It's about time we started talking about bad administrators and leave the teachers alone

How would you like to work for this idiot?


A common trick - what these tyrants do to teachers with disabilities is positively criminal!


Principal from hell - indeed!


Vindictive. Ya think??

I hear ya.

situation right now. We live in a state with no teacher's union and 3 major school systems are being investigated for altering tests and are in danger of losing accreditation. It's been discovered that many teachers reported the testing discrepancies and they were subsequently fired. Now the legislature is trying to pass a law protecting whistle blowers, but whose going to administer that?

Even the best teachers cannot educate students without an administration focused on providing support and quality educational time to teachers.

That means support with discipline, support by maintaining a school atmosphere focused on learning, and support in the inevitable clashes with parents (when warranted).

But let's blame teachers!

Rampant in education. Behind nearly every bad administrator you will find family members on the school board or in the superintendent's office.

Good administrators would be dry-gulching each other for plum jobs to run well-stocked schools full of highly paid teachers. We hear all the time about how corporations have to pay top dollar to hire the talent that runs them into the ground (cf. Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, et al.), but we're always cheaping out on education. "The children are our future" is a required pronouncement of every hack politician from here to Timbuktu, but nobody ever acts like it. "Government should be run like a business" intones Republican nitwit after Republican halfwit. How about some bonuses and incentives for public workers? Whoops, spin on a dime and yammer about "wasting taxpayer money." Well, if we're getting well-educated students out of the deal, that doesn't sound like a waste of money to me.

Sid

I could swear you have posted in many of those threads.

This is about balance. I figure if I post a bad administrator story every day I can catch up to the number of bad teacher stories in about 2 years.

Of course, I wouldn't think we'd see them here, but DU surprises me a lot these days.

though I have posted in support of the ACLU and students in the Los Angeles suit.

I don't particularly like being told, however, to leave any topic alone.

And as far as a daily "bad administrator" story? Go for it.

Sid

Edit: just did a quick search. I've used the word "teacher" on 9 threads, including this one, since 2007.

Edit 2: You? Almost 800 threads in the same period.

:think:

plus, unlike a lot of armchair quarterbacks bashing teachers around here, proud actually knows what she's talking about.

dg

:hug:

I may have left the teaching profession, but I'm here for ya.

:hug:

dg

Apparently, asking a question about the discussion topics allowed makes me a teacher basher. :eyes:

Sid

Um, no.

You took time & effort to search how many times proud has mentioned "teachers" in an effort to make it look like she's whining, when in fact, she *is* a teacher & has commented on many topics re: education & teachers, not just the current round of "Let's blame teachers for everything because it's easier than thinking about how to really solve the problems in our education system."


dg

I was commenting generally on some of the replies to my original question.

I didn't mean to imply that it was you who said that.

And I didn't put her search results in to make it look like she was whining. I put it in only as a contrast to my own discussion count.

Sid

And of course I've posted in a lot of teacher stories here. Duh - it's my profession. :eyes:

"It's about time we started talking about bad administrators and leave the teachers alone"

start talking about bad administrators
leave the teachers alone

Seems pretty clear to me :eyes:

Edit: and I'm sure you'll acknowledge your error in assuming that I've posted in many of the threads discussing bad teachers. Right?

Sid

Can we talk about them? What's the situation like where you live? Are teachers Union in Canada? Is the Canadian government always slandering them as ours does, while pretending that administrators and boards are 'sanctified' beings above all reproach? Tell us of your own life experiences!

:rofl:

Got anything else in your bag of tricks?

Sid

Holy shit, did you just come out of a fucking coma?

but while a teacher can harm a classroom of students per year an administrator can ruin an entire district.

and a population that judges without adequate, and accurate, information?

whose purpose in life is to enrich themselves and their cronies.

A trick I learned as a new teacher - when the principal criticizes you or something you did in your classroom, ask him/her to come in and show you how to do it right. Good principals will do so. Bad ones can't so they won't. And usually they shut up if you keep asking them to come in and model.

Their teaching 'experience' is typically limited to small gigs during grad school, and there is often a sense of entitlement.

I've had a couple really good PhD principals.

and how to spend limited resources cost-effectively.

That's the problem that needs to be solved, keeping in mind that the default solution will be layoffs.

and eliminating golden parachutes commonly awarded to superintendents.

As for money, we have it. In my state, eliminating the sales tax exemptions would meet the budget deficits - in EVERYTHING, not only in school funding.

The money is THERE. Our state legislatures are CHOOSING to spend it on other things - like tax breaks for corporations and sales tax exemptions.

The problem is that the rate of growth of specific spending sectors is so high that any tax increase will be a temporary solution at best.

There's no getting around the issue, that the rate of growth of education and health care spending in particular need to be curbed. However worthy, it is simply mathematically impossible for them to continue to grow at the rate they have been growing - they'll soon consume the entirety of the budget AND any additional taxes levied and then come back asking for more. A brief check of the KS state budget shows education is 65% of the state's spending and social services another 25%+; less than 10% of the state's budget is for all other purposes.

