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Are there places that lay off 25% of their teachers (the least senior, one imagines) every 5 years? If a teacher's career is 50 years, then the bottom 25% by seniority will never age out to safety, right? 25% employment reductions every handful of years seems unwinnable however you select the people. ("Is in the bottom quartile for a single year" shouldn't be enough to fire someone, IMO.)
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# ? Jul 1, 2015 00:29 |
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# ? Jun 1, 2024 06:24 |
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Quartile measures also mean it's harder for teachers with larger classes to be in the top (or bottom) quartile compared to teachers with smaller class sizes even if they have equal skills and demographically similar pools of students to draw from.
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# ? Jul 1, 2015 00:37 |
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Subjunctive posted:Are there places that lay off 25% of their teachers (the least senior, one imagines) every 5 years? If a teacher's career is 50 years, then the bottom 25% by seniority will never age out to safety, right? With public employment it's not like you'll layoff every 5 years like clockwork, it's just that there will be layoffs a whole bunch of times over your career because one half of our political system considers public employees the enemy. Here in California, for example, we had layoffs every year from 2008 to 2012 but before that the last layoffs were in 2004 and before that the last layoffs were at some point in the 90s but that's before my knowledge. Seniority meant that most workers were not effected even by five straight years of layoffs. A rapidly shifting performance metric would have meant frankly absurd amounts of turnover. quote:25% employment reductions every handful of years seems unwinnable however you select the people. I agree but the republican party doesn't, as a rule when it comes to public employees, and they're half of our political system. e: I am imagining the Governator with the ability to enforce those years of layoffs with a performance metric like that during the crisis and it is horrifying to contemplate atelier morgan fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Jul 1, 2015 |
# ? Jul 1, 2015 00:43 |
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UberJew posted:Here in California, for example, we had layoffs every year from 2008 to 2012 but before that the last layoffs were in 2004 and before that the last layoffs were at some point in the 90s but that's before my knowledge. Sure, but 25% each time? 25% just 3 years in a row gets rid of half your staff. Every time you lay someone off, that's one person who doesn't get to retire. So however you select them, the same %age of people make it to retirement. Laying off by seniority is saying "come be a teacher and hope your career lasts longer than a year or two".
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# ? Jul 1, 2015 00:52 |
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Subjunctive posted:Sure, but 25% each time? 25% just 3 years in a row gets rid of half your staff. Most of the positions got rehired or replaced with different classifications each year because it was all political grandstanding and making the numbers line up just for that fiscal year.
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# ? Jul 1, 2015 01:05 |
Subjunctive posted:Sure, but 25% each time? 25% just 3 years in a row gets rid of half your staff.
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# ? Jul 1, 2015 01:26 |
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Subjunctive posted:So what's the meaning of this from the SCOTUSblog post? It means that the fees that non-members have to pay can't be used for political activity, only for collective bargaining. Actual members of the union pay that plus more, and any political activity must be paid for out of the additional member dues. The 'of the amount of "agency fees"' is the relevant bit of that quote. quote:Prior to Abood, what was the law? I thought it was that non-member agency fees could be used for anything, and that Abood was the thing that limited them to non-political uses for non-members. And therefore that overturning Abood would return to that state, with fewer restrictions on unions' use of non-member agency fees than today. It was the same prior to Abood as it is now. A teacher in Detroit sued that he shouldn't have to pay agency fees, but the court upheld them, in other words this has been challenged before but the court in 1977 upheld this part of the NLRA and Taft-Hartley. That's the current precedent. Friedrichs asks the court to reconsider. e: just read this, maybe it explains things better than I'm doing: http://onlabor.org/2015/03/09/friedrichs-v-california-teachers-association-heads-to-the-supreme-court/ Family Values fucked around with this message at 01:30 on Jul 1, 2015 |
# ? Jul 1, 2015 01:27 |
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Subjunctive posted:Are there places that lay off 25% of their teachers (the least senior, one imagines) every 5 years? If a teacher's career is 50 years, then the bottom 25% by seniority will never age out to safety, right? My school has had approximately 50% turnover for the past three years due to "reform" administrators deciding that reform means replacing the "low performers" (older, less tech savvy, more expensive teachers). It is entirely unwinnable, and seeing it happen is heartbreaking. I'm starting my third year at the end of this summer, and I'm considered a "veteran" now. The skilled younger people don't stay, because it's a bloodbath and depressing.
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# ? Jul 1, 2015 02:15 |
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I know when I hear "individualized education plan" I think to myself that we really need a uniform method of accountability for these teachers! Especially the ones that specifically trained to help these students.
