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Post by macrockett on Sept 8, 2009 12:23:10 GMT -6
Pension sites: www.californiapensionreform.com/pensionfairness.org/www.pensiontsunami.com/index.phpcivicfed.org/iifswww.ebri.org/illinoisisbroke.com/news.aspxwww.illinois.gov/gov/pensionreform/www.illinoispolicy.org/search2/?zoom_query=pension&submit=Searchlatimes.com
Opinion
Teacher tenure must go
To cite just one terrible example, a New York City teacher is paid more than $100,000 not to teach. Thank her powerful union.
Jonah Goldberg
September 8, 2009Brandi Scheiner believes she is a political prisoner. Held against her will in what is euphemistically dubbed a "rubber room," the 56-year-old woman likens her two-year captivity to being imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay. Alas, it's unlikely the Red Cross will hear her case.
She's a New York City public school teacher who, like about 600 fellow NYC teachers, has been removed from the classroom for alleged incompetence or other charges that include being drunk in the classroom or molesting students.
Scheiner, who makes more than $100,000 per year, nonetheless insists she is a prisoner of conscience forced to spend her workdays in the rubber room -- at full pay -- until the system can adjudicate her case. She cannot be fired, at least not without the school district spending gobs on legal fees, because she has tenure and her union, the United Federation of Teachers, would rather protect 1,000 lousy teachers than let one good teacher be fired unfairly.
So Scheiner and her rubber-roomies report for duty typically from 8:15 a.m. to 3:45 p.m. every school day and do nothing. They all get the usual vacations, including the entire summer off.
This is all according to Steven Brill in a blockbuster article in the Aug. 31 New Yorker about New York City's efforts to reform the public school system. Brill adds: "Because two percent of her salary is added to her pension for each year of seniority, a three-year stay in the Rubber Room will cost not only three hundred thousand dollars in salary but at least six thousand dollars a year in additional lifetime pension benefits."
Ever the martyr, Scheiner says she's "entitled to every penny of it."
She says that before New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and schools chief Joel Klein came along, "everyone knew that an incompetent teacher would realize it and leave on their own."
That's not how the unions see it. A principal of a Queens public school told Brill that Randi Weingarten, now president of the American Federation of Teachers, "would protect a dead body in the classroom. That's her job."
This is just a small illustration of a much larger mess. America's large school systems are a disaster, as anyone who's been reading The Times' ongoing series about the difficulties of firing tenured teachers in California schools would know.
Yes, this disaster has many authors. Schools are expected to fix larger social problems that are best dealt with by parents. Good teachers aren't paid nearly enough, and bad teachers are kept around, draining budgets. Education bureaucracies siphon off vast resources better spent on classrooms. For example, in 2007, the Washington school district ranked third in overall spending among the 100 largest school districts in the nation (about $13,000 per student) but last in terms of money spent on teachers and instruction. More than half of every education dollar went to administrators.
...or in the case of D204 bricks and mortar as well as admin...
President Obama might be a hypocritical liberal for sending his kids to private school, but he's a good parent for it.
But of all the myriad problems with public schools, the most identifiable and solvable is the ludicrous policy of tenure for teachers. University tenure is problematic enough, but at least there's a serious argument for giving professors the freedom to offer unpopular views. Tenure for kindergarten teachers is just crazy.
Tenure's defenders point to horror stories from half a century ago, as if getting rid of tenure would automatically subject teachers to political witch hunts and sexual discrimination. We now have civil rights laws and other employee protections.
Also, to listen to teachers unions, you'd think incompetent teachers are mythical creatures, less likely to be encountered than Bigfoot and unicorns. No wonder that from 1990 to 1999, the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest in the country with 30,000 tenured teachers, fired exactly one teacher.
The more recent Times study found that less than 0.1% of teachers have been fired in the last five years, and that of the 159 contested terminations across all of California in the last 15 years, classroom performance wasn't a factor in 80% of the dismissals that were upheld.
The best argument for giving K-12 teachers tenure is that lifetime job security is a form of compensation for low pay. No doubt that's true, putting aside the fact that $100,000 a year with ample vacation is not exactly chattel slavery. And while most teachers don't make that much (the national average is about half that), the good ones could certainly make more if the dead weight were cleared away and rigid, seniority-based formulas were replaced with merit pay.
