<p>CNP: I remember when my kids’ middle school did this to some kids. I couldn’t understand why my son’s friends (smart twin girls) were not “given approval” to go on to Algebra I with him for the 8th grade. My son told me that the school had a “scoring sheet” that was divided up into 4 parts and each part was worth 5 points. Each part represented a different thing, such as “pre-alg grade”, teacher recommendation, classroom behavior & “year end test”. So for each of the 4 sections a child was given a grade of 1 - 5. The sections were added up and if you didn’t get at least a 12, then you had to repeat Pre-Alg in the 8th grade. Luckily, some parents signed waivers so that their kids could move on anyway. The twins parents didn’t. This meant that they had to take Alg 1 as Freshmen (instead of 8th grade) To make up for lost time, the girls took a double load of math as Sophomores (Alg 11 & Geometry) and have had straight A’s.</p>
<p>When my niece was in middle school, she had a social studies teacher who insisted on calling her “Purple Person” (which was “play” on her last name). She hated it and told him so (So did her parents). For THREE years, she had him for a teacher and he continued to call her that name. Finally, when it came time to move on to High School, she was elated, “No more Mr. Rodriguez!!! yea!!!” On her first day of high school she learned that Mr. R. had MOVED TO HI School and she was assigned (again) to his class. ENOUGH, said her parents and demanded that she be moved to another teacher’s class. It was done. Only some one with some kind of sick mentality would do what he had done to her.</p>
<p>I think that public schools don’t want to deal with kids who don’t fit the mold. Anybody who is at either end of the spectrum is extra trouble. I just finally got tired of trying to demand individual IEPs and police their enforcement.</p>
<p>jlauer95, it is my suspicion that some nasty teachers have an axe to grind with some one in their past, and now that they are in a position of authority they are getting their chance to even a score.</p>
<p>lkf: I think you’re right. It’s one thing for teachers to be annoyed at “bratty kids” that take time away from everyone. BUT, its another thing for them to “grind their axe” with “A students” who are just going to school to do what they are supposed to do – learn and learn well.</p>
<p>wow, this is so disappointing -_-</p>
<p>it’s too bad that education pays so little. I bet that if it paid better, then talented people might be more inclined to work at schools instead of hedge funds.
<em>sigh</em> education is really too important to have so many incompetent people working in it.
teachers who inhibit learning (like telling the parents to have the kid watch more TV? *** o_O) should really get fired and go work at mcdonald’s or something.</p>
<p>let’s see…</p>
<p>some of our local middle schools had the clear backpack rule, but that was abandoned. </p>
<p>One of our local high schools had a principal who was arrested for smoking crack. A teacher described him as requiring all his teachers to have a minute by minute breakdown of thier lessons for each day, and if they were off they would get in trouble.</p>
<p>some of our local middle schools required that all shirts and sweatshirts be tucked in. </p>
<p>doctor’s notes were needed to allow students to bring any medication, including tylenol and advil, on field trips. it’s been changed so that parent’s notes are only needed now. it’s becuase the doctor’s complained. </p>
<p>my school’s pretty good, so there’s not much complaints about teachers. i think the worst complaint we can have is just a teacher’s too hard, or doesn’t teach well.</p>
<p>some teachers allow test corrections, but i’ve only heard of it for people who fail and you can only get it to be just passing. </p>
<p>i’ve had a teacher who wouldn’t give a grade lower than a 65 for major tests, simply becuase it was impossible to recover from low scores on those, ebcuase they were worth a lot. unless you turned in something blank, then no.</p>
<p>so basically, all the teachers are pretty good.</p>
<p>i have heard teachers complain about parents, like one who’s student was in middle school taking a high school math and had an 89, and how this was “unacceptable”</p>
<p>now subs, those i know stories about.</p>
<p>one sub who made the classes fill out sweepstakes forms</p>
<p>a lot of subs who are tyrranical and don’t allow any talking, even though the teacher does</p>
<p>some subs who simply cannot teach the subject. </p>
<p>there’s one sub who always talks about WWII and MREs, no matter what class he’s sent to teach. He drew a picture of the beaches of normandy on a teacher’s blackboard- in marker. </p>
<p>oh yea, there’s the complaints of male teachers favoring female students more, but we (students) don’t really care as long as they don’t take points away from guys.</p>
