Posted on 05/18/2003 3:01:57 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Hope your new neighborhood's swell. Good to 'see' you. (^;
No, the Mafia doesn't hide behind our kids. They admit they are outside of the law.
If the FBI goes after them, Charlie Crist won't be too far behind. He's a great State Attorney General. He's championing prosecuting fraud and abuse against the average citizen.
Hope you're having a nice summer, mafree.
Meanwhile, Jeb still works 14 hours a day - and there's no 2K suites for him as a rule. He's a very normal, unaffected guy.
But, when other guys drop by, then he's right over here. Men! My landscaping is looking gorgeous. I've bought plants from every garden center in the area. It's really coming together. I need a freeper man to tell me what it really means when a guy calls a girl "dear". I can take it.
I can take anything after Clay Aiken was robbed of votes on American Idol. His mother couldn't even vote but Ruben Studdard's mom voted 200 times. There's a huge American Idol thread here at FR. Lots of Clay-maniacs.
Wary of political favoritism and unfair claims by parents, teachers bank heavily on union support and on tenure policies that promise job security, the survey says.
Such reliance comes even as teachers acknowledge flaws in the system: Only 14 percent said it was easy for their district to remove bad teachers, and 78 percent said their schools had at least a few.
Even as they feel like the targets of reformers, teachers also show some willingness to embrace change, such as paying higher salaries to those who put in more effort.
New teachers, in particular, show support for options such as charter schools and
alternative teacher certifications. "Their openness is quite stunning, given the fact that they feel unsupported -- not only by administrators, whom they believe they should be able to depend on, but also by parents, who they b
elieve are missing in action," said Deborah Wadsworth, president of Public Agenda. Teachers' views ought to matter to a lot of people, Wadsworth said. Parents link their children's success to teaching quality, and all states are under federal mand
ate to have highly qualified teachers in every core academic course by 2005-06. The study, "Stand by Me," covers testing, job performance and other crucial professional issues. Public Agenda surveyed 1,345 teachers after hearing from focus groups and experts.
The theme of frustration is no surprise, said Kathleen Lyons, spokeswoman for the National Education Association, which represents 2.7 million educators.
Beyond drastic state budget cuts, teachers are squeezed by a federal law that puts more emphasis on punishing poor-performing schools than providing help, Lyons contended.
"Teachers see time taken away to practice tests, to do the drill-and-kill exercises that suck the life out of learning. It's just not a happy time in public schools," she said.
Education reformers, however, say President Bush and Congress have appropriately demanded more of schools and provided choice for families.
"There is kind of a woe-is-me aspect to teachers when asked what they think of their lot in life, and a lot of that seeps through the data," said Chester Finn Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, one of four organizations that financed the study.
"I wonder if that isn't fed by their unions and a part of the culture of the profession, which is philosophically opposed to a lot of the reforms under way today."
More than eight in 10 teachers agreed that without a union, they would be vulnerable to abuse of power by school administrators. The same number said their working conditions and salaries would be much worse without collective bargaining.
Teachers also defended the protection of tenure but said it could be a ticket to complacency.
Most surveyed said they work in districts that offer tenure, which offers job security after three to four years, barring dismissal for just cause. Still, almost six in 10 teachers said tenure was no guarantee that teachers had proved themselves on the job.
Lyons, the NEA spokeswoman, said the union supports faster discipline reviews so that incompetent teachers will be removed and those unfairly charged will have their names cleared.
On the salary front, teachers typically are paid based on years of experience and level of education. More than 60 percent said they would support paying more to those who work in tough neighborhoods or who consistently get great job evaluations.
New teachers were most supportive of such ideas. That should open the door to fresh ideas, Finn said, such as allowing teachers to volunteer for performance-based pay scales.
The NEA says it backs such ideas as extra pay for extra work but opposes "merit pay." [End]
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