The GOP keeps asking, where's Obama's sequestration plan?

@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

Exactly what "radical reforms" are you talking about. You need to tell us how, what, and why. Generalities don't produce reform - especially "radical" reform.

I find it odd that you, a master of sweeping generalities and often offensive condemnations of others, and one who when challenged usually resorts to pasted excerpts from often biased sources, should accuse me of that. I don't "have to" do anything.

I was very clear that I don't believe the problem with our public schools is one of underfunding. They are among the most expensive in the world, yet all measures of the quality of their output marks them as seriously deficient. I was equally clear that the radical reform I had in mind would involve greater accountability for teachers and administrators, more parental choice in school selection and other like factors. You should conclude from the above that I favor breaking the power of teacher's unions and the use of vouchers to stimulate the creation of a competitive environment in education, one in which innovations and dedication which produce good results are rewarded and grow, and in which bureaucratic lassitude, tenure and self-serving unions get what they deserve.

2 Replies

@georgeob1,

You wrote,

Quote:

often biased sources

, you should be able to refute the claims made by credible sources of your own.

You still didn't provide solutions for our schools; just complained that they are the most expensive.

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

I think the reforms you mention above may lead to a great deal of disruption for students involved, which is a serious problem. Schools - and the students who attend them - rely upon continuity and redundancy, which is diametrically opposed to the idea of a competition-based market for schooling. In practice, running a school system in the same fashion you would a business would be a disaster for the students involved.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

Getting rid of unions is the GOP's goal to further increase the spread between the rich and middle class incomes.

Our country "depends" on the middle class to keep our economy solvent.

Teacher salaries are not high by any standard, except for the GOP who's known to cry wolf at every turn when it comes to unions.

Quote:

All K-12 Teachers
Median Salary by Job
Job
National Salary Data (?)
$0 $16K $32K $48K
High School Teacher $43,947
Elementary School Teacher $40,373
Middle School Teacher $42,118
Special Education Teacher, Preschool, Kindergarten, or Elementary School $41,459
Special Education Teacher, Secondary School $45,026
Special Education Teacher, Middle School $42,650
Secondary School Teacher $41,112

Country: United States | Currency: USD | Updated: 24

1 Reply

@H2O MAN,

H2O MAN wrote:

Obama's sequestration is nothing more than liberal lies and threats... it's a scam.

Contrary to what that asshole, H2O, said, entitlement programs are mostly exempt from sequestration. Thus, the sequestration really hits discretionary programs really hard.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/09/14/the-sequester-explained/

0 Replies

@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

I think the reforms you mention above may lead to a great deal of disruption for students involved, which is a serious problem. Schools - and the students who attend them - rely upon continuity and redundancy, which is diametrically opposed to the idea of a competition-based market for schooling. In practice, running a school system in the same fashion you would a business would be a disaster for the students involved.

Cycloptichorn

The disruption of a failing system is not necessarily a bad thing. Human life has always had significant elements of competition and very likely always will. Shielding students from it is not a good preparation for what will follow.

Businesses are run in many different ways, depending on the products or services involved and the wants of their customers. There is no single model for it, and I didn't suggest that schools "should be run like a business".

Instead I suggested that those that don't produce a good product should face some consequences for it, and that parents (and students) should have an element of choice in the schools they wish to attend (or avoid), and options to do so.

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@georgeob1,

More than any drastic change like you propose, all our schools need to do is provide students who are not interested or prepared for college is to provide internship programs like they provide in Germany. No drastic changes are needed.

0 Replies

@georgeob1,

You'll run into the same problem with the education market as you do with the health-care market: a lack of transparency and inability to properly judge competing products means that there is no true free market for consumers to choose from, at all. Sounds nice in theory, doesn't work in practice.

I think it's also worth pointing out that a wide variety of studies have shown that so-called 'charter' schools produce no better test scores or results for their students than public schools do - with the exception of the highest-end schools that cater to the very wealthy.

