The massive lie machine directed at public school teachers has one objective, break the power of teachers unions.
Why? So that there is one less voice for fairness in our fading democracy.
How? Get rid of seniority rights and permanent status or tenure.
How does that break the unions? The same way it has always been done. It allows for the firing of everyone who goes to a union meeting. The firing of all the leadership. The firing of anyone who complains. (Walmart is the most famous example of a corporation regularly using this tactic.)
No seniority means getting rid of older teachers who are more expensive and replacing them with new young hires more easily intimidated. No permanent status or tenure allow a culture of fear to be fostered in districts. No teacher is willing to speak out and risk losing their job and endangering the financial health of his or her family.
It is a clever and cunning plan and it is working. Repetition and the absolute suppression of other points of view means only stories about evil older teachers keeping their jobs at the expense of wonderful young teachers are found in the media.
If I am a young teacher I might think how great! Except when you want to buy a house. What happens in five or six years? Will the now "not so young" anymore teacher still have a job to pay the house payments? Because in a few years young cheap teachers get to be older expensive teachers that need to be laid off. No teachers job is safe. No salary schedule means anything if no teacher can ever teach in a district long enough to get to the top.
Two articles to read below. The first (in blue) by a rational ordinary American defending public school teachers. The second (in red) is a hit piece by a small cog in the massive lie machine attacking teachers. This massive lie machine will attack any group that gets in the way of ever more money taken from average Americans and being transferred to billionaires. This second one was written by "the bought and paid for" Union Tribune editorial staff. If they do not write as they are told, the billionaires do not buy advertising for their corporations in the newspaper. No advertising, no money for salaries for UT editors. So they salute, say yes sir, and write what the billionaires like.
The last quote in red at the end of this post is from the Manhattan Institute is one of the vast foul network of tax free "think tanks" dedicated to writing propaganda against teachers and workers that can be used by 'opinion makers' on AM conman radio, FOXnotNews, and in 'editorials' by local newspapers like the Union Tribune (which busted its own union about twenty years ago).
Juniority Rights
By Claus von Zastrow on May 25, 2010
Is teaching a young person's game? That seems to be the prevailing belief in some quarters.
Teachers with lots of experience cost more, and that makes them easy targets in a deep recession. Some pundits have taken this issue well beyond complex debates over seniority rights. They're pushing for something new: Call it juniority rights.
A growing number of bloggers and think tank folk are arguing that we should let older teachers go because they're older. Teachers with juniority don't merely cost less than their more experienced peers. They also have that Teach for America (TFA) cachet. An ideal school system, it seems, would regularly push the old-timers out.
Some are suggesting that we let teachers stay in their jobs for 5-10 years, max.
And just how would we sustain this brave new world? I'm not seeing many answers. Some industries do just fine with a steady stream of younger workers.
(Entertainment, marketing, and summer amusements come to mind.) But teaching, a job held by some four million people? Please.
So can we blame experienced teachers for feeling a bit insecure? When the number of years on your resume or the amount of gray in your hair becomes your chief liability, you may have reasons to worry. The debate over seniority rights is complicated, and it has a long history. Those who advocate layoffs merely on the basis of age aren't helping matters.
And what happens to the soul of a profession like teaching if experience becomes a dirty word? What message do we send to people who want to commit their lives to teaching and to children? TFA suffers from the mostly unfair charge that their recruits are using schools as a pit stop on the way to more remunerative work. Do the champions of juniority rights want to add fuel to that fire? As it is, far too few people see teaching as a career on par with other careers.
So let's not muddy the debate over seniority with calls for juniority rights. It's wise to remember that we'll all be older someday.
http://www.publicschoolinsights.org/juniority-rights
Now for a word from the Massive Lie Machine:
UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL
Keep the best teachers Battles in Sacramento, Washington over seniority
By Union-Tribune Editorial Board,
Wednesday, May 26, 2010 at 12:04 a.m.
Teachers unions know how to fight on multiple battlefields at once. When they’re not trying to kill education reform at the state level, they’re looking to Washington and trying to stifle it in Congress.
The new front in the reform movement is teacher seniority, and the role it plays in deciding which educators are laid off during severe budget cuts. Currently, seniority plays a big role in such decisions. Young teachers with less experience lose out to older teachers who’ve been on the job longer.
In Sacramento, the California Teachers Association is working overtime to kill Senate Bill 955, proposed by Sen. Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar, which would remove the handcuffs from districts and allow them to consider teacher effectiveness as well as tenure in making decisions about layoffs. The bill gives younger teachers who work their hearts out a fighting chance to keep their jobs, despite the best efforts of powerful unions to ensure otherwise as they try to save older teachers with more experience.
Meanwhile, the issue of teacher seniority is rearing its head in the U.S. Senate. That’s because of the arrival on the scene of a proposed piece of federal legislation called The Keep Our Educators Working Act. Proposed by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa , and Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the bill would provide $23 billion to school districts to avert hundreds of thousands of teacher layoffs.
