February 21, 2014

3 years ago in the Wisconsin Capitol...

It looked like this:



And the news came out that Madison schools would reopen (after a week of accommodating the teachers' desire to participate in the scene at the Capitol), and we learned that Jesse Jackson would was staging a rally at a local high school and the president-elect of Madison's teachers union was recommending classroom exercises:
Peggy Coyne, a Black Hawk Middle School reading specialist and president-elect of Madison Teachers Inc., said she plans to ask students to write journal entries Tuesday about what they did while classes were canceled the last four days. Coyne said teachers might also incorporate recent events into lessons about Wisconsin labor history.
At the time, I said: "Look, the teachers should leave the children out of their political struggle. They've already deprived them of nearly a week of the teaching they signed on to deliver. The students should receive, immediately, substantive educational lessons of the completely normal kind. Leave the politics, indoctrination, ideology, and political discipline out of the classroom."

37 comments:

PB said...

This is why all public schools should be privatized and school funding should be considered a voucher that follows the student to whatever school they attend. Take the total amount of school funding divide by the number of students and that's the voucher.

The current model is broken.

Andy Freeman said...

> "Look, the teachers should leave the children out of their political struggle. They've already deprived them of nearly a week of the teaching they signed on to deliver. The students should receive, immediately, substantive educational lessons of the completely normal kind."

They don't receive "substantive educational lessons of the completely normal kind" the rest of the year, so why would anyone think that's an option the teachers spend a week doing politics?

Anonymous said...

School Vouchers is just another way of saying "Taxation without Representation." If you're going to reach into my wallet to pay for your child's education then I damn well better get a vote on how that money is being used.

TosaGuy said...

I don't think the WI left still realizes that its protests and tantrums are what galvanized the GOP legislature to support Act 10 without significantly watering it down.

Anonymous said...

I don't think TosaGuy realizes that Althouse isn't reporting anything new that happened, but rather just re-hashing the same ol' same ol' from a few years ago.

Pretty boring, if you ask me, but I guess it drives traffic to the portal.


Peter said...

'madisonfella' said, "School Vouchers is just another way of saying "Taxation without Representation." If you're going to reach into my wallet to pay for your child's education then I damn well better get a vote on how that money is being used."

All sorts of government programs are privatized, and have been for decades. Headstart, for example, is delivered by private vendors. Do you expect all of these to be delivered by government employees, or is it just local schools?

damikesc said...

School Vouchers is just another way of saying "Taxation without Representation."

An interesting theory. Wrong, but hey, wrongness can be fascinating.

If you're going to reach into my wallet to pay for your child's education then I damn well better get a vote on how that money is being used.

What taxpayers paid for the teachers union ideas?

damikesc said...

I don't think TosaGuy realizes that Althouse isn't reporting anything new that happened, but rather just re-hashing the same ol' same ol' from a few years ago.

That'd explain his writing in the past tense and all.

Apparently, you're not a fan of history.

garage mahal said...

"Taxation by Grifting Scam Artists" is more accurate term to describe voucher school operators and proponents who push them.

damikesc said...

"Taxation by Grifting Scam Artists" is more accurate term to describe voucher school operators and proponents who push them.

As opposed to "Job Security for Pedophiles" that all supporters of teachers unions are.

Do you want to compare the crimes of school voucher proponents with what teachers have done?

Dan from Madison said...

Most of the people there were so crazed that they likely thought the line in the song "The Union forever! Hurrah, boys, hurrah!" actually was talking about a labor union.

Fen said...

This (and the fake sick notes) was the moment the Teachers Unions lost me.

Thanks for showing us their true colors.

Fen said...

madisonfella: Pretty boring, if you ask me, but I guess it drives traffic to the portal.

I just love that you are still butthurt over something that happened 3 years ago.

Nice sockpuppet btw. Be a shame if something happened to it.

kjbe said...

Tosa Guy - who was going to water it down? The Assembly and Senate both had R majorities (still do). All the protests did was to vet the legislation and delay the inevitable vote. It was a done deal.

Matt Sablan said...

On vouchers: Does it matter if the voucher schools really are better? If they ARE better, then For The Children should require vouchers.

If they AREN'T, why would anyone take advantage of the program? You should be able to have billions in vouchers and no one will take them if the government provided better services.

Right now though, parents are required -- by law -- to send their kids to education of some sort. Vouchers allow parents to actually get decent education for those kids, and I think that's a good thing.

Matt Sablan said...

[Mind, in some areas, there are good public schools. Vouchers probably aren't necessary there. But in some places, the difference between getting a voucher and not is the difference in 10 or 20 percentage points of your classmates graduating high school. Those are the areas, I think, we should focus on more, and not worry too much about the areas with functioning public schools.]

Brennan said...

Does it matter if the voucher schools really are better?

It matters if you can get the same outcome for 50 cents with a voucher that you can get for 100 cents at a public school.

Think of this as the Toyota vs GM model. It's coming and organized labor will have to resort to WI tactics to make the loss appear closer than it really is.

Sorun said...

"Pretty boring, if you ask me, but I guess it drives traffic to the portal."

Yep, still butthurt is right. An ethical teacher would look back on it with regret.

Curious George said...

"garage mahal said...
"Taxation by Grifting Scam Artists" is more accurate term to describe voucher school operators and proponents who push them."

LOL voucher programs are pikers compared to WEAC and their WEAC Trust scam. Since Act 10 WEAC Trust's revenues have declined $70 million.

