Why do the voters keep falling for this crap?
For the first time, Gov. Corbett has issued a formal statement on Philadelphia’s school-funding crisis, saying he is “committed to finding a solution … that is focused on students and is fiscally responsible for taxpayers.”
His statement came minutes after Daniel Denvir of City Paper published a leaked poll, conducted by a prominent national Republican polling group, Public Opinion Strategies. The poll of Pennsylvania voters concludes that Corbett can increase his popularity — and chances for re-election — by taking on the Philadelphia teachers’ union, especially on the issue of teacher seniority.
PennCAN, a chapter of a national education reform organization that emphasizes school choice and “better measures of teacher effectiveness,” paid for the poll, said its executive director, Jon Cetel.
Among other things, the poll asked more than 600 respondents whether they supported proposals that the School District is asking for in contract negotiations with the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers — using “performance” rather than seniority in assigning and transferring teachers, giving principals more say in who teaches in their buildings, and ending automatic raises for extra years of service and additional degrees or certifications.
“My organization is about being a pragmatic organization finding a way to achieve our goal,” Cetel said. “We want more funding for Philadelphia schools, and we think a winning political strategy is putting political pressure on the governor by showing him there is a strong appetite for funding if it’s accompanied by fair reforms.”
Cetel said that the poll, which oversampled voters in the Philadelphia suburbs, “came back even stronger than anticipated” on the issue of teacher seniority. It said that 82 percent supported “a proposal that would allow Philadelphia’s public schools to assign and transfer employees based on performance, not based on seniority of the individual.” Eighty percent also supported a similar statement, saying principals should have more say in who teaches in their classrooms.
Nobody– n-o-b-o-d-y–likes a person who “they think” can’t be fired. “Teacher senority.” It’s the job of the Teachers Union to explain to the very dumb general public that teachers can and do get fired all the time. They should also explain who the seniority system works. A dumbass teacher isn’t going to become the principle, or even keep their job, just because they’ve been employed the longest. It’s really unfortunate that our public education system has failed us. But by taking the bottom half of high school graduates into teachers colleges each and every year we shouldn’t be surprised that it has. Teachers salaries should be doubled and maybe we’d get the top 20% each year.
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It’s a sad commentary, basically. If a majority of people get their jollies through supporting efforts to tear down their fellow peers in the 99% group, rather than support each other and try to make things better for each other, then we are just doing the doing 1%’s work for them.
For free. As usual.
And I don’t suppose any of this discussion of education would ever focus on a re-learning of some of the basic skills we once had, but have been forgotten, to survive in the real world we are going to face in the near future.
No. I didn’t think so. We are still going to be geared “to get a good job, get a good education”, when the demand for those “good jobs” will be falling through the floor.
What we really need is the University of Critical Thinking and Free-Lancing.