Don't forget it also allows teachers to grade parents which is the natural way to start a healthy, rational conversation with an adult.

Why is it that supposedly liberal crap like this always comes from Florida or Texas?

If a poverty-stricken, drug-addled meth-cooker burns down his house, suffers third degree burns, and then goes to jail; we don't blame the police, fire department, doctors, and defense attorneys for his predicament. But if that kid doesn't graduate high school, it's clearly the teacher's fault.

Crime happens. Fire happens. Illness happens. As for lawyers and coaches, where there's a winner there must also be a loser. People accept all these realities, until they apply to public education.

Turning now to the News of the Future section of the paper... Huh, there's a severe teacher shortage in Florida and property taxes are going up. Wonder how that happened.

Reverend Monkeypants: Why is it that supposedly liberal crap like this always comes from Florida or Texas?

Both had governors named Bush and saw some profit in privatized education.

There are no bad teachers, ever.

Do you people work for the unions?

odinsposse: Don't forget it also allows teachers to grade parents which is the natural way to start a healthy, rational conversation with an adult.

Are you implying that this stellar bill will not magically fix the problems of failing schools?

Reverend Monkeypants: Why is it that supposedly liberal crap like this always comes from Florida or Texas?


You should really learn to Google names before you post. The two politicians in the article, Senator Lizbeth Benacquisto and Representative Kelli Stargel, both have little R's next to their names. Unless... you meant to call two Republicans liberal.

Why would anyone submit legislation like this when we all know it will lead to "... my precious snowflake!" situations?

FTFA: "... turn the school over to a charter company"


Ahhh..... there it is. Follow the money. Always.

jblizzle: There are no bad teachers, ever.

Do you people work for the unions?


Why do people of a certain political persuasion always think that schools will do better when money is stripped out of their budgets? Do roads magically become better when less money is spent on them? Will cops magically appear on every street corner if you gut their budget?

This is not going to end well.

Am I allowed to fire students who act like assholes during class? I might agree to this if I had the ability to remove any kid who is making life a living hell for his/her classmates.

accountability = bad.

listening to your customers = bad

ShavedApe: Reverend Monkeypants: Why is it that supposedly liberal crap like this always comes from Florida or Texas?


You should really learn to Google names before you post. The two politicians in the article, Senator Lizbeth Benacquisto and Representative Kelli Stargel, both have little R's next to their names. Unless... you meant to call two Republicans liberal.

Why would anyone submit legislation like this when we all know it will lead to "... my precious snowflake!" situations?

FTFA: "... turn the school over to a charter company"


Ahhh..... there it is. Follow the money. Always.

Note my "supposedly"

Portia: Am I allowed to fire students who act like assholes during class? I might agree to this if I had the ability to remove any kid who is making life a living hell for his/her classmates.

Detention.
How does that work?

ShavedApe: jblizzle: There are no bad teachers, ever.

Do you people work for the unions?


Why do people of a certain political persuasion always think that schools will do better when money is stripped out of their budgets? Do roads magically become better when less money is spent on them? Will cops magically appear on every street corner if you gut their budget?

Of course the other political persuasion that thinks schools will always do better if you shovel MORE money into them.

Any chance that both sides are over-simplistic and that the solution is somewhere in the middle?

It's OK if we can fire the parents and the students too.

tenpoundsofcheese: Portia: Am I allowed to fire students who act like assholes during class? I might agree to this if I had the ability to remove any kid who is making life a living hell for his/her classmates.

Detention.
How does that work?

My former school had a no-detention policy. As in, we could tell a kid to show up for 10 min after school, but if they didn't show the principal would not do anything about it. My administrators said negative consequences weren't part of their philosophy of discipline. Kids who got in all-out riots often weren't given even a day's suspension.

soooooo...can teachers give bad grades to parents?? because that's where the problem is. kids these days...got no respect. because their parents are shiat parents.

apotheosis27: soooooo...can teachers give bad grades to parents?? because that's where the problem is. kids these days...got no respect. because their parents are shiat parents.

