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(D) J. Hickenlooper*
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80%
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Governor
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60%
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40%
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CO-01 (Denver)
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May 12, 2010 07:10 PM UTC
180 Comments
everything I can say about this bill. As a former high school teacher and social theorist, I gave the bill a fair and careful reading, and, in my opinion, it will contribute to the deterioration of public education in Colorado. I do not oppose it because it is bad to hold teachers accountable, or because there are no bad teachers, or for any of the other red herrings that are launched by it’s principal advocate on Pols, but rather because I think it errs on two important dimensions:
1) It focuses on a marginal problem rather than on any of the systemic problems in American public education (which, by itself, is not necessarily a negative, even if it is not a strong positive). One of the best things that our public education system has going for it is the overall quality of the human capital it attracts. We have failed, however, at retaining that human capital, and instead have a system which weeds out the best more robustly than it weeds out the worst. The best leave largely because our public education system is hostile to them, by placing more and more impossible burdens and expectations on teachers, while neglecting to deal with the systemic problems which make it so difficult for teachers, even the best ones, to achieve the demanded results. In some instances, when conditions are right, teachers perform miracles. Those same teachers, or ones equal to them in every way, could end up weeded out of education by the provisions of this bill, when they find themselves in circumstances in which conditions are not right.
2) It adversely affects the stream of teacher recruitment, retention, and removal in such a way that it will discourage talented new teachers from entering or remaining in the profession more robustly than it will remove incompetent ones. This bill is more likely to deteriorate than improve the overall quality of the teacher pool, while failing to address the real structural challenges that plague our school systems.
Like No Child Left Behind, SB 191 is based on the myth that effective educational reform should take the form of an uninformative commandment to teacher to cure our educational system. Our system is broken, and we’re pretending to fix it by punishing those who work within it for the fact that they work within a broken system. That’s just bad, and cowardly, policy.
David says that it’s courageous for legislators to do this. I disagree. This is red meat to almost everyone who isn’t in education, because they love to believe that the problem is with the teachers. Actually, the problem is with all of the people for whom this is red meat.
that was excellent. I really appreciate your articulation of the issue. What about the bill recently introduced to eliminate CSAP?
the elimination of CSAP, and its replacement with a very different kind of student assessment system, one with more emphasis on writing and reasoning skills. Whatever assessment system we use, it has to be reduced in importance to just one among many ways in which we evaluate schools.
This bill is a travesty. People should do whatever they can to get their 2 cents in before their State legislators votes for it. It must be stopped.
It gives far too much power to Principals who could fire teachers at will. Union representatives would be intimidated.
Kids do not learn anything from standardized tests. This bill requires more testing.
This bill is vague and dangerous. There are so many unknown variables we could end up with a far different product than intended.
The bill does nothing to improve schools. In order to improve schools, teachers need to be included in the process, not forced out. Teachers need more mentoring, more planning time, more resources and more respect. This bill gives them none of the above.
Republicans are unanimously in favor of this bill because it seeks to break down the teacher’s union, and by extension, the Democratic party.
SB191 is a dangerous bill. Vote NO!
the non-ideological, non-assumption-laden analytical argument: Teachers are on the bottom rung of an institutional hierarchy (with principals just one or two rungs above them) that has been increasingly systemically failing.
Our last major (national) attempt to solve the problem made it worse, by succumbing to exactly the same ill-conceived logic as SB 191: That reform doesn’t require actually identifying and solving the defects in our educational system, but rather attacking the one thing that isn’t broken: Teachers.
Yes, there are some bad teachers, and, yes, it would be great to remove them, and, yes, we should institute the means to do so, by establishing the conditions in which instituting the means to do so will accomplish the desired goal.
But teachers as a whole, as one of the major components of public education, are actually the strongest component, not the weakest one. This bill, rather than addressing the problems where they reside, addresses them where they don’t, and in doing so, weakens one of the remaining strengths of American public schools, by dissuading people of such high quality from entering the profession.
The advocates of this bill are relying on blind assumptions that are easily debunked. But such advocates are oversimplistic thinkers who love to believe that it’s all so easy: Teachers are the ones who teach, so all you have to do is give the people above them the power to get rid of “the bad ones” and all we’ll have left are good teachers. It’s cartoonish in its oversimplicity.
It’s the same kind of foolish logic used by people who think you can tax indefinitely to fill public coiffers without crippling the economy, or, conversely, that you can tax not at all to invigorate private enterprise without undermining the infrastructure on which private enterprise depends. Both are oversimplistic conclusions derived from systemic ignorance.
SB 191 is based on the same kind of oversimplistic assumptions, and it is, in precisely the same way (and by much the same analytical tools), demonstrably ill-conceived.
It just establishes a new process by which they will be evaluated.
Nobody’s being scapegoated because nobody has yet been evaluated under this process.
The bill has been amended to give teachers greater access to appeal should an evaluation result in a recommendation for demotion.
But not enough. I haven’t read the amendment, but, as depicted, it does not remedy what I see as the fatal flaw: A teacher can be dismissed, independently of what their evaluation says, by simply not being picked up by any school for two hiring cycles. Principals thereby have an absolute political trump card to ostracize any teacher for any reason.
I never used the word “scapegoating,” by the way.
The bill does more than establish a new by which teachers will be evaluated: It establishes greater ease of dismissal of teachers on the basis of both an evaluation process that has not yet been designed (thereby saying that we will make teachers’ jobs more vulnerable to a set of criteria that yet to be produced, and appeals process does not mean that that increased vulnerability is erased), as well as, as I stated above, increasing the political vulnerability of teachers independently of their evaluations.
You should run for public office. Oh wait, you are.
It’s misleading to say that the Democrats who voted yes on SB191 were “crossing party lines.” The prime sponsors of this bill in both chambers are Democrats. It would be more accurate to say that the Republicans who voted yes crossed party lines to support a Democratic bill.
The majority of the bill’s supporters are Republicans, and a majority of Democrats opposed the bill. I think it’s fairer to say that the bill’s prime sponsors crossed party lines.
Only if you believe that being a Democrat requires blind devotion to the CEA. Many progressive interest groups support SB191 and testified in favor of it. Don’t believe that only teachers’ groups can tell you what’s best for schools, any more than trade groups for payday lenders can tell you what’s best for borrowers. Powerful interests groups, like the CEA, will always go to the mat to defend the economic interests of their members – that’s just politics, independent of the merits of this (or any) individual issue.
But I support 191. I do not “believe that being a Democrat requires blind devotion to the CEA.”
But it doesn’t change the math. This was a majority Republican bill.
You have Dem sponsors in both the House and Senate and 8 Democrats that voted with the Republicans to pass it to move it to the 3rd reading.
bi-partisan went out with high button shoes. Now you’re either a ditto head for your party or you’ve crossed over to sleep with the enemy. You can’t forget that the other party is not your opposition, it’s the craven, baby eating, puppy kicking, freedom hating enemy. At least that’s the way the Republicans see it. Dems still have that herding cats problem, stemming from individuals insisting on doing their own thinking.