In the past, the 'options to send their kids to other schools' has been an argument forwarded by those who expressly wish to dismantle or defund the public school system. Right now, parents DO have an option with the schooling of their kids, in pretty much every state: they can send them to private school or they can home-school them. What they can't do is send them to a private school or home-school and refuse to pay taxes to support local schools. I don't have a problem with this at all, as these taxes (usually property taxes) are intended to support the community, not one's own children.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

Getting rid of unions is the GOP's goal to further increase the spread between the rich and middle class incomes.

Our country "depends" on the middle class to keep our economy solvent.

Teacher salaries are not high by any standard, except for the GOP who's known to cry wolf at every turn when it comes to unions.

Mostly you are just beating dead horses here, countering points and assertions I didn't make.

Unions are dying fast enough on their own.Whenever and wherever union members are given the option to pay or not pay their dues, they opt out of the unions in large numbers. Our union dominated industries have all failed and gone overseas. At ther same time, our public service/government unions have prospered, accumulating far too much political power and manipulating govewrnments to serve their own ends and not those of the public. Unions survive only with government enforces monopolies on employment. I am opposed to all such monopolies.

I never claimed that teacher salaries were too high. It's their refusal to accept accountability and restrictive, retrograde work rules that I oppose.

You are parroting Obama with your references to the "middle class" - a term which he uses frequently but very imprecisely.

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@georgeob1,

Some commercial unions are dying on the vine, but the GOP is enforcing the killing by hanging. Their state legislators and governors are making them illegal in their states. The GOP is attempting to do the same thing at the federal level.

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@cicerone imposter,

From money.msn.

Quote:

Where unions stand in 10 industries
Once known as the champions of the middle class, US unions are now in decline.

Labor unions were once celebrated as champions of the middle class. Most standard benefits enjoyed by workers today, including paid holidays and overtime, health benefits, fair wages and a five-day work week, are in place because of organized labor.

But, as Labor Day 2012 arrives, globalization and changes in the labor market are helping to drive the labor movement's decline. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in 2011, only 11.8% of wage and salary workers were union members, compared with 20.1% in 1983.

Though their numbers are shrinking, unions continue to fight for their members by tackling crucial issues, including living wages for workers, retirement security, job protection and workplace safety. But do unions still have a place in the modern workforce? Read on to learn about where unions stand in 10 key industries.

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@cicerone imposter,

Imagine if the smartest people of our society were politicians instead of the moron convention we churn out year after year.

1 Reply

@JeffreyEqualityNewma,

Unfortunately, we have a bunch of kids running our government, and "we're" the ones who put them there!

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@georgeob1,

By the middle class, this is what "I'm" talking about; it's the class that used to be the majority in the US several decades ago.

Quote:

22 Statistics That Prove The Middle Class Is Being Systematically Wiped Out Of Existence In America

83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/22-statistics-that-prove-the-middle-class-is-being-systematically-wiped-out-of-existence-in-america-2010-7?op=1#ixzz2MFAdxto2

As unions disappear from our landscape, so does the middle class.

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

Quote:

83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.

Would that be the group that stole all this wealth, using the US military and governments, from the poor of myriad countries around the world, in the process slaughtering millions upon millions?

As Gob1 gets to lick the plates, he has a vested interest in lubing up and keeping his mouth shut. See where that gets you, CI. Aren't you getting a little sore?

0 Replies

@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

You'll run into the same problem with the education market as you do with the health-care market: a lack of transparency and inability to properly judge competing products means that there is no true free market for consumers to choose from, at all. Sounds nice in theory, doesn't work in practice.

I think it's also worth pointing out that a wide variety of studies have shown that so-called 'charter' schools produce no better test scores or results for their students than public schools do - with the exception of the highest-end schools that cater to the very wealthy.

