Florida Legislature in a Quandry

If the Florida state legislature had their way, which of these things would be legal?

A. Giving teacher’s tenure
B. Paying experienced teachers more than novices
C. Judging a teacher by first hand observation instead of test scores
D. Having sex with a dolphin

If you answered D. congratulations. You’re correct!  The Florida legislature has been unable to pass a law outlawing bestiality.  In 1971 a Florida Supreme Court ruling created a loophole by demanding proof that the animal was unwilling and traumatized by the event.  Since then, the legislature has not been able to come together to outlaw the practice.   This year, it was seemingly killed by an amendments dealing with fertilizer and gun rights.

Fortunately, while not being able to agree that sex with animals was unpleasant, the state legislature was able to find a common enemy in the state’s teachers.   Unfortunately, Charlie Crist vetoed the bill.   It was an eventful session for the Florida state legislatures, teachers, and lovers of dolphin porn.

Obama Merit Pay Plan a Good Start

Merit pay would encourage firemen like these to get out and fight fires instead of clowning around.

There’s an old song by the Pink Floyd that goes “We don’t need no education.”  I’m not quite sure what the song is, but those lines always stuck with me.  Teachers for years have been riding the educational gravy train in this country and we need to stop it.  Today, Barrack Obama laid out his plans to make teachers accountable and it is about time.  I may be one of Obama’s harshest critics, but I think his proposal is a good start.  Obama called for tying teachers’ pay to students’ performance and expanding innovative charter schools Tuesday, embracing ideas that have provoked hostility from members of teachers unions.

Obama also called for us to emulate the South Korean school system where students go a month longer than kids in this country do.  I applaud Obama for not looking to Canada which has the second best school system in the world behind only Finland, but which remains a hotbed of liberalism and socialized medicine. According to the Mathematics Association of America,  “Most of the top countries pay their starting teachers a salary equivalent to about 95% of national GDP per capita. South Korea pays 141%. In the United States, average starting salaries for teachers are at 81% of national GDP per capita. With avergae ntional GDP in the US currently at $46,000, 81% means an average starting salary of a bit over $37,000. To raise starting salaries to 95% of US GDP per capita, this would have to rise to almost $44,000” and 141% would be over $60,000 to start, but we’re America and if we can’t get a first class education for third world wages, we might as well just give up now.  I would also hope we can avoid South Korea’s huge teen suicide epidemic which is often blamed on high stakes testing.

Now, Obama wants to increase funding for teacher salaries, but he is wisely tying this increase to merit pay.  I really love this idea because it assures us of getting what we pay for.  The problem with education is how lazy so many teachers are.  They sit at their desks all day sipping their expensive coffee and not paying any attention to what theri students are doing.  What about the lazy cops who hang out in the doughnut shop or the lazy firemen who don’t want to run into a burning building though?   Let’s face it teachers aren’t the only lazy government workers on easy street.

Which is more valuable to a city–The cop who sits in his comfortable car all day or the one who is busting his back writing speeding tickets?   Is the city getting its money’s worth for the fireman who sits around the station watching televsion all day or the one who is putting out fires?  These people should also be put on incentive pay.  Let’s allow cops to keep 20% of all ticket money they raise.  Let’s give our firemen $100 for every burning building they enter.  That’ll get them off their behinds.  In the unfortunate event that you had to go to a public hospital, wouldn’t you want to know the doctor’s salary was being tied into his patients’ survival rates?  Let’s truly make this a merit based society.  For once, Obama and I seem to agree on something.

Mock Election Brings Parental Concern

I was excited in September when I heard that my daughter Emily would have a chance to participate in a mock election.  I still remember my first mock election back in seventh grade when I made the kid playing Jimmy Carter cry.  He was probably ahead on points, but it only cost me $5 to get John Anderson to punch him in the stomach when we had a bathroom break.  In the second half of the debate my firm stance on the Soviets and my trickle down economic policy had carried the day over the sniveling peanut farmer.

