Of the sons of Issachar, men who understood the times, with knowledge of what Israel should do, their chiefs were two hundred; and all their kinsmen were at their command — 1 Chronicles 12:32
This is the sort of thing you can imagine, at some point, conservatives might have imagined half-seriously that a teachers’ union would do, only to provoke dismissive scoffs from union defenders who would point to the claim as evidence conservatives just hated teachers and would say anything to slander the union.
Fast-forward to the present, and the unions not only do it, but do it with no apparent sense of shame.
Andrew Harris was previously a seventh-grade science teacher at Glacier Creek Middle School in Wisconsin’s Middleton-Cross Plains Area School District. He was fired when it was discovered he had spent quite a bit of time, in class mind you, watching porn on his computer. Even a teachers’ union wouldn’t contest that firing, right?
The district’s school board Monday voted in a special closed session to comply with an arbitrator’s 60-page order that demands Harris be reinstated. He was fired in 2010 after receiving and viewing multiple pornographic and sexually inappropriate images and videos, according to a complaint.
To add insult to the district’s injury, taxpayers will have to pay Harris nearly $200,000 in back pay. In total the district will spend nearly $1 million on the case, the brunt of which went to legally defending its position that the firing was fair.
The district’s admission of defeat in the case comes with a decision to offer Harris a job teaching seventh-grade science at another middle school. So in the end, the taxpayers lay out $1 million, and not only are they still stuck with the teacher who watches porn in class, but the porn-watching teacher himself loses nothing as he even ends up getting paid for the three years in which he was not working.
A bunch of other teachers were nabbed along with Harris receiving inappropriate material on their computers, but the school district says its investigation shows Harris was the only one actually viewing the material on his classroom computer.
A district spokesman lays it out: “A lot of people are wondering how? Why? Really? Is this really something as an organization they want to stand for? My wife’s a teacher, so I understand they (the union) feel the need to defend their membership. I also hope they would understand why we would feel this isn’t the right decision.”
Exactly. Everyone understands that it’s the function of a union to defend its members. But do unions care nothing at all for the actual result of the actions they take? What do you do if you’re the parent of a seventh-grader who finds out that your son or daughter ends up in this guy’s class? Do you request a different teacher? What if he’s the only seventh-grade science teacher the school has, which is certainly going to be the case at a lot of middle schools?
The problem when you unionize any sort of workforce is that the rules that are established often leave no room whatsoever for common sense. If a teacher is viewing porn on his school computer, the teacher needs to be fired. Period. That’s not even a question. Or it shouldn’t be. But once you get a union involved, with union rules and union-mandated processes, the firing can’t go forward unless every i is dotted and every t is crossed, and the unions make it their business to make it as difficult as possible for all that to happen.
And this is what you end up with. Yeah. Andrew Harris’s “rights” are protected. And now kids are stuck learning science from a guy who watches porn in the classroom, and no one can do anything about it.
Democrats don’t give one flying damn about children. Not one flying damn.
Liberalism is an extortion racket, pure and simple.
It’s loyalty to the Party rather than loyalty to the children.
They don’t want poor kids to be able to go to excellent schools; they want to force them to go to government schools where they will receive inferior educations but “excellent” propaganda. That’s why they so adamantly oppose vouchers and aid for poor families desperate to give their kids an actual education as opposed to a liberal indoctrination.
Democrats protect unions and unions protect government bureaucrats a.k.a. “teachers”. And both of them prey on children to get what they want.
In this case, what they want is porn. On public school property. Using public school resources. And on public school time.
Any decent human being would want a cockroach like Harris gone. But Democrats and unions are NOT decent people.
Waiting for the Teachers’ Union
By Joel Klein, Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education
Posted: September 24, 2010 04:52 PM
If you do one thing this weekend, go see Davis Guggenheim’s latest documentary, “Waiting for ‘Superman’ “, which opens in theaters across the country today. The film, which has been met with well-deserved critical acclaim, paints a blunt and at times heartbreaking picture of the state of public education in America, told through the stories of families fighting to get their children into safe, high-performing schools.
First, it’s a terrific film. But more importantly, it has helped catapult the debate on education reform to the national stage.