It's not even the respect thing so much for me. I've had students miss 80 to 100 days of school in a year, but I'm held accountable for their attendance and performance on tests. It's not easy to prepare for a lesson if you could have anywhere between 8 and 36 kids in a class depending on how many were allowed to stay home because it's raining or they're tired. Parents, allowing your student to waltz into the building between 11 am and 1 pm every day doesn't work for me either. I can't get that kid out of bed in the morning, on the bus, and into the school.

Get the kids to school fed, reasonably dressed for the weather, and pick up the phone if I call--that usually eliminates 90% of the opportunities for misbehavior.

My brainnose smells someone making a lot of money.

It occurs to me that what schools could use is a legislative ceiling on their administrative cost percentage. When people oppose school funding, generally it is because they feel that much of it is wasted, that is, not being spent on the kids. The school inevitably responds to cuts in funding by cutting services where they will cause the most pain for parents, but never responds by reducing the overhead which was the problem in the first place.

Personally, I would gladly see my property taxes adjust to pay for an outside auditor to force compliance with a "School overhead may not exceed x%" measure.

In today's time, a teacher won't give your kid an A unless they sleep with them.

apotheosis27: soooooo...can teachers give bad grades to parents?? because that's where the problem is. kids these days...got no respect. because their parents are shiat parents.

Yes they can which is really kind of the problem. Even though parents can be tied to a lot of problems with students report cards are a stupid way to deal with them. If you give a parent a failing report card with a "see me after class" note on it you're treating them like a scolded child and not an adult. Most people, if even they deserve a scolding, won't like that and won't want to work with someone who treats them like that. Requiring that be part of a teacher's relationship with a parent is pants on head retarded.

well this actually makes perfect sense,
If your a republican legislator wanting to eviscerate the school system in order to sell off it's remains to you're wealthy donors who have been wanting to completely privatize all education for a long time.

So what do you think will happen when you have an institution in control whose primary mission is not education but profit margin?

Oh wait I know
"YO MAN, i GOT MY DEGREE IN WIDGET REPAIR IN LIKE 2 WEEKS, IT WAS SOOOO EASY AND MY MASSIVE LOANS WERE PAID OFF IN NO TIME."... "your results may vary"

hypnozombie

And people think I am nuts for wanting to homeschool my kids? (No I am not a religious fundie). This solves nothing, the parents who don't care will still not care, and the good teachers will not want to take on even more work and hassle for shiat pay. My sister in law taught in Florida public schools and she said that she had kids that routinely showed up unfed, without shoes, and no lunch. Whenever she did manage to see their parents they always had plenty of cigarettes though.

awww crap...

this is happening in my neck of the woods?

arrrgh

kukukupo: If a poverty-stricken, drug-addled meth-cooker burns down his house, suffers third degree burns, and then goes to jail; we don't blame the police, fire department, doctors, and defense attorneys for his predicament. But if that kid doesn't graduate high school, it's clearly the teacher's fault.

Crime happens. Fire happens. Illness happens. As for lawyers and coaches, where there's a winner there must also be a loser. People accept all these realities, until they apply to public education.

Welcome to the difference between kids and adults.


The problem here is that the parents are much more responsible for failures than teachers. Parents are not sufficiently accountable in our society.

So, how long until parents fire a teacher for teaching evolution in science class?

tenpoundsofcheese: Portia: Am I allowed to fire students who act like assholes during class? I might agree to this if I had the ability to remove any kid who is making life a living hell for his/her classmates.

Detention.
How does that work?

It doesn't.

tenpoundsofcheese: accountability = bad.

listening to your customers = bad

Both are good. School divisions need strong systems for acquiring, developing and maintaining quality staff. Parent feedback should be a part of this. Firing people based on the whim of a lynch mob led by a scorned parent is not the way to achieve "accountability".



tenpoundsofcheese: Portia: Am I allowed to fire students who act like assholes during class? I might agree to this if I had the ability to remove any kid who is making life a living hell for his/her classmates.

Class size and makeup can make a huge difference in the functioning of a class. Teachers often talk about clamping down on the ringleader - the person without whom the circus won't function. I've seen classes where a single students absence makes the classroom unrecognizable from a previous day. Maintaining control gets more difficult when you have multiple ringleaders in a class (think whack-a-mole).


