"Waiting for “Superman” A must see movie - All discussions

Parents Forum
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<p>I live in the No VA area and Michelle Rhee who is in this movie has taken some major hits as chancellor for the DC school system. </p>

<p>I have yet to see the movie, but the reviews/interviews I have seen have been very enlightening.</p>

<p>If you don’t know who Michelle Rhee is, she has become very infamous according to the unions. She created a 2 tier system in the DC school district where teachers could chose between tenure and lower pay, or higher pay based on academic achievement goals, but no tenure (aka job safety). </p>

<p>She knows her job is now in jeopardy because her Superman was Adrian Feinty, the mayor. He lost his re-election bid, so now she has no political cover. I am not thinking it will bother her so much since her fiancee lives in CA she now can move there and will be hired within a few minutes.</p>

<p>In honesty, DC is losing a great spokesman if they lose her. She calls it like she sees it, and sometimes the truth hurts. OBTW, Michelle Rhee is not one of those administrators that live in an ivory castle, she is known to be at one school or another every day with the kids, whether that means eating cafeteria food for lunch or greeting them when they enter, she is with the kids in the trenches.</p>

<p>I also agree, most of us here care about our kids education, but education is a socio-economic issue. Many in the poor areas have parents working 7 days a week, and 12-14 hr days just to put a roof over their child’s head. Until we understand that it is a socio-economic issue IMHPO we can’t get the lower scoring schools up to par. We can feed them breakfast and lunch, but we won’t be there when they leave the school to return to their home as a latch key kid and see that they are doing their hw. I can’t blame the parent, they are trying to provide the necessities of life which makes them accept the fact that their child is a latch key. It is not as if they want to come home at 10 p.m. from a 14 hr work day to kiss their sleeping child’s forehead. They are just in the worst world either way they turn.</p>

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<p>b&p-</p>

<p>Much of the movie follows Michelle Rhee, and the idea she proposed about the 2 tier pay system. According to the movie, the union did not even allow the idea to come to a vote.</p>

<p>** by the way, the 2 tier system was interesting, but in reality it may have backfired. If a teacher could voluntarily give up tenure for the possibility of higher pay, then the lousy teachers would not take the risk and instead stick with the guaranteed job security, and the better teachers would risk loss of job security (that could happen with layoffs, etc) for the chance of higher pay based on performance. The end result could be the opposite of what they want.</p>

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<p>I agree it backfired. When this was announced I saw that happening. The problem for her was she ticked off a big union, and thus, it was over before it ever started. All she did was ruffle feathers. </p>

<p>The problem in our educational system, besides socio-economic is the NEA. This union impacts the school system more than anyone can imagine. I have been an educator, and if you look at the stats the burn out rate is very high. The push-pull situation is insane. Teachers do get paid poorly, but because of the retirement system it diverts funding to those that are still teaching.</p>

<p>The County can’t afford the big budget of the school, so gone are the days of unlimited worksheets, here are the days that students are asked to bring in reams of paper. Gone are the days where schools can build additions to the schools because of overcrowding, here are the days of putting students and teachers in trailers that improperly heat or cool (yes, that does make an impact…kids get easily diverted, a class going out for PE, makes the teacher remind the students to pay attention).
Gone are the days where classrooms are cleaned daily by the janitorial staff, here are the days that the last 15 minutes is picking up crap off the floor and putting chairs on the desk.</p>

<p>With our economy failing, housing being foreclosed on, RE tax receipts being reduced, schools are forced to take drastic measures. The school budget is based on the county budget. The county budget is based on RE taxes.</p>

<p>I will also blame the school systems too. We have a new school being built that will open next Sept. It has the state of art in everything, including an indoor swimming pool. The only one in the county. Are you kidding me? The BOE and the county decided a swimming pool and all its’ costs are worth more than hiring another teacher? Great, these kids can now take swimming for PE, but to what cost? Our school has multiple trailers…tell me how this was a wise an investment, when none of the other schools have pools. Tell me how a teacher who has to wear multiple layers in the winter because they are in a trailer that this adds anything to the kids education? When it is raining like cats and dogs, these trailers leak, and kids take more time to settle in because they are soaked to the bone. Yet, at our school, we are Blue Ribbon, School of Excellence, Cambridge Certified, etc. Can you imagine what we could be with no trailers. Our school is so over crowded within the school that we have 1 way hallways…yes, 1 way, if your classroom is to the left and you must turn right…you have 2 options walk backwards to look like you are going with the flow or spend the 5 minutes going in the 1 way to get to the class next door. Yet, this county thought a pool was worth it. Hey, let’s add insult to injury. The BOE is cognizant of the importance of SRs staying at the school they have been for yrs, so no graduating class will graduate until 2013. The school will open in 2011, but there will be no SR class for 2012. Talk about a waste of money!</p>

