Public Schools, The Teacher's Union, Obama, and The DNC hard at work...............
........hiding the decline once again.
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Atlanta Could Have Averted Its Cheating Scandal If It Had Listened To Its Local Teachers Union | ThinkProgressAFT President Randi Weingarten provided the following statement to ThinkProgress: “The governor’s investigation found that Atlanta Federation of Teachers was the first to expose cheating in December 2005, but the union’s complaint was ignored and sadly, subsequent whistle-blowers in the district were punished and silenced.
The FEA is just as bad, if not worse.
Google "Pat Tornillo" and see what you find.
I'm for reasonable collective bargaining rights as much as the next guy, but people need to understand -- unions can abuse power just as much as corporations and governments.
please explain what it was the atlanta teachers' union did which is found inappropriate
You can't look at this in a vacuum. The line of most union teachers across the nation is secure tenure. Georgia eliminated its tenure system in 2000, which is when this scandal began to take root.
In the absence of firm tenure footing -- in other words, actual standards by which to evaluate teachers and disperse money -- these teachers decided it was okay to pad test scores and literally change answers. These are the kind of people that tenure reform seeks to root out. In other words, these are BAD TEACHERS that were going to be protected by union tenure. And please don't tell me that the standards were "impossibly high," because I would beg to differ.
These are the teachers, and yes the administrators too, that people wanted out of the APS when the reforms were passed.
Now, states like Michigan are afraid to hold their teachers accountable because they don't want a scandal of this magnitude on their hands.
you seem to be quite confused about this
read the OP's cited article
this was management which conspired to manipulate its student test data
management intimidated the teachers into participating
while teachers can and do form unions in georgia, they are not recognized for purposes of negotiation. the union is effectively the ombudsman for teachers' issues
it is beyond foolish to attribute this wrong doing to any georgia teachers union
the atlanta teachers union was the entity which identified this fraud; unfortunately, they took it to the (senior) management official who oversaw the fraud
without having a union available to protect them from being fired for refusing to cooperate in the management led fraud, the teachers were intimidated into cooperation...uh huh...and why do you think they manipulated this data? Because they were afraid of losing their jobs vis a vis the 2000 tenure reform. Why were they afraid? Because they very tenure they defended in 2000, the opposition to merit pay, etc, etc.....it was because they knew their kids couldn't pass these tests. The teachers are not the innocent cogs oppressed by the big bad administrators here. This is institutional. People love to complain about how American kids are failing this and that, but as soon as the state actually starts to hold teachers accountable, people raise a stink about "unrealistic targets" and "formulaic education." It's like clockwork.
That one local chapter of the AFT filed a complaint in 2005 and then just brushed it off, so now you want to make it seem like unions blew the whistle? This is the same union that wanted to marginalize the CRCT's importance from the beginning, and now they're the victims when it comes to cheating on it? I'm not buying it at all.
without having a union available to protect them from being fired for refusing to cooperate in the management led fraud, the teachers were intimidated into cooperation
Across Atlanta Public Schools, staff worked feverishly in secret to transform testing failures into successes.
A state investigation found former Atlanta schools superintendent Beverly Hall and her top aides either ignored or destroyed evidence of test cheating across the district.
Investigation into APS cheating finds unethical behavior across every level | ajc.com
Unions: Teaching quality and bargaining | The Economist... Only 5 states do not have collective bargaining for educators and have deemed it illegal. Those states and their ranking on ACT/SAT scores are as follows:
South Carolina – 50th
North Carolina – 49th
Georgia – 48th
Texas – 47th
Virginia – 44th
If you are wondering, Wisconsin, with its collective bargaining for teachers, is ranked 2nd in the country. ...
your reading comprehension indicates you may have attended school in georgia
Moderator's Warning: |
your reading comprehension indicates you may have attended school in georgia
Georgia is one of the states which does not negotiate with unions. certainly teachers can join a united organization which attempts to effect change in their professional interests. but it is georgia which is able to ignore the voice of the teachers union
here is an economist excerpt to make my point
Apparently yours does too, since you completely ignored the argument about teachers opposing the 2000 reform in the first place. I realize that collective bargaining and striking are illegal in Georgia. That doesn't really mean anything, as I will explain below. My point is that they trashed CRCT as a means of weeding out bad teachers and then cheated to fulfill quotas once the law was passed -- in part because of administrative stupidity and in part because BAD teaching was finally exposed. They didn't just cheat because the pressure was put on these "poor educators." I know southern education far too well to believe them when they say that. The problem is that too many kids still can't pass a test that any 3rd grader should be able to do with ease. The reason that the 2005 allegations were hushed up isn't because the poor teachers were jackbooted and ignored. It's because, ultimately, the union didn't care that much. It was only when the discrepancies became obvious on paper that the governor's office got involved at all.
A ridiculous point, attempting to argue that collective bargaining and the right to strike as the only things that matter in this particular case. They're not "able to ignore" them any more than they can ignore a police union or a firefighter union within the same state. In fact, they historically haven't. You clearly know nothing about Georgia or its school system. I do, even though I have never attended public school there. So please educate yourself before you post.
http://gae2.org/pdf/gov/historicalaccomplishments.pdf
Teacher Salaries By State | Average Salaries For Teachers | Beginning Salaries For Teachers | Teacher Raises | TeacherPortal.com
Georgia is one of the better states in the country for a teacher's salary. Without collective bargaining. Just because they don't have it, doesn't mean they haven't been just as, or MORE effective in getting themselves benefits.
Incidentally...Wisconsin? One of the very worst.
your reading comprehension indicates you may have attended school in georgia
i mentioned the georgia union was not recognized by the state of georgia but served the role of ombudsman, elevating the teachers' concerns with a common voice, in the hope that the georgia officials would listen
georgia is one of the states which does not negotiate with unions. certainly teachers can join a united organization which attempts to effect change in their professional interests. but it is georgia which is able to ignore the voice of the teachers union
here is an economist excerpt to make my point
Unions: Teaching quality and bargaining | The Economist
a public union monopoly conspired together to create an enterprise dedicated to making themselves look better at the expense of the public and those they were supposed to be serving? I'm shocked!
CP, you're working too hard to blame this on the union. This is more the fault of high stakes testing, that really doesn't favor education or children. Remember, I told you years ago cheating would be the result. :coffeepap
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