Why I support Unions.

The Union will block spurious, petty and mean administrators from firing the competent as well as the incompetent. This is good because the administrator usually has no real idea which is which.

The Union will ensure that teachers get a fair shake when they are dealing with someone who has no real need to be fair.  This is not the owner of a company who is watching every dollar out of his own pocket -- this is a transient employee who has too much power and not enough knowledge.

They float through once, twice a year in a choreographed display of feigned interest in what I am doing. Three weeks before, I get a note saying when they'll arrive and which class they'll be observing - get a lesson plan ready and do the pre-observation meeting. Then they'll watch the class, make a few notes. In the case of the more recent attendees at admin training workshops, they'll attempt to record my speech verbatim in the vain hope that recording every word spoken will somehow tell them more than just listening attentively. This is real?

We meet for the post-op and I'll be given a letter that specifies what they observed. Some of the more insightful comments were "Good lesson" and "knows the material." One of the less insightful was "Separates the kids into two groups by gender." I taught algebra in the chorus room -- apparently Mr. HIP didn't notice that the aisle down the middle separated the kids into two groups and that they took the same places as they normally did during chorus -- I don't do seating charts and usually pay no attention to where students sit. No, he thought I was being discriminatory.

I went 6 years before I was observed again. How was that principal supposed to know anything about me or anyone else in the building? How were they (five in six years) supposed to determine that X should go?

When an admin played games, got in the face of someone improperly, tried to ruin a teacher, there was always the Union stepping in to make sure that things were proper. That is its best role, to act as a buffer, to make sure that each i is dotted and t crossed. I was lucky (knock on wood). I had developed a CYA model and kept tons of paperwork and evidence. When parents complained or school boards took a closer interest, I always had a defense. What if I weren't paranoid?

The Union negotiates a contract. The contract is held up as a object of derision by many on the right - "Look at this egregious waste of taxpayer money. Look at this contract. We shouldn't allow teachers to quote the contract when they might get into trouble!" What an incredible thought, that a contract shouldn't be followed by both sides. "Gullible Boards sign outrageous contracts!" Actually, they sign a contract that both sides agreed to.

Show me any industry that breaks contracts at a whim. I'll wait.

Everybody complains about the LIFO, salary schedule, no merit pay clauses in the contract. When the dust settles, these clauses are seen as the most manageable. Since the admins are rarely around long enough to figure out the names of the teachers in the building, how are they supposed to know which one is worth keeping? The one who has been there for ten years or the kid just out of college who has no idea of what she's getting into? If you eliminate the salary schedule, then you'll have people like me getting $15,000 signing bonuses and thousands more than the English teachers. Really? Same job. Same experience. Think there won't be any bad feelings? Think the school will run just fine anyway? If you don't have a contract, then I'll demand more money and different working conditions because I know the school is desperate. Maybe I'll train for six weeks and be a dilettante TFA who does the school a favor by my presence and leaves when a real job is available.

The Union works for that contract and makes sure that both sides abide by it.

As for merit pay, this is a fantasy dreamed up by a billionaire. If I get a bonus every year because I suck up to the principal, how long do you think there will cooperation in the department? If I don't trust him to know his ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to hiring and firing, I sure don't want a large fraction of my income held over my head - "maybe you will and maybe you won't."

Far from being the leech on the blood veins of education, unions are the force that makes education work as smoothly as it does.

What's it all for, really?

Coach Brown writes about a senior who said "You'd think that by now teachers would realize that giving seniors homework in the last quarter is pretty pointless and just a bad idea in general ... most of us already know what schools we're going to, and we no longer need to try to get the best grade possible. All you have to do is pass." Coach asks if the student is right.

Yes and No.

I disagree with what Utah is doing with the incentives to graduate early, I disagree with the students who take the senior year off and I disagree with the parents, schools and states who encourage either.

What is high school for, anyway? It's not for job training, although some kids get some of that from it. It's not for practical purposes, although some get that, too. It's not for babysitting or socialization or any of those things.

It's for the mind.

You may be stuck in a boring job but you learned about poetry from someone who thought it was cool and now you realize it really was - now it's your escape from the drudgery. Or maybe that science teacher turned you on to Biology and the processes and you went and became a brewmaster for Sam Adams.

The only way to deal with senioritis is to realize that, for once in the student's educational life, the scores don't matter but the class is still free. How liberating is that? Finally, you can take a course and learn strictly for the intellectual pleasure of it.

Why study Russian history? "ForDaHellofIt"
How about organic chemistry? "ForDaHellofIt"
AP Statistics with the boring teacher? Okay, that sucked but nothing ventured, nothing gained and nothing lost in the long run.

This is the ultimate in heads I win, tails I win.

Can't Lie -- That just makes it worse.

It's bad on every side but I wish that our side
wasn't feeding the "I am Stupid" fire.

The mess in Wisconsin keeps getting messier.  Stupid people on both sides get recorded doing and saying stupid things. The Governor gets "crank-called." A doctor hands out hundreds of notes and says that many protesters he met with seemed to "suffer from stress."

"Some people think it's a nod-and-a-wink thing, but it's not," Sanner said. "One of the biggest stresses in life is the threat of loss of income, loss of job, loss of health insurance. People have actually been getting ill from this, or they can't sleep."

Sorry, bud. When you are handing out absentee excuses en masse, you are not being a trustworthy doctor, any more than the ones who prescribed way too many painkillers for Rush Limbaugh. The protestors tell their schools they're "sick." The lack of teachers forces many schools to close. So the schools responded.

Workers were told they would need to provide a form from a medical professional for any absence after Feb. 16, according to Ken Syke, a spokesman for the school district.

Protesters in Madison who obtained medical excuse slips to cover their absences from work, and the doctors who issued them, are likely to be subjected to more intensive examinations.

Well, duh.

Look, people. Call it a personal day and go protest, or call in sick and stay home.  Don't call in "sick" and then go marching through the Capitol waving your hands and banging a drum. (Do you know how stupid that looked?) Call a strike, do it up front, in the open and without suberterfuge. If you get on TV, answer the question simply and succinctly, don't just start screaming slogans. (Do you know how stupid THAT looked?) If you really can't afford to be docked a day's pay and feel that this obviously transparent line of BS will cover you, then perhaps you'd better rethink how the public will view you because you're feeding the beast that will devour you.

At the very least, don't brag about it publicly and dare the school system to do something about it. We teachers, and those we have "helping us" need to be the voice of reason.

The questions come easily to a TV watching public and if you are publicly protesting, that who you are trying to talk to. I have heard/read variations of these and other, very important, PR and policy questions

• Should I believe you now if you claim you are being treated unfairly, or that you need a raise, or that the student-teacher ratio is too excessive? 
• Should I believe the Governor who is calm and dispassionate or the teachers who are comparing him to Hitler and Mussolini (didn't any of those teachers study history?) or comparing Wisconsin to Egypt and Tunisia (didn't any teachers have a sense of perspective?) 
• Can I trust the teacher who blatantly lies in this fashion? 
• Do I really want this kind of person to coagulate into a mob for collective bargaining or have they already become a mob? 
• Who invited Jimmy Hoffa to this party, anyway? He doesn't represent a public union and probably just wants to become nationally relevant again.

