It looks like Obama might be doing the right thing on this issue. We’ll see how far he gets. The thing about the Executive is everyone knows that any particular president is only in office for 8 years. They are in the “4th branch” of gov’t ::: unelected bureaucracy. They can hunker down and wait until policy shifts. UNLESS massive dramatic action is done by Executive Order. And even then, those can be reversed by the next Administration. Anyway…

Read about his bold moves HERE.

March 14th, 2010 | Education, Politics, The Department of Hope and Change, Unions | No comments

Micky Kaus over at slate.com has a good roundup and excellent commentary on the atrocious state of schools in Los Angeles [and I am sure other areas are similar].

Quotable bits :::

Unions vs. Liberalism, Part XXIIII: If you are a liberal who believes in public education, do not let the teachers’ unions do to your school system what the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) has done to the L.A. Unified School District–make it so hard to fire a bad teacher that most school principals don’t even try. According to an L.A. Weeklyinvestigation, the school district itself seems to have given up:

In the past decade, LAUSD officials spent $3.5 million trying to fire just seven of the district’s 33,000 teachers for poor classroom performance — andonly four were fired, during legal struggles that wore on, on average, for five years each. Two of the three others were paid large settlements, and one was reinstated. The average cost of each battle is $500,000.

[W]e also discovered that 32 underperforming teachers were initially recommended for firing, but then secretly paid $50,000 by the district, on average, to leave without a fight. Moreover, 66 unnamed teachers are being continually recycled through a costly mentoring and retraining program but failing to improve, and another 400 anonymous teachers have been ordered to attend the retraining. [E.A.]

That’s less than one attempted firing a year. Why? Mainly because firings–and the bad performance evaluations that precede them–are almost invariably contested by the union. Firings must go through an expensive and protracted hearing and appeals process: “Documents show only one instance in the past 10 years in which an LAUSD teacher accepted his firing and left without a fight or big payment.” [E.A.]

Go read the rest on your own.

Speaking of Unions and other insane use of public funds that fly in the face of common sense. This is a bit old now, but in case you missed it ::: Willie Brown can talk common sense ‘cuz he is no longer in office.

February 23rd, 2010 | Economics, Misc., Politics, SF Politics & Culture, Unions | No comments