Oregons new education CEO

[Kevatc]

I see this from time to time(throwing out supplies/books) and this tends to be because of someone ordering books or supplies without talking to the teachers in the classroom and finding out exactly what they need to teach the material they are being asked to teach.

The reason for all the "extra" bureaucracy is a simple one, the states keep passing new laws, thanks George W Bush(NO Child Left Behind), and other more local laws in just about every state that requires all sorts of testing and monitoring and what have you without the funding to pay for it. So the schools have to pull a teachers out from the classroom to do these jobs and in doing so increase class sizes.

I see so many people compare education(k-12 public) to private business and they have to realize one thing, we are not building homes, we are educating students, some want to be there some not, some are extremely smart, some are not. Some have great homes, and some do not. Can you see where I am going with this?? No two kids and I mean no two kids have exactly the same life. You can have one student that is has a crappy home life doing good one day then lose it the next due to what happened at home between leaving school and getting back the next morning, but yet our schools are required by LAW to educate all students. what other private business has to do that kind of thing exactly. I am not talking about following EPA or DEQ or other state or federal laws, we have to follow all those as well. But we are given the same amount per student and we are limited on how many "special needs" funds we can get.

Oregon school districts has been cutting everything it can to stay within state or federal mandates/laws, least my district has(I believe). I will ask again, for anybody who is concerned about their local government, go to the school board meetings, go to your city council meetings, get involved, talk to the teachers, the custodians, the secretaries at the schools and listen to the story of how the current economy is hurting them right now. I know private business is struggling too but I wish for you to see it like this, please, Every business has to deal with inflation. How do you deal with inflation?? You increase of cost of your final product, lower operating cost, find more efficient model. You can not really do that with educating a human being. We are not robots guys, are you?

I know I could go even more into this, but will not.

THIS!!!! And the bolded part is a great example of how it isn't as effective as it might sound to force the business model on education. Theoretically possible but realistically impractical.

 

[DMax]

Seems to me the problem lyes in the lack of committment to education compared to all other social programs. It not that thier is not enough money the problem is where they spend and prioritize goals. Then it also looks like Unions are not really fighting for thier piece of the pie except for rank and file money Nothing to improve education only to expand it just like the government does. And of course the more dumbed down society becomes the bigger government grows so what breed of dog is the tail wagging.

SCHOOL FUNDING FACTS
State appropriations over last decade
2011 biennium: $5.725 billion ($3 billion below the state's own QEM adequacy mark)
2009 biennium: $6 billion, reduced to $5.783 billion through allotment cuts
2007 biennium: $6.3 billion, reduced to $6.185 through allotment cuts
2005 biennium: $5.263 billion
2003 biennium: $5.2 billion, reduced to $4.9 billion after BM 30 failed
2001 biennium: $5.2 billion, reduced to $4.75 billion through five special sessions


Oregon Budget History. Keeps going up but education stays level.

<broken link removed>

Their may be better data in a better format but from a 10K elevation this is what it is.

You all can analize anyway you want. Doing the same thing over and over and expection different results Hows that working out.

 

[strick]

yup the state wants to spend more money locking up the bad guys, when if we educated people and produce good jobs we would then have less need for prisons.

If you look at the increases to the federal funding we were getting, most of that was from the jobs bill that passed right after Obama got in office in a attempt to help the sates "create" jobs by helping improve roads and other such projects. Can not remember all those details. Education keeps being budgeted at the same dollar amount, but keeps getting a smaller piece of the state budget, that is why you are seeing many school districts going for local option levy on property taxes.

 

[JSJPDX]

Why is it that tenure is more important in teacher retention than performance?

"Can you name a public school that has tenure? I know the school I am at does not have tenure. I can't say that I've heard of any public school having tenure."

Let me adjust my statement a little bit as you are correct in that tenure is not a factor in primary education, only secondary education which has its own issues. In primary education the word should be seniority. Why is it that seniority is more important than performance in teacher retention?

If we ran our educational system like a business and cut out all of the waste we'd have more money for important things like reducing class size, upgrading technology, raising student performance, and adequately compensating performing teachers and other school employees, to name a few.

