<p>Teachers are going to fork over more of their hard earned money to the unions to pay for this election campaign. The California Teachers union is taking $60 each year for the next three years from each teacher to pay off the debt. But this is what you voted for.</p>
<p>
I’ve actually supported this kind of approach before. But it would require the creation of safe zones, and real consequences for parents, teachers, and students. It would be a rehab project, as well as an educational one, and everyone would have to check in, and toe the line.</p>
<p>
I know, that is why I didn’t vote for him. But I have to admit your honesty is refreshing.</p>
<p>If you look at the number of years states have for teacher tenure most have two or three years, some have one (Connecticut) and only two have five. Tenure isn’t a life time job it is a guarantee of a process for being let go. </p>
<p>I don’t mind paying an extra $60 to protect my students. The Governor has a record of borrowing from students and not paying back. Without unions, the greedy would own the airways…I noticed the chamber of commerce said they would not let their members opt out of their political funds.</p>
<p>The Governor said he would represent the people and all he has done is to run around the country raising money to try to undo Prop. 98 which is an attempt at restoring all the funding lost over the past two decades. Wherever you live, chances are California spends less per pupil in their public schools.</p>
<p>Imagine he lost even though the ever popular President and Senator John McCain campaigned for him. How did the President help the Republican candidates in New Jersey and Virginia? Sez something eh!</p>
<p>Do you want to make inner city schools more successful, hire more counselors and social workers to help the families and don’t forget to pay a living wage to help reduce poverty.</p>
<p>I’ll go kluge one better regarding the leave California bit - I hearby grant California the right to secede from the US. After rejecting all the common sense initiatives on their ballot, it is clear that they have no desire but to be an under-educated, impoverished state. Given the result of the San Francisco anti-military initiative, it doesn’t sound like they really want to be part of the US either. </p>
<p>Oh, and B, not to interrupt your gloat fest, but I heard some interesting statistics concerning the Virginia and NJ governor races: the VA gov-elect won with the same margin that Gov Warner won by 4 years ago - hence no ground gained there by the Dems. In NJ, Corzine won by a narrower margin than the Dem governor from 4 years ago - so the Dems actually lost ground in NJ.</p>
<p>“Imagine if other professions such as nurses or firefighters had tenure and you couldn’t fire them for incompetence. Teachers keep their jobs no matter how bad they are and it is shameful.”</p>
<p>Actually, firefighters are under a similar system once they’ve passed their probationary period. So are nurses, if they work for a municipal hospital, or for a state hospital. They can be fired for incompetence, as can teachers. </p>
<p>My high school principal once bragged to me that he had fired six tenured teachers. </p>
<p>Tenured teachers, and other public employees below the executive level who have passed through a probationary period, can’t be fired without cause, and are entitled to due process. </p>
<p>It doesn’t protect them from lay-offs, by the way.</p>
<p>My 7th grade English teacher, who took a personal interest in me for which I will forever be grateful, was fired twenty years into his teaching career for “submitting illegible lesson plans.”</p>
<p>California is neither under-educated nor impoverished. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, California ranks 5th in average annual salary and 11th in the percentage of residents over 25 with a B.A. or higher. These are surprising numbers given California’s significant demographic challenges. Either California is doing something right, or educated, upwardly-mobile people from other states are moving here anyway.</p>
<p>As a native Californian who has lived in other parts of the country, I’m used to the cliched California-bashing exhibited in this thread. Often, this attitude is a reactionary response to the imposing social, cultural, and demographic forces that crop up in California and often foretell the nation’s future.</p>
<p>Spoonyj, California ranks 46th out of 50 in elementary and middle school education. California is failing our students.</p>
<p>I’m with Kluge. California is just dreadful - wildfires, droughts and floods at the same time, earthquakes nearly every day, race riots, overcrowding, outrageous real estate prices, unemployment, crummy schools, high taxes, a cultural wasteland full of shallow, vapid flakes. Every bad thing you’ve ever heard about California is TRUE, and any good things you may have heard about us are all lies.</p>
<p>So don’t even THINK about moving here. If you do you’ll regret it (and so will I).</p>
<p>Oh, we Californians have no desire to leave the union. We’re just going to start exporting some surplus Blue voters to punk the GOP in Ohio, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, Iowa, West Virginia, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Florida, and the other reconstituted Confederate States of America.</p>
<p>I am just against the whole “legislate by initiative” idea. What a terrible way to make laws!</p>
