Here There Story UPDATED and BUMPED

[orig post 66.14 1pm]

This is the time for high school graduations.  This is what you get from the public government schools (that require 2x-3x the costs their neighboring private school charge) in Chicago.

America's future.

U/T: Second City Cop

UPDATED 6.7.14 10am:

A Cincinnati school district went on strike hours before the end of the last day of school.  Or, from the teacher's perspective, they started their 3-month summer vacation a few hours early.

Note the union leader who can't spit out fast enough: 'The children come first.'  Obviously they are aware that most people see unions, and especially teacher unions, as criminal organizations with two priorities: 1) Grab as much money for the union, then, if any crumbs remain, 2) give the crumbs to the teachers while telling the teachers how hard they worked on their behalf.  Notice, there is no mention of children in these priorities.



These people disgust me.  At every chance I have, I will support and vote for voucher solutions to put the children back at the top of the priority list.

Until then, I'm going to take a power nap.

UPDATED 6.11.14 11am:

Doug Ross points to this Ace report of a lower-level judge in California blocking tenure as a reason to retain bad teachers.  With my edits for readabilityness (I went to public school too!):

This decision puts three critical blocs of the Leftist Coalition in direct and unavoidable conflict:

A) Wealthy and Middle Class Suburban and Urban Liberals (who want to keep their own schools good),
B) Poor Minorities, and
C) the Teachers Unions.

Only two of these three can "win" here.

For years the two winners have been the Wealthier White Liberals and the Teachers Unions. Wealthier White Liberals supported the Teachers Unions incompetents, and pretended not to notice that all those incompetents were being assigned to minority schools.

Now a judge says that Poor Minorities cannot be the loser -- which means one of the other two must be the loser. Either:

A) Wealthy White Liberals take their fair share of these incompetent teachers, or
B) the Teachers Unions will have to lose them as teachers.

Back to our power nap.

UPDATED and BUMPED 6.12.14 7pm:

An excellent article at ZH by Tim Knight on the California court order against tenure: Tenacious D.  I agree with everything he says, including:

Back to the topic of school, however, I spent all twelve years of my pre-college education in public schools. For elementary schools, exactly three of the teachers were excellent, and three sucked beyond belief. To this day, I question how much better a thinker I would be if all six of those years were good ones. Subsequent years were also hit-and-miss (and let me be clear, all twelve of these years were in good, solid, middle-class schools; not the utterly crappy schools that so many millions have to attend).
---
My view differs somewhat from that of the AFL and NEA. I think that at any point, for any reason, a teacher (or any employee, for that matter) should be able to be dismissed without cause. Period. There's a relationship between employer and employee. The employee is there at the will of the employer. If the employer doesn't like the employees work............or voice.........or hair color........or anything else about them - bang - there's the door.

You guessed it.  Back to our power nap.

Oh ya...

Some of the comments are focusing on race. Specifically the IQ of blacks vs whites.

First, I'm white, so my opinion holds no water on this subject.  Ask anyone - I'm not qualified to discuss race.  Second, I spend ZERO time on race - thinking about it, writing about it, caring about it.

Having said that, I reject minority IQ as having anything to do with the state of public education.  Yes, supposedly there is a difference, but if this is true, the gap is small.  And remember, public education is designed with the lowest common denominator in mind.  Just look at the teachers (not incl. those rare exceptional ones).

I'd argue that environment plays the key role.  Children with absent fathers is problem #1.  Parent(s) who take ZERO interest in their children's education and never help their children set goals and work through problems is a close second.  Just the idea of a basic, loving and safe home is missing in these communities.  These are problems in the black community that are outside the role of public education, yet problems that severely impact the schools in those communities.

How to fix this?  I don't know.

What won't fix this?  Adjustments to the existing system.

How can we begin to fix this?  Vouchers.