"Define waste please. Also, by suggesting education be run like a business you are implying that the end product is predictable and tangible. The variables that come with each and every kid and all their baggage makes the end product very unpredictable. Some kids care, others don't. Some kids excel in certain subjects and other struggle. This makes it difficult to define who a good teacher is and who isn't. Teach an honors class and you are set for a bonus but teach a bone head math class and you are at a distinct disadvantage. How do you define who are the more effective teachers? What's to keep a school district from deciding that younger (cheaper) teachers are "better" than older (more expensive) teachers?"

I suppose we all define waste differently and there have been several good examples, here are some of mine: olympic sized swimming pools in high schools, all the food that is thrown away every day because of the way food services are run, massive football stadiums for individual high schools, principles in elementary and middle schools, elementary schools that are operated at less than capacity, and school buildings that remain unused over the summer months just to name a few.

As far as performance, you have actually stated part of the problem. Honors versus "bone head" class. I take offence at the term "bone head". Every child learns differently and we have not done a good job accommodating that and adapting methods to teach all students. So if you are a teacher and you have an honors class the standard for performance improvement should be much higher than for a class where the students aren't as bright or motivated. If you rate performance and performance improvement based on the class potential you have a much fairer system and maybe some teachers would view the non honors class as a challange rather than a sentence.

As to the last question, performance is how as a more experienced teacher you keep your job rather than loosing it to a younger teacher. This is a standard union type response and part of the problem I see with teacher retention and seniority. I've been working for 44 years and in that time with one four year exception I have not been protected by anything other than my own performance to keep my job. Not once have I feared losing my job to a younger worker. I'll allow that there could be some short sighted administrators that might use salary as a way to gain some budgetary advantage but I think that if performance were the way everyone/everything was rated the problem would become non existant. As a manager, if I keep my job by performing then I am going to keep the highest performers on my team, no matter what the age or experience level.

 

[strick]

The only time Seniority is used in k-12 education is in teacher placement during a reduction of staff, remember first in last out, is what seniority does. A teacher with 30+ years can still be terminated due to bad performance. One reason schools are careful about just firing any Employee/staff member is if they are fired it puts the district into a bad spot. They would might be forced to give the teacher their job back with all back pay for the time they were gone. I know this as I have represented members in our union that the district was wanting to terminate due to all sorts of reasons, some the members fault, and some not. All school district unions want is to be treated fairly, equally, and most importantly, as equals to the superintendent and school board(MY union does at least).

The food service department(cafeteria) in public schools are self funded, meaning they can only charge what it costs to operate. They do get financial aid from the feds in the way of subsided food orders, like 5 pounds of pre-made mac and cheese for $4.

The reason for all the principals in they are the supervisions/managers of those schools, You hear about the manager to employee ratio at the state leave at times, this is why there seems to be lots of them, How many people are true managers/supervisors in the private sector? How many Full Time employees are directly under your supervision? How many would be to much?


I can tell you our district at least has cut most the extra fat out of the schools, the BIGGEST cost to any organization is employee costs, We spend around 80% of our budget on people, I do not work for free. That is illegal, and is called slavery. School districts have to follow all the same labor laws the private sector does as well. We do not get a free "get out of jail free" card.

How to you rate performance evenly?? Just like you have great, good, and not so good employees. You also have the same with manager/principals/supervisors. Should I lose my job or fear loosing it because of a crappy boss?? Guess what? We have them too in the public sector, the union has even offered in the past to help districts with this issue, so our members are all treated fairly and equally.

The problem with using performance for when a reduction takes place is not all supervisors/managers/principals grade the same. There is to many variables involved to make sure everyone is treated fairly. Using seniority makes sure that everyone is treated to exactly same.

 

[Kevatc]

The only time Seniority is used in k-12 education is in teacher placement during a reduction of staff, remember first in last out, is what seniority does. A teacher with 30+ years can still be terminated due to bad performance. One reason schools are careful about just firing any Employee/staff member is if they are fired it puts the district into a bad spot. They would might be forced to give the teacher their job back with all back pay for the time they were gone. I know this as I have represented members in our union that the district was wanting to terminate due to all sorts of reasons, some the members fault, and some not. All school district unions want is to be treated fairly, equally, and most importantly, as equals to the superintendent and school board(MY union does at least).