Even if all the exemptions are eliminated tomorrow, that gives maybe 2-5 years tops before the rate of growth of the main spending categories overwhelm it; then we are right back to where we are now, except with more Republicans in charge and fewer Democrats.

Then what? Tax some more? There won't be any Democrats left in office to pursue such a policy if the only solution to the spending problem is to tax more.

What we need to do is to think up new ways to deal with the issues that don't require as much spending; at some point the credit card will come back "declined" and we ought to be planning for the future before that happens rather than have it be forced upon us.

One day of the war on Afghanistan will pay the teachers in Wisconsin. One day.

We have the money. We are just choosing to spend it on other programs, and not on our children.

If you're talking about the federal military, keep in mind that we can't afford that either, but even if we get rid of it entirely it doesn't solve the state level issues at all.

We borrow to fund the entirety of our discretionary programs, including the military. We can't afford any of that, and we're going to need to make some choices about what we need and what would be nice to have but can't be afforded at this time.

The state of Wisconsin itself is not spending money on military (other than the NG), therefore that cannot be a solution to the budget issues in that state. If the federal government stopped all military spending at this very moment, Wisconsin would still have the exact same problem.

they have generally used it to cut taxes for businesses and rich people. I don't think it is the growth that is really a problem, at least not in this state. Between previous tax cuts and the bad economy is what is causing the current crunch.

There's not a single state in the country where health care costs AND education costs are not both rising at 10% or greater amounts every year. Those two things already consume the vast majority of all state budgets.

State budgets cannot rise at 10% per year on an indefinite basis without economic growth of 10% per year to support it.

Where we are at today is what happens when government budgets consistently grow faster than the economies that support them. The first significant pullback craters revenues and hard decision have to be made. We're here...

we are where we are in this state because the Republican legislature has reduced revenues every year in the name of economic growth. The cost of those tax cuts for last year alone was something like $600 million, not to mention the cummulative costs. You just sound like you are confidently stating some talking point from the Tax Foundation or something.

Let's take a look at the books and see what the facts are.

Here in Kansas, doing away with sales tax exemptions would meet the shortages. We wouldn't even have to insist on higher corporate tax rates.

There are bad administrators; there are occasional bad teachers; there are students from chaotic, dysfunctional families or with behavior problems; there are learning disabillities; there are sometimes bad school boards; bad curriculum; a bad cultural environment that doesn't value education in general.

Let's admit that America's educational problems (which have been here all of my 61 years, from "Johnny Can't Read" to the "New Math" and beyond) are complex, multidimensional, and may require different solutions for each district, each school, each child. The blame shouldn't be put on any single factor as a universal panacea.

One more important thing we need to remember: let's separate out labor issues from personnel issues, and both of these from educational and instructional issues. They are not the same topic, even if sometimes they can become intertwined. The last one--educational issues, actual instructional methods and support for helping kids succeed--should not be a political issue. And they are totally separate from either labor or personnel issues.

In many districts, the union representing the teachers is the only stakeholder truly interested in doing what's best for kids. Teachers get this - so does their union. But it's just a catch phrase for admins.

When we discuss labor issues here, it sometimes seems that the belief is that if we just support teachers unions -- which we all do, to the nth degree: for better pay, for good working conditions, for the right to collectively bargain -- that this is as far as we need to go in discussing education. Everything will just fix itself if the unions remain strong. Unions need to be strong if we want good education, but that alone does not solve all current issues. The facts just don't fit that. Frankly, we almost never discuss "education here": what makes a good history curriculum? how do you go about teaching reading to non-native speakers who increasingly populate our schools? what special instructional methods might help in teaching at-risk inner city youth? There is no one answer to these issues, but they affect all of us, not just teachers.

Of course teachers and unions are at the forefront of tackling these issues for their districts. But it cannot be denied that they haven't found all the answers and that we need to explore them. When you get a school where the dropout rates are 60% and 80% of the students are reading three grade levels below average, you can't just give up on them and say this is not solvable. I don't think teachers believe that either. We should be talking as much about new tactics and ideas as much as we reaffirm our strong support for the teaching profession. We are parents, we are students, we are members of our society: we ALL, not just teachers, have a stake in education, and I think this sometimes gets lost in the shuffle.

It can get sticky separating what's best for kids from labor issues. And we really need to try to do that.

laid on me in my early years of teaching by a grizzled veteran teacher. About administrators... "I try never to learn their names."

The best administrator, in my view, is one that just gets the fuck out of the way and remembers to order the toilet paper.

the administrators are supposedly doing.

Our district was sued by three different families within a one year period and LOST all three lawsuits. The end cost to the taxpayers was many times over the cost of complying with the law. She was pushed out but now has a job at even higher pay at another school district.