Think of it as a government bailout for teachers and the unions that look out for their interests. The debate in Congress isn’t just about whether we should spend that money. It’s also about whether there should be strings attached, and whether one of the strings should be a requirement that those districts that still have to make cuts to disregard teacher seniority and just try to retain the best teachers. That sounds like common sense, which explains why some members of Congress are having so much trouble grasping the concept.
Harkin has rejected the idea of inserting that condition in the legislation. That might have something to do with the fact that the nation’s two largest teachers unions oppose bringing teacher seniority into this discussion. They like the system the way it is and want to preserve it.
It’s never easy for school districts to decide which teachers to let go and which to keep. And it only makes the process more difficult when we strip administrators of the discretion to weigh a variety of factors in making such decisions. It shouldn’t automatically come down to seniority. Performance, enthusiasm, creativity and energy all have to count for something. Administrators should have the power to consider those factors.
Harkin should reconsider his position and allow the language on seniority to come into the funding bill. And lawmakers in both Sacramento and Washington should keep as their top priority not simply the preservation of some jobs over others, but reform of the entire system.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/may/26/keep-the-best-teachers/
Here is more from the Massive Lie Machine about Seniority:
In Teacher Layoffs, Seniority Rules. But Should It?
http://www.wbur.org/npr/127373157
------------------------------------------
Charter backers Education Reform Now's ads blast seniority-based layoffs
BY Rachel Monahan
DAILY NEWS WRITER
Wednesday, May 12th 2010, 4:00 AM
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2010/05/12/2010-05-12_charter_backers_ads_blast_senioritybased_layoffs.html
-------------------------------
Schwarzenegger Backs Bill to End Seniority-Based Layoffs
Civil Rights Groups Argue Current System Harms Poor, Minority Students
By The Associated Press
http://www.edweek.org/login.html?source=http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/04/28/30california.h29.html&destination=http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/04
/28/30california.h29.html&levelId=2100
------------------------------
Teacher Seniority Rules Challenged
With Tens of Thousands of Layoffs Looming, Government Officials and Parents Want to Change the 'Last in, First out' System
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703315004575073561669221720.html
-----------------------------
Mass Teacher Layoffs + Seniority Rules = Bad News For Kids
February 04, 2009
By Marcus A. Winters
"Contrary to what you may hear from experienced teachers' representatives, however, there is basically no relationship between seniority and teaching ability. A wide and scarcely disputed body of research finds that teachers' additional experience stops paying off after about year three."
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/miarticle.htm?id=3868
Why? So that there is one less voice for fairness in our fading democracy.
How? Get rid of seniority rights and permanent status or tenure.
How does that break the unions? The same way it has always been done. It allows for the firing of everyone who goes to a union meeting. The firing of all the leadership. The firing of anyone who complains. (Walmart is the most famous example of a corporation regularly using this tactic.)
No seniority means getting rid of older teachers who are more expensive and replacing them with new young hires more easily intimidated. No permanent status or tenure allow a culture of fear to be fostered in districts. No teacher is willing to speak out and risk losing their job and endangering the financial health of his or her family.
It is a clever and cunning plan and it is working. Repetition and the absolute suppression of other points of view means only stories about evil older teachers keeping their jobs at the expense of wonderful young teachers are found in the media.
If I am a young teacher I might think how great! Except when you want to buy a house. What happens in five or six years? Will the now "not so young" anymore teacher still have a job to pay the house payments? Because in a few years young cheap teachers get to be older expensive teachers that need to be laid off. No teachers job is safe. No salary schedule means anything if no teacher can ever teach in a district long enough to get to the top.
Two articles to read below. The first (in blue) by a rational ordinary American defending public school teachers. The second (in red) is a hit piece by a small cog in the massive lie machine attacking teachers. This massive lie machine will attack any group that gets in the way of ever more money taken from average Americans and being transferred to billionaires. This second one was written by "the bought and paid for" Union Tribune editorial staff. If they do not write as they are told, the billionaires do not buy advertising for their corporations in the newspaper. No advertising, no money for salaries for UT editors. So they salute, say yes sir, and write what the billionaires like.
The last quote in red at the end of this post is from the Manhattan Institute is one of the vast foul network of tax free "think tanks" dedicated to writing propaganda against teachers and workers that can be used by 'opinion makers' on AM conman radio, FOXnotNews, and in 'editorials' by local newspapers like the Union Tribune (which busted its own union about twenty years ago).
Juniority Rights
By Claus von Zastrow on May 25, 2010
Is teaching a young person's game? That seems to be the prevailing belief in some quarters.
Teachers with lots of experience cost more, and that makes them easy targets in a deep recession. Some pundits have taken this issue well beyond complex debates over seniority rights. They're pushing for something new: Call it juniority rights.
A growing number of bloggers and think tank folk are arguing that we should let older teachers go because they're older. Teachers with juniority don't merely cost less than their more experienced peers. They also have that Teach for America (TFA) cachet. An ideal school system, it seems, would regularly push the old-timers out.
