Reform Welfare Before Raising Taxes

Below is my full response to the Riverside Press Enterprise newspaper's recent article regarding polls showing California voters are likely to approve tax hikes to help support our public schools.

As someone who has spent the last twenty-eight years teaching in three different school districts in three different parts of our state, I want to urge voters to reject any proposals to increase taxes to improve public education.

Over the last three years, the state has been brutal to public education. Budget cuts have resulted in massive teacher layoffs, the elimination of performing arts programs, and the realization that our public schools are not getting the job done.

This mess is the result of decisions made by our elected leaders who now want to see hard working taxpayers clean it up by increasing their taxes. This is not a solution to a problem as much as it is a punishment for being employed in this state.

If our leaders want to create more money and ear mark it for public education, they can start by ending the incentive to be a life long recipient of welfare. Rather than rewarding welfare recipients for bringing more children into the state who flood our schools with their low skills, lack of desire to improve, and even less parental support, we need to cut their benefits and encourage them to find another state to live off of.

Student enrollment would quickly decrease relieving school districts of the pressure to hire more teachers and implement programs for people who give us little to no return on our tax payer investment.

Test scores would also increase as would graduation rates and our state could marvel at seeing the percentage of college ready students go through the roof. California might even return to the top tier of states on the education front rather than remain at the bottom.

Ridding the state of its massive welfare population will also allow school districts to place a halt on new construction and allow them to better utilize existing campuses. With fewer campuses also comes the need for fewer administrators whose six figure salaries dwarf those of any teacher and save districts even more money.

Our schools can no longer be education centers for children from supportive and motivated families while also serving as glorified day care centers for parents who are unfit to have children in the first place.

If we eliminate the welfare problem that is sucking this state of much needed resources and replace it with a system that is designed to help those in temporary need rather than reward people too lazy or unskilled to work at all, we instantly improve our public schools.

Ten Things To Be Thankful For

1. Freedom: How do you think Occupy Wall Street would fly in China or the Middle East? Freedom of religion, free press, and the right to bare arms is not tolerated in most other nations of the world either.
2. Peace: We are only experiencing because we went looking for it in some other part of the world. It's not knocking at our door like it is in many other nations.
3. Wealth: Yes, unemployment is high but the poor in our nation enjoy a far better way of life than the poor in other countries. You do not see poor Americans lining up at our boarders looking to leave but how many poor people from other parts of the world would love to come to America?
4. Education: It is easy to criticize a system whose test scores pale when compared to many other countries. However, no other nation provides a free education to as many children from as many diverse backgrounds as we do.
5. Celebrity: We worship it, strive for it, and love to bash it all at the same time. Without it and those who achieve it, just think how miserable we would be without all the distractions it provides us.
6. Debate: Sure, our candidates lie, get their facts wrong, and sometimes just draw a blank when called upon. However, we at least get to make our candidates sweat before deciding who we want to run the country.
7. Black Friday: American consumerism at its best and worst depending on your shopping desires. It does give us a great chance to score some great deals even if we have to wait all night in the cold for stores to open but for many, that beats watching another football game.
8. Competition: Americans love it in all forms. Yes, it leads to scandals, questionable decision making, and creates a lot of stress. Still, it is what keeps this country continually moving forward in search of new ways to remain relevant and influential far beyond our borders.
9. Justice: Lawyers may be among the most despised people in our country for the way they twist and manipulate the law but our justice system has a way of getting far more right than it gets wrong. It's just that when it fails, it makes headlines.
10. Information: Today, we have more information at our fingertips than all the libraries in the world held twenty years ago. Our minds should never have to be idle unless we choose to shut them down.

Merit Pay Will Hurt Education

I recently watched a CNN special report on public education in which an hour was spent examining all that is wrong in our nation's public schools and concluded with what they felt were alternatives to the current solutions being used. As a teacher, the solution that struck me the most was the use of merit pay.

Many experts believe merit pay is needed when it comes to determining a teacher's salary and claim it will reward the good teachers while weeding out the bad ones. I do not believe this to be the case.

In a school district like mine, you can have teachers who teach anywhere from kindergarten through twelfth grade. Personally, over the course of my 28 year career, I have spent time teaching all grade levels and can tell you no two are the same. There is no equitable way to determine whether or not a kindergarten teacher of twenty years is doing a better job than a colleague of the same experience who teaches high school history. No two children are alike, no two grade levels are alike, and no two subjects are either.

Merit pay will only place a greater emphasis on test scores which we all know have driven our education system off the tracks. What do you do with a teacher who teaches a subject that is not tested by the state? Do you drop performing arts and other elective classes? Do you get rid of physical education? Do we just teach reading, writing, and arithmetic?

It is not that difficult to evaluate any teacher who is assigned to teach a single subject. They have the opportunity to master their craft and you can evaluate them on student progress, classroom management, and creative lesson plans. However, when that teacher is assigned to teach a period in another subject area because they hold more than one teaching credential, they now have double the prep time compared to their colleagues who merely teach one subject all day long. Performance is bound to suffer.

There have been years when I did not know what my teaching assignment was when the first bell of the year rang. One year, I ended up teaching seven different courses over a six period day. Figure that one out. Just last year, a week before the start of school, I was informed I would be teaching high school Behavior Health full time. A few days later, my principal, who I had yet to meet, called to tell me my schedule was changed to two periods of PE in the morning followed by three periods of Behavior Health. Then, when I reported to work, no one informed me my schedule had been changed again to four classes of Behavior Health followed by an afternoon class of PE. Three weeks into the school year, I was notified less than one hour before class, my schedule was being changed yet again. I was now losing my Behavior Health classes and being given four new classes of Geography.

