I can't believe you all you all fell for this idiotic trolling post.

My granmother started teaching in a one room school house in 1914 was she was 14 years old. She had around 20 kids most years and she taught all grades from one through eight. She had to leaver her job at 18 yrs old before she was allow to accept an invitation to go on a date with my grandfather. Things change in education just like everything else in life.

Californians just need to get Scott Walker out there vote him in as Governor. I heard he is looking for work and know how to deal with rowdy teachers and their unions.

Maybe the governor should just shut their whole state government down? Maybe call the teachers strike a state emergency demand get them what they want! Show them parents and people their not messing around..

Come on Muskrat you know that is how ya fix things.

Mac

Ok, I’ll bite. Was just reported on the news that the district the striking teachers are marching in, is 70% non-white. The reporter was adamant about the fact that this 70% get their meals at school as well as their education. The reporter then went on to wonder out loud, if the 70% were white, if indeed the district could and would find money to meet the demands of sriking teachers. So, you see my left leaning fellow trappers, the education system has indeed become a major part of the welfare system.

5 to 600,000 students in LA AND 30,000 teachers, you think a math teacher could figure out how to split up the kids for smaller class sizes. The US spends more money on Ed. than any country in the world, more money is not the answer.

Yup, figured.

https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/11/class-size-around-the-world/

Bring back the lash.For students,and teachers that get out of line.

‘Here we are on a rainy day, in the richest country in the world, in the richest state in the country, in a state as blue as it can be and in a city rife with millionaires, where teachers have to go on strike,” United Teachers Los Angeles president Alex Caputo-Pearl declared Monday. Here we are with another teachable moment in the failures of public union governance.

The 33,000-strong L.A. teachers’ union went on strike Monday as the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) slouches toward insolvency due to unaffordable labor contracts. Despite a putative $1.8 billion reserve, the district is spending about $500 million more each year than its annual revenues and will be broke within two years, which could prompt a state takeover and bankruptcy.


Los Angeles teachers earn on average about $75,000 per year—about $6,000 less than the statewide average—though compensation including health and retirement benefits exceeds $110,000. One problem is the region’s high housing costs make it harder to retain teachers while more and more money is diverted to benefits and pensions.

Health benefits consume about 15% of the $16,000 or so the district spends per pupil. Teachers can retire as early as age 55 and don’t have to pay a dime for health insurance until they qualify for Medicare and then receive subsidized supplemental coverage. Few government or private employers anywhere provide this perk.

Nearly all California school districts are also being squeezed by rising pension payments that the state Legislature has mandated to shore up the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (Calstrs). School district pension costs have more than doubled since 2014.

Recall that in 2012 public unions and Democrats championed a tax referendum to soak the wealthy—putatively to raise money for schools. Voters in 2016 extended the tax hike through 2030. Well, state K-12 spending has increased 70% since 2012, yet pensions have swallowed the tax windfall.

Thus, school districts across the Golden State are scrounging to keep the lights on. Last year San Francisco voters approved a $300 parcel tax on each home to fund schools. Sacramento City Unified warns it could go bankrupt this year barring cuts to worker benefits. Governor Gavin Newsom’s budget proposal last week would provide schools with modest relief by making a $3 billion payment to the Calstrs pension fund on their behalf.

But as LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner notes nearby, schools can’t spend money they don’t have. LAUSD has offered teachers a 6% raise over two years and to hire 1,300 teachers and support staff. The union is demanding that the district spend more no matter the district’s finances. Once higher pay and spending are in place, the union will then lean on the politicians to lobby for another tax increase via referendum in 2020. The tax-spend-tax-spend union ratchet never stops.

The union also wants to curb the growth of charter schools, which are a refuge for low-income and minority students. Only 22% of fourth-graders in Los Angeles scored proficient in math on the 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress compared to 31% in other large cities. A 2015 Stanford study found that students at charters in Southern California on average gained more than 50 days of learning in math and more than 40 days in reading each year over their counterparts at traditional schools.

Three years ago, former Democratic state Senate majority leader Gloria Romero launched a charter school in Santa Ana, which last year led the state in math academic improvement. She plans to open a charter in Los Angeles this year, but the union wants to stop her lest she embarrass the failing results in union-run schools. Behold the new regressive progressivism.

