Look for the union label!

[Fairweather]

another dead american hero?

 

And how is the American textile industry doing these days?

[ivan]

another dead american hero?

 

And how is the American textile industry doing these days?

the article mentioned that unions never were very strong in n.c. so it'd be odd to attribute the death of the textile industry in the south to unions - my grandpa was a vp for kent manufacturing in pickens, s.c. and i remember walking around that plant often as a kid - what killed american textiles was the fact non-unionized folks in the 3rd world would accept slave labor pay and modern shipping costs made buying american too relatively expensive

[Bug]

Lowest ROI?

So you are saying we are behind other countries?

Which ones?

And their GDP is better than ours too?

I mean, if we are so poorly educated, we must be doing poorly in the marketplace too right?

 

Oh wait. That's right. You're a republican. Education sucks.

Never mind.

 

We score worse in Math and Science than almost every industrialized nation and have done so for decades. Our kids don't know shit about History or Geography, just to name a few subjects we lack in - woefully.

 

Yes, or GNP/GDP is great - we are a large country with a lot of talent, but that talent is focused on the top, just like our Health Care, right? And we import all the talent we home-grow, as I am certain you can attest to by looking around at your co-workers.

 

I am as pro-education as you get, and am sure I exceed your educational background in both scope (breadth) and knowledge (depth) on balance, so piss off, dung-beetle.

I led 5.12 trad.

[j_b]

another dead american hero?

 

And how is the American textile industry doing these days?

 

err... it's dead because working for $2 per day didn't make any sense?

[ivan]

speaking of the south and textiles, i wonder what these cheerful lads thought of unions?

[Bug]

Lowest ROI?

So you are saying we are behind other countries?

Which ones?

And their GDP is better than ours too?

I mean, if we are so poorly educated, we must be doing poorly in the marketplace too right?

 

Oh wait. That's right. You're a republican. Education sucks.

Never mind.

 

We score worse in Math and Science than almost every industrialized nation and have done so for decades. Our kids don't know shit about History or Geography, just to name a few subjects we lack in - woefully.

Gee. I guess its a good thing that we have decimated federal spending on education with each successive republicon administration. We don't wanna waste waste no money on your dumb kids. Yes. Your dumb kids. They are part of the statistics you are talking about. You implied it. I typed it. Do I think it is OK? Hell no. I think you are proving that republicons have failed our children.

Yes, or GNP/GDP is great - we are a large country with a lot of talent, but that talent is focused on the top, just like our Health Care, right? And we import all the talent we home-grow, as I am certain you can attest to by looking around at your co-workers.

You might want to flesh that one out. How can we import homegrown talent?

Just in case this clears something up, I work with people of many nationalities and races and I really can't say that any of them stand out as being ahead of other nationalities or races.

 

I am as pro-education as you get, and am sure I exceed your educational background in both scope (breadth) and knowledge (depth) on balance, so piss off, dung-beetle.

You don't know anything about me except that I acknowledge how shitty this whole right/left polarization is. We are all dung-beetles who post here. Civility is the primary casualty of the anonimity of internet forums.

The truth is, if democrats or republicans were able to dominate the federal agenda for more than a decade, the country would fail. The muti-party system was one of the fundamental building blocks of this democracy. "Checks and balances." Only a fool would claim we could do without either party.

So I will not piss off.

Lick sack.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

You don't know anything about me except that I acknowledge how shitty this whole right/left polarization is.

 

Yet you post this:

 

Oh wait. That's right. You're a republican. Education sucks.

Never mind.

 

So you contribute to this polarization quite willingly.

Make up your mind.

 

The truth is, if democrats or republicans were able to dominate the federal agenda for more than a decade, the country would fail.

 

I certainly wouldn't disagree with this. My personal preference is for one party to be in charge of the executive and another to have a majority in either the Senate or House at the minimum. I know you hate Reagan, but personally I think we did much better under the Reagan/Dem congress or Clinton/Rep congress model than we do today.

 

 

 

[KaskadskyjKozak]

I led 5.12 trad.

 

Cool. I have no desire to ever to, however. It's not what interests me.

 

I bet you have some cool alpine summits under your belt, however.

 

[JayB]

Recent performance by US students in math and science is better than you portray. Not great, but not awful either.

 

http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/2009/analysis/

 

We're on par with some countries in Europe, but consistently beat out by Hong Kong, Japan, China, and Taiwan.

 

Do I want to mimic the eastern Asian role - I don't think so, but there is room for improvement.

 

The best predictor of school performance in this country is the percentage of kids in a school that are on the free/reduced lunch program. Work with students, as a teacher or volunteer, and the extreme influence of poverty on academic achievement becomes crystal clear. Is it impossible to be of lower economic status and do well in school? Certainly not. But it does impose quite a barrier. Teachers have the kids 6 hours a day and can't compete with a lousy home environment that doesn't support kids.