The food service department(cafeteria) in public schools are self funded, meaning they can only charge what it costs to operate. They do get financial aid from the feds in the way of subsided food orders, like 5 pounds of pre-made mac and cheese for $4.

The reason for all the principals in they are the supervisions/managers of those schools, You hear about the manager to employee ratio at the state leave at times, this is why there seems to be lots of them, How many people are true managers/supervisors in the private sector? How many Full Time employees are directly under your supervision? How many would be to much?


I can tell you our district at least has cut most the extra fat out of the schools, the BIGGEST cost to any organization is employee costs, We spend around 80% of our budget on people, I do not work for free. That is illegal, and is called slavery. School districts have to follow all the same labor laws the private sector does as well. We do not get a free "get out of jail free" card.

How to you rate performance evenly?? Just like you have great, good, and not so good employees. You also have the same with manager/principals/supervisors. Should I lose my job or fear loosing it because of a crappy boss?? Guess what? We have them too in the public sector, the union has even offered in the past to help districts with this issue, so our members are all treated fairly and equally.

The problem with using performance for when a reduction takes place is not all supervisors/managers/principals grade the same. There is to many variables involved to make sure everyone is treated fairly. Using seniority makes sure that everyone is treated to exactly same.

In addition to strick's thoughts I would ask those who feel teachers should be kept/compensated based on performance, how do you do that fairly so that every teacher or staff member is evaluated equally and fairly? Seniority is the only fair way as far as keeping a job. Don't put it past a budget conscious school district administration and school board to keep young teachers and RIF more experienced teachers if seniority is ever tossed out.

 

[JSJPDX]

This discussion is moving away from my original comments about waste in the eduycational system and to the various merits of union versus non-union representation of employees in public and private sector jobs. We are not going to agree on this so just let me say that having worked within a union system and out, your fears about the end of the world in a system based purely on performance are unfounded. More organizations than not use performance and not seniority as the basis for employee retention and compensation and there are safeguards in place to prevent abuse but if you have not worked outside of a seniority based environment it might be difficult to see that.

I orginally jumped into this discussion because I believe strongly that we don't do enough in our country to educate our children, our next generation of leaders. We are falling behind the rest of the world because we don't place the right emphasis on education and follow up with effective structure to ensure success. My original assertion was not a condemnation of teachers, they have a hugely difficult job within a disfunctional system. The problem we have is mangement of the educational system and the resources we currently have allocated. Right back to there is a lot of waste in the system and we have been managing our educatinal system the same way for years and it is not working. If we ran them like businesses, which for the most part have been successful over the same time frame we could see the improvements that I believe are needed.

 

[Morpheus]

So, all of you that feel schools should be run like a business. I truly hope you have looked at your request from a holistic prospective. What that really means. Yes, the teachers (IE the workers) would be judged by their work results. How well they did at teach students and turning them into the future workers, leaders, doctors, scientists, etc.

BUT you also would have to treat the raw materials, IE The Students as materials. And the finished work product, which are graduating students. If we run it like a business then we can reject and return bad or faulty raw material, and scrap mis-formed product right? So, students who don't meet standards should be rejected back to their origins, IE The Parents.

Kids who don't get a C or better, we don't accept below-average students. REJECTED, return to previous class, if 2nd attempt return to parents.
Kids who mis-behave in a manor which would violate a normal HR policy. REJECTED, disorderly conduct return to parents.
Kids who, based on Work-at-Will laws, who just don't fit in to the school's image. REJECTED, no reason give, return to parents.
Kids who are mentally defect or have a flaw. REJECTED, disqualified 4-F, return to parents.

Yes, this is super harsh but as someone who works in a BUSINESS, I wouldn't accept bad raw material or send faulty product out the door to sale. I wonder how many parents would pay attention if they knew there was a real chance their child would be dis-allowed to return to school forever if they didn't perform.