In the past, the 'options to send their kids to other schools' has been an argument forwarded by those who expressly wish to dismantle or defund the public school system. Right now, parents DO have an option with the schooling of their kids, in pretty much every state: they can send them to private school or they can home-school them. What they can't do is send them to a private school or home-school and refuse to pay taxes to support local schools. I don't have a problem with this at all, as these taxes (usually property taxes) are intended to support the community, not one's own children.

Cycloptichorn

You sound a bit like someone who doesn't pay property taxes.

I believe there is a lot of data out there showing that charter schools are, like public schools, variable in their quality and output. However, I believe their measured efectiveness overall compared to their local public school alternatives is decidedly better. Additionally their general attractiveness to parents, where they are allowed such an alternative, is surely an indicator of something. The educational establishment (and unions) trot out the same old excuses - not enough funding; we have to take all the students, while they can give us their failures, etc. The public school system in most areas is stagnant and stale. It needs challenge and competition to reform itself. I don't want to "dismantle or defund" it, but I do want to see it perform better, and so far it has shown itself to be highly resistant to reform.

Who is "the community" with respect to public schools if not the parents of the children who attend them?

2 Replies

@georgeob1,

You wrote,

Quote:

I believe there is a lot of data out there showing that charter schools are, like public schools, variable in their quality and output. However, I believe their measured efectiveness overall compared to their local public school alternatives is decidedly better.

Quote:

California Charter School Finance in aNutshell
Source: Charter SchoolDevelopment Center(CSDC)
California's charterschools are fundedmuch like other non‐charter California public schools.
They receive funding from local property taxes,state education aid programs,the California Lottery,the federal government,fundraising, and othersources. They are prohibited from charging tuition, but may charge fees for certain items to the same extent as non‐charter public schools may.

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@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

Some commercial unions are dying on the vine, but the GOP is enforcing the killing by hanging. Their state legislators and governors are making them illegal in their states. The GOP is attempting to do the same thing at the federal level.

Your statement is entirely false. Unions are not illegal in any state. Indiana recvently became the nation's 23rd or 24th right to work state. These laws do not prohibit union efforts to organize workers or prohibit companys that want unions from having them. Instead it gives employees the right to keep their jobs without joining the union if that is their choice. In other states union membership (or at least dues paying) is compulsory and unions enjoy a government sdanctioned and enforced monopoly on employment in companies where they have a labor contract.

2 Replies

@georgeob1,

Not according this this article.
http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/news/local/teachers-unions-outlawed-in-some-states/nMpb2/

Quote:

By James Kelleher
MADISON | Thu Mar 10, 2011 6:06pm EST
(Reuters) - The Wisconsin state Assembly on Thursday approved sweeping restrictions on public sector unions in a stinging rebuke of the labor movement that critics fear will encourage other states to follow.

After a short debate, the Republican-dominated Assembly voted 53-42 to limit government union bargaining rights to wages only and impose a series of other restrictions. Four Republicans joined Democrats in voting against.

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

I think you are confused about unions generally and Goverrnment employee unions specificly. Forty years ago unions of government employees, both State & Local and Federal were a rare thing - except for Police and Firemen. Indeed until the early 1960 s Federal Civil service procedures explicitly prohibited labor union representation of Federal Employees, regarding such matters as an intrinsic, non delegable function of government. Even today Federal government labor unions are precluded from bargaining over wages and work rules. Just what these unions do for the dues they collect is something I don't understand, however most of it goes for political activity.

Similarly Sovereign states have unlimited powers to regulate and limit the representation of state employees by labor unions, and many use them to prohibit the prectice.

Wisconsin did not out outlaw state employee unions. Instead it made membership and payment of dues a matter of individual choice by the employees, ending the previous practice of forced membership and dues paying as a condition of employment. In addition it limited the issues over which the state and local governments are required to bargain with the unions. These limits are not nearly as severe as those currently in Force in the Federal government.

The stuff you posted has no effect whatever over unions operating in the private sector.

0 Replies

The GOP keeps asking, where's Obama's sequestration plan?

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