Most importantly,

• What is your word worth if this is its standard?

Quotes from journal-sentinel.

PD Follies - part four, New and Improved.

Professional Development Follies - part four.

Professional Development is one of those things that light up the stress meters in almost every teacher I've ever known. Bill Ferriter talks about it. So does Mr. Teachbad. Darren needed Google Translate to interpret the Educationese. What's my excuse? I have many things that trigger me and get my back up. the latest is the

Cha-, cha-, cha-, Change

Everything you are doing is wrong.  Change is the only criteria for success.  A few months ago, the states were all ranked.  Vermont got some pretty good scores all around and excelled when dealing with poor kids.  The only score we didn't do well on was "Innovation and Change." That earned us a D+.

It apparently didn't occur to anyone that if we were doing well and it "ain't broke," we might not consider fixing it.  No matter.  The ranking was not for guided change or change towards an ideal or improvement in any way. In fact, damaging the students and lowering our scores by implementing some change would have increased our ranking.

But enough of the silly think tank. We're ready to get improved.

So we have Challenges for Change, which replaced High Schools on the Move.  HSOTM replaced another failed initiative, and that one replaced another, and so on, and so on.

We had the Vermont Frameworks for Educations, then the Vermont Standards, then the Grade Expectations (but that sounded too Dickensian) so it was modified to Grade Level Expectations. Do all that work and "Happy New Year!" ... Change it all to Common Core.

You've got Best Practices, Master Teachers, Mentors and Peer Coaching, Videotape, Scribes, Verbatim, Class Flow, Curriculum mapping (versions: paper, Word, Excel, HTML, three different online companies), Literacy Across the Curriculum, Literacy Labs, Cross curricular.

Then states started really spending money: technology.  "Laptops for All will kickstart your students" until it won't, computers in every classroom (just 1 or 2 for 25 students), a computer lab, a mobile lab, another laptop program, (Hey! It works in Maine! ... except that it didn't actually do anything positive academically.) Shiny new version of the Office suite every 3 years whether you like it or not, SmartBoards and DVDs and TVs and cable/T1/Fiber Internet, Student Information Systems that tie together thousands of students into one big, unwieldy and ultimately useless mess. But it's all in one place!

21st Century Skills will change the World, unless you believe "Singapore Math Drills will Save the World." "The Chinese will Take Over the World". "India will Outsource our Education!"  Did You Know? "The rest of the world is Coming!"  Which is all well and good until you read that the Chinese people hate their education system (Kristoff, NYT) and want to emulate the American one.

Every one of those NEW! ideas requires time for teacher training and every one starts off during an inservice or professional development seminar. Hours are spent, dragging reluctant teachers through them. We're moving forward! Onward! Upward!

Enough hype and hot air to start an Infomercial Network.

Enough "New!" ideas that you could write a book ... as an object lesson on failed initiatives. The real problem is that most of those great new ideas aren't all that great and they aren't new at all.

I'm no Luddite.What I hate is repeating what has already been done.  I want to stand on the shoulders of giants, take what's been done and go from there. I'm sick of reinventing the wheel.  I do not want to be condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Don't put me in a PD and tell me the wonders of an open classroom design.  I'll just get steamed because I've heard this nonsense before.  I can show you a school 20 miles away that was built on this principle and the entire school hates it.  The cubical farm concept - bleah - but my Highly Ineffective Principal actually threw that one at us last year. Another school a few miles in the other direction built open classrooms 35 years ago and still has the permanently installed floor-to-ceiling temporary walls.

The more it was stressed that we were a "High School on the Move," the more stressed I got. With every new and improved "Best Practice," I wondered why no one, apparently, had never thought of this obviously brilliant idea before ... and then after maybe two seconds of thought, realized that it was pretty much what everybody tended to do anyway.


Every time I have to re-enter the curriculum into a new mapping "tool," I feel like screaming.

Every time the curriculum coordinator tells me that practice is "Drill and Kill" while telling me I need to spend time with test prep but that our students don't have high enough scores, I need to watch a Bruce Lee movie.

Every time the school tries a small "School within a School" without actually setting some kind of measurement to see if it worked, I want to go in my room and hide.

Show me improvement, not just change.

I hate professional development.

PD Follies - part three. Guess my age.

Professional Development Follies - part three.

Professional Development is one of those things that light up the stress meters in almost every teacher I've ever known. Bill Ferriter talks about it. So does Mr. Teachbad. Darren needed Google Translate to interpret the Educationese. What's my excuse? I have many things that trigger me and get my back up. Treating the faculty like ...

You're in Third Grade.

Actually, I'm not. I'm a teacher and have been one since before we found out that George Orwell's book was not dated correctly. I'm getting old and crotchety, too, in case no one noticed. (No!)

Treat teachers as adults, please.

I don't think it cute, informative, helpful, or intelligent to hand every one a candy bar and sort us by the type of candy bar. ("Gasp, how clever") . I don't really care if you want us to sit randomly to break up cliques or friends. Those groups aren't why I'm here. Accept who I am sitting with and get on with it.

I'm here to learn something.  

1. Lose the CUTE. 
1. It's early, I'm anticipating being annoyed and YOU just confirmed it. 
2. Speak in your adult voice. Talk with us as peers, not to us as twelve-year-olds. 
2. I'm not here to vote by placing stickers on an easel pad. If the people in the room can't handle a show of hands, they shouldn't be teaching actual teenagers. Stickers to vote with ... don't go there. Try something radical: ask us. If you are worried that this might be too controversial, ask us ahead of time.
3. I don't want a gold star, a free pen or a happy message acted out by the helpers.  
4. I don't want to form a line holding hands and count out loud every other one.
5. I don't want a condescending twit telling me "Good Job getting to your groups so fast." 
6. If you make me do role-play, I will, to the best of my ability, imitate a real student with all of the real or imagined resistances I can think of - your too-clever-for-words gambit will go up in smoke.
7. Do not place a pile of toys on the table and ask each of us to choose one, then explain how that toy exemplifies our approach to teaching. I can tell what's coming and I will choose wisely and sarcastically. Your pathetic attempt to imitate the Rorschach Test is just that. 
8. I'm not asking permission to go to the bathroom.
9. I want something I can take away from all this, even if it's just a handbook.

We're all walking around with at least a master's degree and most of us have seen this new idea before. Treat us like the mature adults we are and we'll help you through anything that goes wrong. We'll go easy on you and forgive the graphs that are missing axis labels, or the grammatical mistakes in the PP slide. If your phone rings, answer it. We'll keep ourselves busy for the two minutes it takes you to apologize and and talk to your wife.

Piss us off and we'll be irritated and irritating all day. I'll point out that your brand spanking new idea is just like that one we heard about in professional development 18 years ago. I can usually even find the paperwork that went with it.

