Unions Prevent Kids from Learning in L.A.

Publius Forum ^ | 09/04/10 | Warner Todd Huston

[Mobile Vulgus]

The L.A. Times has been publishing a great series about how the city's schools have been dropping the ball on education. Specifically, the Times points out that the L.A. schools district has had at its disposal stats that could have helped it to engineer a better education policy for its students but has ignored these stats. Why have they ignored these stats? Fear of unions.

The Times has a database of the effectiveness of nearly 6,000 L.A. area teachers. These findings, the Times informs us, were based on a method called "value-added analysis. It is a method that is beginning to be used to rank teachers and help administrators design a more effective education for kids all across the country.

The Times also says that the L.A. school administrators had this info all along and never used it. Why would that be? (my bold below)

L.A. Unified has had the underlying data for years but has chosen not to analyze it in this way, partly in anticipation of union opposition. After The Times' initial report this month showed wide disparities among elementary school teachers, even in the same schools, the district moved to use value-added analysis to guide teacher training and began discussions with the teachers union about incorporating data on student progress into teacher evaluations.

That's right, fear of the recalcitrant unions that are more interested in making sure that teachers are unaccountable and cannot be questioned. Unions that are more interested in fat pensions and rich benefits and are less interested in the education of our kids...

Read the rest at Publiusforum.com...

[Mobile Vulgus]

These government wimps fear unions more than they love teaching kids!

[InABunkerUnderSF]

I looked at the database, at least as much of it as they will let us see. From all appearances it looks like in LA County all the teachers are just a little above average!

/sarc I mean what's the problem? /endsarc

[rockinqsranch]

“These government wimps fear unions more than they love teaching kids!”

Wondering where (location) within the LA Slimes this was published. I think that the fact the LA Slimes published this article is more news than the news itself.

[FrdmLvr]

Theoretically, you're right. It's true, the unions don't have as much of an interest in educating as they do in protecting teachers' jobs. However, education is a two-way street. The kids have to WANT to do the work. My experience with inner city kids is that while some of them do want to succeed, many, many more of them treat school as some sort of teen or pre-teen drop-in center. I have heard this so many times in school that I had to start writing kids up for it because of the attitude and because it's racist: "Why you actin' so white?" Kids who raise their hands, try to participate always get labeled by the other kids. Last fall, we had one kid who left our school to attend a suburban school to play ball for them. When he came back a few weeks later I asked him why he was back. He said, and I quote: "Aw. It ain't no fun over there. No one likes to have fun, they just all serious and everything." You can lead a horse to water.....

[goldi]

Someone once told me that you can’t give someone something that they don’t want. They don’t want an education, so why try to force it on them? It doesn’t matter in the long run if they attend school or just stay home. The results are the same.

[Del Rapier]

Unions tend to view schools as either some sort of private club,a racket or a business.

If these kids can do themselves a favor by learning not to subsidize Unions their doing themselves a huge favor.