| Friday,
September 29, 2006
Teacher Unions
Escape Hatch for Incompetent Teachers
Closed
Governor signs a bill that will let some principals to reject poor
instructors seeking a transfer to their schools.
By Nancy Vogel, Times Staff Writer September 29, 2006
SACRAMENTO — In a rare defeat for teachers'
unions, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill Thursday to make it
easier for some principals to reject incompetent teachers.
The new law won't make it easier to fire
public school teachers — something the governor sought and failed to win
with an initiative last November — but it eliminates one escape route
for teachers facing bad reviews.<snip>
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-me-bills29
sep29,0,4911819.story?coll=la-headlines-politics
If you ever had any doubts about just how evil the teacher union
leadership is, read this article. The Iron Law of
Bureaucracy predicts this effect; but why we put up with it in our
public schools is beyond me. The public schools absorb the greatest part of
every state's budget; they are our investment in the future; and we put them
under the control of teacher's unions, whose major goal is to insure that
incompetent teachers remain employed.
At least it's progress of a sort, however halting.
Some Republicans hope for defeat:
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB115932394436
675163-sRXw9TR5RJYNGI8VuFkyGDR21Iw_20070926.html
But one doubts that electing open border democrats under the control of
teachers unions and lawyers associations will do a great deal of good
either.
=======
==========
Subject: 6th grade primer in pdf
I was looking for the 6th grade reader you had scanned
in and were offering for download for a nominal fee. I looked a bit for the
page, but I couldn't find it. I'm on the school board of the Catholic school
in Flagstaff, AZ and I was planning on evaluating the reader for use in our
classrooms.
I would be happy to purchase a copy if you could send
the me the PayPal link.
Ben Espen
I put this letter in View rather than mail, because it's all my fault: I
have the reader in Word Document form. It needs a bit of formatting before
it can be set up as pdf, and I need to write some introductory material. The
introductory material is easy enough. It's the formatting. This arthritis
thing makes it difficult to do long sessions looking at the screen. I need
to figure out a way to change my posture so that I can do more formatting
and layout work without an hour of it finishing me for the day.
I have the reader. It has many classic works, and is very suitable for
home schooling, or as a supplemental reader for pupils in the public
schools. In addition, I have another supplemental reader.
Here is a small snip of one of the stories:
The Messenger
By M. E. M. Davis
“Those reptiles
of Americans, I say to you, Marcel,—mark my words!—that they have it in
their heads to betray Louisiana to the Spaniard. They are tr-r-raitors!”
Old Galmiche rolled the word viciously on his French tongue.
“Yes,” assented his young companion, absently. He quite agreed with
Galmiche—the Americans were traitors, oh, of the blackest black! But
the sky overhead was so blue, the wind blowing in from the Gulf and
lifting the dark curls on his bared forehead was so moist and sweet, the
scene under his eyes, although familiar, was so enchanting! He rose,
the better to see it all once again.
Grand
Terre, the low-lying strip of an island upon which he stood, was at that
time—September, 1814—the stronghold of Jean Lafitte, the famous
freebooter, or, as he chose rather to call himself, privateer, and his
band of smugglers and buccaneers.
The
island, which lies across the mouth of Barataria Bay, with a narrow pass
at each end opening into the Gulf of Mexico, had been well fortified.
Lafitte’s own bungalow-like house was protected on the Gulf side by an
enclosing wall surmounted with small cannon. The rich furniture within
the house—the pictures, books, Oriental draperies, silver and gold plate
and rare crystal—attested equally—so declared his enemies—to the
fastidious taste of the Lord of Barataria and to his lawlessness.<snip>
(The story continues to the Battle of New Orleans, Lafitte and Jackson,
Jackson's preparations, and such like.) I have included another story in its
entirety over in Reports. See The
Bravery of Regulus.
I have also put two
examples of stories from the California Sixth Grade Reader of 1916 in
Reports.
I intend to put these stories into decent format and make them available,
complete with ISBN numbers. My problem is time. The stories are all in WORD
Document format. Some are of course poems that need precise formatting.
I can write the introductory material easily enough; the problem is
getting the time to format this material. I can't sit still for very long.
My apologies for taking so long.
==
You may or may not know that the teachers unions have prevailed on the
textbook publishers to suppress the sale of public school textbooks to home
schoolers. Dr. Arthur Robinson, publisher of the irregularly sent but
invaluable Access to Energy,
has developed a home school
curriculum which I have not evaluated but which I have good reason to
believe is very good.
The public schools seek a monopoly over what is taught to our children.
They are supported in this by the teachers unions. My preference would be
for good public schools, governed by local school boards which can assess
school taxes and is elected by those who pay those taxes. I would get both
the Federal Government and the state governments out of the system. I would
also abolish teachers unions, and tenure, and most of the other developments
that have taken place since about 1940. Good public schools, like universal
conscription, have the effect of giving citizens common experiences.
None of this will happen, of course.
=============
Have you seen the Face on Mars?
Now we have:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060926.html
Of course that's just faked up, and they are suppressing the REAL
photographs. I know that because I heard it on the radio the other night
from a prominent science advisor to someone or another.
=============
Pournelle's Iron
Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will
be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the
organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in
education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs.
union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most
incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of
person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write
the rules under which the organization functions.
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