Oh, and kids would get better teachers.
Democratic politicians, mostly at the local level, are responsible for letting the unions protect their members at the expense of children and in exchange for campaign donations and other political support. And, to be fair, many Democrats (including Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Klein in New York and D.C.'s Michelle Rhee) are aware of the problem. What remains to be seen is whether they can do what needs to be done.
jgoldberg@latimescolumnists.com
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
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I have read a number of articles in the last year dealing with tenure and defined benefit pensions for public employees. I suspect the heat will intensify in the years ahead...
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Post by Arch on Sept 8, 2009 12:57:32 GMT -6
Everything should be merit based.... you know, like you're told as a kid... Work hard and get rewarded... slack off and you're screwed.
Unfortunately it seems many places are: Work hard, get nothing... screw off, keep your job.
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Post by macrockett on Sept 14, 2009 12:54:54 GMT -6
www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/chi-0914edit1sep14,0,6905707.story
chicagotribune.com
Labor unrest
September 14, 2009
Labor unions like to remind us that they are "the folks who brought you the weekend." These days we tend to think of them as the folks who brought us TOOT, or "time off overtime," a scam under which Cook County highway employees were able to bill taxpayers for 20 hours of work by calling in sick and then pulling an eight-hour "overtime" shift the same day. That warm glow of gratitude toward the Norma Raes of the world is fading, replaced by a growing sense that it's us against them. A Gallup poll released this month found that nearly two thirds of Americans believe unions benefit their own members, while 62 percent believe they mostly hurt non-union workers. And 51 percent say labor unions mostly hurt the U.S. economy.
In other words, unions help their members -- at the expense of everyone else. Case in point: the U.S. auto industry.
Fewer than half of Americans -- an all-time low of 48 percent -- approve of labor unions, the poll found.After World War II, almost a third of American jobs were union; now it's about 12 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Increasingly, union workers are government workers. Only 8 percent of private sector jobs are union, vs. 37 percent of government jobs.
In Illinois and around the country, taxpayers are saddled with unsustainable pension and health care plans. They're stuck with incompetent teachers who can't be fired, and they're often obliged to pay premium wages for ordinary effort thanks to union work rules.
With government budgets bleeding red ink, union employees have been asked to take furlough days or forgo scheduled raises -- the same pains being visited on non-union workers everywhere -- and some have declined. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley had no choice but to lay off hundreds of city workers. Gov. Pat Quinn has no choice, either, but he still can't seem to pull the trigger. Last year, Daley angered the unions by spouting off about the inefficient "clock-watchers" who work for the city, though it rang pretty hollow since he'd just signed off on dozens of generous union contracts. At the time, he was defending his efforts to privatize city services to save money. He later apologized for suggesting city workers were unproductive -- not because it wasn't true, but because he needs their support at election time. He's back at it now, with a plan to hire private firms to help during peak snow plowing times. The city's union truck drivers earn huge overtime checks when snows are heavy. The mayor asked them to agree to take comp time this year instead, but they said no. Daley's plan makes perfect sense. By contracting for extra help only when it's needed, the city can throw more bodies at the job instead of having union workers pull round-the-clock shifts. Taxpayers would save money and the streets would get cleared faster. Naturally, the unions are opposed. Is it any wonder their stock is falling? Labor unions may have brought you the weekend. But what have they done for you lately?Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
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Post by macrockett on Sept 14, 2009 13:50:13 GMT -6
latimes.com/news/local/la-me-week13-2009sep13,0,1040374.story
latimes.com
THE WEEK
Californians agree: State government doesn't serve them
And it's no wonder, with all the money wealthy donors, or their operatives, toss around in Sacramento.
By Cathleen Decker
September 13, 2009
As metaphors go, last week served up a doozy. A married member of the Legislature resigned his office after blurting out over an open microphone salacious details about relationships with two women, at least one of them said to be a lobbyist.
