There is a Japanese word that perfectly describes Mitt Romney. Kanji means; honest to a fault, foolishly honest, naively honest, and thanks to Romney we now have an equivalent English word…..Mitt. It is true that he isn't worried about the very poor. It is true that he can make a 10,000 dollar bet without having to worry that he won't be able to pay the mortgage if he loses said bet. It is true that he believes that corporations are people my friend. It is true that he likes firing people. Can you even image this guy is negotiations with world leaders? The thought should scare everyone. If he is this bad at being a candidate in an extremely weak field, how in the world can he hope to succeed as the leader of the free world?
Kinda like you bragging about owning property in FL or having a driveway full of cars? All you elitists are the same.
But your elitist is OK? I'm not running for president. Mitt is the dreaded elitist you seem to despise but you back him for president? Interesting. BTW I don't have any knowledge of bragging about anything. That is your own personal interpretation of my words. I've never said that I have a driveway full of cars. Find the post where I actually said any such thing. I dare you or one of your RW misfits to find that post. As far as owning properties in FL, they are rental properties and I would hardly consider mentioning them to Andy is "bragging". Again, you hear what you want to hear to reinforce your own prejudices. I'm not responsible for your delusions and nobody that actually knows me would call me an elitist. Only a pretender such as you revels in that fantasy and you're not all that bright. And BTW Nice personal attack! You never fail to bring down the conversation to the lowest level possible from the git-go.
He said he liked the right to make the decision of who he could fire, not that he liked firing people. The problem with being unable to fire substandard workers is clearly evident in the automatic tenure process for teachers of grades 1-12.
Bravo, good for you! Someone must be proud of you! C'mon, tell us more about your vast wealth, your assets, your holdings.......on second thought, don't. I really don't care.
I have experienced my share of public school teachers that should not be teaching anywhere. I have also experienced my share of public school teachers that are so far beyond wonderful that they would have their pay doubled if there was any justice. We train teachers and I know what they are up against when they enter the public school system. It is easy to point at one factor such as tenure and say that it is the problem but it really is far, far more complicated than just tenure. Tenure is more of a symptom of the problems than the problem itself. No question that there are bad teachers just like there are bad workers in every profession. Parents that treat public schools like daycare are a major problem. Lack of funding from school to school is a major problem. Testing regulations that make no sense cause huge problems. I have a friend that has twins. They both took a HS placement exam. One twin is really good at math and was placed in a lower math track based on the test she took. The other twin who is not as good at math was placed in the honors math class even though he isn’t nearly as good at math as his sister. Now why is this one test making a decision that is exactly backwards? Tenure didn’t cause this problem but no doubt there are some who will make that argument.
Moen, you're right--tenure is not the problem. Automatic and lifelong tenure is the problem. I am a product of the same public school system and have experienced the same range of extremes that you have. However, a problem arises when tenure is automatically granted after only three years in the profession. Professors at higher levels of education are not granted automatic tenure--they must work for it and continue to publish once it has been granted, as tenure can be revoked. If educators at all levels were forced to work for and to maintain tenure then it would be an amazing tool for the educational system. Unfortunately, the idea of tenure does not work for all fields of employment. It becomes necessary to fire people due to lack of competence in performing simple rote tasks. I doesn't matter if a cashier at McDonald's has gotten published on the benefits of hand-washing in preventing the spread of listeria--if s/he can't make change correctly and the drawer is consistently short, then that cashier needs to go away. Companies should be able to fire employees at will without needing to justify it to the government or special interest groups.
Do you know the rationale behind tenure? Do you think tenure is just something unions dreamed up? What do you know about tenure? Just curious.
Yes, I do understand tenure. Tenure was intended to protect academic professors' employment as they pursued individual research projects. Given that any profession only moves forward when research is both independent and free of ethical impediments, the concept of tenure was a good one: professors could not be fired for doing research or reporting data that were contrary to the institution's position of authority. While tenure did not start out as being a "big stick" for the unions, it has evolved into something that protects every educator from being fired, no matter what they have done, except under certain legal circumstances. The grade school educator should never have been protected by tenure without a research requirement--given that few educators teaching K-12 actually do research (although some do), there is no need for the protections provided by the original intent of tenure.
....the unions offer job protection, regardless of ability, in return for the payment of union dues. We suffer bad public school classroom teachers because they are protected by the union without regard for the students.
