'Waiting for Superman' Sends Educators to Detention Hall

Teachers are an easy target. Teachers are not the cause of the problems. In a country where the biggest football player is revered and the "Bookworm" is laughed at. How can on blame societies ills on only one group of people? It is because teaching is a female dominated field which makes them easy targets?

ETTU shows a severe disconnect from actual practice at public schools these days. Yes, there are worksheets and study guides. Worksheets are often used to prove to angry parents that their child refuses to be involved in a class. And as for study guides, these are DEMANDED by parents and administrators so there are no mysteries abut what is on a test. And as for the "testing at intervals" three companies I KNOW of sell these to public schools systems and they are very common, more so than when I was in school. Unfortunately, since "No Child Left Behind" the test is king. And if the problem is the teacher, why measure their effectiveness by the success of the kids? Teachers are only one contingent factor in a very complicated equation.

Once again employees and their organizations are hammered for causing the problems they organized to protect themselves against. The rubber room is a reflection on how crappy the bosses are at managing employees and not on the Union or the teachers themselves. Guess what, folks... public employees are subject to protections under the 14th Amendment. The Government cannot take anything from a citizen w/out due process and firing a public employee w/out due process is illegal. Those people in the rubber room are waiting for the system to provide due process. If the system worked, there would be no rubber room.
No union contract in the country bars an employer from terminating an employee... they just have to do it right; something most employers don't know how to do.

I never attended public school. Though I received a rigorous education, I realized,upon entering college, that I was,in so many ways,naive. And unworldly. I'd grown up disconnected from the experiences of my mainstream public school-educated peers. They were, I discovered, much more sophisticated, richer in ideas and opinions and expressed themselves more freely and openly than I ever thought possible. I admired them. They intimidated and challenged me and I learned from them to be intellectually audacious with questions and answers. I doubt I ever thought about public education prior to college. But I do know that my 12 years of private school limited my exposure to-and did not prepare me for- the complex public world that was natural to my inclusively schooled peers. I sent my kids to public school. Their experience has been, like everything in life, hit or miss, good and not so good. But overall they are better off learning the dynamics of the real world, as well as the three "R's:" theirs is an infinitely more rounded and grounded education which I believe private schools can't provide. Thus, I feel they are better prepared to face the realities of the future.

This was an interesting review of a film that I am going to make an effort to see.That said , I believe that overall our public school system is excellent. Examining schools that are " failing" we find that they are overwhelmingly in certain urban areas where dysfunctional familes, dysfunctional values and the lowest socio-economic classes live. In short schools are a reflection of the communities in which they are located. Seemingly one answer would appear to be revisiting the neighborhoods with a modern version of settlement houses as well as more positive community involvement in the schools. However I am aware that these approaches have already been tried and seemed to have failed. I am a teacher who grew up in a housing project community that was not in any way dysfunctional. It acutally mirrored Hemingway's answer to Fitzgerald's comment that" The rich are different from us" of " Yes, they have more money." Sadly today it seems the poor are all to different from us, they not only have less money they have a deeper poverty.

Ahh, yet another opportunity for a backhanded slap against the current convenient target, the teachers.

It it off the charts infuriating to hear misinformed or deliberately ignorant people spout off about teachers and the profession of teaching.

One of the core myths that keeps the emotional rhetoric at a boil is the triad: tenure equals a life-time job; its corollary, incompetent teachers cannot be fired, and than all wrapped with the nice bow, a gift from the all powerful teachers' union.

For the record, there is no dispute that there are -- as in ANY industry -- incompetent teachers. However, name another advanced education profession where EVERYone (including K - 12 students) feel they KNOW how to teach.

The NYC "rubber rooms" do, in fact exist.
Funny though, that when other municipal employees are suspended with pay while ALLEGATIONS are being INVESTIGATED, their 'reassignment' isn't given a pejoratively dismissive name. (Where's Sarah Palin's indignation as "rubber room" is code for "mentally ill"?)