I'll ask for the supporting research and for actual names and links so we can read it, too. When you show me THAT GRAPH, I'll ask you for the details. "What's the vertical axis? How was it measured? Is this in a demographic similar to that we have here? What was the demographic?" I can even sound sincere and interested when, in fact, I'm ridiculing you.

And one other thing. I CAN read, you know. I don't need or want you to do it for me.

PD Follies - part two, Death by Verbiage.

Professional Development Follies - part two.

Professional Development is one of those things that light up the stress meters in almost every teacher I've ever known. Bill Ferriter talks about it. So does Mr. Teachbad. Darren needed Google Translate to interpret the Educationese. What's my excuse? I have many things that trigger me and get my back up. Here, over the next couple of days, are some of those triggers. Mr. Teachbad's List contained Major Peeve #2:

Powerpoint Death Slides.

There is <sarcasm> nothing more thrilling </sarcasm> than settling in, readying myself to take some notes, and then watching the presenter click open a PowerPoint slide covered with words.

 

As Tufte says: "Power Corrupts. PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely." Here's the thing, people. I can listen and take notes: I had lectures all through college. I also had homework for which I was required to read and highlight, and then take notes. I'm okay with taking notes. MY Notes.

The problem with most PP is we are combining two separate and incompatible entities - a lecture and much reading material, densely packed and illegible, slammed together with cliched or cartoony graphics, interspersed with every transition possible.

Presenters, it seems that ...

• Graphic design is an Art that you do not possess.
• Public Speaking is not one of your skills either.
• You have graphs riddled with errors.
• You have abysmal spelling. Right down there with your grammar.
• You need to buy a clicker. Do not have someone tapping the SmartBoard to advance slides.
• You have a 200-word minimum per slide.

It's a PRESENTATION and it needs to be PRESENTED, not read. Stop right there and think about that. If you don't know it cold, inside and out, then you don't belong on stage.  Watch a TED presentation, like this one by Hans Rosling. Notice that he is presenting, not reading. If the presenter is reading his own slides, then everyone should walk out and collect a copy of the "notes" on the way.

Sure, Rosling's a pro at this and all the TED presenters are pretty awesome, but come on, the district is paying a grand or two for your time today. Spell check and grammar check are simple. If you've given the same talk before, grammar and spelling errors are inexcusable.

Stick with the fundamental designs if you aren't a PP wizard. You should be able to present the material without PP. The PP is visuals: icing on a knowledge cake, the froth on your Guinness.

If you want me to read it, then give it to me ahead of time, in a form that I can read. Paper is acceptable, but really, can't you give me a pdf so I can save and reference it? (Especially if the presentation is about using technology, you know.)

Don't get all huffy and defensive.  I want to read it at my leisure, not at the speed you choose. I also want to review it later. I have a very good memory but it's nice to use my computer's "Search" function, too.

For example, at the beginning of this year, we had a bullying workshop. The people were setting up and I wandered over with a thumbdrive and asked if I could have a copy of the presentation - for later review and for notes. After getting all huffy and asking "Who are you?", she refused. (Like the general public was coming in and demanding to see her bullying presentation.)

This was information we were getting recertification credit for, and fulfilling an important state requirement for, and we couldn't get the information in any way other than paper handouts. I still have those handouts in a file at home. A simple pdf would be much more useful.

PD Follies - part one, the Blind.

Professional Development Follies - part one.

Professional Development is one of those things that light up the stress meters in almost every teacher I've ever known. Bill Ferriter talks about it. So does Mr. Teachbad. Darren needed Google Translate to interpret the Educationese. What's my excuse? I have many things that trigger me and get my back up. Here, over the next couple of days, are some of those triggers.

The Blind Leading the Blind.

When I went to get my commercial driver's license many years ago, I was faced with a guy who drove these vehicles every day. He knew the ins and outs, knew the laws, knew what was important and what had to be memorized for the test and then filed away. An expert who was teaching? How quaint.

How many times have I been in the room and the HIP, Highly Ineffective Principal, (thanks for reminding me, Richochet!) or an AP would get up and present as definitive fact a half-remembered workshop from the summer?

Too many times.

The more it was stressed that we were a "High School on the Move," the more stressed I got. With every new and improved "Best Practice," I wondered why no one, apparently, had never thought of this obviously brilliant idea before ... and then after maybe two seconds of thought, realized that it was pretty much what everybody tended to do anyway.

"We need to create A School Within a School."
"According to the Latest Brain-Based Research, students need to write about their feelings."
"I want all of the teachers to begin differentiating all classes with respect to the three Learning Styles."
"We're buying netbooks for each fifth grader because Maine did it and had the biggest gains in state history."

Before we should implement something, shouldn't there be at least one person who completely understands it? Perhaps we should rename this one as the "As Seen on TV" Initiative because it looks cool and shiny, no one understands it fully, it costs a lot (plus shipping and handling) and invariably doesn't work. Any of you suggesting we call it the "iRenew Initiative" can be quiet back there.

I'm not getting behind this nebulously defined initiative until someone clears it up and explains it. "You're being obstinate because you don't want to be a team player. You argue about every initiative."

Sorry. Got to do better than that. Argument by Accusation - not valid.

Classy

Just saw the Christmas Card.

Is it just me, or are Bruce Jenner and Lamar Odom the only one with class and style in this photograph?

What happened to "Education"?

Joanne Jacobs has a piece on evaluation programs that are looking to videotape teachers as they give lessons and then "Go Look at Tape." The issue seems to be that

More than 99 percent of teachers are rated satisfactory by their principals, reports a study on “the widget effect” by the New Teacher Project.

and this is somehow "bad," hence the need for overhaul. While I would argue that you need to improve the system so that middle-managers (Admin) can appropriately rate, measure and evaluate their assembly-line workers (teachers), I'm not sure that going to videotape is much of an improvement. If the Principal can't see the "errors" while sitting in the class, how is he supposed to make anything out of the 17th such review, even if he did have the time. Well, they have an answer for that ... Gates figures we'll pay outside evaluators who will somehow be able to see what the highly paid admin can't or won't.

The Gates Foundation is developing a new model, with the help of social scientists and teachers, reports the New York Times. Outside evaluators analyze videotapes to determine whether teachers are teaching well.

We've got money for outside evaluators? Pretty cool. I'll sign up. What gives you the idea that I'll be any more or biased/petty/superficial than the current system? The fact that I'll be able to rewind the tape? More likely I'll fast forward through it. The fact that I don't know the teacher so I'll be more honest? More likely, I'll make a snap judgment and move on.

You know we'll pay for training out of our RTTT money or something, hire bunches of consultants to teach teachers to evaluate other teachers who are trying to teach students. Pretty amazing, ain't it?

Hundreds of teachers will be trained to review 64,000 hours of classroom video. They will look “for possible correlations between certain teaching practices and high student achievement, measured by value-added scores.”