 

Rather than putting an emphasis on smoke and mirrors such as NCLB - which adds mandates and no finances for implementation, I'd like to see some real money go into building stronger inner city communities instead of some new Petagon toy research. Just saying.

 

Another factor that confounds international comparisons is that in quite a few countries kids are separated into vocational and academic tracks at a fairly young age. Are all of the kids in those systems subject to the testing that's used a basis for constructing those transnational comparisons? I seem to recall hearing or reading that they aren't, but I can't recall precisely where. If that's true, then that's introducing a bias into the data that's potentially making the performance of US schools worse than they are.

 

I think longitudinal studies of performance in the US would be more revealing, but even there it's difficult since I suspect that the content and format of most standardized tests has changed over time.

[prole]

 

Our kids is the BEST!

 

[JayB]

teachers do need unions - the history of the profession shows a clear need - as a union member of a teachers union, i disagree w/ the notion that the union is there to protect shitty teachers

 

Seems like the problem for teachers is monopsony, which is the opposite of monopoly. Eg, monopsony = one and only one buyer, which distorts prices and suffocates competition just as effectively as having a single seller.

 

It's puzzling to me that so many teachers are vehemently opposed to reforms to vouchers, since competition for children would also foster competition for teachers, and likely foster the development of compensation models that'd allow teachers to capture more of the revenue, have more discretion over curriculum, pedagogy, etc.

 

 

[JayB]

Just to get things back on topic.

 

"Cash-short county inks raises for unions."

 

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/410379_county22.html

 

If you're tempted to claim that public employees with equivalent qualifications are undercompensated (wages plus benefits, including the costs of their pensions and health-care in retirement) to their private sector counterparts, I hope that you'll furnish the data that supports that contention.

 

 

[prole]

teachers do need unions - the history of the profession shows a clear need - as a union member of a teachers union, i disagree w/ the notion that the union is there to protect shitty teachers

 

Seems like the problem for teachers is monopsony, which is the opposite of monopoly. Eg, monopsony = one and only one buyer, which distorts prices and suffocates competition just as effectively as having a single seller.

 

It's puzzling to me that so many teachers are vehemently opposed to reforms to vouchers, since competition for children would also foster competition for teachers, and likely foster the development of compensation models that'd allow teachers to capture more of the revenue, have more discretion over curriculum, pedagogy, etc.

 

Yeah, God knows why they wouldn't want to compete against each other for the lowest wages and benefits and bargain with their employers as expendable individuals like the rest of us!

[ivan]

teachers do need unions - the history of the profession shows a clear need - as a union member of a teachers union, i disagree w/ the notion that the union is there to protect shitty teachers

 

Seems like the problem for teachers is monopsony, which is the opposite of monopoly. Eg, monopsony = one and only one buyer, which distorts prices and suffocates competition just as effectively as having a single seller.

 

It's puzzling to me that so many teachers are vehemently opposed to reforms to vouchers, since competition for children would also foster competition for teachers, and likely foster the development of compensation models that'd allow teachers to capture more of the revenue, have more discretion over curriculum, pedagogy, etc.

 

how is there not already competition in education? you can go to private schools - you can move to another public school district - you can home school.

 

there's a first amendment problem w/ many private schools as they're religious in nature.

 

 

[JayB]

teachers do need unions - the history of the profession shows a clear need - as a union member of a teachers union, i disagree w/ the notion that the union is there to protect shitty teachers

 

Seems like the problem for teachers is monopsony, which is the opposite of monopoly. Eg, monopsony = one and only one buyer, which distorts prices and suffocates competition just as effectively as having a single seller.

 

It's puzzling to me that so many teachers are vehemently opposed to reforms to vouchers, since competition for children would also foster competition for teachers, and likely foster the development of compensation models that'd allow teachers to capture more of the revenue, have more discretion over curriculum, pedagogy, etc.

 

how is there not already competition in education? you can go to private schools - you can move to another public school district - you can home school.

 

there's a first amendment problem w/ many private schools as they're religious in nature.

 

 

I'd agree that there's already competition, but the deck is clearly stacked in favor of unionized public schools in a manner that it wouldn't be if the money followed the kids. As things stand now, the kids follow the money, and the people who exercise effective control over the public money have every incentive to structure the balance of the benefits that derive from such control on behalf of their own members, and to advance their own interests, whether or not that happens to coincide with improving education. Seniority rules that favor tenure over merit are only exhibit A in a list that would surely exhaust the capacities of the alphabet.

 

This is hardly some radical wing-nut fantasy, unless you consider the Swedes and the Dutch, for example, to be nations of radical wing-nuts. Just listen to this guy:

 

"Per Unckel, Governor of Stockholm and former Minister of Education, sums up the advantages of Swedish system: "Education is so important that you can’t just leave it to one producer. Because we know from monopoly systems that they do not fulfill all wishes".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[JayB]

So would you support vouchers on the condition that they couldn't have a specific religious charter to advance as part of their mission?