Some are suggesting that we let teachers stay in their jobs for 5-10 years, max.
And just how would we sustain this brave new world? I'm not seeing many answers. Some industries do just fine with a steady stream of younger workers.
(Entertainment, marketing, and summer amusements come to mind.) But teaching, a job held by some four million people? Please.
So can we blame experienced teachers for feeling a bit insecure? When the number of years on your resume or the amount of gray in your hair becomes your chief liability, you may have reasons to worry. The debate over seniority rights is complicated, and it has a long history. Those who advocate layoffs merely on the basis of age aren't helping matters.
And what happens to the soul of a profession like teaching if experience becomes a dirty word? What message do we send to people who want to commit their lives to teaching and to children? TFA suffers from the mostly unfair charge that their recruits are using schools as a pit stop on the way to more remunerative work. Do the champions of juniority rights want to add fuel to that fire? As it is, far too few people see teaching as a career on par with other careers.
So let's not muddy the debate over seniority with calls for juniority rights. It's wise to remember that we'll all be older someday.
http://www.publicschoolinsights.org/juniority-rights
Now for a word from the Massive Lie Machine:
UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL
Keep the best teachers Battles in Sacramento, Washington over seniority
By Union-Tribune Editorial Board,
Wednesday, May 26, 2010 at 12:04 a.m.
Teachers unions know how to fight on multiple battlefields at once. When they’re not trying to kill education reform at the state level, they’re looking to Washington and trying to stifle it in Congress.
The new front in the reform movement is teacher seniority, and the role it plays in deciding which educators are laid off during severe budget cuts. Currently, seniority plays a big role in such decisions. Young teachers with less experience lose out to older teachers who’ve been on the job longer.
In Sacramento, the California Teachers Association is working overtime to kill Senate Bill 955, proposed by Sen. Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar, which would remove the handcuffs from districts and allow them to consider teacher effectiveness as well as tenure in making decisions about layoffs. The bill gives younger teachers who work their hearts out a fighting chance to keep their jobs, despite the best efforts of powerful unions to ensure otherwise as they try to save older teachers with more experience.
Meanwhile, the issue of teacher seniority is rearing its head in the U.S. Senate. That’s because of the arrival on the scene of a proposed piece of federal legislation called The Keep Our Educators Working Act. Proposed by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa , and Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the bill would provide $23 billion to school districts to avert hundreds of thousands of teacher layoffs.
Think of it as a government bailout for teachers and the unions that look out for their interests. The debate in Congress isn’t just about whether we should spend that money. It’s also about whether there should be strings attached, and whether one of the strings should be a requirement that those districts that still have to make cuts to disregard teacher seniority and just try to retain the best teachers. That sounds like common sense, which explains why some members of Congress are having so much trouble grasping the concept.
Harkin has rejected the idea of inserting that condition in the legislation. That might have something to do with the fact that the nation’s two largest teachers unions oppose bringing teacher seniority into this discussion. They like the system the way it is and want to preserve it.
It’s never easy for school districts to decide which teachers to let go and which to keep. And it only makes the process more difficult when we strip administrators of the discretion to weigh a variety of factors in making such decisions. It shouldn’t automatically come down to seniority. Performance, enthusiasm, creativity and energy all have to count for something. Administrators should have the power to consider those factors.
Harkin should reconsider his position and allow the language on seniority to come into the funding bill. And lawmakers in both Sacramento and Washington should keep as their top priority not simply the preservation of some jobs over others, but reform of the entire system.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/may/26/keep-the-best-teachers/
Here is more from the Massive Lie Machine about Seniority:
In Teacher Layoffs, Seniority Rules. But Should It?
http://www.wbur.org/npr/127373157
------------------------------------------
Charter backers Education Reform Now's ads blast seniority-based layoffs
BY Rachel Monahan
DAILY NEWS WRITER
Wednesday, May 12th 2010, 4:00 AM
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2010/05/12/2010-05-12_charter_backers_ads_blast_senioritybased_layoffs.html
-------------------------------
Schwarzenegger Backs Bill to End Seniority-Based Layoffs
Civil Rights Groups Argue Current System Harms Poor, Minority Students
By The Associated Press
http://www.edweek.org/login.html?source=http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/04/28/30california.h29.html&destination=http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/04
/28/30california.h29.html&levelId=2100
------------------------------
Teacher Seniority Rules Challenged
With Tens of Thousands of Layoffs Looming, Government Officials and Parents Want to Change the 'Last in, First out' System
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703315004575073561669221720.html
-----------------------------
Mass Teacher Layoffs + Seniority Rules = Bad News For Kids
February 04, 2009
By Marcus A. Winters
"Contrary to what you may hear from experienced teachers' representatives, however, there is basically no relationship between seniority and teaching ability. A wide and scarcely disputed body of research finds that teachers' additional experience stops paying off after about year three."
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/miarticle.htm?id=3868
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