I’m seeing plenty of that from Dems these days, too. I think we are way past cat herding and firmly into driving out anyone that isn’t seen as progressive or pure enough to be under the umbrella anymore.
Folks like Wade Norris, David Sirota, some of the supporters of a certain Senatorial campaign, the constant call to primary anyone that is even slightly less than progressive perfection–no, I don’t just see this is a Republican thing anymore–the way they are always so disappointed in anything and everything that any Democrat or Obama does that doesn’t meet their ideological standards. I find it wearisome.
but they aren’t really succeeding. The GOP has almost reached the finish line with their purge. The Dems haven’t come close.
Most Dems who are really being strongly challenged are much closer to conservative than to moderate and their Dem constituents are rebelling. Specter keeps forgetting that he’s no longer a Republican on the stump. In our own Senate primary battle, while there is an attempt to frame it as progressive vs moderate, both are centrists and if one is a little more progressive, it certainly isn’t the former co-chair of the Colorado DLC.
As always, the situation on the Dem side is messier. The Dems’ challenge is to balance solidarity with big tent smarts. We’re never going to be able to get everyone to go along with marching orders handed down from on high, as the Rs so often do, but we’ve been doing a much better job since 2004 of not purging ourselves into phone booth size either.
Don’t despair. It’s not as if our Sirotas have anywhere near the ability to scare our pols into submission as their Limbaughs do. Nobody is afraid to admit to disagreeing with our left wing. That’s the big difference.
No I don’t: I just wanted to demonstrate my lack of fear. 🙂
(Though, to be honest, I am a little bit afraid of you, BC…).
such a pussycat!
and I have the virtual scratches to prove it…. (just kidding, of course. You’re the best!).
I wish you and Dave got along better. For two pretty mild mannered guys who probably agree on most things, you two are just nasty to each other.
Because they’re over such little differences. h/t Henry Kissinger
I often repeat, despite my general dislike for Kissinger.
(The other is that pacifism only cedes the world to the most ruthless).
Could this be leading to a group cyber hug?
I wish it were so, but I don’t see the opportunity for it.
I’ve heard that one before…. 🙂
I was trying to make the opportunity for it above, as I do whenver I can, but other posts that Dave made afterward put the kibosh on that.
I still think he’s an adorable doofus. After we stop responding to each other re: SB 191, we’ll go back to quietly rubbing each other the wrong way, neither really feeling any deep rancor over that fact. Some personalities are just made to clash.
We each consider ourself to merit sincere affirmative respect, and we each are unable to offer it to the other. There are three possibilities: 1) Neither of us really merits it, and so both of us are right to withhold it; 2) both of us merit it, and so neither of us are right to withhold it; or 3) I merit it, he doesn’t, I’m right, and he’s wrong…, (okay, okay, or vice versa). 🙂
I think that’s a myth and a fun little cheap shot that we (including me) like to toss off. Are they running off the moderate faction at a pace I can’t even dream of? Hell, yes. Are Democrats? Yep, just not as quickly.
How many times a day do I have to read the wailing disappointment being spewed on every “progressive” site on the internet because Obama has done exactly what most of knew he would do when we backed him in the primary?
Agreed on some of those being primaried–Specter, Blanche Nelson–no great shakes by any stretch. And I’m as guilty of a purity binge every now and again as the next person, particularly when we have members of Congress openly trying to gut Roe v Wade while claiming to be Democrats. So I guess it’s a matter of how big the tent is for each of us as individuals. The tent gets really small for me when we get to women’s reproductive rights.
to get a Repub to admit to disagreeing with Limbaugh. I saw one do it: Pataki. Then check back. They are afraid of Rush. And the teabaggers. And Sarah Palin. Very afraid. Nobody is afraid of Sirota or Olbermann or Maddow or Big Ed (not that I’m putting them on the same plane as the Big Fat Idiot but they are our left wing media folks). We’ll just have to agree to disagree on this one.
I think the extreme wings try to cull out the moderates on both sides, and I think they both have some success. Right now, the right-wing nut-jobs are more robust in their culling, and more robust in their capture of the party in general, but the difference is more one of degree than of kind.
For complex reasons that I won’t bore you with here, I actually find discussions with people on the far left more difficult than discussions with people on the far right, even though I’m far more closely in agreement with people on the far left. Part of that has to do with the recognition that if we don’t organize our own team, and operate to some extent from the same play book, we all lose vis-a-vis those we disagree with more profoundly.
To me the proof is in the pudding and I only see a very few, fewer all the time, marginalized moderates hanging on in the GOP. I still see more diversity surviving among Dems. We’ve turned red state legislatures and congressional delegations blue in purple states by being more realistic about what kind of candidate can win in less than deep blue situations.
I’m sure my experience as an Arapahoe County, Littleton area Dem since moving here in the early 80s has something to do with it. I’ve seeing things go from absolutely of safe red here in the south ‘burbs, to the point that sometimes there wouldn’t even be a Dem on the ticket for every down ticket seat, to having moderate Dems for both my State Rep and State Senator. I’ve seen moderate Ken Salazar take back a senate seat for Dems and I’ve seen Dems build on that with electable candidates, not litmus test liberals.
It wasn’t that long ago that nobody would have believed that could happen here. I don’t think we’re as bad as today’s GOP in accepting a range of candidates. And the internal poll numbers on all kinds of issues for the generations coming more and more into play make me very optimistic that in the future hyper you’re with us or against us partisanship will be dialed back a tad.
I’m not sure the two positions are really conflicting.
of one of my sentences, self editing while talking on the phone. Still, you see what I mean.
Editing what I wrote here while distracted and then discovering that I had posted an unfortunate jumble of the pre- and post-editted versions. And then all you can do is say “Doh!”
Michael Johnston is a known member and leader of the Colorado branch of Democrats for Education Reform. This is a group of social liberals but free-market capitalists that think they’ve got education all figured out.
The DFER Board
Kevin Chavous (chair) – Former Washington, DC, City Council member and chair of the Education Committee.
Tony Davis – Anchorage Capital, board chair for Achievement First East New York, in Brooklyn.
Charles Ledley – Cornwall Capital, NYC, board member and treasurer of Harlem Village Academy and Leadership Village Academy Charter Schools.
Rafael Mayer – Co-founder and managing partner, Khronos LLC, board member for Planned Parenthood of NYC, KIPP AMP, and The Dalton School.
Sara Mead – New America Foundation, former analyst for Education Sector and the Progressive Policy Institute, Washington, D.C.
John Petry – Gotham Capital, co-founder of Harlem Success Academy Charter School, NYC.
Andrew Rotherham – Co-Founder and Publisher, Education Sector, former White House education advisor to President Clinton, author of the blog, Eduwonk.com.
Whitney Tilson – T2 Partners and Tilson Funds, vice chairman of KIPP Academy Charter Schools in NYC, co-founder of the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City.
Don’t take my word for it. Read it yourselves: http://www.dfer.org/list/about…
Will the Senate accept the House Amendments or will the drama continue late into another night?
we had better come up with some very robust strategies for recruiting and retaining high quality teachers in Colorado, because unless we take care of the upstream and midstream problems, our downstream “solution” is just going to drain the pool. (And just imagine the quality learning that will go on when kids dive head first into dry cement).