Let's say it's 800 teachers - that's 80 hours of tape to watch, per person. Asking a lot? I can't even spend that much time watching TV or movies in a month while sitting mindless and half-comatose. I'd need to be unemployed to look at 80 hours of tape multiple times and evaluate someone.

But here's the crux of my complaint ... those correlations. I've had students who completely and utterly bombed in class but did well on testing. I've also had plenty who did well in my class, well in the next couple of classes, had a great high school career, and then a great college career, and are now cranking out 6 figure salaries ... but didn't do well on testing. How do I know they did well? They told me.

Since when did value-added scores on NEAP mean an education? Since when could anyone figure out what I do that "works" by watching 10, 20 hours of videotape? Really? Do they know me? Since when did someone watching a few hours of video actually have a clue as to what went on and who and how the students were effected? Ten hours of video? That's two days. Does anyone here think that I couldn't fake it for two days and mess around the rest of the year if I was of a mind to?

I didn't think so.

About that Longer School Year Idea

It's at this time of year, when the temperature in the building is above 90° and the only fans are ones the teachers bring in from home, that you begin to understand why school leaders in the 1800s decided to take the summer off. It is also about this time -- although late June is also hot around here -- that I really wish the reformers would shut the hell up.

Arizona Improves its Teacher Corps

In this WSJ article,

"Nearly half the teachers at Creighton, a K-8 school in a Hispanic neighborhood of Phoenix, are native Spanish speakers. State auditors have reported to the district that some teachers pronounce words such as violet as "biolet," think as "tink" and swallow the ending sounds of words, as they sometimes do in Spanish.
These teachers "are very good educators who understand the culture" of their students, said Ms. Agneessens, Creighton's principal. "Teachers should speak grammatically correct English," she acknowledged, but added, "I object to the nuance of punishment for accent."

I certainly agree that those teaching English should be fluent in English. It's less important for them to be New England Private School Stereotypes. (Mr. Chips left this building years ago.) If only all teachers and administrators were fluent in English (which apparently mine is not, despite being a WASP), that would be a very good thing for all of the kids, white, Hispanic, Asian, whatever.

It would be nice if they were all fluent in mathematics, too, but I wish for too much.

The accent, though, is a much dicier matter for me. Knowledge can be acquired. Style can be learned. Strategies can be developed. Accents are forever.

Einstein spoke with an accent. Arianna Huffington. Henry Kissinger. Lucille Ball and Dezi Arnaz. Half the engineering faculty in this country speak with accents. Which "accent" is the Arizona DOE putting out as acceptable? Is it just the Hispanic accents they are denouncing? Careful how you answer that.

Would Arnold Schwarzenegger be allowed to teach in Arizona?

I speak with an accent, too. I try for different ones to crack up the students - I'm quite proud of my North Carolina and my Kain-tucky. Every Southerner I know speaks with a distinct drawl. Most Texans can't seem to pronounce "you" with one syllable and three letters, not to mention most of the rest of that bastardized version of English. The Welsh guy and the German and Italian teachers all have accents - duh. Every wanna-be gansta kid (black or white, though the white kids are funnier) works on a pretentious, ridiculous accent that practically guarantees that they will never be taken seriously in an intellectual context. Ebonics was a sick joke.

And Arizona is concerned with "tink"?

Validating the material. Justifying the curriculum.

I'm all for the real world. I live here, too. But not everything I do is directly related to what I'll be doing tomorrow. Sometimes, I'm just guessing. Most of the time I know what's useful and what isn't.

What I refuse to do is to always justify every topic and problem that I teach as being useful to every student for every day of their future lives. I won't even guarantee that every topic will be "useful" even just once for each student. I can never do that because I know that every kid is different and will have different needs. Some kids are losers who will grow out of being losers -- what you were sure was useless last year may suddenly become very useful tomorrow.

This question arose when f(t) posted about some circle theorems and asked "What are these good for?" One answer included the following: "On the other hand, there are millions of other problems/concepts that also do that AND are useful in 'real life.' So, why do we do these that are so disconnected?"

The problem with always requiring "a real-world application or you'll dump the material" is that all of math can be reduced to this absurd level if you try hard enough. As can poetry. And chemistry. and history. and art. (and grammar and writing, if you took my principal's example). Every topic can be eliminated by somebody.

"When am I EVER going to use this?" becomes a weapon instead of a question.

Why not teach it "just because?"

Why should my short-sighted, intensely hormonal, spring-addled students have the right of refusal over anything they don't immediately see a purpose for? I can see a couple of blue-collar uses for those circle and tangent rules above. If I can't convince a student that a machinist, draftsman or custom motorcycle builder would need at least an understanding of this stuff, should it be eliminated? I don't think so.

Sometimes they just need to follow the leader. "We're doing it because I think it's neat, it's part of the course, it fits here and we have the time."

As math teachers, we need to refocus the question and answer it ourselves. We need to take the question out of the mouths of the lazy and decide what does, indeed, make for a good curriculum. If something like those circle theorems can be used in any meaningful way either later in life or later in the week, then WE should decide. If they have no purpose other than intellectual curiosity, then they have that going for them, don't they?

Geometrical theorems are rarely useful in the raw as it were, but in combination with other knowledge, make a different problem solvable. It's a polygon inscribed in a circle -- or is it a bolt-pattern for a truck wheel? Tangents and circles, central and inscribed angles, external angles come together all the time in machining and manufacture.

To answer the original question:
Every time I see these theorems, I think of the guys on Junkyard wars who recited geometrical theory when building a go-kart. They won.

Some other comments:
"My take on it is that the people behind the unified 10-12 curriculum looked at circle geometry and asked these same questions of "why?", had no answer, and got rid of them. " The commenter didn't get rid of them but the powers-that-be did.

"I don't consider "it's interesting" a good enough justification, because there are plenty of things that are both interesting and relevant to what students will later see of pure mathematics." In other words, justify or get replaced.

"it's a mathematical dead end." and "but I can't even think of a later pure-mathematics connection. Shouldn't we be suspicious of anything that's a "stub" in the curriculum?" I can't think of a reason for it, so let's be suspicious of it?

National Health Care

Darren, of Right on the Left Coast, has posted about socialized medicine.

I have to disagree.

"Our federal system was created so that the states could serve as "laboratories" for democracy, trying out programs and seeing if they work. Three states have tried government-mandated health care, and three states have failed at it. Anyone who thinks such a program would succeed at the national level is a liberal political ideologue or a fool, but I repeat myself."

Interesting Dichotomy. False one, too.

First, our states were not created to be laboratories, they were autonomous states banding together for a common goal. Federalism was at a minimum because they had no intention of giving up rights they perceived to be held by the States. Over the years, that has changed as the Nation decided that local practices were in need of improvement. Civil rights vs slavery, national defense, highways, Rural Electrification ... there are many reasons for national control, some better, some worse.
More:
Second, three states have tried and "failed". I doubt any are abject failures. Programs are probably in trouble more because of the poor economy than program deficiencies - though the US tort system and US style of defensive medicine are major factors. Simultaneously providing health care and having fiscal problems doesn't prove causation.