<p>Teaching is the only profession I can think of that promotes mediocrity through unionization. We have a music teacher who was approached by some other teachers while he gave extra assistance to students during his lunch hour (my child was there)and told that he wasn’t permitted to help. That would set a precedent for other teachers to help during their free time and their contract didn’t require that. Unbelievable.</p>
<p>One of our kids’ prior schools considered “chapstick” as “medicine” and was therefore banned!!! Not even a “parent’t note” would work!!!</p>
<p>One private school banned the HOME use of any and all “hair products” (hair spray, get, mousse to keep hair in place). So, pony-tailed girls had fly-aways and moms couldn’t rely on a little spray or gel to keep hair in place. I can understand banning of ridiculous “sharp” spikes in hair or mohawks, but this was ridiculous. We would “get around” it by using “micro mist” hair spray because it was hard to detect.</p>
<p>The principal would RUN HER HANDS thru anyone’s hair that she SUSPECTED was using a hair product!!! My kids only went to that school for one year. Micro-managing principals are the worst!!! </p>
<p>Same principal wanted the female teachers to do “thong underwear” checks because they were banned.</p>
<p>it’s too bad that education pays so little. I bet that if it paid better, then talented people might be more inclined to work at schools instead of hedge funds.</p>
<p>Im wondering how much these districts pay per hour
Since the education union is one of the most powerful in the country- I would have to say that benefits and pay in many districts is fairly good. For example- my husband who has worked in his field roughly 30 years, and at his current company for 22 years if he retired tommorow, he can expect a pension of $30 x years worked, contrast that to a public employee, including teachers who recieve 80% of wages- they both earn about the same $60,000 but he works about 50 weeks a year and often three weekends in a row. ( he also has an inspector that inspects his work- haven’t seen many principals who keep that close of an eye on their teachers)</p>
<p>I don’t think it is the pay that keeps people out- I have seen some fantastic teachers, many in private schools with less pay and benefits.
But in a situation without incentives for performance, some do the minimum</p>
<p>
My post, along with many others, disappeared into cyberspace when the server burped. So I’ll post again. Education pays okay, and there are millions of teachers out there, many who work harder than you can even imagine, and put up with every kind of kid, including some with problems that you cannot begin to imagine. I find this thread title offensive, and I’m getting a little tired of the underlying “digs” that certain posters keep sliding in there. Thread title: “Are they stupid or do they think we are stupid.” In education, we learn to address student’s behaviors and not the student. Some teachers and some administrators make decisions that may seem arbitrary and stupid. That doesn’t make the teachers and administrators stupid. Nor do administrators or teachers deliberately set out to create rules or policies because they think parents are stupid. Sometimes they just make bad decisions, or don’t thoroughly think through the ramifications of their decisions. So… if you want to keep providing anecdotes, go ahead. Lord knows there are poor decisions and incompetent personnel in all areas of the workforce, not just in the education field, and we could start threads for all of them. But think a little before you cast such a wide brush on all the teaching field, and next time you want to start a thread similar to this, how about title it, “Poor decisions and policies of teachers / administrators”, instead of calling educators names? </p>
<p>P.S. By the way, not every state has a teacher’s union.</p>
<p>Emeraldkitty: I guess “pay for performance” is another topic to go into, but it is rife for logistical problems. Who do you test when 1/3 of you class has only been with you for the last 3 weeks? How will it change the collegial atmosphere of the school if some teachers will be penalized (by not getting performance bonuses) because the principal always places the distruptive, hard-to-handle, slow learners in their classes because he/she knows that they are the only teachers who can handle such kids? Etc, etc, etc, I don’t know anyone on the staff at my school that would work harder, care more, or educate better if they were given a bonus for it. They might, however, teach more to the test (if that’s even humanly possible), and Lord knows, that would be an awful thing!</p>
<p>Teachers pay and working conditions vary substantially between different areas of the country. My sister (upstate NY) gets about $65K/year and has a workload of 18 students in her fourth grade class. She gets an aide to assist her because she has 5 special-needs students of those 18. My niece, in the same district, teaches four sections of middle school science, each with around 22 students (88 students total) for $50K. </p>