And then we’d better get busy addressing the real problems with public education, rather than the imaginary or exaggerated ones that appeal to an increasingly GlennBeckicized electorate.
We never have before, why start now?
It seems like the vest way for CO to attract collegr grads is to have them move here from out of state. We should stop trying to produce our own. Same with teachers.
Hell- if we could just land a few more large aerospace contracts for Raytheon and Lockheed (and Ball and etc) then when the spouses follow, they can teach. That solves Denver metro.
Then we do the same down at Fort Carson/Peterson/Schhriever and we get more spouses.
Then we amend the CO constutition to re-write the school finance act and eliminate that “thourough and uniform” bullshit statewide- and the rest of the state can hire their own damn teachers.
It worked in the 50’s – it will work now.
Not to put you on the spot.
…but I will say that the bill had better be excellent and effective in order to justify all the wailing and tears and name-calling that I’ve been reading about. If it’s simply a mediocre effort, the bill was hardly worth it.
As I write this.
Two additional amendments, LOL, both housekeeping.
Now over to the Senate.
Thanks, Ralphie.
Was anyone else disgusted by Rep. Tyler’s comparison of teachers who have to try and teach troubled students to a baker who has to use flour filled with Maggots???
These troubled kids are not something that is in the way of the teacher’s progress, they are why the teacher is there.
Horrible.
His point was that public school teachers often don’t get the cream-of-the-crop students that charters do…they have to make do with who they have, but they shouldn’t be penalized for not being able to make magic every time.
As a minority from a working-class neighborhood, I was not at all offended. I knew what he meant.
And even he realized it and apologized for it.
Kids are not worms or maggots.
Regardless of the point I was attempting to make what came out of my mouth was awful and I sincerely apologize for it. Please consider the work I’ve done this session and other public statements I’ve made in context with this boneheaded statement on a late night.
The class acts take ownership for it and apologize. Your handling this speaks well of you.
Something good is happening.
Right-wingers, and people who just want to piss on teachers.
Or do I repeat myself?
Regardless, aside from David and Steve, pretty much nobody here has been discussing the actual content of the bill. That seems like a dead giveaway that the idea is to punish a scapegoat rather than solve a problem.
How surprised will we all be when nothing’s improved ten years later? Me, not so much. Solving the problem would remove it as a campaign issue.
On exactly how evaluating teacher and principal performance is punishing a scapegoat?
because I agree with everything there. The short version is that the bill provides a new sort of punishment without providing any kind of new reward, so there’s no incentive for great teachers to come to Colorado to replace the bad ones you believe are already here. Even if it were true that the main problem in schools is bad teachers, this bill does nothing to address that. It will simply increase the turnover rate, which will probably make education worse. It doesn’t even work in its own fantasy world.
There is substantial proof that people who are good at a task want to work with others who are equally good. If we raise the level of education in a school, that will attract more good teachers to that school.
I also think teachers want to do a good job. This bill will provide them tools and feedback to improve. I think that will also attract teachers.
It’s the same reason a professor will accept a job offer from C.U. but not one from Mesa State.
Hmmm… I think we all agree that CU is a higher-quality institution than Mesa State, although obviously the schools have different goals.
But if CU paid the same as Mesa State and had the same research vs. teaching load, they’d get the same sort of people. (And from memory a typical low-paid adjunct at a research university is usually a worse teacher than a typical professor at a community college. Students don’t go to research universities for the adjuncts.)
If you want K-12 to emulate CU, have it do what CU does. Pay a lot more to attract the best people in the country. You’re kind of making my case for me.
As for the rest, of course teachers want to do a good job. Some seem to have this idea that teachers want to do something they hate just to get job security; people who wanted that could work in the Post Office and probably make about as much money. And yes, teachers prefer to work at schools where they are supported and the students are successful. That’s why so many of the ones who work in poor districts get burned out really quickly. And you are aware that teachers in their first few years are definitely worse for students who have at least three years of experience. So burning them out or turning them over more quickly seems like it’s not going to be effective.
Then again, like I said, I don’t think the goal is to be effective.
It has higher standards. It’s harder to get a job there. It’s a more prestigious place to work as a result.
Excellence begets excellence.
but if they just had high standards without paying more than a typical community college, a lot of their classes would be empty. Excellence costs money.
Try to hire an electrical engineer for $35,000 a year, see what kind of quality you get. Then tell them everything they do will be monitored and micromanaged, and that they can be fired for things beyond their control. See if their quality of the ones who remain increases or decreases.
A lot of people who want schools run like a business don’t want to pay professionals like a good business would.
Where nobody gets fired for things beyond their control.
I once got fired off a consulting job by an 20-something accountant who wanted her boyfriend to get the job instead.
In the Real World, shit happens.
that clogs the plumbing and makes the shit happen more often. The idea is to pass legislation that unclogs the plumbing and makes shit happen less often.
people who are expected to perform well get compensated accordingly. It is obvious to everyone, even you, that this is the point I was making.
Still, I’m sorry for your loss. Obviously it traumatized you beyond anything I can imagine.
I had plenty of backlog.
I’ve got news for you.
In the Real World, people are not always compensated in amounts commensurate with their worth. The biggest failing of so-called merit-pay systems is that there isn’t enough spread in compensation between the best and the worst.
That sort of a system tends to reward mediocrity by minimizing risk-taking.
We’re talking about a system where we don’t pay teachers who need more than a bachelor’s degree very much. About half of an engineer’s salary despite requiring the same level of education. In the real world you could not hire a competent engineer for what you pay a teacher. Even the incompetent engineers get paid more than a starting teacher’s salary.
We already have lots of people willing to take such a pay cut because they like kids. It’s a sacrifice to become a teacher. We get the best people we can get for what we pay.
Now we are going to remove some of the job benefits without any compensating reward. And you expect to recruit better people this way?
Once again, you don’t get to set higher standards for your employees without paying them more. No businessperson would be dumb enough to imagine that. “We pay less, give you less independence, and it’s easier to get fired! Quit your job and come work for us!” Um yeah no.
even under the proposed changes.
Engineers are hired “at will.” They can be fired at will.
Which isn’t even really the point. The point is very simple: If you change from the status quo in a way which results in a net reduction in the incentive package being offered new teachers, more new teachers will choose other alternatives. The would-be new teachers who do so will be disproportionately the best ones, because they have the most options. That means that the in-flow of new teachers will be reduced in quality. The off-sets that you and David identify, that, based on the assumption that this bill will improve the quality of teachers in the teacher pool, high quality new teachers will flock to education despite decreased job security because, outweighing decreased job security (and relying on some of your assumptions, while ignoring other of your assumptions), some bad teachers were fired, is, let’s face it, a bit of a stretch.
CU has different standards.
At a major Research 1 institution, faculty hires must develop well funded research programs and bring overhead in to help fund the institution. Poor teaching ability can be overlooked if you keep getting million dollar grants and support lots of graduate students.