If the same people assigned to evaluate my performance are unable to come up with a master schedule by the first day of school, how can they be relied upon to provide accurate teacher evaluations?

Some teachers hold a single subject credential and can only teach one thing. This allows them to master a subject and teach it year after year. Many work at their trade and continually shake things up in an effort to provide a quality education for their students. Still, others relish knowing they can go on cruise control and do what they have always done.

Other teachers, like myself, are credentialed in several areas. As a result, we get moved around a lot to fill in where needed, much like a utility baseball player who one day plays first base, the next, he is in the outfield, and then that is followed up by playing third base. Baseball teams need utility ball players but these players do not make as much money or receive as much recognition as their colleagues who master one position.

Schools are no different. They need utility teachers who can do a little bit of everything but are never given the chance to master any one thing. Without them, schools could not function.

In 2007, I was teaching middle school PE where my management skills allowed me to effectively teach classes of more than sixty students. When a new middle school opened up in

2008, I was moved and assigned seventh grade Social Studies, the subject I first started teaching in 1984. In 2009, I volunteered to teach elementary PE because I was looking for a challenge I had never done before. However, my district closed the school I was at when the year ended and I was then moved in 2010 to teach high school Behavior Health and later Geography. When that school year ended, my district dropped the Geography and Behavior Health requirement so I was then assigned to teach PE full time.

Five years and five different teaching assignments. Is it fair that my pay be tied to student progress over that time? Should I be rewarded for the multiple assignments I took on or punished because as a result, I did not have time to take on additional duties beyond the teaching day?

If the person assigned to evaluate me likes me, I may end up among the highest paid teachers in the district. However, if they don't, or if they go by the book and base it on strictly student performance, I may be working a second job to pay for my kids college tuition. Is it really fair to place my financial state in the hands of someone who may not like me or who may be upset because I do not blindly follow No Child Left Behind? While it may be easy to chart the progress of students on a year to year basis, you can not do the same with the teacher whose assignment continually changes. And before you say I am the exception, you may want to check and see how many teachers there are out there like me. You would be surprised.

Too often, our "best" teachers are given the "best" students and the "best" classes to teach. Any principal who dares to change their teaching assignments will have to face the wrath of that teacher, their Union, and scores of parents.

Other teachers are rewarded with choice assignments because they coach or over see other extra curricular programs that are not mandated or required by contract. The rest are left to fend for what we call the table scraps and as a result, some years are good and some not so good.

Merit pay for teachers will never work in making our public schools better. It will only drive away teachers who want to know in advance what they stand to earn so they can financially plan for their family's needs rather than having to sweat out an evaluation from an administrator who may be unable to make a master schedule while earning more money than the teacher affected by it.

Thoughts From A November Bike Ride

1. I am not as concerned about whether or not Herman Cain sexually harassed women in the 1990s as I am the fact he is a cancer survivor. If he is elected president next year, he better have a strong person as his Vice President.
2. Steve Jobs last words were, "Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow!" In other words, his reaction toward dying was the same as Apple customers reactions are to the release of a new product.
3. While the news has been covering the Occupy Wall Street story, we should be more concerned with how many shoppers occupy Wal Mart and other retailers on Black Friday. If shoppers stay home this year, 2012 will be worse for all of us than 2011.
4. I still do not understand why we observe day light savings time. Each day is still twenty-four hours long so where is all the savings?
5. If I were the Republican party's 2012 presidential candidate, I would select Newt Gingrich as my running mate. He is the only person among the current candidates with both the intellect and Washington experience necessary to get things done but no one will elect a guy who once divorced his wife after she was diagnosed with cancer.
6. Conan O'Brian's shows last week from New York were brilliant. No one on television is as funny as he is. How you you not crack up over his masturbating bear or Triumph the insult comic dog?
7. Why are college football games more exciting to watch than NFL games? One, the enthusiasm of a college crowd can not be duplicated by NFL teams that charge the prices they do to attend their games. And two, there is a lot more ingenuity on display in the college game than in the No Fun League.
8. I will always root for athletes that do the kind of things skier Lindsey Vonn did this week. To take the time out of her busy schedule and accept the invitation from a shy 15 year old boy to his prom is a class act that will provide that boy with a fantastic life time memory.
9. Why is it when Lance Armstrong passes every drug test known to mankind he is still under investigation for cheating long after retiring but when the 2010 Tour de France winner, Alberto Contador, fails a drug test he is still competing a year and a half later while authorities decide his case?
10. I wonder how tolerant the Chinese government would be if their citizens decided to occupy Tienanmen Square...again?
11. As long as the ninety-nine percent focus on the one percent who make up ninety-nine percent of our news and entertainment, we can continue to expect to see one in every fifteen Americans living in extreme poverty.
12. Our government spends far too many resources on other nations problems that should be spent solving our own. Where would we be today if England had taken that approach in 1776?
13. Americans are addicted to the quick fix which is why we have so many long term problems piling up on us today.
14. A four hour bike ride up and over a mountain wearing the season's first snow fall is something I'm glad I experienced.