I am not a liberal political ideologue or a fool, yet I believe in the idea of national health care. I present not the evidence of three states who have attempted it and "failed", but rather of those who are still giving it a go, and those Nations around the world who have somehow made it work.

One of my students was on a trip to France and got very sick. There was no cost and she was well cared for. She returned to the US three weeks late with no bills. If the French can do this ... why the hell can't we?

The real problem is that too many of us are stuck in an idealized vision of capitalism with the hope that companies will always "do the right thing" and will always be responsible to its patients rather than its shareholders. Unfortunately, the interests of patient and insurance company are ALWAYS at odds.

"What about choice?" is usually the next question. What about it? I have no choice as to plans or company ... I can take my nice plan or drop it (with no way to use that money I refused in a plan of my choice). My choice of doctors is limited and the insurance company has limits on who, when, where, and how much.

"Doctors are going broke over Medicare and Medicaid" Bullshit. They choose to work with those patients and I really doubt any of them are going broke as a result. Frankly, if it's so bad, why does everyone still want it?

"The pharmaceutical companies will go broke because the government will impose price caps just like the other countries." Again, bullshit. The companies can make a profit selling that drug to European markets at a tenth the price but somehow doing the same here will cause them to go broke?"

"The government messes everything up." No. it doesn't. It does a lot of things better than the private sector, and for more people. For instance, I like having public education for all, with private options available to any who choose to pay more.

"Immigrants will bankrupt the system." Really? On what planet has this happened?

Cover everyone to a low, basic level. Cover maintenance, typical injuries. Set limits on what is covered and done. Allow anyone to purchase extra coverage of their choosing. Apply tort reform. Allow for physician review by patients and the public.

We have nationalized (or publicly control) quite a bit in the interest of fairness, of allowing all citizens the benefits of our society, without requiring immediate payment (or, in some cases, any payment):

• roads, bridges, other infrastructure, snow removal
• education
• army, navy, coast guard, national defense and all that
• electricity, power, water, sewage (Electrification Act and others)
• rescue, emergency rooms, first responders, fire, police
• Medicare, Medicaid

And finally,

Can anyone, anyone, really expect California to try such a system given its track record of fiscal mismanagement and our current $20 billion or budget shortfall?

Frankly, I couldn't give less of a damn what California does. That state is a mess in so many ways. It has problems with its budget that have nothing to do with health care. California is so unlike any other state (except maybe Texas) that I couldn't bring myself to suggest that anyone imitate it.

It's not a factory.

Schools matter quotes a letter to the editor of the NYTimes:

"The Times notes that No Child Left Behind was unpopular "partly because it requires schools to administer far more standardized tests …". ("Experts Say a Rewrite of Nation’s Main Education Law Will Be Hard This Year," January 28). Education Secretary Duncan has announced that the Race to the Top national standards plan will include national tests linked to the standards, which means far more testing than we had with NCLB."

Okay. Let's stop here and discuss this for a second. NCLB was not vilified because it required testing, but because it mandated changes to the schools based on those tests, changes that would not fix the issue that those tests were thought to identify but didn't.

more:

You can't fix a school in the way you can fix a car. "My alternator jammed and burned up and I fixed it - I replaced the broken part." The same cannot be said for a school. Which teacher do you "replace because he's broken" if a subgroup didn't perform? Which aspect of that teacher is "broken" in the way my alternator was? Or do you toss the administration out on its ear? (must rethink this last)

Second, education is not an assembly-line with control of the raw materials and control of the process. If there is a substandard material, you can't toss it in the recycle bin. If the parts don't get stamped correctly, you change the procedure. Education, on the other hand, is a long process of stuttering advancement performed for a short time per day at arm's length on willing and unwilling students with varying abilities and desires, minds of their own, part-time jobs and full-time lives.

It's not a true assembly-line if the raw material is fighting you all the way and would rather not be there. The alternator in my car doesn't get to argue that the battery was at fault because it did its homework and that electrical testing equipment is flawed and its mommy was going to complain to the principal.

It's not an assembly line if the product itself, the supplier and the maker can be at odds and don't agree on the best way to make that product better (somehow value-added).

If there is a mistake down the line, you cannot "recall" the product and start over. If you notice something that went wrong, there is no real way to apply those lessons directly to the next batch. Your product research is flawed and rarely gets to you in any meaningful or useful form, anyway.

You can't control the product: it has it's own motivations and desires.
You can't control the preliminaries: other teachers, parents, peers, environment mold that kid before you have a chance.
You can't know the parameters: the "data-driven" decisions are based on data derived by others and is very suspect.

Here's a couple rhetorical questions for you:

1. Can a teacher be responsible for students he's never had? I'm one of many in this department. Every year, they're all new faces with new dynamics.
2. If I'm teaching pre-calculus and calculus, do I bear part of the responsibility for a broken school? My kids have all passed the test (if they cared to). If you give me a calculus class, I'll teach calculus to them.
3. How about placement? How can you consider me "broken" if I got that kid in 10th grade in a course he couldn't handle? Am I responsible for his failing the test?
4. Why is it that math is the touchpoint for success for all students? If you gave those tests to adults, you'd get the same 30% passing rates yet those adults are successful. The art teacher and the history teacher may be a much bigger influence and might be far more important or interesting to that student.

I'm for testing - sort of.

Schools matter quotes a letter to the editor of the NYTimes:

"All educators understand the necessity of assessment, but it is our obligation to do the minimum amount of testing necessary, and no more. Every minute spent testing that is not necessary bleeds time from learning, and every dollar spent on testing that is not necessary is stolen from investments that really need to be made in schools. Any new education law should result in less testing, not more. - Stephen Krashen"

Apologies to Stephen but state-wide testing, done right, doesn't bleed anything or "steal money" from anything, really. Using loaded words does get you published but it doesn't make your argument any better.

If I had my druthers, I'd have testing that would happen mid-course and end of course. These would be called Midterm Exam and Final Exam. The exams would not be written by the teacher but by a group made up from the district. Exams should at least be department-wide. Scoring would be be done by the teacher, but with other teachers being able to review the materials. Multiple choice is half. Clearly defined scoring for the student-constructed response section. All teachers aware of the curriculum and of the topics on the exam.

That's it. Two tests. Every grade at the same time.
No assemblies. No illnesses. No field trips. No sports dismissals. No bullying seminars. No peer mediations. No suspensions. No doctor's appointments. No guidance appointments. No excuses.

If you want a nationwide test, that would take place at the same time for every student tested and would count somehow. Like the SAT.

Now that I think about it, giving everyone an SAT in October of their senior year would be cheaper and more accurate than the silly state-written things I've seen so far.

What's a failing school?

These truths I hold to be self-evident:

1. You can't fix a failing school by converting it into a charter school, replacing its administration with a new administration that had been fired from another failing school, or by testing until the kids go bat-crack crazy. (h/t to Ritchie for that expression!)