In contrast, smaller liberal arts institutions focus on faculty teaching abilities and have high teaching loads that preclude being able to spend much time on research.
Different people are attracted to different schools.
People who are good at tasks and choose to work with others who are equally good, in contexts of reduced job security, are generally very highly renumerated. Talented and capable people who choose a profession that is not highly renumerative do so because the balance of other benefits outweighs the loss in earning potential. If you think some vague promise that this bill, which will remove good teachers almost as fast (or just as fast) as it removes bad ones, by providing an imaginary improved quality of colleagues, compensates for the loss in job security by doing so, then you have utterly abandoned reason in favor of contortions of rationalization.
This is true notwithstanding your accompanying fantasy argument that “teachers will be highly renumerated once we fire all of those bad teachers and the prompt and publicly obvious resulting improvement in education will cause the people of the state that amended their constitution with TABOR to signifcantly raise their taxes to fund the education system that they now see working so well.” The only assumption you’re missing is that the tooth fairy will put improved academic performance under every child’s pillow, once we pass this bill.
Faith in this bill is based on a set of demonstrably false assumptions. The problem is, just as when confronting people of blind faith in other contexts, reason can not penetrate the fortress of assumed certainty.
From the May 12 Rerevised version of SB10-191:
In other words, one thing this bill does is set the punishment for “ineffective” teaching, prior to determining how to determine what “effectiveness” means.
Here it is again, on page 10:
Although the word EFFECTIVE (and its variants) appears 95 times in the 44 pages of the bill, it is very clear that there is not, at this time, a process for identifying and distinguishing sufficiently effective from not yet sufficient effectiveness.
SB10-191 should fail.
SB10-191’s focus on the development of a punishment, prior to the development of a means for assessing effectiveness. This focus on the sticks (rather than carrots, or even clarity on what is causing problems)is a clear indication that the bill is more a red-meat sop/witch hunt rather than being a noble attempt at improving education.
What is the evidence that the removal of tenure/due process is a solution to “effectiveness?” There is none. Is there really evidence that this “solution” will in anyway motivate teachers and principals? Is this the sort of stick that motivates the best work from you? I don’t think so. Indeed, this stick approach rarely succeeds in motivating intelligent, creative people.
Any teacher who is motivated by this punishment probably shouldn’t be in the teaching profession.
Some more language from the bill, for your entertainment:
and
So, if your idea of improving education is to pass legislation, any legislation, this could be a solution. If you actually care about children, and recognize that teachers are generally good people, this bill might not be worth the time to vote on again.
They didn’t convene until 10:30, they’ve been “recognizing” departing members all morning, now they’ve broken to eat. You’d never know they have a six-page calendar, not counting what the House sent them this morning.
if the day runs late 🙂
Voting against the strong lobbying of a core Dem group is emotionally (and politically) very rough.
And for those upset with this vote, while you may disagree with the value of SB-191, you should be able to understand that legislators voted for this because they believe (and I think they’re right) that this bill is more important than their political future. I think that’s commendable.
In Colorado Democrats frequently get elected by pissing on core constituencies to make themselves look more “moderate.” This ain’t a secret. You know how Colorado politics works. Why pretend otherwise? And why do it at a Libertad-rate in every thread?
I’ve talked with my mom when she goes through votes like this – it’s really tough on them. It’s an emotional battle. And they face the very real risk of a primary challenge and fewer feet on the ground in the general.
You should not be so dismissive of those you disagree with.
And if only people whose family members are legislators are allowed to comment on the often-cynical motives of politicians trying to get re-elected, well then I guess a lot of us will have to leave the site.
Many Colorado Democrats try to seem more conservative to get elected in conservative districts. Many Colorado Republicans try to seem more moderate to get elected in moderate districts. These are successful tactics that we talk about every day. I’d like to imagine pointing this out in this one context doesn’t make me a dick. I’d like to think all the rest of my comments have established my dick reputation better than that.
Moderate Democrats get elected in more conservative districts. If you talk to a Wes McKinley, a Christine Scanlan, a Joe Rice, a Kathleen Curry (before she left the caucus), you’ll learn pretty quickly that they’re not closet leftists who move to the center to win moderate votes in election years. Johnston and Scanlan ran this bill because they sought education reform. McKinley and Curry vote with Rs on issues pertaining to land use and ranching because they themselves feel similarly about those issues. Joe Rice is a career businessman and military guy – not exactly the pedigree that generally shapes a political mind on the far left.
Some Dems vote moderately even when they’re in safe blue districts – Sue Schafer comes to mind as one example, and you can look at Tom Massey or Don Marostica as reverse cases. Believe it or not, legislators sometimes hold moderate views, and they sometimes even vote moderately!
Democrats who are elected from conservative districts are elected because of who they are and what they believe, not what they can fool people into thinking.
Running to the center is you’re not a centrist already is just trying to fool people.
Real People are too smart to buy it.
Damned fingers.
until it comes to a bill we support, and then the people who agree with us have only the noblest of motives, while the people who disagree with us are the most venal and self-serving?
Sounds fun!
Or we could maybe admit that even in the best of circumstances, legislators vote in ways that will make their constituents happy enough to re-elect them?
Nah! That makes things complicated sometimes!
The bill takes effect in 2013, sxp.
You have three years to stop worrying, get competent, or find another job.
Good luck with all three.
solely because I didn’t think this bill would solve the problem. What other evidence does Ralphie or anyone have that I’m incompetent? How should I react to such an accusation?
I kind of think the fact that people like Ralphie call me incompetent is evidence that teachers have extremely political jobs. Regardless of whether you agree with me or not, I think I’ve tried to make a decent case as to why I disagree with this bill. For that I’ve been accused of wanting kids to fail. For that I’ve been accused of incompetence. And if people knew where I worked, I have no doubt they’d make an effort to pressure my supervisor into firing me.
And yes, I fucking love my students, and it turns out (and it surprises me too) that the one thing that sends me into a rage is suggesting I don’t care about them or can’t teach them.
Please forgive me when I don’t have the patience for people who can’t debate an issue without shitting on me personally.
there was an “or” in there.
I already asked you in another thread to explain why you didn’t want to be evaluated. You took the fifth.
Get busy.
that’s certainly true of him. He didn’t get to be the first Dem elected here in over 35 years by moving to the middle or pretending to be moderate. That’s where he honestly is. Nobody to his left would have had the slightest chance of getting elected in HD38 and most HD38 progressives accept that and accept that he is closer to us than any of the alternatives. If we want a more liberal Rep, we pretty much have to move.
I don’t have anything against anyone who weighs the evidence and, exercising their reason in service to goodwill, comes to a conclusion that differs from mine. I am less enthusiastic about people who just skip that part about weighing the evidence, but are adamant in their certainties nonetheless.
Joe is a great guy, an American hero, a man of great courage and character. We progressive Dems in HD38 are very lucky to have him, disagreements on some issues not withstanding. Before Joe, we had nothing but state reps who disagreed with us on everything as does Coffman, our congressman. If we ever do elect a Dem to the CD6 seat, it will be someone very much like Joe. In fact, I think Col. Joe Rice is someone who would have a legitimate shot.
are “saying nothing,” “bloviating,” and are otherwise oh so dismissable.