It’s not surprising that the film is making many people uncomfortable. The truth is harsh. It’s easier to turn away than to watch a crying mom clutch a losing lottery ticket that just cost her child a spot at a top-performing charter school.
What is surprising is that some — including the teachers’ unions — are railing against the film, dismissing it as anti-teacher and pro-charter school propaganda.
‘Superman’ is not anti-teacher; nor does it suggest that charter schools are the answer. Teachers are the heroes of any education success story, and ‘Superman’ recognizes that. It also recognizes that there are good charters schools and bad charters schools. But it demonstrates that charters are finally providing families in traditionally disadvantaged communities with more choices — something affluent families have always had — thus increasing the chances for better outcomes. And the most successful charters, like the Harlem Children’s Zone schools that are run by Geoff Canada, who stars in the film, or the KIPP schools featured in it, are proving that success doesn’t depend upon where you come from, or the color of your skin, or how much money your family has — because they are getting real results in the poorest communities.
For example, this year, at the Harlem Success Academy, a charter school in New York City, 88 percent of the students passed the state’s reading test and 95 percent passed the math test, while comparable schools have pass rates of 35 percent in reading and 45 percent in math. In fact, Success performed at the same level as the very top gifted and talented schools in the City, all of which have demanding admissions requirements, while Success selects by lottery from primarily African-American and Latino students, three quarters of whom are living in poverty.
So why are they able to get better results? The number one reason is because they are not bound by legions of micro-managing regulations, including those contained in today’s typical teachers’ union contract.
Free from these rules, charter schools in New York can treat their teachers like professionals and reward them for excellence. They embrace an accountability system based on merit. They understand that, like any other profession, all teachers are not created equal. And, they value the future of the kids above the future of the adults. Which means if you are teaching in one of Geoff Canada’s schools, and your kids keep failing, you’re out.
It’s been nearly 30 years since President Reagan presented “A Nation at Risk.” In the meantime, our nation has almost doubled its spending (in inflation-adjusted dollars) on K-12 public education, but our gains have been negligible. And, while America’s students are in a ditch, the rest of the world is plowing forward. The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development administers English, math and science tests to 13 year olds in its 30 member countries. On the most recent exams, the United States was in the bottom third in all three, and trending in the wrong direction in each one. And, where we once had the highest percentage of high school and college graduates among these 30 countries, today we’re toward the bottom for high school graduates and in the middle for college graduates.
We can’t keep ignoring this problem or thinking it’ll get fixed simply by throwing money at it.
Public education is badly failing far too many of our kids and, ultimately, our nation. We must, as Superman does, talk honestly about this uncomfortable fact and why it persists. And that discussion can only begin in earnest if we are prepared to acknowledge what the iconic teachers’ union head Albert Shanker told us almost two decades ago: “As long as there are no consequences if kids or adults don’t perform, as long as the discussion is not about education and student outcomes, then we’re playing a game as to who has the power.” Unfortunately, things haven’t changed much since then.
Only recently, for example, the General Counsel of the NEA, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, said:
Why is the NEA an effective advocate? Despite what some among us would like to believe it is not because of our creative ideas; it is not because of the merit of our positions; it is not because we care about children; and it is not because we have a vision of a great public school for every child.The NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power. And we have power because there are more than 3.2 million people who are willing to pay us hundreds of million of dollars in dues each year because they believe that we are the unions that can most effectively represent them; the union that can protect their rights and advance their interests as education employees.
I am not naïve enough to think that a movie can change the world. But “Waiting for ‘Superman’ ” does shine a much-needed spotlight on the status quo and the people who benefit from and defend it.
And it reminds us all that our job is to give voice to the voiceless and the powerless kids that are currently being denied the education they need and deserve. Because, let’s face it — they can’t afford union dues.
If you watch this movie and you AREN’T a KoolAid-drinking ideologue, you will be enraged at what the teachers’ unions are doing to our children.