2. You can't measure a school based on tests that aren't taken seriously.

3. You can't reliably identify a failing school by testing because the criteria were so poorly defined in the first place and because the Law is looking from the wrong perspective.

4. The educational experience of a small fraction of one ethnic group doesn't represent the experience of all of the students in that school any more than my abilities as a teacher can be "averaged" with those of the loser next door and the PhD on the other side.

More:Why should the failure or marginal failure of one subgroup (a significant portion of whom passed) lower the boom on a school?

Looking from the top down, you can measure how the "school" performed, but each student has a different experience. This group may have done poorly because their particular teachers didn't "get" them or were stupid (someone has to fit the stereotype), but those other groups had a great education.

Same building. Same "faculty." Different teachers. Different families. Different education.

As any parent knows, there are good teachers and bad ones but far more good than bad. The bad ones just don't stay - if they do, there's a reason. What not everyone understands is that often it's not a matter of good and bad teaching but of good or weak connection between teacher and student.

If your kid is not capable of "meshing with" or learning from a particular teacher, you ask for a change of section. Every teacher will have kids who won't or can't learn well from them but who magically blossom with someone else -- but there's always a vice-versa. I know, for instance, that some students just enjoy being in my class -- for whatever reason -- and try to set up their schedules accordingly. Often, the older brother counsels the younger to take my class. Others prefer other teachers, whether for their teaching style or gender or height or discipline policy. Many either don't care or know enough to have an opinion. I don't take it personally.

You all have had the experience of sitting in an IEP, SAT, EST, 504, MVP, IPod, or faculty meeting and listening to the others complain about KidX. When it comes to you, you shrug and say "I've never had a problem with him. I called his mother and everything just worked out." Judging by the looks on everyone's faces, you've dropped a bombshell.

The real problem with NCLB is that an entire school feels the punitive effects of the law when as little as 2% - 5% actually experience the school environment that produced those low scores.

All schools have some students who receive a great education. Those schools have a majority of students who get a decent education. The school certainly hasn't failed them. All schools have the mouth-breathing, drug-using lowlifes who really need a life-altering experience before they have a life-ending one - why should the results of the latter reflect on the school of the former?

New and Improved! Technology initiatives in education.

Time for a big-ass rant.

The Tempered Radical knows why teachers give up on Interactive White Boards. With some major snipping, and hoping I don't eliminate context:

What bothers me ... is an attitude towards teachers that I see often in conversations about school change. "Teachers all resistant to change and lazy!" the argument goes. "If they'd just be persistent and determined, our schools would be saved." ... The general belief is that teachers lack determination and commitment in almost every circumstance.
... that's a flawed assumption. ... the amount of effort that most changes take doesn't align with the corresponding benefits that change is designed to produce. ... The software wasn't designed to naturally facilitate the kinds of teaching that I believe in and limited access to the hardware required that I restructure learning time in my classroom almost every day.

I'm all over this. I think that the programmers who do this stuff should spend some time teaching to find out how the "real-world" will use it and what those teachers actually need. This is, for me, the crux of the problem. Those who write don't know what problem they are trying to solve and often do not have a clue as to how I will use it. (Sort of an educational consultant, no?)

Then, the pressures of making a sale get in the way of making my life easier. All too often, the person making the purchase isn't the one who gets to use it. Even if they asked the teachers, they're still asking someone who hasn't used it and can't really tell.

There are four major problems with technology and tech initiatives: Variety, the learning curve, Usability and Availability.

The rant is below this break.


Variety:
MS Word, OpenOffice, Google Docs; MAC vs PC; wikis, blogs, GoogleDocs, twitter, facebook, a million Web2.0 sites; GradeQuick, Powerschool, BlackBoard. This list is a tiny fraction of the options available to me. If I put everything together for PC and the Office suite, should I suddenly redo it all when the school upgrades - or when my wife's school upgrades and the home computers do or don't?

Does Scott Macleod's obsession with transformation mean that I have to transform according to his specifications? I hope not.

I am using what works for me. Your flavor might work too, but as Bill argues and I agree, the cost of conversion is often higher than I care to spend right now. And I'm one of the geeks. What actual benefit can be found in converting? Tell me that and I'll go for it.

My colleagues have a higher "benefit" threshold, though. Online gradebooks started this year (I volunteered to do the training), and I stressed the ease of printing a progress report and the chance to put things online for ill students. Had I told everyone that they had to be fully invested from the word "go", they'd have tuned me out. It would have been nice to repurpose some inservice time for it, but we managed.

Like the Highly Ineffectual Principal he is though, our HIPster didn't get it. He is now ratcheting up the "standards" before anyone is comfortable. He wants everyone to put lots of time into it but can't free us from mindnumbing inservices to do it. Pushback. Push back.

Technology isn't the magic cure-all, either. I LOVE blackboards. There really isn't much reason to eliminate the 18 feet of beautiful slate in favor of a 4 foot piece of gee-whiz. If the IWB is an addition, then "woot!" but new isn't necessarily better, it's just different.

You don't need Excel to average 20 numbers. Or even a calculator.
You don't need a spreadsheet or database to deal with your grades (but it does make things a little easier).
You don't need Blogger to tell your kids the homework. or texting, or podcasts, or wikis, or a lot of this junk. If you can, great. But you don't NEED it.

The learning curve:
This is the flip side of the "benefit" threshold - the cost of converting. You need to start small and give the faculty (and the students) the time and training to pick up the new software and make the changes to their daily lives to fit the software. If you don't give them either, they will nod and move to more pressing matters like, oh I don't know, maybe teaching?

The other thing is that you have confidentiality and sensitivity issues. Jumping right in and forcing everyone to play ball before training only makes the inevitable mistakes harder to handle.

I was called in to help another teacher fix her grades 70% of the way through the course. She hadn't weighted her terms or her categories properly and had wrong dates for terms, start dates, etc. -- and this was the computer teacher. I told the principal that unless he wanted to redo all of the transcripts for all of her students, then we shouldn't touch it because they were all going to get changed grades (a month after report cards had been sent).

We had gone too far, too fast and most faculty were barely getting it right and some, like this one, were messing up big time.

Added to this mess was that the guidance department was convinced it knew what it was doing, but was missing very important details, like making sure that global settings were done. This year, apparently, started in Aug 2008 and so all of the teachers' gradebooks thought the first day was fourth marking period. Then, the first day of 2010 was showing up as 1910 and the "out of chronological order" popups were flying everywhere -- because guidance hadn't applied the update that had come out six months earlier. BTW, the tech guy refuses to be responsible for the gradebook system because they purchased it without consulting him (or some such BS), so the guidance counselor is trying to do the administration for it, too. Not surprisingly, she doesn't get things right.

Usability:
Then, of course, you have usability, the redheaded step-child of the computer development teams. It's obvious they didn't think everything through.