You consider their vote courageous because you approve of what they are voting for. Actually, I chose not to respond initially because I do know many of these legislators, and I respect them. I believe they are voting their conscience. But you arrived at something close to the truth by means of a very self-serving and convenient rhetorical ploy, one that you abandon quickly when you are strongly opposed to the object of equally “courageous” people.
Care to provide a link to back your allegation up? Just one…
This one, in which you politely refer to the fact that you characterized my posts on this same topic, prior to the introduction of this particular bill, in exactly the ways I depicted above.
But, to be honest Dave, I do appreciate your attempts at civility, which are generally impressive. This topic seems to strain that otherwise characteristic admirable trait of yours. The truth is, despite your general civility, it’s true that you find these legislators courageous more because you agree with the bill than on principle (not to say that you could never do so on principle, in a different context, and regarding a bill you disagree with). And it’s true that your reprimand of sxp for dismissing those he disagrees with, in the context of a discussion on increased ability to fire allegedly bad teachers, is a bit…inconsistent, due to your prior ease in dismissing me due to your disagreement with me on the same topic (an error, to your credit, you haven’t repeated recently).
Do you recall prefacing one diary by saying that sxp and myself need not apply, because we are mere teachers and former teachers who are therefore discredited by our bias of having actual knowledge? That wasn’t (pre-emptively) dismissive? C’mon.
I said that at times I don’t understand your point – not that I agree or disagree with it, but that I don’t understand it.
And yes I said that I think that you “blotivate” at times – but again that has noting to do with agreeing or disagreeing. I think you do that on subjects we agree on.
You said it in the context of a conversation on which you disagreed with me, which was, in fact, this same conversation in an earlier incarnation. Whether you, in your heart, did not mean it in relation to your disagreement or not, is something no one, probably not even you, will ever really know.
I was “bloviating” when I was disagreeing with your “analysis” of how to reform education (it was in reference to my post disagreeing with you on that very subject that you first used the word “bloviating” to describe me). Your later reference to “saying nothing” was clearly a reference to the same series of posts of mine in which I was expressing my disagreement with your “analysis”.
My statement above is absolutely and incontrovertably correct: You said those dismissive things to someone with whom you disagreed. The added fact that you were referring to the expression of the point with which you disagreed isn’t even necessary to its accuracy.
You asked for one link, “just one,” to back up my assertion. I gave it to you, and it backed up my assertion. Now let’s drop it.
Have I said dismissive things toward people here – absolutely. I’ve been horrible dismissive, snarky, mean, etc at times.
What I thought we were discussing (and this comes back to my point that many times I clearly don’t understand your posts) was do I do that when someone votes their conscience and I disagree with their vote. That I don’t believe I do.
But yes I say dismissive things toward people here at times. And many times it’s with someone I disagree with. I see that as very different things.
But despite the undoubtedly enormous value of your idiosyncratic perceptions of reality, in the reality that the rest of us share, I made an absolutely accurate statement, you challenged me to link to one example, I linked to one example, you refuted it (taking the opportunity of being proven wrong to reiterate the insults that were in the example I linked to, and assure me that you really do believe them to be true), and I pointed out that both my original statement was true, and that the example I linked to, in response to your challenge, was an accurate example.
You have been incredibly dismissive of everyone who is opposed to SB-191. Anyone who is opposed to this is corrupt or shortsighted. Only those who vote for it are courageous.
Vomit.
I’ve discussed this in detail with those opposed to it. In my interview with Beverly Ingle I said that she raised very valid points. I’ve repeatedly agreed that for this bill to be effective it has to be competently implemented, and that is a leap of faith.
So no, I have not denigrated those opposed to the bill. (You are welcome to post a link to a comment of mine if you can find a counter-example.)
Perhaps I was a little too strong in my comment above, but your relentlessness on some issues is trying. Especially when you dismiss what others say, without acknowledging that sometime they have way more experience on an issue than you. That comes across as dismissiveness on your part, regardless of your intent.
[You are such a prolific contributor that when you ask someone to search through your comments to find something, you really create a burden. ;)]
“Trying” is exactly right. There are many other words I might use, but I’m really trying to be civil with David, despite his insistance that he, who has never worked in any aspect of education, knows all there is to know and is doing all there is to do, while I, who have studied and worked in education from a variety of angles, know nothing, am saying nothing, and have done nothing to improve education (see my post below listing the things I have done). David insists that if we just give principals authority to fire bad teachers, well, that’s going to have a huge effect. Frankly, it won’t, even if it worked as well as could be imagined, and none of the unintended consequences that I have identified come to pass, it would still have a very marginal effect.
But David is the master of sanctimony on this topic, if not the master of the topic itself.
One is to have nothing. The other is to have so much it’s impossible to get through most of it 🙂 And in my case there is actually more on technical postings than politics.
Anyways, I don’t dismiss most here but in my replies it can come across that way. This site lives for the clever quip which does not leave room for giving a full answer. Where I’ve come across as dismissive usually (granted not always) it is more brevity.
But I think part of it also is the world I work in. In the high tech world we produce products that are permanently in beta (there’s never a final release) and our mantra is to make mistakes quickly. In this world trying, measuring, adjusting is highly valued while building giant complex systems that are then turned out as a final product is pretty much history. In this environment innovation counts for a lot more than experience.
I do think experience has value. But I give it less importance than most here. And I do so because of my experience that innovation is a lot more productive. Which is a conundrum – no?
The incremental innovations in your profession, as in all others in the modern world, are made by people who are expert in the systems they are working with, and involve devising systemically intelligent solutions as well as identifying (already identified) problems and claiming that “let’s solve it” or taking a jackhammer to microchips to rip out the defective material are actual solutions.
In my world the brilliant innovations are coming from people so young they drop out of college because it would delay their efforts. From Bill Gates to Mark Zuckerberg the new solutions are coming from people who are by no stretch experts with a large body of experience in the field.
That’s one of our big differences. You put a premium on knowledge, experience, and deep research into a problem with reasoned approaches to fully solve a problem. I put a premium on fast failure and an innovative approach from someone who does not have a lot of time in that problem space.
Now you can’t take an approach from one field and apply it to every field. But I always come back to education has been stuck for 40+ years while high-tech is ever accelerating. So I’ll bet on my approach working better.
Yet we don’t want most kids to fail.
That seems like a big problem with your analogy.
When we’ve got what, maybe 10% of poor kids graduated college ready – we’re already failing most kids.
Also, most companies fail because the product does not catch on. I’m pretty sure the product of a K-12 education is a winner 🙂
And really you kind of missed my point, I think. You consider the software industry a success since there are occasional success stories. But a typical person who starts up a company will fail, and therefore a typical person hired by a small startup will lose his job fairly quickly. So it’s not successful for the average participants, even though it produces a few good products. Nobody asks the government to ensure all startups are successful.
It just doesn’t seem like a great analogy for what you actually want to do. Education is a public service in America, and any private-sector analogy is necessarily flawed.