NYC is different most American school systems save for the other large city jurisdictions. By its sheer size, there will be a fair number of teachers, firefighters, police officers, etc. on "modified duty" at any one time.

But, the real lie is that unlike police and firefighters, all it takes to have a teacher placed on modified duty is the complaint of the supervising principal. One disagreement. One angry outburst. One set of bad test grades. That is all it takes to have a teacher removed.

Now, again, unions are not perfect. But they do provide one benefit that most American workers BELIEVE they have -- due process before being fired.

Sorry, Wal-Marters, but you work "at will" and the company can will you gone at any time. But tenure for teachers was a hard fought benefit because it wasn't so long ago that the election of a new mayor brought an entirely new teacher corps, who all shared the new mayor's political/ideological views. So, in order to achieve a PROFESSIONAL teaching corps, there had to be a system created where teachers were fired for work reasons, not political ones.

But, the "all powerful" unions couldn't kill off the first step of the process -- the principal suspension -- so many teachers are shipped off to modified duty because of an issue with the principal. Note carefully, that doesn't mean a professional failing, just somehow falling out of favor with the principal.

Ultimately, NYC's Department of Education has had a pretty terrible reputation for being able to handle suspension reviews in an efficient manner. So, yes, there have been some teachers who were paid to not teach for extended periods.

But, if the system would get its act together to prevent capricious suspensions and then put in the effort to follow its own review procedures in a timely fashion, the "problem" would be solved.

Now if teachers could just get the public to stop pretending they are all education experts and start receiving the support and respect befitting their training, experience, and contributions to society, then maybe we could start seeing true academic achievement and not politically jiggered sham scores designed to appease an impatient electorate.

I am an elementary teacher who comes from 4 generations of teachers and administrators on both coasts and everywhere in between. Every school district has its own individual problems that need to be addressed, but the one common problem that seems to plague most low-performing schools is undisciplined students with unsupportive parents. In my 4 years as a kindergarten and first grade teacher, I have been slapped across the face, scratched, kicked, punched, hit by chairs, and cussed out. I have also had to file 6 complaints with DSS for child abuse and neglect. Most parents refuse to answer my phone calls or notes home, and when they do talk to me it is usually to cuss me out for "harrassing" them. When parents do show up to conferences they are often completely disinterested in the help and resources I try to offer. During one memorable conference, I heard a phone ring. Without saying a word to me, the mom pulled her cell phone out of her bra, answered it, carried on a 5 minute casual conversation, then hung up and never acknowledged what had just happened.
Every teacher I know has similar stories of parental neglect. Unfortunately, most of my day in the classroom is taken up dealing with the behavior issues of children whose parents never bothered to teach them their alphabet or how to count. I have succeeded in bringing 90% of my students to grade level by the end of each year, but I will admit that I spend most of my time teaching to the lowest students. The higher students are the ones who are the true victims, as they are rarely given my full attention.
Be careful when pointing the finger at "lazy teachers". Yes, there are a lot of bad teachers out there, but if we want to fix struggling schools, more accountability first has to be placed upon parents. I am more than willing to handle all of the teaching responbilities, and in fact I am in favor of monimizing homework because it often causes undue stress at home. However, YOU as a parent are responsible for your child's social and emotional growth. If your child is repeatedly causing disruptions at school, do not blame me when they start falling behind!

The "wire"was a great series based on fact. Local school districts teach to the test and jigger the results so they can get the federal money actual learning takes back seat to funding. States keep cutting funding so school boards have to go for the federal money. Bad unmotivated teachers can't be dismissed, and your kids have better things to do than learn. Solving this problem is a lot more complicated than blaming the teachers union and will call for the dismissal of idealogical differences and agreeing to better education. But why bother how educated do you have to be for a minimum wage job most of the good paying jobs aren't coming back and how many engineers do we really need?