“[The problem is terminal right now] because it is incredibly serious. Children’s lives are hanging in the balance, and we are making all the wrong decisions right now. Let me give you an example: people say to me all the time, ‘Oh, Chancellor Rhee, you’re so mean; you’re so harsh. You know, if there is an ineffective teacher, don’t you believe that that person should be given the opportunity, give them some time, give them the resources to professionally develop them. But I look at this from the vantage point of being a mother, too, because I have two young children. I can tell you that if I showed up for school on day one and the principal said, ‘Welcome to Olivia’s class, here’s her teacher. Guess what? She’s not so good. But we’re going to give her this year to see if she can get better, and Olivia and her classmates may not learn how to read this year, but we think that’s the right thing to do for this adult.’ There is no way I would put up with that.”
And of course she is out of a job. And liberals say, “How DARE she talk like that! She should be dragged into the street and killed.”
Democrats are in an unholy alliance with the teachers’ unions. And teachers’ unions are in an unholy alliance with bad teachers, because they (and not the children) belong to the unions and pay union dues and are part of the system that funds Democrats so that Democrats can stay in office and reward the teachers’ unions.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker today signed into law the largest expansion to the state’s school choice programs in history. The expansion will benefit thousands of children from the state’s low- and middle-income families and sends a strong signal to the nation that educational equality is possible with strong leadership from state legislators and executives.
The American Federation for Children, which—along with School Choice Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Council of Religious & Independent Schools, Hispanics for School Choice, and Democrats for Education Reform—has invested significantly in outreach and advocacy efforts designed to expand school choice in the Badger State, praised the passage of the landmark school choice program expansions.
In approving the state budget, Walker enacted a significant expansion of the popular Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. The state’s 2011-2013 biennial budget contains language that increases income eligibility for the program and removes the cap on the number of participants. The budget also allows children in Milwaukee to attend the private schools of their parents’ choice—anywhere in Wisconsin.
In addition, the budget creates a new choice program—similar to the one in Milwaukee—for Racine. AFC polling indicates strong, bipartisan support for the creation of this new program. Governor Walker first publicly announced his intention to pursue the expansion to Racine during an address to the American Federation for Children’s National Policy Summit in May 2011.
“Today is a monumental day for children in Milwaukee, Racine, and the State of Wisconsin,” said AFC Chairman Betsy DeVos. “Governor Walker and state legislators pledged to put Wisconsin’s children first, and today that important pledge has become law. We encourage governors and state legislators across the nation to be equally bold in fighting for the creation and expansion of school choice programs.”
In addition to praising Governor Scott Walker’s leadership, AFC today hailed the courage of Senator Alberta Darling (R-River Hills), Representative Robin Vos (R-Burlington), Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau), and Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald (R-Horicon). AFC also praised Representative Jason Fields (D-Milwaukee) for introducing the successful “Once In, Always In” provision that will protect students enrolled in both the Milwaukee and Racine Parental Choice Programs.
You start to feel like there needs to be a Moses who says, “Let my children go.” Democrats certainly won’t. They will do everything they can to force every parent to keep their child(ren) in government schools no matter how badly those schools are failing.
Obama talked about America facing a “Sputnik moment” last night. For the record, “Sputnik” was a Soviet successful satellite that stunned America out of its complacency. America entered the space race with a vengeance, and won it by a knockout. Obama exploited that moment, pointed out that America is watching the world go past us, and says we need to be competitive by pursuing massive government spending oops I mean “investment.”
But he did evoke a huge defense issue from a half-century ago—the signal wake-up security call that marked the years of transition from Dwight Eisenhower to John F. Kennedy, the single word that has symbolized ever since the fear of slipping behind in a dangerous world: Sputnik.
“This is our generation’s Sputnik moment,” Obama said. As a result, we need to fund “a level of research and development we haven’t seen since the height of the space race.”
Well, at the heart of Obama’s State of the Union speech were many contradictions. And I’ll get to them. But his “Sputnik moment” thing was the worst one of all.
Allow me to cite a couple of my own articles to document just how stunningly pathetic Obama’s analogy truly is:
The first article above documents how Obama has been GUTTING the space program, and in fact RETURNING AMERICA to the pre-Sputnik vulnerability. To the disgust and open contempt of former NASA heroes. And the second documents how Obama has turned the now disgraced NASA into yet another tool for political correctness.