The other serious problem with your analogy is the notion that only teachers have to try hard, that students will learn without working. This is the thing I just can’t seem to get across to teacher opponents.
Take CU as an example. In-state tuition is not that high, but out-of-state tuition is really really high. Yet you get lots of students coming to Boulder from out of state who are more concerned about parties than studying (judging from my neighbors on any given Saturday night), and they have to drop out because they fail too many classes. Has the university failed them, or have they failed themselves? And these are people with a lot more motivation and opportunity than a typical poor kid in a public high school.
Obviously good teaching can help motivate students to work harder, but even in the best of circumstances some of them just won’t work hard. Sometimes this is laziness, sometimes it’s due to having to work another job to support the family, sometimes it’s frustration at not understanding things easily. And sometimes it’s a teacher who isn’t doing as well as s/he could, sure. But not always.
Fill the schools with nothing but perfect teachers, doing nothing else, and you would still have high failure rates among poor kids.
If you want the schools to just pass everyone, they can certainly do that. Is that really what you want?
Those college drop outs studied and excelled in the field; they were not blissfully ignorant of the relevant areas of expertise, bestowing wisdom from the heights of their complete lack of knowledge. Your analogies are always stripped of just enough relevant information to make them seem almost convincing…, at least to you. But none of them bear up to actual scrutiny.
Because if it wasn’t, you really should re-read it a few thousand times, until you get it.
At least, in my ignorance, I’m only commenting on your industry, rather than telling you you should step aside and let me run it.
are you really trying to argue that I’m wrong that those college drop-outs weren’t completely ignorant of computer programming?
You live in a system where educational level and years of experience are some of the most important measures of how good someone is. Someone who dropped out of college after 2 years would never be accepted as a teacher, much less a principal or superintendent.
I live in a world where most of the significant innovation comes from people who are just getting started.
in which knowing what you’re talking about is generally preferable to not knowing what you’re talking about, however and wherever the knowledge was gained. The rest is your embellishment.
Read the second paragraph of my autobiography on my campaign website (linked to below), and then tell me how I consider formal education and years of (professional) experience to be the most important measure of how good someone is.
There is a difference between actually having acquired the breadth and depth of knowledge and/or skill required to accomplish something that requires knowledge and/or skill, by whatever means, and presuming to have acquired them by having played some peripheral role or occupied some peripheral position that is inherently less robust in imparting the necessary knowledge and/or skill.
Analogies succeed when the two things being compared are similar in the ways essential to the comparison. Your analogy fails for failing to benefit from such a similarity.
In the case of the computer whiz-kids, they acquired the necessary skills before achieving their success. They were not blind algorithms producing random success that could have struck anyone trying anything anywhere. If I had been mixing cocoa with orange juice trying to produce intelligent life in my kitchen, I would not have been in the running with them, simply by adhering to the principle that rapid trial and error will get you where you’re going.
Who can speak to the actual content of the bill, including it’s amendments and how this bill would effect teachers and students immediately and in the future?
Not just one sided rhetoric from either group?
For: http://www.coloradopols.com/di…
Against: http://www.coloradopols.com/di…
Sorry I missed these originally!
There have been 200 amendments proposed but how many have passed? Is this an attempt to amend until it’s unrecognizable? It’s a strategy that has been used before. This one is going down to the wire, isn’t it.
we can argue, but we should listen instead.
During debate on the amendments, it looks like the bill might have picked up at least two more Dems.
Debate on re-passage is ongoing.
It passed 21-14 last time, so House amendments switched several votes.
26-8-1
Implementing it competently.
And to speak to that issue, if there is any committee, etc. that will be responsible for implementing this, I would like to be a member.
But I sure hope we do not have people sitting on it who think CSAP scores are a proxy for anything but, well, the score the students got on the test. They are not. And the sooner we admit education is not about CSAP scores the sooner we’re on our way to true education reform (rather than platitudes and chest-beating).
The trick is to devise a test where teaching to the test will deliver the education we want to see. And that will be difficult.
I also don’t think testing is the biggie. I think what’s critical is teaching principals and teachers how to be more effective. If we do that right, then the testing will primarily be a tool in how to improve – and then everyone will be happy.
“We need to teach teachers and principals how to be more effective,” says the man who knows nothing about education, and whose two most formidable contributions to the enterprise are “put someone in charge,” and “fire bad teachers”.
It’s a good thing we have you here to save us.
I am curious as to why you think that would not have a significant positive impact.
Why you are so convinced this is the problem? I know many effective teachers and administrators. And, IMO, nothing kills initiative, creativity, and effectiveness faster than narrow-minded bureaucratic regulations that have no correlation to the solution. I agree with Steve. This will accelerate the motion of effective teachers out of the system, leaving only inexperienced junior teachers behind.
From my interview with Beverly Ingle – She made a very credible argument that many principals do a poor job of evaluating teachers and providing them ongoing feedback.
From years of sitting on school committees and attending board meetings where it almost always would be “what I think works best…” as opposed to “research shows…” or “evaluation across many classrooms…”
And I don’t think this means regulations – I agree that is counter productive. I think it means presenting people with proven approaches to do their job better.
the craze is for research-backed best practices, with professional teacher-coaches and curriculum developers scouring the country for innovations in administrative and pedagogical practices that have proven most effective, and endless professional development faculty meetings to disseminate and implement those programs and techniques. That’s been going on for years, and I have always been a strong advocate for refining and streamlining that process, to make it more effective.
The pattern in your suggestions is that you eschew all knowledge of the educational profession and of social science, asserting their defects and deficiencies in a vacuum filled by your arbitrary assumptions, and then, benefitting from a complete lack of training or knowledge, offer as suggestions caricatures of what has already been done and is already being done. You presume to have transcended all of these massive professional, multi-disciplinary, and integrated efforts that have explored and developed every embryonic idea you’ve proferred and many more you haven’t yet thought of, and taken it where intelligent people trained in the field and working full-time on these issues are capable of taking it.
You’re like the enthusiastic teen-ager who just read his first lay-book on physics, lecturing professors of physics about the real meaning of quantum mechanics. The enthusiasm is endearing, until the teen-ager gets together with others like him and insists in the political arena that his understanding provides a better basis for allocating grant money than the peer review process does.
First off I’ve put in years on school committees as well as the heavy involvement that comes from putting 3 kids through school. So lots of time discussing this over the years with administrators, principals, teachers, others involved in the system.
Second, I’d give a lot more credence to all the efforts of the professional educrats if they had delivered any improvement. They haven’t. There a lot of very smart motivated people like you in the system – but they can’t improve it.
is because of the deadly combination of an anti-intellectual culture and a habit of populism, reflected by the political pressure to implement popular but shallow, unfunded, and ineffective ideas rather than making the financial and policy commitments recommended by research and experience.