Oh but my tax dollars pay for schools, oh well, sometimes you buy stuff and you can't return it. Sorry, so sad. But to be fair, I have no problem to give you a tax credit or refund or something if your child isn't in school. That credit/refund/whatever would be equal to the percentage that your tax would go to public education as based on the state/federal budget. EXACTLY that much. Here is your 2.1% of your taxes back, gone are the $2000 and $4000 tax credits, we are a business remember you only get back what you pay in. (Please check me there, as I could find 68 billion on education, 3.2 trillion national budget based on 2012 estimates.)

The above would be just as much run like a business as hiring or firing teachers based on performance. Teachers would select only the best materials to be shaped and molded into the adults of tomorrow. Reject all other inferior raw materials and have good quality control, only C students or higher get a diploma.

So which system do you want parents? Are you ready to not only have teachers fired for failing, but the raw materials students rejected as defective?

I know LOTs of teachers that get stuck with the bad class. Not because they are bad teachers but because they are the good teachers who have the skills and experience set handle 25 to 30 horrible students (bad raw material) and have a chance to turn them into something good. But, at the end of the year if these teachers only make this class of D students into C students, is that an improvement? How do you rate that improvement? What if they go from F to D, is that a big enough improvement to move them forward?

Try thinking about these things a LOT longer before you spout off on waste or teachers being lazy. Remember that you have 4 sides to get the whole picture. teachers, administrators, students, and parents. As someone who works in the private sector and for a business I can choose to reject my entire supply chain, and my workers, and my administrators. And I don't care about my worker's parents. So I only have 3 sides to worry about. Can public schools ever do that?

Just think about it. Like most things in this world, there is no clear cut solution. Worst part of all, unlike most things in this world, it takes 10 to 12 years to find out if what you did worked or not.

M

 

[deadeye]

Remember there are many different bussiness models and the one currently being used in the schools isnt working, so we need to change it. Yes there is waste, yes there are lazy teachers what we need is a better way to over see how our taxes are being used or at least clean house on the ones currently overseeing the system because obviously they are not performing well at all.

 

[DMax]

The most successful business are the ones that the employees makes the improvements in process and systems. Seems to me that if you all can't solve the issues or Unions won't let you as a partner for a common goal of student success then tell all of us tax payers that you cannot run it like a business and all the negative reasons why this and that will not work but cannot come up with a can do additude and solution then theirs the rub if you can't then how can students.

 

[strick]

Teachers are telling everyone what they need!!! We need the money to reduce class size to under 20 kids per class, but with the economy we are getting less per kid, so we have to increase class size to balance the budget just like everyone else does. We need to get the economy going again, We need to stop supporting china!!! How, you might ask?? Easy, stop shopping at WALMART, I could almost guarantee that over 90% of the products they sell are from Taiwan, China , or other counties of such. I am not intending to pick on Walmart, but they are a large company everyone knows about. If we bring quality manufacturing jobs back to the USA, and support them. I know the prices of goods would go up due to the cost of labor, but at least the money would be staying put in the local community. In turn they(the new jobs) would then spend that money on goods a services here making a snow ball effect.

I like how everyone wishes to blame teachers and public workers for the economy, but geez guys (not saying anyone has) we have not taken any bailout money like GM did or bank of america(tarp). Why is everyone attacking us???(yes they are, look at Wisconsin). I understand people are pissed that public workers get these really "nice" benefits(health care and retirement). I can tell you I do not . I have a $1000 deductible health plan and a pension that will only cover 60% of my income when I retire after 40 years of service.

 

[DMax]

How much smaller would the classes be if we dealt with Illegals in our tax payed education system or any state benifits that money could go to education. How about eliminating the child tax credit to pay for thier education. Thier are ways to fix issues the problem is the easies fix is always spend more money which means usually more taxes which never solves the problem. The politican and unions would never address the real core issues just in case it offends someone meanwhile the problem never gets fixed or we just keep sending more and more tax payer money down a never ending hole with no more child success provided. Take out the unions and the politics and you might have a chance. For the record I am for paying teachers more money in salaries and reducing retirerment benifits and let them save and invest just like the private sector. Then teachers are in control of thier future just like the rest of us. Besides over the coarse of the term the union dues would be a nice chunk over 30 or 40 yrs in thier pocket. Then again in this state its all just wishfull thinking so nothing will ever change.