Check this out. If tenure were actually the problem, our schools would have steadily declined since 1910 when tenure was first instituted. We don't see that at all. A Brief History of Tenure It’s been called the holy grail of the teaching profession — academic freedom plus job security all rolled nicely into a union contract. But to Michelle Rhee, superintendent of Washington D.C. schools, tenure just means trouble. Roughly 2.3 million public school teachers in the U.S. have tenure — a perk reserved for the noblest of professions (professors and judges also enjoy such rights). The problem with tenure, Rhee and other critics say, is that it inadvertently protects incompetent teachers from being fired. The Teach for America alumna, who oversees some 50,000 students and 5,000 teachers, has sparked controversy in the capital by proposing a new contract allowing teachers to earn as much as $130,000 a year if they forgo their tenure rights (a teacher's salary, on average, is less than $48,000; most start out making $32,000). Though tenure doesn't guarantee lifetime employment, it does make firing teachers a difficult and costly process, one that involves the union, the school board, the principal, the judicial system and thousands of dollars in legal fees. In most states, a tenured teacher can't be dismissed until charges are filed and months of evaluations, hearings and appeals have occurred. Meanwhile, school districts must shell out thousands of dollars for paid leave and substitute instructors. The system is deliberately slow and cumbersome, in order to dissuade school boards and parents from ousting a teacher for personal or political motives. But the system also makes it extremely difficult to flunk a bad teacher. Each state has its own stories: A Connecticut teacher received a mere 30-day suspension for helping students cheat on a standardized test; one California school board spent $8,000 to fire an instructor who preferred using R-rated movies instead of books; a Florida teacher remained in the classroom for a year despite incidents in which she threw books at her students and demanded they referred to her as "Ms. God." The start of the tenure movement paralleled similar labor struggles during the late 19th century. Just as steel and auto workers fought against unsafe working conditions and unlivable wages, teachers too demanded protection from parents and administrators who would try to dictate lesson plans or exclude controversial materials like Huck Finn from reading lists. In 1887, nearly 10,000 teachers from across the country met in Chicago for the first-ever conference of the National Educator's Association, now one of the country's most powerful teachers' unions. The topic of "teacher's tenure" led the agenda. By the turn of the century, tenure had become a hot-button issue that some politicians preferred to avoid. In 1900, the Democratic Party of New York blasted their rivals in the Times for taking up the issue, writing, "We deprecate the tendency manifested by the Republican party of dragging the public school system of the State into politics." New Jersey became the first state to pass tenure legislation when, in 1910, it granted fair-dismissal rights to college professors. During the suffrage movement of the 1920s — when female teachers could be fired for getting married or getting pregnant or (gasp) wearing pants — such rights were extended to elementary and high school teachers as well. But where the tenure track for college professors can require a record of published research and probationary periods of up to 10 years, K-12 teachers can win tenure after working as little as two years in some states. And thanks to the rigid testing requirements put in place by the No Child Left Behind Act, the academic freedom that tenure was meant to protect has been severely curtailed. Some school districts have resorted to separation agreements, buyouts that effectively pay a teacher to leave his or her job. The practice has evolved as a way to avoid the extensive hearings and appeals required by union contracts and state-labor laws in firing a tenured teacher. (Costs can run as high as $100,000). Other districts simply transfer inadequate teachers to other schools in what Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has called "the dance of the lemons." Former Mass. Gov. William Weld tried to pass legislation requiring teachers to take competency tests every five years, a move that triggered a number of complaints from local teachers' unions who called the bill adversarial and intrusive. Weld defended himself by explaining his stance as "anti-slob teacher," not "anti-teacher." In 1997, Oregon abolished tenure and replaced it with 2-year renewable contracts and a rehabilitation program for underachieving instructors. Other states like Connecticut, New York and Michigan have simply eliminated the word "tenure" (from the Latin tenere, meaning to hold or keep) from the books while retaining the due-process rights it embodies. In Toledo, Ohio, officials have adopted a more creative approach by establishing a mentoring program to improve teacher performance. Fifteen surrounding communities have already copied the idea. But some teachers argue tenure has become a scapegoat for a whole basket of educational and financial ills responsible for the dismal test scores and disappointing graduation rates in U.S. schools. Abolishing tenure doesn't address problems of underfunding, overcrowding or improving students' home environments. And despite more than a century of social progress, the need to protect teachers from the whims (or the tyranny) of the community remains as important as ever — especially in science classrooms where the battle over evolutionary biology and creationism rages on. Whatever the problem, most teachers and administrators agree the status quo isn't working and that change can't come too soon. Announcing her plan last month, Rhee said, "Students cannot wait for accountable teachers while adults argue." Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1859505,00.html#ixzz1lGoiRZK3