• Tell me why you need a "wizard" to add a mark to your spreadsheet.
• Why can't I type in the date? Why do I have to use the drop down calendar?
• Tell me why there isn't enough room in the category field for the word "classwork" or "participation" - haven't we heard of a lookup field and a normalized database?
• Tell me why clicking on the spreadsheet adds a new student.
• Why isn't there an UNDO feature?
• Why does the guidance secretary need to click through 13 different menus and popups to import grades from a single course from one teacher and then print it out for verification?
• Tell me why important settings are in four different preferences screens, accessible from different menus without rhyme or reason. The faculty ask "How do you know this stuff?" and I reply "Because I do it over and over with each of you and the repetition helps me remember. You only do this step once per year and it's something guidance should have set globally anyway -- why would you bother remembering it?"
• Tell me why Blogger jumps me all the way to the top of my editing window if I bold-face something at the bottom?
• Tell me why I'm ranting?

SmartBoard software is a dim cousin of, and less useful version of, PowerPoint, which is a problem all its own. The included graphics are lame, the lessons are silly and many are flawed, and the "tools" are pale versions of things found elsewhere. Any notebook gets edited by the student running it - there's no way to block those changes so the next kid can run it from the beginning. (What? Why?)

The lessons I find at TeqSmart are amazing in a "can't turn away from a trainwreck" sort of way. The learning curve on this piece of software is pretty steep and not worth the time and effort, in my mind, even though I did it.

But LOOKIE, I can TOUCH it! and wrilewrite with my finger. And it has SOUNDS! and I can ROLL a DIE! (pretty much how the 3-credit training course went) Yes, I got three credits for something learned in about 30 minutes RTFM. Sue me.

Availability
Why do I give a damn about a SmartBoard if I can't get one? I was told I could "Borrow" the one from across the hall. Anyone who has one knows how that would go. If I make every kid use Google Docs, they all have to have Google accounts. If I want everyone on Excel, I have to have a computer for at least half of them. This gets expensive. If you want to throw money away on a one-laptop-per thing, okay, I'll go along and make use of it. Otherwise, shut up and let me use my blackboard. I'll sign out the computer room when I can, but there ARE other teachers in the building.

In summation:
I am in favor of technology and would actively use an IWB were it to appear in my room, but I get annoyed when people like Scott Macleod go all "Techno uber alles" on me.

Kids minds haven't changed much in the "mumble-mumble" years I've been doing this. They can put their toys away and learn.

Learning is hard and technology is no shortcut. "There is no Royal Road" and all that. GeeWhiz is like CheeseWhiz - kids love it, it's sorta nutritious and it holds their attention, but it isn't all that great most times.

P⁶: Proper Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance.
Forget that at your peril.

I expand on my views of WalMart YMMV

I have gotten some heat for my take on WalMart. It has been pointed out that it's just as the sign says and too many "locals" have gone out of business and their jobs aren't up to the standards of other parts of the country and all that. I am also keenly aware of the impact those jobs can have on a poor community where before there was only a bunch of family-owned shops (who didn't hire and had high prices) or somewhat larger shops; again with the limited opportunities and high cost of goods.

More below the fold:

When WalMart moves in, they definitely put some businesses out and aggressively so. They hire people for small wages and all of that. BUT, and this is the big fly in that complaint and in that sign, those markets were dying anyway while WM is hiring; something that the rest of the stores weren't. It's not great work, but its work.

Add to that the prices are considerably lower and there's a lot more stuff - not terribly high quality but the people that go there aren't looking for high quality. They're looking for the basics of life and a step up.

Would I rather have a Target, KMart, JCPenny, Sears, Ames, Aubuchon? I can't see the philosophical difference. Would I rather have a town full of little mom-and-pops? Absolutely, but that business model has been declining for decades - nothing to do with WalMart. When's the last time anyone went to a mom-and-pop grocery anyway? Why is the supermarket any different from WalMart?

Look at those buildings in the photographs – all those first-floor stores were closed or closing before WM opened, now they're different stores but they're all alive.

Without some other draw, the little stores die. So the towns die. The buildings stand empty and the only thing you see in the windows is your own reflection. You may not want to accept it, but there it is. WalMart is usually trying to set up shop in a depressed, empty, God-forsaken part of town where the choice is WalMart or nothing. Until that changes, don't expect the voters to rise up swinging to get rid of it.

At right, you can see the farmers market that sets up every saturday. You can also see that the parking lot is full (at 9-10am on a Saturday). What you can't see is that maybe 90% of that lot is people who are NOT dealing with WalMart. They are shopping and working in the rest of downtown - probably a third of that lot will at least walk through the farmer's market. Because of WM, the city is more vibrant and alive than it was in the fifteen years before they arrived. There's even street fairs, for crying out loud. (I didn't realize it when I chose the photo but you can see the two white tents just up the street to the left - they close it for music and partying on Fridays in the summer. Everyone parks at WalMart and walks around. Great time)

Another thing that many people seem to overlook up here is that WalMart has a pretty tough slog getting into this state. They are continually roadblocked by activists using any legal means. I don't care about that (they've got plenty of money for lawyers and architects) but it does mean that the town can have a big input into the size and style of the building and in the parking lots and surrounding areas.

So WalMart can blend in, if the town has brains enough to demand it. Here's the Rutland one (off to the right of the farmers market picture) smack in the middle of the city. If you're not looking for it, you'd miss it. They rebuilt the whole plaza and blended in with the existing architecture. The whole area has been redone and the center of the City looks amazing. The combination of WalMart and PriceChopper has probably saved downtown.

The car dealers down the street and the minimalls and the strips are MUCH more ugly and dingy. If it weren't for a gigantic Hannaford's supermarket (even bigger than the WalMart or the PriceChopper), the other end of town would still be little more than car dealers and an empty department store minimall with eight empty stores and a Staples.

Size matters. WalMart has it. Hannafords has it. The market is changing and mom-and-pops aren't.

I'm not up-to-date with the hiring practices around the country, but I do know that the place here is always full and is always hiring people - which many feel is a strike against them - but then you realize that the people who are cycling through are not particularly good workers. (Like one of my students who couldn't understand why they fired her. I asked what happened. She worked two days, then skipped work four of the next five and had a "doctors excuse" for the sixth. They asked to explain herself and she told them to f&#^$ off and walked out. Then they fired her.) The ones that stay are better workers who wouldn't stay if it weren't a good decision for them.

A lack of health care is a knock against them until people think about how many other jobs and businesses don't bother either. It isn't ideal and it's why I think that health care should be treated like education - a basic option provided by the government for any of its citizens - if they want more, they can spend more if they want. WalMart has made the decision to not have it. Right or wrong. Although I'd like to see them have insurance for their people, I can't dictate their policy. (If only the CEOs would stop trying to run education ...)

I won't argue company politics because I think it's irrelevant but I will argue that WalMart, in its current configuration, is a better citizen in those towns than the companies it drove out. Look at those companies that were "driven out" – they were, by and large, going anyway. They paid as little as WalMart and they were a failed business model. People just aren't interested in paying full cost for low-to-average quality and that's what they were getting from the losers.

