>>>>Who cares more and works more about the local school board election than the teachers unions?
>>>
>>>Great question.
>>>https://www.justice.gov/usao-nj/pr/former-hamilton-township-nj-mayor-sentenced-38-months-prison-extortion-bribery-money
>>>This woman was getting about $1million/year in commissions for insurance sold to the Hamilton Township school district.
>>>She was doing that in several townships.
>>>Not many teachers making that kind of money.
>>>She financed Caribbean vacations for school board members, etc, etc
>>>Do you suppose that she might have had a passing interest in school board elections?
>>>
>>>It's convenient to tar the unions.
>>
>>>In one of my management roles I dealt with some pretty tough unions.
>>>No union could ever match the power of management.
>>
>>Understood.
>>In private industry, management has the ultimate power.
>>
>>In the public sector, teachers unions in particular, how much power does management have if they can't even fire an employee?
>
>They can fire a teacher, but there's a process. Most parents aren't willing to do the work. Particularly, they're not willing to put their complaints in writing.
>
>As a parent, I was involved in getting two teachers out. In both cases, it didn't come to firing. The teacher in question was guided to retiring. (In both cases, these were teachers who'd once been effective, but for various reasons, weren't any more and weren't willing or couldn't do the work to be effective again.)
>
>I also watched our district work with some young teachers to get them from barely adequate to solid.
>
>>How independent is "management" when the union installed them in the job to begin with?
>>
>>In the California city I lived in, Orange, the school board kept turning down union demands for raises, saying they did not have the money.
>>The union pushed their own candidates in an off-year election and got a majority on the school board.
>>First thing they did was hire a consultant to study the feasibility of giving large raises to the teachers.
>>The consultant was paid good money, and sure enough, according to his study, the district could afford the raises.
>>
>>So, the school board voted the raises in, and the district promptly went broke.
>>
>>Meanwhile, the local elementary school was failing. Badly.
>>All the teachers kept their jobs, regardless of performance.
>>They kept those nice fat raises too.
>>Yay union!
>>
>>My father-in-law volunteered at our local elementary school after he retired.
>>He liked the kids, but he said all the teachers ever talked about was pushing the union.
>>
>>Later, we had to petition to send our girl to a school across town, because that local school scored 3/10 in the "No Child Left Behind" scale.
>>Unfortunately, there were plenty of children left behind at that school.
>>
>>We looked into private schools, but they were all religious and besides, I could not afford them, so, lucky us, we did succeed in our petition.
>>
>>In a nearby more affluent suburb, my sister and her husband tried and failed to petition to move their kid to a non-failing school
>>They were denied because it would upset the racial balance.
>>Hmmmm.
>>Obviously maintaining racial balance in a failing school is more important than, ya know, actually fixing the school.
>>
>>Fortunately, unlike me, they had enough money and enough religion to send their daughter to a private religious school.
>>
>>The scary part for us was we had to re-petition every year, so sooner or later our kid was going to go to that failing school.
>>Ultimately, we escaped and moved to Round Rock Texas with Exemplary schools.
>>
>>>>It's convenient to tar the unions.
>>That tar sticks so well because there is a lot of truth there.
>>See Detroit built cars from the "Malaise Era" to see how well forcing crappy overpriced products on people works out.
>>
>>This is the same pro-choice argument that Charter and School Voucher advocates make.
>>I experienced it firsthand.
>>
>>The ultimate question is, why do we damn the students from poor, often minority, families to such crappy choices?
>>It is not because we don't care about the poor students.
>>
>>Rather, we seem to care more about preserving those good union jobs than about the effectively racist act of sending our poor minority kids to failing schools.
>>Shame on us.
>
>FWIW, this was in the NY Times earlier this week:
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/12/nyregion/it-turns-out-spending-more-probably-does-improve-education.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0
>
>Also, heard this story as I was driving to my VFUG on Tuesday:
>
>https://keystonecrossroads.atavist.com/ontario-one
>
>I haven't had a chance to hear the other parts of this report, but it was intriguing.
>
>Tamar

Glad things are so rosy in Philly.

A valiant defense of unions, but I ain't buying it.
I would be surprised if the teachers unions were as weak in Philly as they are in Texas.

Here in Texas, my daughter ended up with one teacher we had been warned was mediocre.
She *was* trying, but this is not Lake Wobegone where all the teachers are above average.
This teacher was then caught cheating on the state student achievement tests.
Here is the long drawn out process that followed:
* She was fired.
* Immediately.
She was not reprimanded.
She was not transferred to another school.
This could not happen with the strong teachers unions in California.

More pay and generous pensions for teachers that can't be fired - it just is NOT a recipe for good results.
That is the recipe I saw in California, and it produces poor results at great cost - it stinks.

Teachers unions are just as insidious as the unions that destroyed Detroit.
Exact same scenario - crappy results at much higher costs.

We cannot afford to throw away the futures of our poor children of all colors by failing to educate them.
It is a tragic and ultimately racist outcome.