so upset at Democrat lawmakers, why, the Democrats and their handmaidens in the Old Media establishment were filled with dire warnings that the uproars were evidence of the end of our polite political discourse was nigh.
So, where are the scolds in the Old Media and the Democrat Party to tsk tsk these union thugs for being so uncivilized that they forced this townhall to be shut down?
It just goes to prove once again that the vaunted “New Tone” that the left keeps rambling abut is supposed only to be applied to the right. Only the right should quietly acquiesce to Democrat imposed “civility.” Only the right should sit back and accept that “elections mean things.” When it is the left that is upset, then shouting down opponents, calling them Hitler, and running off to a neighboring state so that the democratic process is shut down is the way to go. All perfectly acceptable, right?
To be a leftist means to be a hypocrite.
Is this the distempered, hatemongering that our “teachers” are teaching our children?
The video below is the last seven minutes of a townhall meeting that was held on March 7 in Wisconsin. It was hosted by Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner (R, WI) and State Senator Leah Vukmir (R-Wauwatosa). The video shows that the pols quietly listened to the whiner teacher issue her lies about what the situation is in the state but when State Sen. Vukmir went to the podium to try and respond, the crowd filled with distempered union thugs erupted and would not let her finish her points.
Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but when scenes like this were reported to the nation back in 2009 when Tea Party members were interrupting townhalls because they were so upset at Democrat lawmakers, why, the Democrats and their handmaidens in the Old Media establishment were filled with dire warnings that the uproars were evidence of the end of our polite political discourse was nigh.
So, where are the scolds in the Old Media and the Democrat Party to tsk tsk these union thugs for being so uncivilized that they forced this townhall to be shut down?
It just goes to prove once again that the vaunted “New Tone” that the left keeps rambling abut is supposed only to be applied to the right. Only the right should quietly acquiesce to Democrat imposed “civility.” Only the right should sit back and accept that “elections mean things.” When it is the left that is upset, then shouting down opponents, calling them Hitler, and running off to a neighboring state so that the democratic process is shut down is the way to go. All perfectly acceptable, right?
To be a leftist means to be a hypocrite.