Appeared in the January 15, 2019, print edition as 'Unions in La-La Land.'

https://www.wsj.com/articles/unions-in-la-la-land-11547511666

The problem was integration. "Can't have a white teacher disciplining a black student". That was the beginning. Not that we should be segregated just these things should have been addressed before hand. Teachers need to have order and the authority to maintain it. When you are in a group no matter what they are doing, individualism should be reserved for your time.

Alaska has one of the worse public education systems in the U.S. IMO it would be criminal to send your children to it. People choose to do it everyday.

Just when you thought things couldn't get any worse.

"A national oversight body has revoked the accreditation of the University of Alaska Anchorage’s teaching degree programs, throwing the viability of hundreds of aspiring teachers’ degrees into question and casting an unflattering light on the university."

It sounds like it's all about the teachers and nothing about the students. Teachers are already receiving great pay and benefits unheard of in most other career fields but still want more, more , more. Meanwhile, they are apparently failing at their primary mission to educate kids to where they can be proficient in math and reading.

Non-union charter schools have always achieved better results than union-run public schools. Dumping billions more into public education does absolutely nothing for students. It just gives teachers higher salaries and better benefits.

But hey, "We're fighting for the students."

This is the part I always wonder about. $16,000 per student. Put 20 in a class room and that equals $320,000 per year. Give the teacher his/her $100,000 for 9 months of babysitting. Where does the other $220,000 go?

The "class size" issue is a joke.
A union teacher friend of mine told me everyone knows there will never be enough teachers to reduce class size to say 20 or less students.
It's just a ploy; teachers want to be paid additional money per student if their classes are larger than a predetermined size. More or less on a prorated basis. They don't really want smaller classes, the unions just want more money.

Hahaha ADC, that's exactly what I was thinking. This topic comes up about every month or so. It's interesting to hear everyone's opinion but in the end the conversation concludes like every other one.....lots of opinions, no solutions. Beatin' a dead horse here.

Here's a solution. School vouchers.

Special ed. laws have made it so that most schools have many students in classes with single digit numbers while others have 30 or more in most of theirs.

Yes. You shouldn't be forced to send your kids to failing public schools. Taxpayers are footing the bill and should have a say on where their money is being spent. Then there's the issue of public education churning out budding socialists.

School vouchers and the parent required to cover the transportation to the school of choice outside of home district.
One year commitment minimum to the school of choice.
An end to all school sponsored athletics.
Vocational exploration for a minimum of 1 year before tenth grade.
Alternate education, separate from general ed school for repeat disciline problems.
Career exploration centered ed in years 100 and 12.

Now, how to pay for this?

NEA position on vouchers from their website

"The Case Against Vouchers




The Educational Case Against Vouchers
Student achievement ought to be the driving force behind any education reform initiative. See what research says about the relationship between vouchers and student achievement.

Americans want consistent standards for students. Where vouchers are in place -- Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Florida -- a two-tiered system has been set up that holds students in public and private schools to different standards.

NEA and its affiliates support direct efforts to improve public schools. There is no need to set up new threats to schools for not performing. What is needed is help for the students, teachers, and schools who are struggling.

The Social Case Against Vouchers
A voucher lottery is a terrible way to determine access to an education. True equity means the ability for every child to attend a good school in the neighborhood.

Vouchers were not designed to help low-income children. Milton Friedman, the "grandfather" of vouchers, dismissed the notion that vouchers could help low-income families, saying "it is essential that no conditions be attached to the acceptance of vouchers that interfere with the freedom of private enterprises to experiment."

A pure voucher system would only encourage economic, racial, ethnic, and religious stratification in our society. America’s success has been built on our ability to unify our diverse populations.

The Legal Case Against Vouchers
About 85 percent of private schools are religious. Vouchers tend to be a means of circumventing the Constitutional prohibitions against subsidizing religious practice and instruction.

The Political Landscape
Each year, about $65 million dollars is spent by foundations and individuals to promote vouchers. In election years, voucher advocates spend even more on ballot measures and in support of pro-voucher candidates.

In the words of political strategist, Grover Norquist, "We win just by debating school choice, because the alternative is to discuss the need to spend more money..."

Despite desperate efforts to make the voucher debate about "school choice" and improving opportunities for low-income students, vouchers remain an elitist strategy. From Milton Friedman's first proposals, through the tuition tax credit proposals of Ronald Reagan, through the voucher proposals on ballots in California, Colorado, and elsewhere, privatization strategies are about subsidizing tuition for students in private schools, not expanding opportunities for low-income children. "

The problem is there are two solutions, the financially impossible solution and the politically suicidal solution. The third solution is only viable for your own children.