Because of budget woes, the LAUSD is laying off teachers.  The decisions as to who goes will be based on seniority and not quality.  

One school in a low income area has been hard hit and dropped from one of the highest rated in terms of student achievement to one of the lowest rated. Each percentile drop is a poor student whose life is screwed up.

It is not possible to guess how many kids will be harmed by retaining the bad teachers because they have been there for a longer time.  (The fact that the bad teachers have seniority is a scandal by itself.  Why they haven't been fired is an indictment of the system.)

The LAUSD has been a one-party organization for 30 years.  I doubt if there has been a conservative on the school board since 1942.

http://mobile.latimes.com/wap/news/text.jsp?sid=294&nid=30894601&cid=16677&scid=1854&ith=1&title=Top+Stories

No one can deny the role of parents.  In fairness to teachers, there are other  factors, society, TV, MTV, video games, etc.

HOWEVER, HOWEVER, HOWEVER, when all is said and done, kids go to school and teachers deal with the cards they are dealt.  Every other profession is in the same basket.  Doctors get patients with cancer, attorneys get stupid criminals who leave their fingerprints on a gun (I advise them to wipe the gun with Sani-Wipes, the brand most good criminals prefer - paid endorsement), CPAs get clients who forgot to make their pre-payments.

There are good, bad, and average doctors, CPS, attoneys, shoe salesmen, and teachers.

How do you keep the good ones is the issue.  In all of Los Angeles, the second largest district in the nation, they have fired about 5 teachers in the last five years (if that).  Even those were on the payroll for years, sitting at home, while the system worked it through.  Money from kids.

And why does CA have such a high tax rate? Back in the 60's, the national average state sales tax was 2%. Compare that to today. Why was it so low? Because the federal government took on much of the state's spending needs. Today, the federal gov't doesn't have that money because of those nice Bush tax cuts.

Yes, you can hire great teachers, although for some reason Phil, you dislike teachers with experience. Of course, school districts where teachers aren't unionized are running into the same problems of pumping out dumb students. Must be the damn union's fault.

Of course, none of these problems have anything to do with what Mark Foley & the Pope so lovingly call No Child's Behind Left. A program that mandates that kids don't actually learn things in school, but instead spend their entire day prepping for standardized tests, tests that Neil Bush's company Ignite Incorporated was quite pleased to provide schools for a nice profit. Gee, do you think that Neil Bush had connections to get that little deal made?

And of course, none of these problems extend into private schools, despite that private school administrators keep getting prosecuted for fraud for collecting tax dollars for schools they've never opened.

And surely, none of these problems with schools have anything to do with all the illegal immigrants, who came to this country seeking a job after NAFTA destroyed their local economy. Gee, I wonder how well kids will do when they don't speak the language and their parents can't read. Gee, I seem to remember a recent President doing his damnest to extend NAFTA south of Mexico's borders. His name is escaping me at the moment. Can you think of who that could be Phil?

And obviously, none of these problems have to do with the fact that Texas gets to decide what textbooks our school children use. I'm sure you're quite pleased that the Texas state legislature thought it was a good idea to eliminate Thomas Jefferson from our nation's school textbooks.

It's all just the union's fault, right Phil? Hey, all we need to do is get rid of these fucking unions, hire new teachers and pay them 8 bucks an hour, and watch the magic of the marketplace at work!

-- Modified on 12/6/2010 9:31:08 AM

CA has one of the five or six highest tax rates in the nation.  This is not about too little money. It is about not using it smartly.

You can hire two good teachers with low seniority, or one good one with a lot of seniority.  

And you say Bush did it.  Shame.

For those who say insurance companies are bloated, LAUSD has one non-teaching person for every teacher.  That is 50% administartion.  For you libs who were complaining about charities being inefficient, at least they are private.  This is public and she schools are mandatory for poor people.

And Bush did not mandate that one administartor be hired.

The unions pushed for these rules, and the board of education has been solid Democrat for decades.  These are their rules.

Bush didn't adopt them.

You see kids hurt - lower income and chlldren "of color.  They are hurt by policies the Dems backed for as long as I can remember.

And it is Bush.

The lead school in the story went from a success for poor people to a nightmare, and rather than look at how it happened, you struggle to blame Bush.  To great grade to pathetic

And somehow you can ignore the pain to poor people, as long as you can find some connection to Bush.

Certainly the unions, politicians, and poor teachers have an affect on student learning, but it's the uncaring, lazy, FUCKING PARENTS that are the root cause for poor education systems. If parents got involved, pushing for better teachers, going to school board meetings and demanding changes, voting in school board elections, bending local politicians ears until they do what parents demanded for their kids, things would change.....for the better.

The NEA will always want more money to be thrown at their schools' problems. Money is NOT the problem. New Jersey spends over $14,000/student/year in the public school system. Some districts have excellent schools, such as the ones where we live, but the schools in urban areas still suck, really suck. Parents with no involvement in their kids education are the primary problem.

Although I wouldn't be so quick to blame parents.

On average, a ton of money is thrown at public schools, but when you break things down on a district by district level, I'd be willing to bet that the kids that don't do well come from schools have have less resources.