The assemblyman later said he was not guilty of affairs but, rather, of "inappropriate story-telling." If you believe his original words, then, he was in bed with a lobbyist. If you believe his recantation, he just wanted people to think he was in bed with a lobbyist.
You didn't have to be outside the windows looking in to get the picture, and Californians do, according to a poll released last week by the Public Policy Institute of California. The poll showed that, overwhelmingly, Californians believe their state government is servicing the few -- say, those represented by lobbyists -- over the needs of the many.
Only 20% of Californians, and only 15% of regular voters, felt the government elected by the people and for the people had any interest in the people, broadly speaking. And the poll was taken before the scandal involving Republican Mike Duvall broke.
The only good news in the poll, if there was any, was its demonstration that we have finally become the unified, "post-partisan" state that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been advertising: Everyone distrusts government, or at least huge majorities of all political groups do.
On the question of whom state government serves, "a few big interests" was the answer of 75% of Democrats. And 78% of Republicans. And 74% of independents.
In their view, "something is terribly broken about state government -- it's not responsive, it's not effective and it's not efficient," said PPIC President Mark Baldassare, a veteran California pollster.
It's little wonder how Californians draw their conclusions. Even those who pay only scant attention to Sacramento can pick up a distasteful whiff. Capital calendars are chock-a-block with lavish meetings between wealthy donors -- or their operatives -- and legislators. Overseas junkets, professional sports games and other activities fill in gaps in the dance cards.
The current speaker, Democrat Karen Bass of Los Angeles, chummied up with lobbyists in Pebble Beach earlier this year. Her predecessor, Fabian Nuñez, also a Democrat from Los Angeles, spent tens of thousands of his campaign dollars on overseas travel, expensive wine and other high-end purchases.
That would be the same Fabian Nuñez who is now a partner in Mercury Public Affairs, the public relations firm that was due to receive a $9-million contract from a state commission 10 days ago, until an article in The Times disclosed the idea and derailed it.
The state high-speed rail commission is dominated by Schwarzenegger appointees; the recommendation for the contract came from a staff panel with close ties to Mercury's partners, which include the governor's top political advisor and his former campaign manager, as well as Nuñez. After a burst of publicity, the commission announced it will rethink the whole thing and issue a new recommendation in the fall.
None of that means Mercury itself did anything wrong, but it served to corroborate the belief of many Californians that their government inhabits a tight little world that excludes most of the state.
That sentiment is only exacerbated by the fearful recession, which has driven the demand that someone, somewhere, stop the destructive spiral of job losses, home losses and dislocation. When people see no improvement in their own circumstances, Baldassare said, they presume that the in-crowd must be benefiting instead.
"Increasingly," Baldassare said, "they are seeing things slipping away in California. This is a state that was great, not a state that is great. That is very depressing to the average Californian."
At least part of the depression stems from the notion that California has tried almost everything to stem its fall, including throwing a Hail Mary pass in 2003 by selecting a previously unelected movie star to run the state, on his promise that things would be better.
Now the governor, whose landslide election drew the highest voter turnout in a governor's race in two decades, is mired with the highest disapproval rate of his tenure, 61%.
This has always been a tortuously difficult state to govern, too big and diverse to come to peaceful agreement most of the time. But part of the problem has also been a California notion that to all problems there must be an easy solution, if only we could find it.
A depressed and distrustful California would not seem inclined to eradicate that flaw. Yet Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC and a former Republican strategist, said he caught glimmers in the poll of a populace that might now be more ready to accept difficult realities.
"Voters are learning that there is no magic, snap-your-fingers solution," he said. "They've been told any number of times that things are going to make the state magically work better, and they just don't believe in magic anymore."
cathleen.decker@latimes.com
Each Sunday, The Week examines implications of major stories. It is archived at latimes.com/theweek.
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
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I feel your pain CA
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Post by southsidesignmaker on Sept 14, 2009 21:04:30 GMT -6
I would have to agree with the idea that "defined pension plans" are a relic of a bygone era.
As for the one comment laying blame on union workers regarding the domestic automobile crisis, I am afraid that situation is a lot more complicated. To assign blame to just organized labor is to bring forth a very incomplete picture to a very complicated problem.