And to make sure you realize how pathetically laughable Obama’s analogy is, let’s make sure we understand that Sputnik was a Russian threat, and then let’s make sure we understand how Obama has helped undermine American interests to advance the Russians with yet another title:
That one documents how Obama has undermined America’s missile defense program. And the actual Sputnik moment was all about dealing with Russian missiles.
This guy’s talking about our Sputnik moment? Seriously?
Conservatives had already debunked many of Obama’s lies last night before he even told them. I’ve debunked those lies right here.
But sadly we must take Obama seriously. Because Obama’s real political genius comes down to one simple thing: he realized that the people who support him are stupid and ignorant, don’t know a damn thing that the incredibly biased media machine doesn’t tell them, and that he can therefore spit out anything and not get caught by much of America in his deceit.
Obama is our Sputnik moment. By which I mean, this turd-in-chief and his policies are the reason that we are failing and falling behind while other nations around us rise up and overtake us.
One of the other major contradictions of Obama’s speech are that he is essentially acting as if the previous two years didn’t happen. “Nothing to see over there, folks, now if you don’t mind looking this way.” Obama is saying that we need a major new “investment” (which is a tidy euphemism for yet more government pork), when in fact he has already “invested” well over a trillion dollars with absolutely nothing to show for it but more debt and more deficits than this nation has ever seen before.
Which is why DeMint said:
When asked about President Obama’s statements about government investments, DeMint said, “Now the president is promising more spending, which he calls investments, when the time is to cut spending in Washington.. The president needs to tell the American people the truth.. That its time for the federal government to do less.”
Let’s look at Obama’s trillions in “investment” and see what effect it has had on our “competitiveness”:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States spends more public and private money on education than other major countries, but its performance doesn’t measure up in areas ranging from high-school graduation rates to test scores in math, reading and science, a new report shows.
That dates back to 2003. Look before that, look after that, and the results are the same. We spend and spend and spend while our kids get dumber and dumber and dumber. To the extent that right now only a third of our kids are considered proficient in major subjects.
Here’s the problem: liberals call for more and more and more spending, but liberals make sure that all the largess goes to them, and goes to their politically connected interests. Like the liberal teachers unions that are the REAL reason our country is falling behind in education. And to the extent we spend more, we only feed the beast that is the REAL source of our dilemma and help build it into an even BIGGER problem as it uses its vast resources to protect the status quo.
Obama wants to spend billions on “green energy.” What that means is that he wants to subsidize incredibly expensive and NON-Competitive energy sources while our rivals continue to run circles around us with cheap and efficient oil and coal. And the more and the faster we spend, the more and the faster we fall behind.
The real sputnik moment, epitomized in the person of Obama himself, is this: America is spending itself into extinction. It is not wise spending, because we are sucking money out of the efficient private sector, giving to an incredibly inefficient and wasteful federal government, and then doling it out on the basis of political patronage rather than common sense.
I’ll end with this: Obama is using a “mangled multiplier” as his basis for the need for more government spending. On Obama’s and the Democrat Party’s distorted view, for every dollar the federal government spends, we get a $1.55 “bang for our buck.” But it isn’t true. Unless you really think building tunnels for turtles, bridges to nowhere and studying cow flatulence is going to make America great. On the International Monetary Fund model, which just makes more sense in addition to being less ideologically biased, we only get back 70 cents for every dollar spent. See this article for the documentation on that, and check out this graph:
In his SOTU speech, Obama provided an airplane metaphor that went:
“Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may feel like you’re flying high at first, but it won’t take long before you’ll feel the impact.”
On Obama’s metaphor, government is the engine that flies our economy. And if you reduce government spending, you eliminate the engine and the plane crashes. But that simply isn’t true; it is PRIVATE spending that flies our economy. And sucking money out of the private sector to create more government bureaucracy and more pork-barrel spending is foolhardy. It is actually OBAMA who is actually removing the engine from our economy.
If we really want to experience a “Sputnik moment” and surge back to greatness, what we need to do is wake up and vote out Obama and the Democrat Party.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is showing he is even more fearless and determined to fulfill his promises than he is rotund.
