Michael Ramirez for September 19, 2021

But by all means, let’s not lift a finger to fix any infrastructure.

Maybe if we spent more on real education instead of on STOOOOPID/MEANINGLESS wars…

Maybe if we realize that education relies on STUDENTS, PARENTS, and TEACHERS each doing their part as partners, then we wouldn’t have this problem. Too many parents treat school like free daycare and expect teachers to raise their kids.

That’s not a union problem.

Funny thing, public schools that have union teachers consistently outperform charter schools with non union teachers when students are tested by independent authorities. Homeschoolers don’t even place. Public schools are just one other thing Republicans would like to eliminate, along with National Parks, free highways, libraries, Social Security, etc., etc.

Blaming teacher unions for faults in education is like blaming your server if your steak isn’t prepared correctly.

There are two ways teachers evaluate STUDENT learning.

We have what is called a formative assessment, which evaluates how well a student is mastering the objective, right now, as we’re going along, during instruction. We use it to show how well were doing, problems students might be having and what we need to change to get to where we need to be. These are the most useful because we can give feedback to students. It is what true teaching is all about.

Then there are summative assessments which are done AFTER the unit is complete. They help us see what was missed, where we need to go back and fill in gaps while we move ahead.

Those are assessments which help STUDENT learning.

That is NOT what Mike is referring to here. When Mike talks about “student scores” he’s talking about the year end test which does NOT assess student learning. We do NOT get the chance to go back and discuss with students what they missed. Students take the test in April, results are released in September and it is against the law to sit down with a student and say, “Hey, look, remember this? We talked about it in class. Here, let me show you again.”

What Mike is talking about is how bureaucrats and bean counters justify how much money is spent in schools. They are evaluating schools and NOT learning. And it is only a portion of the evaluation. The evaluation includes information on the local community, boys and girls scores, how many students receive free/reduced lunch, minority population. It is a complex equation.

And now we have remote learning. It is NOT our choice. We were forced into it the same way you were, overnight. Parents were expected to do something that they are honestly not trained to do, be teachers. I am not blaming them, but they’re mostly not doing very well. They need help. We are offering help and some will actually listen. Many, sadly, will not. Or, even sadder, can not.

In the last administration, Betsy DeVos did NOTHING to change,revise, and or improve the education in America! United States used to be in the top of the list compared to foreign countries in education! No we plummeted and no longer leaders.

Obama, Bill Gates, and all the states governors, ( except for about 4-5) decided to go with the cheesey, inadequate, low barred COMMON CORE CURRICULUM ! DUMBING DOWN AMERICA!!!

Eliminating many courses that have been taught for decades to improve a child’s intelligence.

Common Core: Teaches students how to take a test and hands out hours of homework to kids to do and parents can’t even help them with most if they get stuck. Instead of teachers teaching they’re prepping them for tests….and people wonder why the last generations have no clue.it’s a shame, Parents are always too busy, kids left to their own devices and the family unit is no longer working! I can bet most parents don’t even check out their kids homework and or what they’re learning….on their own, I must add.

By the looks of it, this administration will do nothing to change the education for the better for our kids. What a huge disappointment,

Betsy, was chosen to lead the Education Dept in Trumps cabinet, which she knew NOTHING ABOUT, but was picked for the position because she was a huge " doner" to his campaign! A multi-millionaire herself, was being investigated on her taking bribes from the loan companies who gave students their school loans. She accomplished NOTHING in four years to even matter to the students in America!

Instead of spending billions on school buildings to impress people, it might be better to get rid of all the useless admin and pay teachers more to get qualified people. Then pay for their further education. Also replace expensive out of date textbooks that are controlled by trolls from TX and give each kid an ebook to download current sources.

Public schools are worthless liberal breeding grounds.

Perhaps Covid, Jan 6, trump, republican behavior and words, 2020 and so far 2021 has the kids distracted and not at the top of their game, so to speak.

Given the apparent intelligence (read lack of).. from some Republican governors this is not a union problem.

We need good teachers. You’re not going to get good teachers if the pay and the working conditions aren’t good. Teachers, as workers, deserve to have a union to look after their interests. I’ve been a unionized teacher (at a university) for twenty-five years or so, and on balance our union has been good for us. We need a society that values education. In my experience most students want to learn if the material is presented in the right way. Rote learning isn’t much fun. I’m all in favor of hard work, but the students have to see why the hard pays off. Hard work is actually fun if you get a sense of satisfaction from it. Students in today’s world need to know some serious science. I would start teaching biology in a garden or a farm. How do plants grow? What kind of soil chemistry do you need? How does a garden interact with the other living things around it? What about some basic genetics? What about pollinators? What about the weather? With this kind of real knowledge about plants, you could move on to the history of farming in America. How many people own farms? What are the social consequences of the concentration of farm ownership? How does the tax structure effect small farmers? At some point I would also want to talk about farming animals, both practically and philosophically. I eat meat, so I’m not pushing vegetarianism, but I think a thoughtful meat eater needs to think about what it means to live by killing. There’s also the very practical question of the social costs of raising a lot of meat in the current climate crisis. So you start with one little thing and a whole world opens out.

These are the kids of parents who won’t make them do their homework. Parents who demand that the school give them marks they don’t deserve.

I have found that young students and university students did not achieve well last year at all. After talking to both groups, they said they didn’t learn anything from being on line but did when they were in class. These students from various years all said the same thing which really surprised me that last year was simply a waste of time.