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Post by asmodeus on Sept 15, 2009 11:04:55 GMT -6
Obama's speech to the GM workers today was absolutely nauseating. He told them they deserve "more" when in fact it was the UAW who bypassed every single SECURED creditor of GM during the government's takeover. Ironically, many of the "little people" were crushed, as their retirement plans owned GM bonds -- which became essentially worthless.
The UAW is FAR AND AWAY the number one reason the domestic auto industry is in shambles. There is no other argument that can be made...other than perhaps blaming management for caving in to them all of these decades.
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Post by Arch on Sept 15, 2009 11:08:27 GMT -6
The UAW is FAR AND AWAY the number one reason the domestic auto industry is in shambles. There is no other argument that can be made...other than perhaps blaming management for caving in to them all of these decades. It always takes at least two to tango... |
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Post by macrockett on Sept 15, 2009 20:14:15 GMT -6
I would have to agree with the idea that "defined pension plans" are a relic of a bygone era. As for the one comment laying blame on union workers regarding the domestic automobile crisis, I am afraid that situation is a lot more complicated. To assign blame to just organized labor is to bring forth a very incomplete picture to a very complicated problem. I agree sssm, as amazing as that might seem. Defined contribution plans are unsustainable. As to GM, there is a lot of blame to go around there. Both unions and management should share responsibility. Unfortunately, the taxpayer is the one who picks up the bill... |
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Post by macrockett on Sept 15, 2009 20:54:51 GMT -6
nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=28www.aft.org/pubs-reports/intl/Teacher_Migration.pdf-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- New York Times
September 15, 2009
Schools Look Abroad to Hire Teachers
By SAM DILLON
Some American school districts have turned increasingly to overseas recruiting to find teachers willing to work in their hard-to-staff schools, according to a new report by a national teachers union.
The report used government data to estimate that 19,000 foreign teachers were working in the United States on temporary visas in 2007, and that the number was rising steadily. There are more than three million teachers in American public schools.
“Overseas-trained teachers are being recruited from nearly all corners of the globe and are being placed primarily in hard-to-staff inner-city or very rural schools teaching the hard-to-fill disciplines of math, science and special education,” said the report, by the American Federation of Teachers. The report cited the Baltimore Public Schools as a case study. Baltimore hired 108 teachers from the Philippines in 2005, but four years later has more than 600 Filipino teachers working in city classrooms, where they make up more than 10 percent of the teaching force. Michael Sarbanes, a spokesman for the Baltimore Public Schools, confirmed those numbers but said the report exaggerated the district’s overall reliance on foreign teachers. “For Baltimore, the question is how do we get highly qualified teachers into our classrooms,” Mr. Sarbanes said. “International teacher recruitment has produced some exceptional results for us.” But, he said, the number of foreign teachers the city recruits each year is now dropping because it is finding enough teachers for most hard-to-staff subjects from other sources, including Teach for America. Still, the city could not find American teachers for about 60 special-education jobs this year, he said, and so recruited Filipinos to fill those positions. Foreign instructors usually must show English proficiency to be hired, but sometimes districts inadequately assess them, and in such cases should offer help in improving fluency, the report said. The union published the report in the hope it would lead to heightened regulation, it said. The report cited the prosecution of several recruiting companies and three Texas school administrators on charges related to smuggling immigrants and visa fraud and other cases as examples of the dangers that can accompany the foreign recruiting of teachers.The top applicants for temporary visas for foreign teachers in 2007 were Texas, Georgia, New York, Maryland and California, the report said. Each of the foreign instructors recruited to teach in Baltimore paid $5,000 to $8,000 to a recruiting firm in California for their placement, the report said. The report asserted that Baltimore school officials were leaning so heavily on foreign recruiting that they were recruiting less aggressively in the United States.
