Thursday, July 14, 2011

School Tech Connect: Someone's Getting Yelled At...

School Tech Connect: Someone's Getting Yelled At...

Someone's Getting Yelled At...

... at the 51 second mark of this video. I wonder who it could be... Hmm..... I simply can't tell...

Anyway, my own feeling is that over the long haul, assuming pensions still exist in another year, the thing that will be most missed out of everything recently lost is seniority. It's basically gone, as far as I can tell, and I think it people will look back and realize that a lot of damage was done in that particular giveaway.

The Kids Are All Right

I realize the popular spelling is "alright." I just can't go there. Anyway, the kids seem to be aware that "shape up or ship out" isn't 100% a charter school thing. It's also part of "zero tolerance." There, I finally said something that wasn't an indictment of charter schools alone. Anyway, any policy that's increasing dropout rates is a failing policy. We really need to hold on to every kid that we can--- and not just for reading drills; we need to be able to offer them the kind of things that they need, rather than this Common Core, everyone-study-the-same-thing crap.

Teachers Ruined Everything!

So cool.

Infrastructure---you can't beat it for putting people to work. Here we stimulate the economy by inventing more tests for kids to take in school.

At lease we have our military. And the most expensive health care system on the planet.


The Coming Pension Grab

This is just excellent; it's the post I've been trying to formulate in my mind. Therefore, I take full credit for it. I kid! It's an excellent post on where Illinois is with the pensions. Go read it now, I command you.

SPOILER ALERT: I'm about to quote the single phrase from Fred's post that describes the heart of the problem. Close your eyes if you haven't read it yet. Here goes: "Over some of our objections, the delegates approved the language change." I'm serious. I think that's the problem. Teachers have basically accepted the idea that they're guilty of some kind of crime and need to pay some kind of price.

The average TRS pension is about $41,000 per year, and TRS members don't get Social Security, and they pay