I dunno how the rest of the country operates, but in my home state of Virginia, the primary revenues for schools come from property taxes. When people live in a less wealthy part of the country, you have less home ownership, workers are paid less, and therefore can contribute less to schools.

It also doesn't help when you have to have 2 to 3 jobs to keep food on the table. It leaves little time left to help educate your kids, much less yourself.

It works the same way here. School funding comes from the property taxes. That's the main reason the property tax in NJ is the highest in the nation. By an NJ State Supreme Court decision, all students are given equal funding per district. How that funding is spent is the problem. The average teacher salary in NJ is $85,000/year. Not too shabby, but probably not enough either, considering the state and federal mandated bullshit they are required to teach, in addition to the 3 R's.

There is a special needs student in a neighboring township that their district spends $71,000/school year for his education. I have no problem with that. That's not an isolated case either.

Talking about funding spending, my son's school is pre-K to 8th grade. 154 students in the school. The school has a Superintendent, Principle, vice-principle, office admin staff, school nurse, 2 student counselors, etc. At every school board meeting this staffing level is brought up, and the answer as to why is always, "it is required by the state". The NJEA also has a say in staffing, through their campaign contributions to the Democrat candidates at the state level. The NJEA is the most powerful union in the state. Gov Christie is trying his best to get them to show some fiscal responsibility. Their answer is, "give us more money, smaller classes, better facilities, yadda, yadda, yadda.

There is no high school in our township. Kids go to a high school in a neighboring township. That school gets $14,000/year for each student. That high school was built 6 years ago. In the recent election, on the ballot was a bond issue for $15 million to improve the sports facilities, and add an indoor, Olympic size pool. It was defeated. School board was pissed. Fuck 'em.

I like teachers with experience. DOn't make that up about me. The L.A. Times said that a lot of the seniority teachers were not good.  Crazy Phil didn't say that.

Yeah, the fed took the state money.  Fuck the Deptarment of Education. Give the money back to the states without strings attached, and CA will hire teachers.  The fed takes our money and then you say taxes are too low.

The L.A. Times is a liberal paper, and it put the blame on laying off good teachers on the union rules.

The Times clearly explained what the cause of the problem was.  You switch topics to Texas and Neil Bush, and Nafta, and No Child Left Behind.  

For some reason you are will to sacrifice kids for union rules.

However, none of these are relevant to the fact that the good teachers are fired and the bad teachers are kept on.

The bad teachers don't stay because Texas did something with Thomas Jefferson, or NAFTA brought in seven million immigrants or some private schools being bad or anything else.  Anticipaing Mari pitching in, the good teachers aren't fired because we proseucted Polanski.

The good teachers are laid off and the bad ones are kept for one reason.  The reason has nothing to do with Bush lying about WMD or anything else.  

They have money for teachers.  They are not allowed to keep the good ones

But if it comes to ignoring the impact on kids to preserve union rules, we know where you stand.

The first thing was you said I "dislike teachers with experience."  My SO is a librarian in a high school and most of our friends are teachers.  That is a pure lie I do not like experienced teachers. It is worse. You just made it up without knowing me.  

One sign of a lame argument is you have to attack the person making the argument by making up .

Now you make up that this article is filtered through Phil's head.  Hey. I linked it.  If you think I am distorting, rather than a personal attack, look at the original and see where the distortion by Phil's filter is.

(Of course you never address the issue of good teachers being fired, so older teachers can stay. You blame everyone for other problems, but they are all a change of subject.  QUESTION: Should they keep better teachers or the ones who have been there the longest?)  

As to the Times being a liberal paper, they are not socialist or communist and don't shout "worker's of the world unite."  But for the last 40 years in every election where they have made an endorsement, it has been for the more liberal canditate.  Today they had an editorial supporting gay marraige. They have been anti-death penalty for decades.  They were against the immigraton proposition, the number of which I forget.  You name a position, and I will wager they are on the left.  If you can't come up with one conservative position it has taken, you look silly denying they are liberal.

YOu ask, "Did the LA Times tell you Phil, that school districts have just as many teachers with seniority in non-unionized districts?"  

That is a change of subject. I am not talking about other districts.  The story was in this district better teachers are being laid off.  How you drag in other districts if amazing.  When you can't address the issue, throw a lot of smoke.

The bottom line is there is X  amount of money.  For what evfer reason, regardless of who is to blame.  Regardless of other problems. Regardless of bad text books. Regardless of too much smog.  There is so much money.  Change the subject again, but there is only so much money.  The question is when you have that set amount of money do you use it to hire good teachers or old teachers, regardless of their quality.  

The experienced teachers they retained already did incredible damage to a school that was doing well.
You prefer spending what ever money there is on the bad teachers and crying there is no enought money.

I would rather higher the good teachers who have been proven successes.

Even when you compare schools of identical demographics, there are huge ranges in results.

Schools with a "strict" adminstration gets better results than similar schools in the same demographic with more lax standards.

There are many high proforming schools in low income areas and areas of high "ethnic" concentration.  The kids area as capable as those in Brentwood or Nob Hill.

If you create the right enviornment for poor kids, they will excel.

I would be happy to find the common denominator of every sucessful inter-city school and apply that across the board.

Find your high proforming school. See what their formula is, and let's adopt that.