Detention.
How does that work?

Not well at all. I've seen kids do detention every week for a year.

A huge mistake in evaluating the motivation of a grade school kid is to apply your sense of reasoning or an adult sense of reasoning to it.

The punishment model isn't even much of a deterence for many adults who commit crimes knowing that there are lengthy sentences that apply,


HypnozombieX: So what do you think will happen when you have an institution in control whose primary mission is not education but profit margin?

Oh wait I know
"YO MAN, i GOT MY DEGREE IN WIDGET REPAIR IN LIKE 2 WEEKS, IT WAS SOOOO EASY AND MY MASSIVE LOANS WERE PAID OFF IN NO TIME."... "your results may vary"


For faculty evaluations at the University level I've heard that positive evaluations correlate well with grades given and inversly with the difficulty of the class. I can't imagine that this is much different with grade school.


Morrius: Turning now to the News of the Future section of the paper... Huh, there's a severe teacher shortage in Florida and property taxes are going up. Wonder how that happened.

This would presumably only impact the public school system. The rule would likely not apply to charter schools since you can fire the whole school by taking your business elsewhere. Charter schools might even choose to "fire the customer" (you and your child don't like our teachers and are disruptive to our operation - go away).


When I hear people complain that teachers are overpaid and underworked I usually repond with "You should quit your job and take up teaching." The typical responce is "You couldn't pay me enough to do that!"

I misread "snowflakes an A" as "Schizandrol-A"

/looks like i should hit the gym in about 26 minutes.

This one's pretty clear.

1. Allow parents to privatize "failing" schools.
2. Cut education funding.
3. Invest in charter school companies.
4. Profit.

Earpj: Reverend Monkeypants: Why is it that supposedly liberal crap like this always comes from Florida or Texas?

I'm in Texas. The kids are getting a new standardized test this year. The STARR instead of the TAKS (which my kids call the "retarded monkey test").
At a school meeting about it the other night, the 4th grade reading teacher, apologized that the test is soo hard for the poor little Snowflakes. There were kids there.
If they know that their teacher expects them to fail, maybe they won't even try.

/Don't really know where I'm going with this.
//Just made me angry.

Yeahhhh that's no way to set a precedent. Self-fulfilling prophecies, anyone?

Thank you, Earpj. I see where kukukujo got his/her talking points. A teacher once taught me that, when you borrow someone's words verbatim, you acknowledge it as a quote and show the source.


That said, I thank GoldSpider for this voice of reason:

Any chance that both sides are over-simplistic and that the solution is somewhere in the middle?

/just my two cents

qorkfiend: This one's pretty clear.

1. Allow parents to privatize "failing" schools.
2. Cut education funding.
3. Invest in charter school companies.
4. Profit.

Are you not familiar with how charter schools are funded? Hint: charter /= private

Reverend Monkeypants: Why is it that supposedly liberal crap like this always comes from Florida or Texas?

Because it just an excuse to find a way to dismantle 'liberal' public schooling and have the public pay for religious schools.

Gough: qorkfiend: This one's pretty clear.

1. Allow parents to privatize "failing" schools.
2. Cut education funding.
3. Invest in charter school companies.
4. Profit.

Are you not familiar with how charter schools are funded? Hint: charter /= private

So what's the point of converting a public school to a charter school?

Portia: Am I allowed to fire students who act like assholes during class? I might agree to this if I had the ability to remove any kid who is making life a living hell for his/her classmates.

Its called the"ninety-eight two" rule. Two percent (or more) of all students are the problem students who require ninety-eight percent of the teacher's time and attention.

/I like China's model.
//If kids don't try in school they're placed in the factory or on the farm.

RedPhoenix122: HB 1191 would give parents power to create a reform plan if their child's school is failing; with enough signatures, fire teachers and administrators or turn the school over to a charter company; move their child out of a classroom if their teacher receives low ratings, and move them into a virtual classroom

This is bad, this is real bad.

Nailed it. This is just an attempt to undermine the public school system. And make a few select people rich in the process.