“Rather than attending job fairs throughout the Mid-Atlantic, trying to persuade reluctant American teachers to accept positions in troubled inner-city schools, H.R. officials can meet all their hiring needs in one trip,” the report says. “At a single career fair in Manila, they can interview hundreds of prescreened applicants, each of whom is eager to pay for the opportunity to work in Baltimore city schools.”Mr. Sarbanes disputed that. “Our human resources people are everywhere, all the way out to Michigan and Ohio,” he said. “We’re aggressively recruiting every which way we can.” Ligaya Avenida, a former San Francisco school teacher who founded the agency that has supplied hundreds of Filipino teachers to Baltimore, said the report was mostly fair. Ms. Avenida said it failed, however, to detail the high costs of applying for foreign teachers’ visas, reviewing their qualifications and transcripts before interviews with American school officials, and carrying out other services, all of which are paid for by fees charged to the recruits.
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Post by doctorwho on Sept 15, 2009 21:35:04 GMT -6
I would have to agree with the idea that "defined pension plans" are a relic of a bygone era. As for the one comment laying blame on union workers regarding the domestic automobile crisis, I am afraid that situation is a lot more complicated. To assign blame to just organized labor is to bring forth a very incomplete picture to a very complicated problem. I agree sssm, as amazing as that might seem. Defined contribution plans are unsustainable. As to GM, there is a lot of blame to go around there. Both unions and management should share responsibility. Unfortunately, the taxpayer is the one who picks up the bill... Yep- both sides at fault- but then someone please make sense to me how our current admin wants to 're-strengthen' the unions once again. Just not paying attention or what? For years the unions were able to force their way to the type of wages made by the UAW today - then mgmt just became lazy and caved no matter what. When GM already has more sunk into the cost of a new car in owed pensions/benefits then will one day be a competitive cost against Chinese manufacturers - how will they compete? Fair is fair but when you have someone making more money putting bumpers on cars - with a great pension and complete benefits - and they make more annually than the GP MD that spends $250K-$500K+ getting an education to take care of your health and deal with life and death situations - the world is f'd up. |
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Post by Arch on Sept 15, 2009 21:40:32 GMT -6
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Post by macrockett on Sept 15, 2009 22:53:06 GMT -6
I guess they have finally risen to the radar of the AFT, etc. |
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Post by macrockett on Sept 15, 2009 22:56:51 GMT -6
I agree sssm, as amazing as that might seem. Defined contribution plans are unsustainable. As to GM, there is a lot of blame to go around there. Both unions and management should share responsibility. Unfortunately, the taxpayer is the one who picks up the bill... Yep- both sides at fault- but then someone please make sense to me how our current admin wants to 're-strengthen' the unions once again. Just not paying attention or what? For years the unions were able to force their way to the type of wages made by the UAW today - then mgmt just became lazy and caved no matter what. When GM already has more sunk into the cost of a new car in owed pensions/benefits then will one day be a competitive cost against Chinese manufacturers - how will they compete? Fair is fair but when you have someone making more money putting bumpers on cars - with a great pension and complete benefits - and they make more annually than the GP MD that spends $250K-$500K+ getting an education to take care of your health and deal with life and death situations - the world is f'd up. I suspect that will prove out in the future Doc as the losses pile up...again  |
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Post by Arch on Sept 15, 2009 22:59:00 GMT -6
I guess they have finally risen to the radar of the AFT, etc. My sister used to work for them as a screener/placer |
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Post by southsidesignmaker on Sept 16, 2009 21:46:37 GMT -6
Asmo, I blame management for nearly all the problems at GM. Their arrogant attitude and lack of vision tied together with little if any spine when dealing with organized labor has brought the company to its knees.
There are still some of us that hold onto the last vestige of the "buy domestic" drum beat, but even now that can be hard to do with domestic brands. The last vehicle I purchased was 80% made in America and it is a rebadged thinly disguised Toyota. The other choice was a Chevy with a Chinese engine and Japanese transmission, U.S. content under 50%. Nice "The American Revolution" produced for you in China and other far east countries.
Have you noticed where the majority of American purchased Toyota, Honda, Nissan, and Mitsubishi vehicles are manufactured, right here in the USA. These plants are located in mostly southern and non-union states. Health and welfare costs are significantly less than the union shops while wages are competitive.
The vehicles built at these plants do have a major advantage.. These cars and trucks are what the purchasing public want to buy. Many Americans are just tired of low resale, mediocre products that are available at the 2 government owned domestic vehicle manufacturers.
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