I’ve been asking Emily questions about the mock election when we’ve talked, but she’s gotten real quiet lately.  I have been prepping her on all of the best Obama/McCain talking points.  When I found out she was going to get to debate I was excited to see her as Sarah Palin or even the maverick himself.  Needless to say I was shocked and apalled when I found out that her teacher would be making her play the part of Barack Obama.  My daughter loves this country and is not now nor has she ever been secretly a muslim.

I arranged to have a conference with the union protected incompetent that passes for my daughter’s 7th grade teacher.  The cow actually wanted me to arrange an appointment, but I was insistent.  She tried passing the blame on my daughter by swearing that my daughter had wanted to play Obama and had volunteered to do so.  I naturally accused this woman of lying, but she persisted.  I need to confront my daughter and find out her side of the story.

I am terrified that maybe she really was playing Obama in the mock debate.  Democratic politics are something a lot of kids experiment, but most don’t get hooked.  Still, I thought I raised her right.  I taught her about supply side economics before she was 3.  She cried in 2004 when the Democrats became the majority party.

If the teacher is lying to me, union or not, I will go to the school board with this.  In fact, if she isn’t lying I have no doubt she’s responsible for filling my daughter’s mind with these socialist pro-Obama thoughts.  There will be reprecussions for her, but I’m concerned about Emily.  I guess we’re going to have to have that talk I’ve been dreading.  I’m thinking I might take her out for ice cream.  She seems a lot less testy when I’m buying her food.

Texas Board of Education Strikes Back at Teacher Union Tyrany

This past week the Texas board of education stopped an effort by teacher’s groups to hijackthe statewide English curriculum and instead turned the job over to Washington DC based Consultant StandardsWork.  There is a reason that we have modeled so much of our country’s educational sytem after Texas and it is impressive moves like this to keep educational policy in the hands of professionals and away from special interests like teachers groups that we as a nation must applaud.

The meeting began when a proposal the teachers had been working on for the past 3 years was roundly rejected by the State Board of Education’s social conservative block 9-6.  Many on the board were resentful that the teachers had been working behind the scenes over the past 3 years with educational consultants to devise their plan.  Cynthia Dunbar, R-Richmond, said some teachers and their supporters “subverted” the process of writing the curriculum standards by working behind the scenes to influence the final version of the plan. “We don’t want to say we’re not listening to teachers, but I am very frustrated,” she said. “This process has become a joke and mockery.”

Fortunately, with litle time the State Board of Education was able to call up Republican Education Consultants StandardsWork to draft a new curriculum.  According to StandardsWork the thing that seperates the company from others is its “Customized, grassroots approach to reform initiatives.”

According to StandardsWork’s company website (http://www.goalline.org/) the seeds of StandardsWork were planted in 1991 when [Leslye] Arsht helped U.S. Department of Education Secretary Lamar Alexander promote America 2000. That initiative was then-President George H. W. Bush’s campaign to engage communities in education reform. One of the six national education goals reflected in that strategy was that American students leave grades four, eight, and twelve “having demonstrated competency in challenging subject matter including English, mathematics, science, history and geography.”

Fortunately, the Board of Education in Texas did the right thing by going with a group that has been at the forefront of the educational success of the last 14 years rather than the teachers who continue to be a lodestone around the neck of our sinking schools.  You’d think everybody would see the wisdom of this decision, but you’d be wrong.  Some board members and teachers complained. 

“The state board is split between members who respect the opinions of teachers and education experts and … other members who clearly don’t,” said Kathy Miller, president of the education watchdog group Texas Freedom Network. “So this board is increasingly unable to complete tasks with efficiency and a respect for informed debate and expert opinion.

“How am I supposed to vote on a document when I’ve had it in my hands for slightly over an hour?” asked angered board member Mary Helen Berlanga, a Democrat from Corpus Christi. “How are we supposed to reply to our constituents? I don’t understand that. I can’t support a document that I haven’t had a chance to read.”

