I don't see how. We've increased school administration and reduced class sizes over the past 40 years and there has been no increase in performance. Perhaps the answer is to cut back. Reduce electives, focus on the basics. Get rid of tenure and make it easier to fire bad teachers. Cut the bureaucracy. Throwing money at the problem isn't working; it's time to try something new.
We've reduced class sizes over the past 40 years? Not saying it's not true, but I've never heard that. Does this factor in special needs? If so, then it's a pretty misleading statistic. I know in my experience (I know empirical data isn't the best), many of my classes didn't have much room for more kids. Not sure how we could have been much higher in the past. Can you provide a link for this? Again, not saying you're not right, just want to read up on it. I'm not saying throwing money is the right solution or that being able to fire bad teachers shouldn't be easier. I'm just saying it is not comparable to a company that is reducing it's output (for that product) by nearly a third.
The author compares the system today, where everyone must be educated, to the system of the nineteenth century where only the wealthy could go to school. Not exactly apples to apples. His more recent comparison of teachers that "commonly had 30-35 students" 45 years ago and "many classes of 25" today, are purposefully vague. There can be many classes of 25, but the average could still be 30. You could commonly have a class of 30-35, but the average be something less than that. Both are probably true statements, but neither is a hard statistic. Plus he doesn't discuss the effect special ed on average class size. If you have a school of 1000 with 40 teachers (so his 25 students per class), but one of those teachers teaches only 5 special needs students, the affect of removing those students and single teacher is about .5 students per class. That seems small, but the gap between his "stats" from today and 45 years ago is only 5 students.
An excellent review of all the ways public unions aren't analagous to private sector unions. http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo203.html
Except the GOP did stall and tried all sorts of stuff to slow down the passing of Obamacare. http://sbynews.blogspot.com/2009/12/gop-stalls-push-for-obamacare-in-senate.html They didn't just "take it in the ass for democracy". Then why is such a big provision in this bill & how is it going to save money? Wouldn't we want to get top dollar by having a healthy bidding process? Perhaps it's just to make it easy for a fat cat to help his fat cat friends, meanwhile causing a ruckus over the unions being corrupt & drunk with power, holding the state budget hostage with their lavish lifestyles. Renegotiate the pension program. Not sure why collective bargaining has to be destroyed to attempt to renegotiate? Probably because it "takes too long" and would ruin him of an idealogical victory. http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/lo...cle_78dbd12c-3fa5-11e0-9aed-001cc4c002e0.html Not so cut & dry. Again, not seeing why you can't renegotiate programs w/o destroying collective bargaining. Organizations/people give to political parties they feel help their cause. Nothing is new here. Who really cares who takes the money out. It's hard to escape union dues. That's fine if they swap around who's responsible, but does this save anyone massive amounts of $$$? Because they are linked to each other. You pay more for your benefits, you have less salary. Compensation includes benefits. Pensions are essentially an agreement to defer wages until a later date. If a state mismanages their pension fund then they put the taxpayers on the line. There was already some flexibility in the system as far as choosing who your health provider is, changing that doesn't mean people are going to get better healthcare at a lower cost. If everyone took a cheaper plan(with probably reduced benefits), yes that would save money by providing a lesser service. If indeed only benefits are being hampered then I guess the union will just need to renegotiate higher salaries to cover some of the costs caused by reduced benefits. Ultimately the whole point of removing collective bargaining on any portion of the union seems idealogical rather than practical. There is also the possibility that reducing/removing benefits & possible wages cuts will make it harder to live on those jobs. There is no guarantee removing collective bargaining is going to net immediate savings or save any immediate jobs. Yet it could hamper the ability for teachers to negotiate in the future. Many of the rights granted to people over the last century are due to people standing up and trying to bring attention to situations. Workers rights, women's rights civil rights. Not all policy is shaped or decided from within the chambers of the government.
The GOP Senators didn't run away. They debated. They lost the vote, but if poll numbers are to be believed, they won the argument. 2010 was a huge GOP victory, largely because of the perceived overreach of Obamacare. Why can't Wisconsin Democrats do the same? Have the debate. If they lose, so be it. They can rescind the legislation when they take back the Legislature and the Governorship. That's how Democracy works. All you other points are just so much noise. Wisconsin can't afford to pay the benefits. The state is broke and there are no more financial wells from which to draw money; the State has been bled dry by the unions. It's not about the $138B deficit this year; it's about the $3.6B debt going forward. And it's not just about the state union, there are thousands of local jurisdictions that have to adhere to these collective bargaining of benefits. I don't know why you believe that Democracy only has to move one way--to more government, higher taxes, more bureaucracy. It's a pendulum. It moves one way, it moves back. Have faith in the good people of Wisconsin. If you're so sure you're right, let the problem be solved at the ballot box. The citizens of Wisconsin get to decide their future. Right now they've decided through their votes that they would like to modify the agreement between the teachers and the State.
Let's just cut public education all together and let the private sector figure it out. I'm so angry at teachers right now I can't see straight. I'm looking at you, Sug, you worthless scumbag. Stop stealing from good people like PapaG.
The cool thing is that this would solve multiple problems. Not only would it get rid of those pesky teachers, but the kids would all have lots of free time, so we could put them to work in the factories, which would lower wages dramatically and let us compete with China on their terms. And since those lazy teachers like spending time with kids, they can work in the factories too. And - get this - we'll have a bunch of unused school buildings, so they can be turned into... factories! That way the kids won't have to commute to some distant workplace, so we can extend their work hours a little more. Think of it... a world where "Made in the USA" has the same cachet as "Made in China" does now. barfo
I don't have a side in this fight, I'm just trolling PapaG because he's a big doody-head. Carry on with your srs bz.
Last night I tried to figure out how much of Sug's salary PapaG actually pays. It's difficult to be precise, but I figure it's something less than a penny. barfo
Good idea. Stick to your strengths, because your ignorance on societal and political issues is frankly an embarrassment. Anyhow, today is apparently deadline day in WI. Either the Fleebaggers show up, or up to 1.2k state jobs are slashed because there won't be a passed budget to pay for them.
It didn't take any effort at all to figure out how much of my salary and individual retirement benefits Sug pays. ZERO
I'm struck about how the roles have changed, with each side representing the same people, the same constituencies, but different positions. It used to be that representing unions was standing up for the rights of the downtrodden, the working person against The Man. Today, the unions are The Man. They're the privileged ones. They're demanding that they keep benefits that only they have, while taxpayers continue to struggle and tighten their belts. Their idea of "compromise" is still to pay half the amount for their pensions and their health insurance as the people paying for them. I hope Gov. Walker and the GOP stands firm. It's too bad that the union would rather flush 1,200 of their jobs than give up collective bargaining for their pensions and health care--not salary--just benefits. This isn't a conflict between the government and the union; it's a conflict between the union and the taxpayers. I choose the taxpayers.