The companies who weren't driven out? They adapted and changed. They moved to better service or made a better product or slid into a niche. They can take business away from the WalMart if they do it right. True fact - the shops around the WalMarts up here have been doing very well because Walmart brings in business. They'll all tell you they'd much rather be within walking distance of WalMart than anywhere else in town, including the mall. Okay, the Book King is gone, but Amazon killed that cat. I had occasion to go to a small appliances store near the WM in mid-NH and got the same story. Business skyrocketed when WalMart came in. One near Brattleboro has brought a noticeable difference to that community as well.

I admit, I don't like the place, and I rarely go in because it creeps me out, but I can't deny the changes it made here.

Finally, I get irritated by the opponents who I've come into contact with up here (and your mileage may and probably will vary). It seems that the Vermonters against WM are wealthier, activist types who could afford to pay more or drive 30 miles to get groceries. They have this idealized sense of what Vermont "should be", totally at odds with the facts of life. Most of them moved in from out-of-state and are trying to keep their "farmer's paradise" and "more cows than people" fantasies alive. The ones who bitch the loudest come off as racist and classist. "WalMart's anti-union" is the call. Maybe so, but the minute one finally does open, it's staffed fully within a week.


My brother is a typical greenie-type: anti-WalMart and all it stood for … until one finally came to the town across the border in NH. Now, he says nothing and shops.

I paint what I see.

Bashing Walmart is ultimately pointless.

It's Saturday and I'm feeling cranky.

In another blog, this sign popped up. The comments were the usual "Right on" and "We need more of this." My favorite was "Yes, we certainly do need to draw attention to vanishing local economies and signs like this would definitely do the trick".

I find this sign silly. It reflects antipathy toward one company that built itself up in a classic sense, just like every small but somehow more worthy company wants to.

It should read "On this site stood a dinosaur which couldn't adapt to the reality around it."

If we were talking about a car company, bigger and foreign-built would apparently be fine. Who wants to buy a car made completely in East Podunk, Vermont? Even if such a company existed, its costs would be prohibitive. If it still made a decent product, people would pay more for it - it's called "custom car."

More below the break:

If we were talking about a grocery store, bigger and cheaper would absolutely be fine. A small mom-and-pop store with 200 square feet of space wouldn't work for anyone - that's why they've all gone out of business. You can still have a small store, but you have to be better than the big one. Whole Foods succeeds because it provided more "holy" food than PriceChopper - but at a premium price. Surprisingly it grew and became a chain. It paid well and doesn't need unions. Neither did UPS, or Costco. (and the "Organic" tag is a complete joke - mostly an indicator of massive agricultural operations that have eliminated thousands of small farmers - oops.)

Being non-union is not a crime. Being out-of-business is stupid.

The local hardware store around here was Aubuchon's, a large chain with high prices and lousy service. It got replaced with a Home Depot with low prices and good service. The computer guy - Office Depot. The bookstore - B&N or WaldenBooks, which are now losing to Amazon.com and e-books. The Florist with a greenhouse is replaced by one with global shipments coming in daily from Columbia and other, warmer places.

Adapt and live, people.

Whine and go bankrupt.

The world doesn't owe you a living just because you are white and graduated from the local school to open a tiny store with too-high prices, a limited inventory and an unlimited attitude, selling things that you purchased wholesale from a company in Indiana who contracted out to Pakistan or Mexico or China ... "Assembled in the USA!"

WalMart succeeds because people go there. These people aren't making a political or ideological point, they are making a purchase. If your store goes out of business to the big box, it is your customers who are doing you in. Read the tea leaves and change accordingly.

Into town: Hannafords, Bed Bath Beyond, Dicks, Home Depot, CVS, Walgreens, Verizon Wireless, 99, Holiday Inn (et al), the freaking Malls, what seems like a million car dealers and chain dollar stores. Most are big, monopolistic chains and most have non-union staff, but some are union. It makes no difference.
Out of Business: Grand Union, Ames, P&C, porno shop, Aubuchon, three local hardware stores, Book Store, travel agents, clothing store, the Catholic School.

Who lives: the Pharmacy provides home delivery, the restaurants are good, the stores fill a niche need, the schools do a good job, the lumber yard allows contractors an account.

Adaptation wins. Price wins. Service wins. Quality wins.
Union or non-union doesn't matter. Local or Chain doesn't matter. Size doesn't matter (don't make that joke -ed.) Monopolistic tendencies don't matter - especially when it comes to gas.

Think about where you bought your last book, camera, rose, can of paint, chocolate, clock, linens. All little, local stores with no branches? Who holds your mortgage, the local bank providing local jobs or one in Delaware screwing over the country? Do you have a credit card? Have you ever purchased gas from Citgo, Shell, BP or do you stick with Exxon or Irving? Do you have any idea whether these are local, unionized, even if they are US companies? Are these businesses making money while streamlining the logistics to lower prices and still be a decent wage for most of its staff? Do you have a local insurance agent or did you go non-union and cheap with Progressive or GEICO? How about a local travel agent? or a local butcher?

Didn't think so.

The Merit Pay Joyride

I have been teaching for more than 25 years. I have taught students from at least 30 different countries (and every continent save Antarctica), every socio-economic level (and some from levels so high that Mike Bloomberg would get a stiff neck looking up at) and nearly 40 different religious backgrounds. Their abilities have ranged from the dyslexic boy lucky to finish consumer math to the kid who got 5s on every AP test he took and is now working on his PhD. in mathematics.

I spend all year teaching and assessing.

• Grades are based on agreed upon points.
• Tests are meticulously broken down to assure myself and the students that partial credits are done fairly, that everything they do that is correct and given an appropriate number of points.
• Progress reports ensure that every student can keep track of his own work and make up missing assignments, and know fairly accurately what his grade is and how he’s doing. If anything is amiss, the kids are instructed to bring it to my attention first. “I not infallible. Let's get it right” Students know that finding my error gets them points.
• Every mark or measurement has a paper trail and a justification.

That's how grades work. Everyone understands that they are not given but earned.  They know what they got and why and agree that its fair because they'd give themselves the same thing. Though maybe not happy, they'll still says things like "I'm not very good at math but I sure learned a lot." "I enjoy your class, but I hate math." (Then later, the same kid says "My college statistics course was an easy A.") Depending on the course, there are scores of grades of varying weight.

Consider Merit Pay, on the other hand, and it's basis.

• At the end of the year, students are given a survey on the last, hottest day of school when absolutely NONE of them want to be there.
• In a few minutes, they rush through questions that ask them to judge on a scale of 1 to 10, my use of classroom time, and 12 other vague metrics. (using their vast experience with 10th grade math teaching methods and pedagogy)
• Add in the results from the 11th grade NECAP test which this grade hasn’t taken yet and doesn't have any incentive to do well on.  Mix in the 8th grade exam from two years ago - somehow this is my responsibility?
  
• Add an administrative evaluation from three years ago (because we're doing the fad of the moment: peer coaching)

What you got? Nothing. Nada. Bupkus. Zero. Zilch.
You don't have a clue as to my value as a teacher.


You want to base my merit pay on that?