“I find it’s really wild that we can work for three years on a project and then the board is so qualified they can pull it out of their hat overnight,” said board member Pat Hardy, a Fort Worth Republican who, like other board members, received the substituted document when it was slipped under her hotel door less than an hour before their meeting was set to convene Friday morning.

This is a reading curriculum lady.  If you’re making the decisions and you can’t read a simple 100 page document in an hour than maybe you shouldn’t be involved in the process in the first place.  This is an important blow for the type of top down educational reform that President Bush has been trying to bring to this country for the past 8 years.  I applaud the Texas Board for picking consultants who know what they’re talking about over the special interest teacher groups.

Teachers Faling Our Kids

I’ve talked about it before, but with a new study coming out today its become clearer than ever that our public schools aren’t cutting it.  Its a fact that the school day and calendar are too short – Canada may be one of the top school systems in the world with the same basic schedule, but they don’t have the powerful not teaching unions we have.  I resent the huge salaries paid to teachers in these public schools and I believe we need to go to non-union charter schools where a board of directors makes the money.

It is for this reason that I wish to start the Nate Peele Charter Academy for Academic Excellence.  The students will go to school for 300 days per year from 8AM until 6PM, but there will be no homework as the students will have a longer school day.  The typical 4th grader’s school day would go like this:

8:00 – 8:15 Prayer and silent reflection

8:15 – 9:00 Reading

9:00 – 9:45 Math

9:45 – 11:00 American History

11:00 – 12:00 Gym

12:00 – 12:30 Lunch

12:30 – 1:45 Science (This will also include theology and will include Intelligent Design and morality)

1:45 – 2:45 Gun Safety

2:45 – 3:45 Junior ROTC

3:45- 4:30 Reading II

4:30 – 5:15 Math II

5:15 – 6:00 Self Defense

I am going to actively look for a site and investors to see if this plan can become a reality.  Chicago has a wonderful program for starting charter schools called Rennaisanse 2010 that I would love to be a part of.  My teachers would be young and energetic with experience in business and totally nonunionized. 

20 Students in Chicago Killed

I usually stay out of local politics because Chicago has a great mayor who is Democrat in name only.  However, they announced today that 20 students in the Chicago Public Schools have been shot and killed this year.

The liberal media naturally gravitated to blaming everything on guns.  To me this is like blaming beer for drunk driving.  Gun safety should be taught in the schools not ignored.  My question is what exactly are these teachers doing?  In my day we wouldn’t dare throw a spitball in class let alone kill somebody.  Are they in such a rush to get home at 2PM that they forget to mention to the classes “Hey don’t kill each other.”

I’m so disgusted by these teachers who allow this many students to be shot.  I blame the teacher’s unions.  The obvious answer is more charter schools and vouchers to let parents choose where to go to school.  Don’t blame the guns put the blame where it really belongs

Teachers Get Out of the Way!

I look at some of the truely great things that W. has done as President and one of the greatest actually had help from Senator Kennedy and that’s No Child Left Behind.  Bush believes that the children are out future and he knows that if we teach them well they have limitless potential.  So with Dumbocraps and Republicans on board who stands in the way of education reform–teachers.

They’re so happy with their $80,000 a year jobs with 3 and a half months off in the summer while getting out by 2:30 that they will put our children’s future in jeopardy.  What does No Child Left Behind do?  Quite simply if a school isn’t performing well, the school will get its funding cut and eventually shut down.  The system used to determine this is a simple test that all students must take.  Lately, the government has been cracking down on schools that feel some of their students should be excluded because their special ed or don’t speak English–try teaching everybody and then you won’t have this problem. Still the teacher unions try and fight this every step of the way. 

If you ask me, we should apply this same formula to all government employees.  If a hospital is not keeping their patients alive it should be shut down.  If a police station is not controlling crime in an area shut it down.  Then maybe we’d have real accountability.  I wish somebody had the guts to do what Reagan did to the Air Traffic Controllers and fire any union teachers.  Let’s replace them with people willing to care about kids first and their paychecks second.  I can’t think of a better job than teaching and that’s without all the perks.