Monday, May 04, 2009

Even The Los Angeles Times Realizes Firing Teachers Is Impossible

It is amazing that this story appeared in the Los Angeles Times of all places, but here it is. The thrust of the story is how hard it is to fire teachers in the state of California. And especially in the behemoth known as the Los Angeles Unified School District.
There are so many points of this article that are worth highlighting, but the fact that teachers gain tenure after only two years is one that clearly needs to be highlighted and changed. Directly from the article:

The system in California provides teachers protections that go beyond what they receive in many other states. Teachers here can gain tenure after two years instead of three, which is common elsewhere.

Tenure in two years? Why do school teachers get such a deal in California? Again, directly from the article:

Teachers have won strong job protections over the years, the legacy of labor battles in the early 20th century, when instructors could be fired for frivolous infractions. Some experts say the tenure system has outlived its usefulness.

Really? Do ya think?!
It is important to read the linked article. It starts out with a teacher that asks a student why the student was out of class. The student said he was hospitalized over a suicide attempt. And when the student showed the teacher their wrists, the teacher said that the student did not try hard enough. Other students were getting in on the conversation. Yet, this degenerate is still employed by the Los Angeles Unified School District.
There are many other egregious examples in the linked article.
But, the bottom line is the overwhelming power of the teacher's unions. They protect mediocrity and quite frankly, the scum of the earth that have flopped into teaching because they could never hold a job in the real world.
This is not written to impugn those that are teachers for the right reasons. But even they buy their own union propaganda about if there was no tenure districts would fire teachers for no reason. There can and should be legitimate safeguards to protect against that kind of approach. But, having tenured teachers marking time until retirement and no merit pay, districts all across California and the United States get what they pay for.
It is time for the good, serious teachers to rise up and tell their unions that it is time to stop protecting the idiots that give the teaching profession a bad name. To make the road to tenure much, much longer than two years. To allow school districts to get rid of bad and dangerous teachers easier than it is now.
If these teachers really care about the children, they need to step up and be counted. This article is a start.

2 comments:

Rightwingsnarkle said...

Bashing teachers.

Nice.

Who's next on your list - nurses?

skeneogden said...

Who's next on your list - nurses?My wife is a nurse and they have the same problems with their union protecting bad nurses.

From what I've observed most of the nurses do not support the left wing bent of their union, however the activists in the union always seem to be those who espouse a left wing agenda. I've also noticed that many of the people active in the union are single and so don't have family responsibilities to occupy their time.

There are just as many bad nurses as there are bad teachers, firefighters, cops etc. Just because you provide an important public service doesn't mean you should get a free pass when it comes to scrutinizing your job performance.