<p>I can tell you why! They did it because they want to get people to move into the district. It goes back to RE tax receipts. The problem is people won’t move there over the other hs’s since it is not attractive for the parent who must commute to work. Instead, they move into the over crowded school. Pure waste of tax dollars.</p>

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<p>Don’t forget the rock climbing wall and artificial turf.</p>

<p>Not only is there no Sr class the first year, rising Jrs are given the choice of staying at their current school or going to this new school. You end up with students unwilling to move so several more years of overcrowding at neighboring schools, while the new school has a full operating budget next year.</p>

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<p>bulletandpima, in your second paragraph you blame the union, then spend the rest of your post doing a nice job of enumerating all sorts of specific problems, none of which could possibly be the union’s fault. I’m confused. What exactly <em>is</em> the union’s fault?</p>

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<p>nightchef-
There are 2 main unions, IIRC from the film. I encourage you st see the film. If you happen to be a member of one of the unions, I would be interested in your perspective of the film.</p>

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<p>To understand the fiscal side of public education, you need to understand the dichotomy within the system.</p>

<p>The BOE has a budget that comes from the state and county, mainly RE taxes. The county must balance their budget, but this is where the NEA comes in. They have to adhere to the teachers contracts which are passed through the union, this includes pay and benefits.</p>

<p>The school system (BOE) with the funds left over, or by passing through county elections (bonds) have the ability to add into this pot for specific purposes. In this case building a new school, instead of building new additions to an existing school. </p>

<p>Put both together, and you get what? You get a homeowner with higher taxes to support a school system that wastes $$$.</p>

<p>People love to kvetch about the schools and the unions, but very few understand how the system actually works from a fiscal standpoint.</p>

<p>Night you proved my point. You are confused because I blamed both sides of the fence. If you understood how the money flows in the state/county/BOE you would understand both sides are screwing the students and the parents.</p>

<p>Have you volunteered in your kids school? Have you talked to the teachers about how they are supplying materials for the kids? They are supplying because of the Catch 22 situation… the union contract is so strong that the county can’t afford to supply any longer, thus the teachers and parents have to step up to the plate to fill the whole created by the deficit that was created by the union contract that the school must abide by. It is a dog chasing their tail situation.</p>

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No, I’m confused because you blamed the union side of the fence without supplying any specifics about what they’ve done wrong.</p>

<p>Now you’re telling me that what they’ve done wrong is to negotiate good salaries and benefits for their members. Yet in your earlier post you say “teachers do get paid poorly.”</p>

<p>I don’t think I’m the one who’s confused here.</p>

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<p>b&p</p>

<p>The film does a great job of demonstrating, via some animation, this quagmire of competing federal, state and local school districts/regulations with the overlap of the union policies. Also, while I’ve forgotten the exact #s they gave, they reported that the # of physicians and attorneys that have lost their licenses is something like 1 in 47 and 1 in 80 respectively. The number of teachers who have lost their teaching credentials was something like 1 in 2500, even if they had engaged in egregious activities such as child abuse.</p>

<p>They have videos of the NYC “rubber room” where 600 teachers sit daily reading, sleeping or playing cards while drawing their full salary, because they cannot, for any of a variety of reasons, be placed in a classroom (incompetence, abuse, whatever) but cannot be fired. It costs the city I believe the # was over 1.5 million (or was it billion???) dollars a year in salaries and benefits. And then they get pensions. This system is broken.</p>

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<p>Nightchef,</p>

<p>If you know unions, then you know that they negotiate the teachers contract down to how many weeks off between the last day of school and the first.</p>

<p>I may be confusing you, but I have to ask do you understand Teacher Union Contracts? I can’t give specifics, because they vary from county to county, state to state. The contract for teachers in Boone, NC will not be the same as it is in Elizabeth NJ. </p>

<p>UM yes, they do negotiate good salaries, but making 45K in VA is poor. On the flip side they work 180 days a yr. So, if you put it together, making 45 K for 36 weeks out of the yr is not bad! Plus, once tenured they have lifetime pension, that the residents of the state pick up.</p>

<p>I am sorry you are confused. However, in this issue it is a very tangled web, and you need to comprehend how many players have a hand in this issue. IT IS ALL ECONOMICS. </p>

<p>Jym,</p>

<p>Actually we moved from NC 2 yrs ago, and we had something akin to the rubber room. We actually had a paid teacher with their sole responsibility was to be IS. Thanks to Unions, we as taxpayers must absorb the cost of a teacher instead of a non-union employee to babysit IS suspension/detention.</p>

<p>Here is a classic on how insane the school system has become. Our school requires belts if the pants have loops. Certain students to get around this cut off the loops. I receive a phone call from the school telling me that during homeroom our DS was not wearing a belt so he was sent to the office. The office tells me, unfortunately the kids that they have lent out belts to have not returned them, means our DS will go to IS and he will get a 0 in his class until I show up. I say to them I live 3 miles a way can you just hold him for 5 minutes until I get there? NO was their answer. </p>