Liberals – the demagogues and haters in this country – are relying on a vicious ad hominem campaign of hate over Christie’s weight because mean-spirited hate and ad hominem demagogic rhetoric is all they’ve got.
My father spent nearly his entire career in public relations at AT&T, so he was always dispensing advice on how to handle personal crises, big and small. And when I would come home from my high school job of stocking shelves at King’s Supermarket, complaining about some ungracious customer, he would remind me:
“AT&T spends millions of dollars trying to shape the public’s opinion of us, but it takes only one rude telephone operator to flush all that money and ruin all of my hard work. The same thing could happen at King’s.”
His lesson was clear: One bad decision, one stupid miscalculation, can wreck years of good will.
Which brings us to the New Jersey Education Association.
In an astonishing fall from grace that has taken only months, teachers have gone from respected and beloved members of the community to some of the most reviled. In a blink, they have trashed years of good will.
Once the patient darlings who nurtured our kids, teachers now look like insensitive, out-of-touch, can’t-think-for-themselves union robots who, when forced to face economic realities, clung to an insulting sense of entitlement, heartlessly sacrificed the jobs of colleagues, called the governor naughty names and used students as political pawns.
All while blaming everyone else.
At Saturday’s rally in Trenton, teachers wondered when the Earth started spinning in the other direction.
“It’s like we woke up one morning and the world had changed,” said Linda Mirabelli, a music teacher in Livingston. “We were liked and respected, and now, overnight, people have turned against us.”
How did it happen? That’s easy: One bad decision, one stupid miscalculation: An overwhelming majority of teachers refused to accept a pay freeze. They could have won taxpayers’ eternal gratitude, but instead demanded their negotiated raises and fought against contributing a dime toward budget-breaking health insurance benefits. Teachers could have pitched in, but they dug in.
They thumbed their noses at taxpayers, who have lost their jobs, had their pay cut, gone bankrupt and fallen into foreclosure. As taxpayers made less, teachers demanded more. You do that, you become a villain. Fast. It doesn’t matter how many stars Junior gets on his book report.
Teachers listened to their overpaid brain trust, the architects of this disastrous public relations strategy. Together, NJEA president Barbara Keshishian, executive director Vincent Giordano and spokesman Steve Wollmer earn more than a million dollars. Keshishian, who has been outmaneuvered by the governor at every turn, earns $256,450 annually. Giordano, with salary and deferred compensation, earned $550,203 in 2009, and Wollmer makes $300,000.
Who says you get what you pay for? Union members are shelling out a lot of money for lousy representation. They should stage a coup. Instead they joined hands at Saturday’s You-And-Me-Against-The-World rally and tried to convince each other they’re doing the right thing.
To compound the troubles, the NJEA does something stupid almost every day. They insult the governor; teachers (and administrators) let kids walk out of class to protest cuts in aid; union members refuse to give up their seats to private-school students at a hearing in Trenton.
And now the NJEA is now running TV commercials, attacking Christie (again), this time using cops and firemen for cover, hoping the public still likes those guys. The firefighters union, realizing the teachers union is now toxic, says it never would have approved the commercial, but the NJEA never asked.
NJEA leadership should have seen the backlash coming. Tenure, raises, pensions, health care benefits and an aversion toward merit pay have irked taxpayers for years. The recession ignited that anger, and no last-gasp advertising blitz will change the perception of insensitive teachers who told taxpayers to eat chalk.
So, the question is: Was it worth it?
The average public school teacher makes $63,000, and the average raise this year was roughly 4 percent, so teachers traded $2,520 for these scars, which never will heal. And because Christie and taxpayers asked only for a one-year pay freeze, it’s money teachers could have recovered next year.
Imagine how differently teachers would be perceived today if they had agreed to a pay freeze and willingly offered a few bucks toward their health policies. They’d be heroes.
Heck, we would have staged a rally for them.
Kevin Manahan is a member of the Star-Ledger editorial board.
Want to hear how the public school teachers are responding to being asked to show some responsibility to a massive financial crisis that is threatening their state with bankruptcy? Want to see how mature and tolerant they are?