<p>ellemenope you are so right, it was a proposition that allowed the voters to limit the role of real property taxes in our state and since then the state has dropped in per pupil spending compared to other states and that has led us to Socals’ observation that our average student achievement is so low. A few years ago, the citizens of California passed a proposition to improve the funding for schools, but this Governor borrowed from that program promising to pay it back and then reneged. The promise was posted on his web site under press releases and may still be there.</p>
<p>Californians do pay taxes but if you are living in a million dollar house that you purchased 20 years ago in California your real property taxes are unrealistically low. I believe the same is true for stores and malls.</p>
<p>The Governor said this election would be “Judgement Day” and I think the peoples ruling is clear. He didn’t have to force us to have this expensive election, he could have stayed in Sacramento working with the legislature instead of running all over the country fundraising, but he thought if he could raise enough money he could buy the advertisements to trick the people. Legilsate by initiative is a bad idea, Gov.</p>
<p>Ah, Californians…so fickle in their affections…</p>
<p>It all sounds so fun, but perhaps it all gets a bit tiring after a while:)</p>
<p>Mr. B states: “the state has dropped in per pupil spending compared to other states and that has led us to Socals’ observation that our average student achievement is so low”</p>
<p>The low student achievement in California is due to liberal education policies, not lack of funds the Whole Language disaster, social promotion, and lack of accountability from teachers to name a few.</p>
<p>Throwing taxpayer money at the problem is not the answer. Unfortunately, California voters are satisfied with the status quo so our education system will not improve no matter how much money is spent.</p>
<p>Ellemenope, I agree: the initiative process has become a way for the governor and legislature to abdicate responsibility. But the larger problem is the gridlock that has three causes:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>A system that requires a 2/3 supermajority for all tax and budget measures, thereby granting great power to ideological extremists on either side. (Like V.D., Prop 13 is the gift that keeps on giving.)</p></li>
<li><p>Term limits, which has shifted the balance of knowledge and power to the lobbyists and bureaucracy.</p></li>
<li><p>The Democratic-Republican Mutual Incumbent Protection Act, aka redistricting, which is done in such a way that virtually all leglislative seats are very safe for one party or the other, resulting in officeholders who are more worried about primary challenges from their flanks of their own base, resulting in very liberal and very conservative legislators who don’t have to respond to moderate voters, who are thus pretty much disenfranchised throughout the state. (N.B., I <em>almost</em> voted for Prop 77, finally decided that submitting redistricting plans to the voters was unwieldy. I like Iowa’s non-partisan redistricting plan a <em>lot</em>.)</p></li>
</ol>
<p>“The low student achievement in California is due to liberal education policies, not lack of funds the Whole Language disaster, social promotion, and lack of accountability from teachers to name a few.”</p>
<p>Yup, those Dick and Jane books, the basis of the education of the vast majority of the folks on this list, are a real disaster. (For those youngsters not in the know, they were the first program of “whole language” readers to be used in the U.S.)</p>
<p>I believe Dick and Jane were part of the “look and say” method</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr029.shtml[/url]”>http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr029.shtml</a></p>
<p>That’s what they called “whole language” before they actually invented the term. It confused lots of teachers too, when they introduced it. We had Dick and Jane, but the teachers who didn’t understand how whole language worked, then had us talking about the duh oh guh named suh puh oh tuh, and his sidekick puh oo fuh fuh. And it went on for months! (I already knew how to read - which they were quick to take credit for - and would have thought I’d fallen into an insane asylum, if I’d known what an insane asylum was.)</p>
<p>Wow, Mini…you are going waaaaaaaaay back! </p>
<p>I was talking about more current teaching philosophies. When my oldest was learning to read, phonics had been completely thrown out and there was no structured way of learning to read. Fortunately for him, we had already taught him to read, but many children weren’t so lucky and spent years struggling with basic reading skills. His kindergarten teacher told us she wasn’t allowed to teach phonics.
Liberal educators had decided phonics wasn’t important and many students suffered long term damage as a result.</p>
<p>TheDad, Minnesota is still blue last time I checked. Red is seeping in from elsewhere but it hasn’t taken over yet.</p>
<p>
That’s o.k. I lived in Minnesota when Jesse Ventura was governor – it made for some interesting conversations with out-of-state friends and relatives.</p>
<p>The thing about California (I grew up in So. Cal) is that it is such a collection of different communities. The Bay area is a very different place than the middle or southern portion of the state. I haven’t lived there in almost 15 years, but when I visit (yearly) I’m amazed at how it’s changed in some ways but stayed so much the same in others. My experience has been that there is something to poke fun at in every place. California just has everything on a larger scale.</p>