<p>Tell me the fairness in this system, kids cut off belt loops so they don’t have to wear belts. School gives belts to kids who forgot their bet, but don’t return them. I am ask fr 5 min. and told sorry, your DS is SOL.</p>

<p>The school system burnt me out as an educator because of crap like this. </p>

<p>Again, so many parents condemn and complain about the system, but if you go into any school, you will see that it is a rarity to see a parent in a classroom. Most likely if you do see them at all during the school yr, it is because they want to yell at you because you have an issue with their kid when it comes to grading.</p>

<p>There are great parents, and they are the life savers to the teachers. They are the ones that always send in boxes of tissues, ream of paper and when their child messes up, sits in front of the teacher and tells them in front of the child, I support you, if they ever do it again, CALL ME.</p>

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<p>I thought the movie was fascinating. The most effective point it makes is that kids are losing out while adults protect their own interests.</p>

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<p>B&P</p>

<p>If you go to see the movie, can you jot down the correct #s they gave for the 2 examples I mentioned (# of MDs, JDs and teachers who lost their license, and the amount NYC spends each year on the folks who sit in the rubber room). Thanks</p>

<p>They give a ton of statistics on the # of kids who graduate from the “dropout factories” and the absence of any improvement is performance in math, english and science over the past several decades. US students rated their self perception of their math skills as the highest of all countries measured, but in actuality proficiency was near the bottom.</p>

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<p>

Of course. Why wouldn’t they do this? Should they have a contract where these things are left vague? </p>

<p>

This is classic slippery argument. You make it sound as if 1 in 2500 teachers who have abused children have lost teaching credentials, whereas that’s really an overall figure, which happens to incorporate those teachers who have abused children.</p>

<p>I’m not saying that there may not be serious issues regarding failure to discipline teachers who are clearly doing a bad (and occasionally, criminally bad) job. And sometimes that’s probably at least partly the union’s fault (though often it boils down to laziness and indifference on the part of the school department–there’s a procedure to fire bad teachers, but it takes effort to go through it, and they can’t be bothered). But that’s a separate issue from pay and benefits, and also a separate issue from merit pay.</p>

<p>My concern is that it’s very easy to just say, “oh, it’s the damn teachers’ unions!” instead of looking at the situation carefully and objectively–and that there are forces involved in the school reform discussion who very much want us to do this.</p>

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<p>nightchef,
I didnt say, nor mean to imply that 2500 teachers abused kids. But the unions did seem to protect the jobs of teachers regardless of what they did. They show, for example, teachers reading instead of teaching, and they explain the “lemon dance”, a concept that I was not familiar with, where they basically ship the bad teachers to another school and hope that the lemons they get are better than the ones they got rid of.</p>

<p>They also showed some absolutely wonderful teachers and the jobs they did as well.</p>

<p>** BTW, they also had an administrator explain the process of trying to fire a teacher. It was outrageously cumbersome with many, many unreasonable deadlines. And if they missed any one of the gazillion deadlines, the process started all over again. Ridiculous.</p>

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<p>No, I understood the statement. It was a comparative of the number of professional licenses lost where lawyers were 1/47, Drs 1/80, and teachers 1/2500. This figure suggests not that Drs and lawyers are more likely to commit an act that they should loose their license, but that a teacher is far less likely to have their license revoked. This leads one to ask if the process to do so is too strict, and who are we protecting…students or teachers?</p>

<p>I have not seen the film, so the above is simply a hypothetical look at statistics offered by another member.</p>

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<p>

You understand my point correctly, blueiguana. That is exactly their point. They are saying that it is extremely difficult to get a teachers license revoked (particularly unionized teachers I would assume), regardless of what they do.</p>

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<p>I saw the movie this past weekend,and I agree with this.</p>

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<p>Here’s the facts as given in the movie:
About one of 57 medical doctors and one of 97 lawyers loses his or her license annually for malpractice. In contrast, only one in 2,500 unionized, public school teachers with tenure gets fired each year.</p>

<p>I know many excellent teachers, but because of their union rules the worst teacher is paid as much as the best teacher. As a result of this and other factors, the quality level of teachers in general is mediocre, IMHO.</p>

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<p>Thanks for that factoid, payfor. Do you recall how much NYC is paying annually to babysit the those teachers that cannot be given any academic responsibility in the rubber room?</p>

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<p>The film briefly visits a “rubber room” in New York City where idle teachers accused of misconduct wait months and sometimes years for hearings while drawing full salaries at an annual cost of $65 million.</p>

<p>[American</a> Thinker: Waiting for ‘Unionman’ (to Go Away)](<a href=“http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/10/waiting_for_unionman_to_go_awa.html]American”>Waiting for 'Unionman' (to Go Away) - American Thinker)</p>

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Yes, we all know what a Paradise America was before the unions came along. :rolleyes:</p>