Too bad that Ramirez didn’t have the pleasure of working in the Fisher body or Chevy axle plants back in ‘36—’37. Why, you ask? Well, there are two reasons. First, chances are good that Ramirez would have a better, and more realistic opinion of unions. And second, he would probably be deader than Marley’s ghost by now, which would relieve our burden of having him in our society.

Kids have missed a lot of school in the last 2 years because republicans spread covid and refused to get vaxed or wear a mask. The new variant is killing teachers and children.

Republicans continue to give covid the right to reproduce as they take abortion rights from women.

Better remote than dead.

Teachers unions are not the enemy of school reform. My union does three things. They negotiate compensation. They negotiate working conditions. They represent teachers in disputes with administration. That’s all they do. The larger parent organizations – like the NEA – lobby government about laws pertaining to education and government spending. In that respect they re no different than the Police or oil companies.

The main reason that the right does not like the teacher’s union (or teachers for that matter) is that they skew liberal and there are a lot of them, so they have clout. Notice that the right doesn’t have much to say about police unions as obstacles to reform. Put that together with the rights hostility to education – teachers tend to teach facts that the right does not agree with – and you have things like Mr. Ramierez’s cartoon.

American teachers work harder than any other teachers in the world. The OECD puts out a annual report on the state of education throughout the world. We spend 1100 hours in the classroom, while most of our colleagues spend between 800 and 900, with more school days than American schools. Most of our work, outside of the classroom is expected to be done off the books. As I write this I am staring down a stack of papers that need to be graded, along with lesson plans to complete that will take up the next five hours of my Sunday off. This is the reality of American teachers.

My union did not force remote learning on our students, the parents did. Many parents wanted their kids in a classroom, but more did not want their kids exposed to Covid-19. When parents wanted schools reopened the union wanted their teachers vaccinated and the schools to enforce preventative measures, masks, social distancing, etc. That’s not unreasonable. I can’t think of any teacher who thought distance learning was a good thing. Kids need to be in a classroom. But none of us signed up to be at the mercy of a virus that can kill us.

A Generation of American Men Give Up on College: ‘I Just Feel Lost’

The number of men enrolled at two- and four-year colleges has fallen behind women by record levels, in a widening education gap across the U.S.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/college-university-fall-higher-education-men-women-enrollment-admissions-back-to-school-11630948233?

Michael Ramirez might have been saved by a great teacher.

Spoken like someone who knows nothing about teaching.

Is this cartoon set in Texas, where the Texas school boards want history books that say the all slaves were happy when their white masters did the thinking for them?

I don’t think it’s the teachers or the teacher’s union. I don’t think it’s about the money we spend on education – we spend more than just about any other country per student. It’s our system and culture. We monetize everything. We politicize everything. People find knowledge threatening. We don’t value anything that does not make money or validate our beliefs. Our media demonizes teachers or makes us saints, not human beings. It also laughs at intelligence.

Our kids have no respect for education. They are being told that if you believe in something hard enough it will happen, not that you have to put in the work. So more of my students care more about sports than learning about the boring things like math or history. They’d rather play video games.

I read today about a Tik Tok challenge where kids are being told to vandalize the bathrooms and steal teacher’s stuff. It’s apparently popular. How does one teach in THAT environment?

Funnily enough, my school actually did incredibly well this online year. I don’t know about every school in the state, but just saying…

The problem was around in 1955 and has only gotten worse. The more government got involved in teaching the worse the problem became. But there is too much money in teachers’ unions and one size fits all solutions for anyone to see the obvious solution.

How many times have you heard someone say that they didn’t learn anything useful in school? If they have kids, just imagine how unmoitivated those kids are going to be to learn anything.

A significant fraction of the responsibility for poor scores belongs to the folks who insist on universal testing instead of universal teaching. Unions do make it harder to get rid of bad teachers, but unions have nothing at all to do with the hiring of them in the first place.

People want to dictate to teachers how and what they teach – then get upset when the results are poor…

Untrue. Educational efficiency and achievement in public schools has been dropping ever since teachers were allowed to unionize. When I pointed out obvious and easily provable errors in textbooks the union said they were going to continue to teach by the books. That’s when we removed our children from the blackboard jungles and taught them at home (except for band). We discovered they were woefully ignorant of history and mathematics., It took us a year just to get them caught up. Then they surged ahead under our tutelage and both got “superior” scores on their state graduation exams. They went on to both graduate with honors from university.

When my daughter was disappointed with my grandson’s education it tutored him as well. He graduated high school with honors and also university with honors.

Teaching isn’t hard, you just have to be as smart at the kids, at least. Unfortunately, we are now in the third generation of teachers taught by teachers who themselves were ignoramuses. The unions let them escape responsibility, while the very few truly gifted teachers are often booted out by the union as they threaten the rest of their labor force by making them look bad by comparison. We had a science teacher in my daughter’s school (before we removed them), who was a wonderful teacher. Smart, had good records, helped students who were having trouble and informed parents when students were having trouble. She was selected by NASA to go to Space Camp. She had honors and accolades. Parents and students alike loved her. Her reward? her contract was not renewed. No cause given. She was replaced by a union machine teacher who knew little of science and cared less. Science scores on state exams plummeted.

Unions stopped being necessary protection for workers decades ago. They now exist only to perpetuate themselves. Why do you think Catholic schools ran by nuns consistently outscore public schools?

We need to let parents have more control over where their kids go to school, and need to get the left wing brainwashing out of schools.