Teacher Unions Dump $80 million Into 2014 Midterms: Result is an F+

Big money down the drain for this election failure.

Another "educated" guess down the tubes.

But all in "due" time as they say.

a scathing article..

American kids rank below their counterparts in China and Russia and a whole bunch of budding Super-Powers such as Slovenia, Estonia, and Vietnam. It’s okay though, because most of our public school kids can’t even locate them on a map, much less outdo them in the classroom.

But, rest-assured, they feel good about it – because they win a trophy anyway, don’t they?

People are going to scream that I hate teacher’s and that’s BS. I feel bad for teachers – they’re stuck in the middle of all this. Of course they want good wages – who doesn’t? But they know what’s going on here. Some of them are afraid to stand up to the curse of Common Core and I understand needing to keep your job and keep in good standing.

Teacher Unions Dump $80 million Into 2014 Midterms: Result is an F+

Parents need to take over education, with helping in schools so that the kid to teacher ratio is better than 30:1, and with as much homeschooling as possible. Once kids can read, most could easily be left alone to teach themselves with a computer, access to books, etc. Hell, there's MIT college courses available on line for free, why are we bothering with brick and mortar schools?

As for the 20% of kids who disrupt classes all day long for the rest who want to learn, teach them a trade, early. They'll never learn to sit still for the higher level math classes, it's a waste of time trying to force it. Maybe when they're adults...

a reply to: xuenchen

Is that 80 million nation wide or is that for one state?

a reply to: signalfire

Parents need to start parenting again. I don't know where a new set of parenting skills are going to come from now that the ones that have evolved over the last several thousand years have been lost in the last two generations.

originally posted by: Grimpachi
a reply to: xuenchen

Is that 80 million nation wide or is that for one state?

The article seems to mention several state issues.

So probably $80 million total nationwide.

Maybe some areas were successful.

Depends on the Democrat vote pockets.

Serves them right for investing in the supression of homeschooling as a viable alternative.

Joe the Plumber and a FOX news report?

Do you even have kids in school?

At least you know I follow the links.

originally posted by: xuenchen

originally posted by: Grimpachi
a reply to: xuenchen

Is that 80 million nation wide or is that for one state?

The article seems to mention several state issues.

So probably $80 million total nationwide.

Maybe some areas were successful.

Depends on the Democrat vote pockets.

OK well that was sort of what I thought but couldn't tell from the article. I mean the casino mogul bought the florida election for 75 million but that was all in one state I figure 80 million could have bought any other state but when you consider that was total for the country then well of course they could lose.

My 2 cents...

Soft kills have destroyed the American memory.

Learning isn't the problem, that's partially the teachers fault.

Unable to retain information has become an epidemic.

The evolution of a microwave society.

there are already study at home courses/systems that might replace the old fashioned classroom
education will probably be a big topic for a while

originally posted by: Annee
Joe the Plumber and a FOX news report?

Do you even have kids in school?

At least you know I follow the links.

Good Point.

But what does it have to do with successful family structures?

a reply to: xuenchen

Maybe if we insentivized smart successful people to become teachers or incentivized students to learn not regurgitate for grades we'd get somewhere. Capitalism at its finest.

No worries !

They will just hike their dues.

And raise property taxes on the locals.

Money grows on trees, they will have enough for next election to try to buy it.

originally posted by: xuenchen

originally posted by: Annee
Joe the Plumber and a FOX news report?

Do you even have kids in school?

At least you know I follow the links.

Good Point.

But what does it have to do with successful family structures?

Define family.

I am raising a 6 year old grandson, who's on the Autism Spectrum, Southern California, Common Core.

I have a strong interest in the public school system and all connected with it.

a reply to: eisegesis

the ability to retain information has become redundant.

the ability to understand and process information is most relevant.

how many examples of epic poetry can you recite?

do you have to read from a book or can you recite the Odyssey of Homer from memory, or Canterbury tales... or any of the old stories that were once memorized and passed down through an oral tradition.

Wait till the HOA's and few others start lobbying for the passing of laws to opt out of paying Taxes that are collected to pay for schools in local communities

Watch the news, it is coming

This mess has not even started

originally posted by: tavi45
a reply to: xuenchen

Maybe if we insentivized smart successful people to become teachers or incentivized students to learn not regurgitate for grades we'd get somewhere. Capitalism at its finest.

Lack of capitalism is why people no longer have incentive. That should be obvious.

a reply to: Metallicus

Really? Plenty of people are going into finance, marketing and other capitalist industries. Seems to me an overabundance of capitalism is the issue here. I know tons of smart people who went into these useless industries which produce nothing of value because the paychecks are good.

Then again investing in the public good is considered anti American these days. Our schools are deteriorating just like our infrastructure. The primary reason being that individuals don't benefit in the short term from investing in the public good. It's all about money and you don't make money from educating people.

originally posted by: CraftBuilder
a reply to: signalfire

Parents need to start parenting again. I don't know where a new set of parenting skills are going to come from now that the ones that have evolved over the last several thousand years have been lost in the last two generations.

Exactly....they need to go back to the principles of what Parents used to do, which is enforce discipline and education

Now a days Parents want to be their 'friends' & let their kids do what ever, including slacking off in school, just to keep them happy cause they don't want to hurt their feelings

Parents play a large part of this problem, not just the teachers

a reply to: xuenchen

How many months are we going to have to suffer through this post election propaganda? How much money do you think the Koch's spent running nearly 44,000 television ads? The Koch's and their friends were looking to drop a reported $300 million.

I'm going to let you in on a little secret, it's not unionized teachers that have us at 17th place. South Korea, Japan, Finland, etc all have teacher's unions. I've done a little research into the topic and in my opinion, one of the things most of the better performing countries seem to have in common is that being a teacher is a more esteemed profession than it is here.

What's really fascinating to me is that people have this misconception that American schools were ever top performers. That's a falsehood propagandists encourage so that you'll have something to blame the "liberal takeover of education" for.

The fact is we've never really been near the top in terms of K-12. There's a lot of people that would argue that dropping the scores from the lowest performing schools — those in impoverished areas — would actually result in our country being much closer to the top. That's not really a fair comparison though but then again, maybe these types of comparisons are useless as indicators for future performance? The American education system's failure to churn out teens with superior math scores never seemed to stand in the way of our economic superiority before did it?

Maybe our advantage lies in higher education? That seems like a reasonable hypothesis. What I do know is that whenever I see right-wingers talking about education it seems like they're trying to get ID in science classrooms or any mention of Islam out of history textbooks.