 

Are you sure that there's still a first amendment problem if the parents, rather than the government, determine who gets their money? What differentiates these from tax deductions for donations to churches, in your mind?

 

 

[prole]

"The money following the kids"

 

Translation:

 

School for the kids with money

 

 

School for the kids without:

 

 

 

[JayB]

That's a curious observation, given that the wealthier your parents are, the fewer constraints that the accident of your birth imposes on the education that you'll receive.

 

The real benefit of vouchers accrues to those who are born into families who are too poor to dream of sending their children to private schools.

 

If you consult the literature on the systems in place in Sweden and the Netherlands, you'll notice that both have mechanisms in place to prevent kids that are dependent on vouchers from being priced out of private schools that accept public tuition money.

 

The status quo that you are defending is actually the principal mechanism that forces poor children into schools that resemble the bottom photo, and keeps them out of anything like the institution pictured above it.

 

[billcoe]

I believe that the bottom line for all labor in this country is that your value, as labor enters a world market, is going down. It doesn't matter if you are a highly trained Aerospace engineer or working at the 7-11. Everyone is going to get hit in our lifetime. The time frame may span years, but you will see it. Union or no union. Some professions, like teaching and the medical field will lag, but eventually, they will see this as well. The effect will be mitigated and offset somewhat by price declines due to increased productivity vs underlying price pressures as it relates to the demand and availability of raw materials.

 

ie, your future competition isn't going to be Union or non-union as much as it will be Indian/Chinese/Malaysian/Indonesian. So hold on brothers, it's a rough ride ahead.

 

That's my view.

[prole]

Vouchers have been around long enough in this country to provide some data as to their effects. Is our vouchers working?

[ivan]

So would you support vouchers on the condition that they couldn't have a specific religious charter to advance as part of their mission?

 

Are you sure that there's still a first amendment problem if the parents, rather than the government, determine who gets their money? What differentiates these from tax deductions for donations to churches, in your mind?

 

yes to the first question

 

as to the second question, i don't like any of the tax exemption bullshit that churches get, though i know the court has upheld it. tax exempt donations to charities is fine, but not charities who wrap it up in buddha/jeebus/mohammed whatever. it's probably just my angry atheism talking

 

i don't know anything of sweden or norway's voucher experiment - enlighten me, if you can in a 1000 words or less - is comparing our giant heterogenous nation to a tiny homogenous one sound?

 

wouldn't the transition to a voucher system dangerously destabilize the current public schools? schools and the infrastructure already built were designed for large populations which could only decline. future planning would be harder w/ potentially giant #'s of students coming in and out of the system.

 

 

[kevbone]

 

as to the second question, i don't like any of the tax exemption bullshit that churches get, though i know the court has upheld it. tax exempt donations to charities is fine, but not charities who wrap it up in buddha/jeebus/mohammed whatever. it's probably just my angry atheism talking

 

You are right Ivan. The churches take in billions a year and dont pay taxes....what a bunch of bullshit.

[Bug]

I believe that the bottom line for all labor in this country is that your value, as labor enters a world market, is going down. It doesn't matter if you are a highly trained Aerospace engineer or working at the 7-11. Everyone is going to get hit in our lifetime. The time frame may span years, but you will see it. Union or no union. Some professions, like teaching and the medical field will lag, but eventually, they will see this as well. The effect will be mitigated and offset somewhat by price declines due to increased productivity vs underlying price pressures as it relates to the demand and availability of raw materials.

 

ie, your future competition isn't going to be Union or non-union as much as it will be Indian/Chinese/Malaysian/Indonesian. So hold on brothers, it's a rough ride ahead.

 

That's my view.

All else remainng the same, sure. But given the massive changes in social structures being brought about by global communications, internet access, and physical mobility, those of us willing to be agile will remain in comfortable digs.

[ivan]

Vouchers have been around long enough in this country to provide some data as to their effects. Is our vouchers working?

the GAO report on the washington d.c. experiment doesn't seem to think so

[ivan]

I believe that the bottom line for all labor in this country is that your value, as labor enters a world market, is going down. It doesn't matter if you are a highly trained Aerospace engineer or working at the 7-11. Everyone is going to get hit in our lifetime. The time frame may span years, but you will see it. Union or no union. Some professions, like teaching and the medical field will lag, but eventually, they will see this as well. The effect will be mitigated and offset somewhat by price declines due to increased productivity vs underlying price pressures as it relates to the demand and availability of raw materials.

 

ie, your future competition isn't going to be Union or non-union as much as it will be Indian/Chinese/Malaysian/Indonesian. So hold on brothers, it's a rough ride ahead.

 

That's my view.

dude, an angry mayan god's gonna kill us all in 2012 anyway, didn't you get the memo?