Your notion that because popular obstruction of effective education reform has prevented effective education reform thus far, what we really need is more popular obstruction of effective education reform (and popular insistence on demonstrably destructive ideas) is part of the dysfunctional cycle we are trapped in, rather than a part of the solution to it.
or that “teachng teachers and principals how to be more effective” isn’t a good idea, rather it’s that it’s a shallow and meaningless platitude, it’s a restatement of something that would be an obvious good (regardless of the status quo, it is always, tautologically, good to be better). This is your great contibution: “Learning is good.” “we need our professionals to do their jobs better,” “the solution to the problem is to solve the problem.” Uh, gee, thanks for that incisive and penetrating contribution to the enterprise, bud.
You once accused me of saying nothing, which made my eyes roll so hard they flew out of their sockets. I got news for you Dave, you’re the one saying nothing. “We need to teach teachers and principals how to be more effective.” Do you have any idea how many thousands of people, from a variety of disciplines, with a variety of training and experiences, have been working on that problem, as well as other problems that may, in fact, be as or more salient?
You are always speaking as if you have some unique insight, when in fact the only thing unique about you (which is not, unfortunately, all that unique) is that you insist you are making a contribution while all you are doing is making meaningless noise.
We do have a very serious, very complex, very deeply embedded set of structural problems with education, and, unfortunately, as much as we would all like it to be so, your shallow and meaningless panaceas will not solve those problems. But every time you and people like you succeed in imposing them, against the better judgment of people who are really struggling with the problems, who are really studying them and analyzing them and getting into the mud with them trying to figure out how to make headway against our morass of educational failure, it is, literally, the victory of ignorance over wisdom, of reaction over proaction, of making the problem worse and the solutions more difficult over implementing innovative and potentially productive real reforms.
Congratulations on your success. You’ve fed your hot-air inflated ego at the expense of our kids.
however, it’s not what I’ve done and not what I’m doing.
(1) I was a college teacher for seven years and a high school teacher for five;
(2) I took 150 hours of ESL training in order to help kids struggling to learn in their second language, and taught social studies classes to some in their second language;
(3) I devised (but have not yet had the chance to test or implement) a program for adapting a research-tested outreach technique to the challenge of improving local student culture in struggling schools;
(4) I studied education law as part of my legal training, in order to be better prepared to contribute to the creation and implementation of robust and effective educational reforms;
(5) Last summer, I did hundreds of hours of legal research, for free, for a small policy LLC, working on the legal issues involved in providing mental health screening in public schools. I’ve been told that my brief is still in circulation, and still receiving rave reviews;
(6) I chaired at my own initiative and on my own time, on behalf of my school while I was a teacher, a community outreach network;
(7) I recently founded and am currently presiding over a non-partisan community organization whose first project is a volunteer tutoring and mentoring program for South Jeffco kids
(8) I have had the project featured in the local South Jeffco paper (The Columbine Courier), have talked about it on a political news show that will air on Channel 12 at 7:00 pm on Friday May 21, and have induced the Jefferson County School Board and Superinentent to work on implementing it district-wide.
Of course, none of that compares in importance and effort to being a staunch advocate for reduced teacher job security. Obviously, I can’t hope to match your depth and breadth of contribution to our children’s education.
“in both their first and their second language.”
If effort equaled effectiveness, you’d have a great argument.
I remember a supervisor who once told us, when we were trying to improve productivity, “If I wanted you all to work HARDER, I’d ask you to carry a brick around all day. I want you to work smarter, not harder.”
So tell me what results you are getting from your effort. If successful, your efforts could be a model for working smarter.
I had excellent results, and am still contacted by former students from time to time.
The project I worked on last summer is still up and running, with the CDE as the client.
The community outreach network I chaired while I was a teacher was doing great, until the district undermined it by shuffling in a crony of the superintendent to replace the principal who was supporting it.
My South Jeffco tutoring and mentoring program is just being established, and has not yet been implemented.
The original study, on which I was a core team member, from which I derived the student culture project that I would like to test and implement at some point is still up and running as a health outreach service, and has been enormously successfully in addressing the health issue for which it was originally designed.
If the comparison is to be between success already demonstrated, that my efforts win hands down over SB 191, since the latter has accomplished absolutely nothing, while I have, at the very least, actually taught kids. Though you imply that that is the comparison that should be made, we both know that that’s ludicrous.
Most of my efforts, at this point, are prospective, as is SB 191. Neither can win in a competition of “show me what you’ve accomplished.” So your point is completely moot.
the list of the efforts I’ve made to improve public education was in response to David’s post suggesting that all I do is sit around and complain. The criticism was regarding my efforts, and the response was precisely directed to that criticism.
Me, I think it’s worth a try, because the old system was broken.
means any new recommendation is a good one, why not just kill a cock and cast a spell? Or, perhaps more evocative of SB 191, why not just “fire” students who aren’t learning, and keep the ones who are? After all, “it’s worth a try,” and if we’re going to kick crude and counterproductive versions of “accountability” down the hierarchy, why stop with teachers?
Critical thought about what to do is still required. If the arguments on the table are, on the one hand, that it creates disincentives for talented new teachers to enter the profession without counterbalancing those disincentives in any way, invites political ostracization through not picking up teachers at will (many of whom will be the best rather than worst teachers), and doesn’t address the fundamental problems while incurring these deficits, and, on the other, that the system is broke and it’s worth a try, then I personally would say the former arguments prevail.
My posts on the subject are laden with politically and financially feasible real solutions, that don’t just “fix” the problem by shuffling responsibility for it down the hierarchy, but actually address the challenge of delivering educational services and improving the incentive structures of all involved. That’s what’s “worth a try”.
Are both better than doing nothing.
I’d go for either.
But I’d say that seeking research-based inovations in how most effectively to teach kids and organize the educational process is better than killing a cock, if education rather than putting supper on the table is your goal. And it’s better than simply reducing teacher job security, if education rather than a cosmetic and counterproductive sham is your goal.
About your “thought” processes on this topic. And tells me you are not serious about education.
Not obvious due to high nesting
I almost thought you were talking about me.
But that’s obviously not true, because I care very deeply about education.
But is willing to try anything. This sounds like a recipe for disaster, and typifies the “chest beating” attitude I referenced earlier.
I can think of a whole lot of anythings I would not be willing to try. As well as a whole lot of somethings that I think we should try but nobody is talking seriously about (because we’re stuck on crap like SB191):
* Many more early childhood interventions (specifically, health care, nutrition, and vocabulary exposure)
* Teaching second languages at the primary (K-2) ages, when they are likely to stick
* Instrumental music at the primary ages – research shows enhanced neuron growth as a result, which spills over to other learning, especially math
* Getting the CHSAA out of the business of dictating school schedules. Teenage kids have no business coming to school before 10AM. But everything revolves around the holy athletic training schedules.
* More K-8 opportunities – administrators and teachers who know the kids for 9 straight years can devise much better individual programs for them
* Text books tailored toward actual learning needs of the students rather than being dictated by religious kooks in Texas, as necessitated by current budget realities
I could go on. If any one of these were seriously tried in public education, it would have a huge impact.
Of course, highly educated, rich parents typically are able to many of these. Which is why their kids are so advantaged.