<p>If I were working full-time (my sister and I started teaching the same year), I would be making about $45K (before the optional supplemental contract that requires an extra ten days of work and pays about $5000). My teaching load as a high school teacher would be 160 students (5 sections of 32). </p>
<p>It may not be obvious that a higher teaching load adds substantially to the workload–preparation is substantially the same, after all–but imagine an English teacher grading 160 essays instead of 90, a chem teacher supervising 32 students instead of 22 in the lab (and grading that many more lab reports).</p>
<p>
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<p>I never meant to suggest that there are no competent teachers, only that there is insufficient incentive to attract more competent people to the profession. (I’ve certainly had several amazing teachers in my experience in public school, along with plenty of mediocre ones) Making arbitrary and poorly thought out decisions can have a really significant impact, especially when impacting the young people who will be the future of the country. While there is incompetence in all professions, I think that perhaps education is sufficiently important that it should not accept it so easily. And often, the problem stems not from the teachers but primarily from management; inefficiency and bureaucracy are accepted since there’s no incentive to get rid of them.</p>
<p>regarding performance-based pay, surely there are other metrics besides test scores. (besides, is teaching to the test so bad, if it’s a <em>really good</em> test?) rewarding excellence is an important part of attracting talent.</p>
<p>I would like to see more districts and schools encourage their teachers to become board certified-
I think NCLB actually is going in th e right direction - with criteria for having teachers being qualified to teach in their subject- too many times teachers are placed in areas where they arent qualified- for example- my daughters school had a spanish teacher who had taken it in high school- because he was a long term sub ( school was trying to find permanent teacher but lots of district hoops) it didn’t matter that he wasn’t certified to teach high school students- but only had K8 certification.</p>
<p>They also have my sister in law teaching japanese, who has never taken a japanese course in her life. She didn’t choose to teach it, but the school decides where you teach</p>
<p>I dont agree with using exit testing as a requirement for graduation
If curriculum is meaningful, if the child passes the class and isn’t merely pushed ahead, then they should know what they need to know.</p>
<p>I dont like that bilingual students are held to same standard- regardless of when they began learning english, I don’t like that in our state students with IEPs are not given the accomodations that they would recieve in college or the workplace to pass the tests.</p>
<p>I don’t like that the wonderful teachers who have 15 years experience are paid less than the medicore teachers with 25 years experience who brag that they “teach the same as the day they first began”
@@
I also think that 32 is way too large a classroom-for one teacher- I have been advocating in our district to allow for parapros who are trained in tutoring for disablities, to reduce the ration and allow more support for the students.</p>
<p>( students or parents and other volunteers actually do the grading- at least in some schools- which I don’t feel is appropriate)
Some districts do use financial incentives- not only the board certification but in Denver they are looking at test scores of students and giving bonuses for good results.</p>
<p>But one of the most aggregious problems is inability to get rid of harmful teachers or just plain lazy teachers.
The principal that my daughter had at her last school was awful. ( she was new to district, but not to education) She was an interim principal, placed at the school, when the district informed us that the pool of principals didn’t have anyone suitable. An interim principal would give the school district a chance to do a wider search. ( the district process was left till so late, that other districts had already placed the better candidates) This principal was out of the building more than she was there. She attempted to cut programs that the community had supported for 20 years, she undermined long term teachers and brought in teachers diametrically opposed to the schools philosophy. She refused to do her work or get needed help. THis school was the very last school in the 100 school district to submit a budget for the next year and held up the entire process.</p>
<p>When the teachers and parent group opted to do a search instead of hiring her as a permanent principal, she taunted that the principal union would find her another job, that they couldn’t fire her.