She was also sued by several teachers for - get this - discrimination! Like the one in the OP, she decided to force sped teachers with disabilities to quit. So she transferred them to buildings that weren't handicapped accessible. They sued and won. One of them got $250,000 from the district. There were also too many parent lawsuits to count.

Fortunately she finally got fired. Last I heard she was at some charter school.

to earn their pay? They are robbing kid's education. Get rid of all admins above principals. And get the bad principals out.

They hire and fire principals.
They arrange the budget, set the priorities and react to variances.
They arrange contracts with suppliers.
They set a strategic plan for the schools.
They deal with municipal/county/state political and educational leaders.
They measure the results of what the schools are achieving or not achieving.
The deal with parents who have grievances.
etc., etc., etc.

The computers measure the results of "achievement." I know principals work hard, but above them, I doubt it.

The rest of us are suspect and treated as such.

but the anti-teacher brigade doesn't want to hear anything bad about their beloved administrators.

on edit: the school district in the town I grew up in actually sent out a press release congratulating the school board & administration for saving all of the central office administrative positions, while cutting 50% of the librarians & music teachers in the schools. Then these brainiacs wondered why everyone in town (not to mention the affected librarians & music teachers) were pissed off & barraging them with angry phone calls.

dg

In our family alone we have a good half dozen good teachers.

that teachers in general are better motivated than the average workers to do their jobs, but get beaten down by rules, regulations, bureaucrats, and of course parents. They want to do their jobs, but are often stymied through no fault of their own.

Fire 90% of administrators, use their wages to give all the actual teachers raises.

to run a school, might that be better? There could be cooperative management, team building, etc. Lots of positive things. Let them run the school for 2 years and see what positives have occurred. This might be a good approach. But, it would take an innovative school board to allow this to happen.

Suspensions require paperwork, which makes our school "look bad." We even had a couple of girls who tried to poison a teacher by putting hand sanitizer in her water bottle. They got a few days of in-school suspension and were back in the class of their intended victim within a week.

It's beyond ludicrous.

The principal not only didn't suspend the kid, but blamed the teacher for putting the kid in a situation where he felt he had no choice but to assault her. There was another kid involved - this kid was attacking her. Well, without telling anyone at the school, her parents filed charges with the police, which caused the district to get involved. The district ended up putting the kid out for good and reprimanding the principal. But if it hadn't been for those police charges by the other student's parents, it all would have went away with no consequences to anyone except the teacher, who was just trying to pull this kid off of the girl he was attacking.

I've talked about bad administrators for a long time, teachers get it, others haven't.

Here's an anecdote: I have a friend (37 years) she was a teacher, before becoming a principal. She said she had a teacher that she couldn't get rid of because of "the union". The problem was that the teacher was always late at the beginning of the school day. Principal could terminate, suspend, basically punish the teacher for this, but my friend wasn't able to clearly document it. I asked friend "do you have all the teachers sign an attendance sheet as they enter the building?" Answer "no" I said "if you do, then you'll have the documentation to discipline the teacher." Answer, "Oh no, an attendance sheet would be demeaning to the other teachers."

If you can't document, you can't discipline. Those teachers abiding by the rules, would understand the attendance sheet and subsequent discipline for themselves and others.

If administrators, can't get the simple things, how can they comprehend the larger issues?

Another issue that irks me, is that administrators always blame wide scale discipline on teachers, with the phrase "classroom management". Teachers can't manage their classroom, if administrators have abandoned school discipline. I taught in a school district, where the administrators came out with school discipline policy in March, it should have been in place in August. This was a district where on any given day, 10% of the school was on suspension.

In NOLA schools for about 2 decades millions of bucks for the schools went unaccounted for, missing.

He was a mess. Spent money like it was falling from the sky.

Peter Principle.

The effects of incompetence is one thing that does trickle down, and those in charge are usually blind to this.

The school boards have gone on the offensive, yet their own jobs would not hold up to the same scrutiny they demand of others.

I've been insanely lucky with the administrative staff at my school. I can't imagine trying to teach on top of being tortured by a desk dictator.

Anyone pointing fingers to one of these groups in particular is only trying to cover their own ass. The problems in our school system are a perfect storm of shitty Administrators, shitty Teachers, and shitty Parents all working together to destroy their kids lives.

I needed to go there to get an intra-district transfer done for my youngest & did not know they had moved. The sign on the door directed me to their new location..

Imagine my surprise when I found the new place..

It was in a brand new building with a lobby that was very similar to a fancy hotel lobby, complete with a water-wall feature behind the polished marble front counter/desk. Out front when we walked in throughout a slate courtyard, it was impossible to miss the large fountain out front.. the circumference ledge could comfortably seat 50 people.

I took the elevator up.. (the steps were being carpeted & were closed) It was a two story building..

Upstairs was another reception desk .(.no water feature)

The upstairs consisted of about 10 offices.

The overall size was no bigger than the old location..just waaaay nicer.


Apparently a LOT of parents complained, because in less than a year they had moved out, and were back in their old digs:)