Cultivate community based support systems that help extend to all children the effects that highly educated rich parents have on their children’s education, by creating increased opportunities for intellectual and creative stimulation, and increased engaged interactions with mentoring adults.
But don’t worry Ralphie, maybe if a good teacher is fired it’ll start working again? We’re all pulling for you. Not as hard as you are, of course, but we would if we could.
to teaching at public schools.
The lack of respect accorded public school teachers.
The lack of support from administrators and parents.
The lack of creative control and choice in textbooks and syllabi.
The lack of options to demonstrate teaching and subject matter expertise (namely, required 100 level courses regardless of one’s experience).
Etcetera.
I took several steps to move into a career in teaching several years ago. I opted out.
If the committee comes up with an effective tool for measuring effectiveness, maybe SB191 won’t be a total horror. But, I wont’ be considering teaching in Colorado as a career.
since improving the quality of the teacher pool would be a good thing, and maybe the critical reform that would turn around public education, then increasing the administrative ability to fire bad teachers must, by definition, be a good thing.
Aside from all of my other substantive arguments why it almost certainly won’t work that way, it’s very easy to demonstrate the fallacy of the logic itself. If I am driving north on I25 toward I70, and I want to go to California, then I need to turn left (west). According to the argument above it must, by definition, be a good idea to simply turn left, foregoing the inconvenient complexity of turning right onto the off-ramp. Of course, if I do so, even if I manage to survive the on-coming traffic going south on I25, I will still go up the on-ramp going the wrong way, and end up on I70 going west in the eastbound lanes. Not just a bad move, but an enduringly, systemically, catastrophic choice.
And this example is true for a system as simple as intersecting interstates, and a maneuver as simple as turning onto one from another. The more complex the system, the more complex the challenges, the more often you have to recognize the tangle of intended consequences to seemingly obvious direct solutions to oversimplified problems.
Thanks for helping to point out the on-coming traffic involved in SB 191, Ardy. Now that our drivers, drunk on the booze of easy answers to complex problems, have turned us into on-coming traffic, it is incumbent on all of us sober passengers (and sober drivers who were out-voted) to grab the wheel and avoid a wreck. We might even make it onto the westbound lanes in the end, on our way to improved education. But it won’t be thanks to this bill.
“unintended consequences” toward the end of the third paragraph.
that The Independence Institute is celebrating the passage of SB 191 tonight. I responded with one of my favorite quotes from John Maynard Keynes: “(People) will do the rational thing, but only after exploring all other alternatives.” It appears that those who have chosen to get into bed with The Independence Institute have decided that there was yet one more alternative we needed to explore, before finally turning to “the rational thing.”
To improve the human condition you take any ally you can find. And keep in mind that a lot of people at the Independence Institute are parents – they also want better schools.
but rather the fact that this idea, like most of the ideas they support, deteriorates rather than improves the human condition. And instead of ever actually addressing the arguments why that is so, this poorly conceived and counterproductive bill is staunchly defended with shallow platitudes based on shallow assumptions informing arbitrary and false certainties. And then treat those who disagree with you, people who’ve worked in and researched and engaged in policy design regarding education, with belligerent contempt, claiming that those who have actually dedicated themselves to education are the ones who only complain, to shore up your pretense of being the great defender of and advocate of education, you, who in reality have done nothing but complain, and fight to institutionalize complaint as a sham reform.
CEA gripping=LB, future of DPS kids celebrating.
I don’t undertanding the equation, what with all that gripping and capital letters and whatnot
Nothing in the last 40 years has been worse for our kids than the CEA and NEA.
Really, NOTHING has been worse? Not even meth.
Or, the grade inflation that was encouraged at universities all over the country during the Vietnam War? (Seriously, I would trace many many of our educational deficiencies back to that.)
What were graduation rates 40 years ago?
Fuck the CEA. I work with their leftovers and they’re good kids. It’s the clearest example I can show people of a Union that’s totally lost sight of what their supposed benefactors’ goals are.
It’s a Goddamn disgrace.
That’s like blaming the UAW for the demise of the car companies. The job of a union is to get the best deal for their members. You can complain about what’s best and long vs short term, but that is their focus.
The fault lies directly with the school boards who are responsible for providing a quality education and have failed to do so. And secondarily with the administration of the schools and an educational system that is totally resistant to change. They are the poster children for the truism that continuing to do the same thing and expecting different results is a form of insanity.
The UAW is solely responsible for the demise of US car companies.
So much for my little joke. Your nickname doesn’t seem to describe you very well.
Come to my office and be flippant about the Union destruction of the system.
Your sudden hostility against me is bizarrely misplaced.
It’s not funny. I’m tired of paying to see 2/3 of brown kids swept under the door.
Nothing personal. Really.
It’s not funny. I’m tired of paying to see 2/3 of brown kids swept under the door.
Nothing personal. Really.
Is without peer.
Sorry for the profanity.
And Earnest – you were correct – I was projecting some of my anger on to you, but let me explain why this issue makes me so angry. Because I’ve had the image of a sneering, smiling CEA rep in my head saying “Too much…too fast”. Well, bullshit.
This watered-down, do-nothing bill is only being done to make our schools eligible for money from the feds. THat’s it. It doesn’t really reform tenure at all, IMO.
Currently we have about a 30% minority graduation rate in DPS. That’s just offensive beyond words to me. And the response I often see to that from Union folks is “It’s the parents!” or “We need more money!” which are both good points, but not the primary reasons for this disaster.
There are a few other big problems left out. The main systemic problem I see and the reason true reform won’t happen is that the unions basically use their money to hire their own bosses. Bottom line. It’s the biggest and arguably the most powerful union in the State, and they use money extracted from their members to win elections for people who protect them over doing the right thing for the kids. Mike Merrifield’s famous quote comes to mind as an example of someone so out of touch with the heart of the problem that he thinks it’s appropriate to damn to hell people that want to create a better system for their kids.
As Ralphie said, there’s not a big enough spread in pay between shitty teachers and great ones, like SXP (although I’m speaking to K-12 and not higher ed.). It’s against the collectivist nature of any labor union to reward excellence and punish incompetence, and that is also a big part of the problem.
I’m tempted to out myself so you will understand my interaction with these kids, and how wonderful they are. I didn’t mean ‘come down to my office and I’ll kick your ass’, I meant ‘come down and see what I do and the scope of this travesty will really freak you out’, so sorry if my angry tone was too much. My bad.
Anymore than there is a need for anyone else to out themselves.
With the exception of the paid shills who post here, we all believe what we believe and come by our beliefs honestly.
In DPS, union backed candidates are not winning. There are three board members – Merida, Jimenez and Kaplan who were supported by the DCTA and won. However, they are in a minority. Nate Easley was backed by the DCTA but does not vote with the union backed minority.
It would be helpful if you would say exactly what actions/policies the Denver Board of Education has passed with which you disagree. I think we are on the same page.
Why am I suddenly in the position of defending DPS teachers? Because I never thought they were the problem…just complacent.
Are you delighted that Lucia Guzman is now going to be representing your part of town in the State Senate?
I anticipate she will do for the whole state what she did for DPS and schools like North High.