It was one of the more unprofessional situations that I had seen in my life. She was correct however, she was placed at a school with a high needs, high level of ESL students, where the parents don’t know enough English yet to know where to complain.</p>
<p>THANK GOD every state doesn’t have a teachers union!! Those states have a chance!!!</p>
<p>My post which addressed the title of this thread was also lost. I don’t have the time right now to completely redo (perhaps if someone received it in an email notice, they can copy/paste it and repost it for me.)</p>
<p>If you look at the first post, the 20/20 show that was titled, “Stupid in America” was the inspiration for this thread. That TV title was not an indictment of every student, and this thread is not an indictment of every teacher. Titles ( the TV one and this one) are selected to attract attention. Teachers should realize that is a title’s purpose.</p>
<p>I am disgusted that there are teachers who aren’t demanding that their unions help THEM get rid of bad teachers because THEIR reputations (the good teachers) are being hurt by them. Therefore, it is difficult to feel “bad” for them when that happens. (Parents are demanding; why aren’t the teachers & their unions??? I am disgusted that there are teachers that aren’t demanding that their unions help them get rid of dangerous and disruptive students since their lives and their students’ lives are in jeopardy. I am sure that there are <em>some</em> but until teachers use their numbers and demand such reforms, their unions will just be happy to collect their dues and pay their union leaders high salaries.</p>
<p>To put this in perspective: When my church (Catholic) went thru the priest scandals (which represented a small percentage of priests), the good priests were angry at their bishops for allowing their vocation to be hurt because the few bad ones had been protected. People had a right to be angry about those bad priests. They had a right to speak up. They had a right to be heard. Do teachers that “dislike this site” realize that they are acting like those bishops who wanted to keep things “hushed up” and not talked about??? </p>
<p>More to the point, did the teachers who dislike this site, feel that the victims of bad priests should not be heard???</p>
<p>It doesn’t have to be this way, good teachers need to “band together” and demand that reforms take place so that their profession is not injured by the inadequacies of the few that create so much drama and frustrations in their schools. Since there are far more good teachers than bad teachers, the “good guys” should win.</p>
<p>
I think the poster or posters who addressed this issue had their posts disappear into cyberspace also. This “not in my backyard” mentality doesn’t work. (Or maybe it does… those that don’t like it send their kids to private school or homeschool.) Tell me again where you are going to send all these disruptive and/or dangerous children? A boarding school in the netherlands? A penal colony in Australia? You want them out of your kid’s classrooms, but the law says that they have to be educated and that they are entitled to a free and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment. So contact your elected representatives and lobby them, but don’t blame the teachers for this issue! I addressed in another disappearing post that our school district has been reprimanded for identifying too many special education students. We are a majority minority urban disctrict with many kids from chaotic homes with issues of generational poverty - yet somehow our kids are not supposed to have more emotional issues or be more needy than the kids from upper-income stable homes. We’ve been told point-blank not to bother filling out the paperwork to refer a child for emotionally disturbed, speech or other special ed testing - but we are persevering and doing in anyway. It is next to impossible to remove a child from a regular ed classroom if he/she does not have an identified special ed. designation. So the angry, hostile scissor throwing child can be sent to in-school suspension, or an out-of-school center for short periods of time - but then he/she comes back to the classroom, because that is the law.</p>
<p>The district has a duty to identify those with a learning disability. I do not understand why you should not refer them/fill out paperwork.</p>
<p>I believe that the child with a disability must be educated in the LRE which is appropriate. It is not always appropriate in the regular classroom, and sometimes it is, with supports for the child and classroom teacher (like a teacher’s aide or removing the child from the classroom during math/reading, foreign language etc). Also, LRE does not mean the child may effect learning or safety of other students. When this is an issue the law does not protect the child’s placement in the LRE.</p>
<p>Yes, parents need to lobby their legislators to get dangerous kids out of the classrooms. Now if only they can count on the teachers union not to spend $100 for every $1 the parents spend trying to get such laws passed.</p>
<p>Again, there are many, many great teachers. There are just some teachers and some school administrators that drive parents crazy.</p>
<p>Well! First I found this “gem” on page 1:</p>
<p>Schools are often too dumb to figure out that their silly rules are easily “jumped over” by using some smarts.
One school made a rule that parents couldn’t bring their child’s “left at home” homework to school, so parents started signing their kids out of school, handing them their homework, and then signing them back in!!!
Or… they would put their child’s forgotten homework in a lunch sack and bring it to school and have the school give it to their child!!! </p>
<p>“Dumb” IMHO would refer not to the schools, but to the foolish parents who connive to baby their students and deliver their homework to school…what does that teach their child about responsibility? If my own child forgets her homework, that’s her lack of responsibility showing, and she will need to suffer the school’s consequence. As a teacher, I appreciate parents letting their children find out about the consequences of disorganization NOW. Someday, when their children are in college, they will be glad their children had such experiences early on and learned from them. (I also speak as the mom of a college freshman)</p>
<p>THEN I began reading page after page of “stories.” I think OP must have kept a journal to have so many to post. What really “got” me, and what I felt led to respond to, was the implication that OP is “disgusted” that teachers like myself aren’t ranting and raving to have “bad” teachers replaced. First of all, I’m not in a union. Second, I am so busy working hard for my students, checking work, planning engaging lessons, and spending extra hours outside of class to do so, besides trying to take care of my family, that I DO NOT HAVE TIME to go on a tirade against other teachers. </p>
<p>It’s nearly midnight. Just finished lesson plans, recorded grades, and I’m going to catch a few hours of sleep before going back tomorrow morning to do what I love doing - teaching children.</p>