HADDONFIELD, N.J. — They’re the kind of obscenity-laced schoolyard taunts that could get a student suspended.
But the target of this tirade is New Jersey’s Gov. Chris Christie – and the perpetrators are the state’s teachers, irate over his calls for salary freezes and funding cuts for schools.
In Facebook messages visible to the world – not to mention their students – the teachers have called Christie fat, compared him to a genocidal dictator and wished he was dead. The postings are often riddled with bad grammar and misspellings.
“Never trust a fat f…,” read one profane post on the Facebook page, “New Jersey Teachers United Against Governor Chris Christie’s Pay Freeze,” which has some 69,000 fans, many of them teachers.
“How do you spell A– hole? C-H-R-I-S C-H-R-I-S-T-I-E,” read another.
The rhetoric has become ever more heated as residents of most of the state’s school districts get ready to vote Tuesday on property tax levies that support district budgets. And while many of the postings are emotional, most aren’t personal attacks.
Christie, a first-year Republican governor who inherited a state in dire financial straits, wants voters to reject the proposals in districts where educators won’t agree to salary freezes for the coming school year.
The acrimony intensified last month when Christie proposed cutting state and federal aid to districts by 11 percent, calling it a way to share sacrifice as the state tries to rein in spending.
That’s when the Facebook attacks really took off. […]
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: these are the loathsome, dishonest hypocrites who have repeatedly attacked the tea party people as being hateful bigots. When THEY’RE the hateful bigots.
TRENTON, N.J. — A teacher union’s memo hinting that New Jersey’s governor should die has escalated a war of words in a state already squabbling about public schools and how much they cost.
The memo from the Bergen County Education Association to its locals reads in part: “Dear Lord this year you have taken away my favorite actor, Patrick Swayze, my favorite actress, Farrah Fawcett, my favorite singer, Michael Jackson, and my favorite salesman, Billy Mays. I just wanted to let you know that Chris Christie is my favorite governor.”
Christie doesn’t care. He knows these people are vile, loathsome, and hateful, and that they are selfish, greedy, little Marxist commissars who demand that the system keep paying them top benefits in their cushy 180-day-a-year jobs even as the people reel from high taxes and unemployment.
Here’s Christie on video confronting a teacher. It’s edited for mainline media news consumption, but Christie still manages to shine through:
I love that exchange. Teacher: “Bitch bitch bitch, whine whine whine.” Christie: “Then quit.”
New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie told a disgruntled teacher that if she doesn’t like the pay, she doesn’t “have to do it.”
Christie was speaking to a small crowd in a church gymnasium in Rutherford on Tuesday when the Bergen County Record caught the exchange between Kearny teacher Rita Wilson and the governor.
Wilson claimed that if she were getting paid only three dollars an hour for the 30 students she teaches, her salary would be $83,000 a year, a much higher sum than her current take.
“You’re getting more than that if you include the cost of your benefits,” Christie pointed out.
The teacher responded by saying that she has a master’s degree and that her current salary isn’t compensating her for the value of her higher education as well as her experience.
To that, the governor responded: “Well, you know then that you don’t have to do it.”
Stop and think about this teacher’s demented, pathologically entitlement-minded demand for $3 an hour per student. Where in the world does this “$3 an hour per child” mentality come from??? Say that she were teaching 15 students, and then started teaching thirty: did she actually double her work load? Does she now spend twice the time preparing her lessons? Of course not. This woman is making $86,000 a year for a 180-day-a-year job. And she thinks she should collect more because of some $3 an hour per kid figure some liberal loon pulled out of her butt? I don’t think so.
But I’d take her up on her offer and have her teach just ONE kid at $3 an hour. Because if you should get $3 an hour for thirty kids, you should get $4 an hour for one kid. And that way she’d only get to destroy only one kid’s life through her socialist indoctrination. Maybe after she left New Jersey could hire a less whiny and less self-centered teacher in her place, who would actually be delighted to teach children 180 days a year for over $86 grand.
Whether America crashes and burns into a failed socialist hellhole, or whether we’re able to pull ourselves up out of a mountain of debt, is up to whether people like union teachers or Chris Christie win the day.
Start Thinking Right 