[mdittmar]

Hundreds of disenchanted teachers are preparing to flee 70 city schools that are to be privatized or otherwise transformed under sweeping reforms planned for the fall, union officials said Friday.

And that's a bad thing?

[Fish out of Water]

index bump

[goodnesswins]

Hey....we need to threaten this EVERYWHERE!!!

[johniegrad]

Finally, meaningful change in the public schools.

[johniegrad]

Twenty teachers at the Luis Munoz-Marin School

A public school in Philadelphia named for the former governor of Puerto Rico???!!!

[jackbill]

Let's all say "GOOD RIDDANCE"!!!

[LarryLied]

Bet the DMV is flooded with teachers applying for jobs.

[skr]

Ahhh, so only those who are truly dedicated and those who really need the job will be left. A win-win situation.

[friendly]

Jeez, disempowering the corrupters of children. Spoiled creeps who work 180 days a years, out at 3PM, get a sabbatical off an entire year with pay, tenured. The only groups more loathsome are lawyers, bureaucrats, and incarcerated sociopaths.

What a shame.

Buh Bye, guys. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

[Slyfox]

I have to admit, I don't know very much about theses for-profit outfits but I do know that one of them, I think it was Edison, uses a top notch reading/phonics program that can virtually guarentee children will not suffer from learned diabilities. Can anyone elaborated on the record of these for-profit outfits?

[Lancey Howard]

Philadelphia's school system, the nation's seventh-largest, has 265 schools and more than 200,000 students and a budget of $1.7 billion.

Okay. I like to do the math. The math says that Philadelphia's school system spends $8,100+ per student.
And these are the results:

The majority of its students score in the bottom quarter on state reading and math tests and the district has predicted a budget shortfall this year of $107 million.

And this pathetic pack of teachers union scum has the gall to insist on keeping the status quo?
These crybabies should get "transferred" right out of their jobs.

[longshadow]

"We have been getting an overwhelming number of calls from teachers who are concerned about being able to transfer out of schools being privatized," Jordan said. "They are totally demoralized."

Rats leaving the sinking ship.....

Note also the budget numbers: $1.7 billion annually, for 200,000 students, um..... let's see, carry the seven, .... um, $8500/student/year spent by the Philly school system. Guess they can't blame their poor performance on a lack of funding, can they?

[Zipporah]

"They are totally demoralized."......They don't know what an excellent staff we have, or how dedicated we are."

They are demoralized by the reform and NOT by the dismal failure of the system they are now a part of??

Well it's apparent that being dedicated means ZILCH as far as performance is concerned.. AND they are totally disillusioned if they believe they have an excellent staff .. apparently NOT!

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

Hundreds of disenchanted teachers are preparing to flee 70 city schools that are to be privatized or otherwise transformed under sweeping reforms planned for the fall, union officials said Friday.

Looks like the plan is working straight away. I would like to see this and similar approaches spead throughout the country. It is unfortunate that things have to get SOOOO bad, that the incompetents ruin the lives of so many, before corrective action is demanded by the public. Here in Kalifornia the downward spiral has been under way for at least twenty years. Education has movbed from substantial subjects (e.g. the three R's and the sciences) to social indoctrination. High school graduates can't tell you what twenty percent of one hundred is, but they are sure that we should'nt drill in ANWR. It's just despicable.

The school system here is VERY well funded. But many schools are in disrepair and ill-equipped. Many teachers are unqualified and under-payed. A large and growiung share of funding goes to the large and growing staff middle managers. And these are the ones who are defining the socialist curriculum. And when test scores shine light on the problem, their answer is to "dumb down" the tests (under some murky logic about differences in cultures affecting performance, blah blah blah). Oh, students have great self-esteem, but they don't know how to think. As a hiring manager I see this ALL the time. It's going to take a lot to turn this mess around. Competition (against the government schools)in the education business is a must.

[PianoMan]

Maybe they'll hire real teachers in their place.

[TopQuark]

Hundreds of disenchanted teachers are preparing to flee 70 city schools Penn. should make that day a permanent state holiday.

[sarasmom]

Good riddance.

Do the same here in Florida.Get rid of the "government teachers" such as my child endured in KINDERGARDEN preaching "vegatarian" principles to "save" mother nature.

Save our public school systems from agenda based curriculums.Require/LET the teachers TEACH reading, writing,arithmetic,history,science etc.STOP making our schools a surrogate for family (government) values.

God bless our school teachers.God D@mn the politics in public education.Between the unions and the politicians,public education has become an extremely ugly joke in this country.The only ones hurting are the children.

It took a concerted effort on both sides to get to this ugly mess.STOP THE MADNESS.

Basic education has nothing to do with political agendas.Get politics out of education. Let the teachers teach the subjects.Don't expect them to brainwash our children to a specific ideology.How did we get to the point that basic education is controvercial? How our children are socialised, is the parents job, not the school teacher's.

Sorry for the rant, but I think it is the height of stupidity to have allowed partisan politics to drive education in the USA.

[ValerieUSA]

Why would the new administrators want to keep the same teachers in the schools that were failing? Their flight is good news, saves them the trouble of firing them.

[FITZ]

The teachers leaving on their own is much better than them demanding to be given jobs or have their seniority respected by the private companies taking over. I'm sure the better teachers will reapply for their jobs and be hired, the rest should look for jobs outside the teaching field.

[Jeff Chandler]

An ed school professor was walking down the street in New York when a tourist approached him and asked "Excuse me, sir. Can you tell me how to get to Carnegie Hall?" The Prof replied "Through non-authoritative facilitation tailored to your individual learning style with emphasis on process over content."