$70,000,000.

Why don't you clean up, add up all the fraud in WI's voucher program, and get back to me when it goes over $70,000,000.

William said...

I can't get too upset over teachers and their union who want higher pay and a better pension. That's not a gross contradiction of the higher aims of education, and there aren't many people in America who want more work for less pay. Nor are there many employers who think they'll gain a competitive advantage by paying more for less work. I'm willing to let market forces settle the issue.....The indoctrination of children is not a market force. The teachers' willingness to manipulate children in pursuit of a selfish goal is a gross betrayal of their vocation.

MadisonMan said...

That's pretty weak support, Curious, for vouchers if you think it's warranted until fraud exceeds $70M.

I think there should be zero fraud with vouchers. That's probably unrealistic. How much fraud is too much? $1M? $10M

Matt Sablan said...

Fraud is like theft in stores; you want zero, but you have to realistically decide what the threshold of realistically acceptable is.

Curious George said...

"MadisonMan said...
That's pretty weak support, Curious, for vouchers if you think it's warranted until fraud exceeds $70M.

I think there should be zero fraud with vouchers. That's probably unrealistic. How much fraud is too much? $1M? $10M"

I was making a point MM, are you really so stupid that you didn't know that?

There is a huge difference between a few bad apples in a voucher system, and the systemic abuse in the teachers union arena. The $70 million dollars was just in the two years after Act 10...it went on for years and years prior....hundreds of millions of dollars stolen from taxayers. This money was used by the union to elect Democrats who would keep the scam in play.

This is the only waste of dollars in the public school system....there are additional millions of dollars in waste and fraud.

So really MM, put things in perspective. Or make a case for the alternative.

Michael K said...

"School Vouchers is just another way of saying "Taxation without Representation." If you're going to reach into my wallet to pay for your child's education then I damn well better get a vote on how that money is being used."

So, you don't pay your taxes for the present system, such as it is ? The fox said, "Those grapes are probably sour anyway."
Aesop.

garage mahal said...

Republican legislators don't send their kids to voucher schools. Those are for the poor black kids they pretend to care about. Also notice the budget now includes 420 million in public funding for religious schools? Our schools are going to be looking like school system in Louisiana.Keep those taxpayer funds coming, suckers.

PackerBronco said...

madisonfella said...
School Vouchers is just another way of saying "Taxation without Representation." If you're going to reach into my wallet to pay for your child's education then I damn well better get a vote on how that money is being used


Really? You vote for every item in the budget personally?

John said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
alan markus said...

I live in a school district with about 7000 students - well-respected, ranks quite well, no "issues" like poverty/behavior/race, good SAT scores, Advanced Placement, etc. Great teachers and staff, community engagement. Many 2nd generation teachers, lots of teachers that graduated from the system.

My daughter's 2nd grade teacher - kids went to parochial. Her 3rd grade teacher - spouse home schools their kids. Her 5th grade teacher - kids went to parochial. Her current principal - kids in parochial. Next year's principal - kid went to parochial until middle school. Superintendent - kids in private elementary school. One of her 2nd grade classmates daughter of two high school teachers - one became a stay-at-home parent and the other was a union steward - after 2nd grade they pulled their kids out to be home schooled by the stay at home parent.

So, to me this indicates a resounding endorsement of alternatives to the public school system from the experts in our school district.

Illuninati said...

How can we blame the teachers for the NEA when it was forced on them and when many teachers don't support their agenda? Also, why should we blame teachers for children who don't learn? Is there any evidence that failing schools are the teachers' fault? Wasn't the Head Start program an attempt to improve education by early childhood enrichment? Has Head Start been a major success? Why do we think the present cohort of teachers are so incompetent?

FullMoon said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Birkel said...

Illuninati:

Head Start has been a waste of resources, yielding no positive measurable results. Low-skilled women have been employed at great expense. Some (likely overpaid) administrators also have phoney bologna jobs. Children show no educational gains. This is well documented even by left leaning academics.

The one positive for Leftists has been to secure more union members in the teacher/administrator ranks.

Illuninati said...

Birkel said:
"Head Start has been a waste of resources, yielding no positive measurable results."

In light of the failure of head start, I'm not sure why conservatives blame teachers who get the same students the next year and fail to transform them into little Einsteins. If charter schools can make a difference, then by all means lets push them. I'm still waiting for definitive evidence one way or another.

Sigivald said...

Leave the politics, indoctrination, ideology, and political discipline out of the classroom

But then we wouldn't have so many people wanting to be teachers!

Actually, that makes it an even better idea, as there are too many already.

Michael K said...

"Our schools are going to be looking like school system in Louisiana.Keep those taxpayer funds coming, suckers."

Well, if Holder doesn't manage to shut it down, it will far surpass what those poor black kids have now.

It is always amusing to see lefties accuse Republicans of wanting vouchers for poor black kids when the people who voted vouchers down in California were suburban parents. They didn't want to take a chance of poor black kids in their own schools.

Union teachers send their kids to other schools. Why not require teachers to send their kids to their own schools?

PB said...

In the privatized world, there's nothing from stopping the union from starting and running a school. If they do it so much better, then parents would flock to send their kids to those schools. Right?

PB said...

Why can the teachers unions only exist in a world where students are essentially forced to go to the public school (except of course for the teachers and administrators who make more than the taxpayer and can afford to send their kids to private schools)?

damikesc said...

Garage, how many progressives send their kids to public schools? Check, union leaders don't send their kids to public schools.