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# ? Jul 1, 2015 02:30 |
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Most people specifically train for their jobs. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean all of them are good at it. Given how comparatively little is invested in teacher development and coaching, and the paucity of actionable performance feedback, it would be pretty surprising if more teachers met their standards of effectiveness than the average of industries.
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# ? Jul 1, 2015 02:36 |
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Also, here's a reason to actually value seniority - it gives the good teachers a reason not to immediately bail on you, and it gives good people an incentive to enter the field because they know they can make a career of it. Part of why younger teachers get paid so little is because they are a risk, an unknown, they might not stick around for long, they might end up breaking down or bailing out of the industry completely. Systems are valuable, culture is valuable, and both of those things are hard to build effectively if you don't have at least a solid core of people sticking around for a while. And younger teachers only accept low pay because some day after they've proven their reliability they might get enough to actually pay off their loans. I don't think seniority should be the only factor, but Subjunctive, you seem to believe seniority systems don't even have a reason to exist. Next-quarter thinking isn't an effective way to manage human resources. (Neither is completely culling the young in favour of entrenched interests, of course)
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# ? Jul 1, 2015 02:41 |
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GlyphGryph posted:I don't think seniority should be the only factor, but Subjunctive, you seem to believe seniority systems don't even have a reason to exist. I think seniority should not be the only factor, but if seniority leads to higher effectiveness (individual or organizational) then I would also expect that to show up somewhere other than notches on the calendar. Is there evidence that a more senior teacher -- or a school with more senior teachers, to accommodate organizational and team effects -- is more effective? I can imagine some reasons that would be the case, but I wouldn't want to make policy on my imagining, and it's not always the case in other industries. New hires are a risk in every industry, and I'm definitely not in line with using the promise of "seniority benefits regardless of how well you do your job -- if you survive the culls" to get away with paying new hires poorly. Teachers unions are not known for being welcoming to new teachers, though, since that increases competition for scarce spots. By definition, seniority preference is to the advantage of whoever is in the union at the time the contract is made, over those who will join later. That's a "reason to exist", but I don't think it's one that's in line with the goals of education policy. I'm not advocating next-quarter/semester thinking. It's never how I've managed personally, and it's not how I would put up with being managed. Whatever the time scale, though, you have to know what it means for your staff to be successful, and what factors contribute to it. There are already criteria for becoming a teacher that are periodically updated -- does it make sense to re-evaluate existing teachers against those criteria? (I have heard that proposed and loudly decried by the teachers union, I think in Ontario, but the reasons against were never especially clear to me.) If you can't find acceptable ways to tell whether a teacher is doing their job well or poorly, at least verify that they have the basic skills that you would expect from a new hire today.
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# ? Jul 1, 2015 03:05 |
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Northjayhawk posted:A lot of people (including me, I think) were under the impression that a method of execution could be evaluated in isolation, unrelated to anything else, and we can just look at a method and judge it to be cruel and unusual, or not. The supreme court made it clear that this is not the case. It can be, they just didn't want to. Let's not pretend there was some iron-clad logical reasoning above reproach in the majority here.
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# ? Jul 1, 2015 03:20 |
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Subjunctive posted:Are there places that lay off 25% of their teachers (the least senior, one imagines) every 5 years? If a teacher's career is 50 years, then the bottom 25% by seniority will never age out to safety, right? 50% of all teachers leave teaching in 5 years or less. Now, that is obviously not all due to layoffs. But it seems obvious that there is a disconnect between conditions in the profession and the political debate that focuses so much on the ability to get rid of bad teachers without the corresponding focus on retention.
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# ? Jul 1, 2015 03:21 |
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Subjunctive posted:I think seniority should not be the only factor, but if seniority leads to higher effectiveness (individual or organizational) then I would also expect that to show up somewhere other than notches on the calendar. Is there evidence that a more senior teacher -- or a school with more senior teachers, to accommodate organizational and team effects -- is more effective? I can imagine some reasons that would be the case, but I wouldn't want to make policy on my imagining, and it's not always the case in other industries. You just ignored his reasons for seniority that don't have to do with 'effectiveness', and teachers unions definitely welcome new members. This derail probably should get its own thread or join some education thread already in existence.
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# ? Jul 1, 2015 03:22 |
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Obdicut posted:You just ignored his reasons for seniority that don't have to do with 'effectiveness', and teachers unions definitely welcome new members. Heck, most teachers unions don't even give you a choice! I had fees coming out of my paycheck for half a semester before the union got around to mailing me the union card to fill out.
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# ? Jul 1, 2015 03:23 |
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From a complete non-American layman's understanding of this, if negotiation with government is considered political speech/lobbying (which as others have pointed out is ridiculous and would turn all government contractors into lobbyists, it seems like there is a need for a line between negotiating over the supply of services and agitating for policy/laws relating to an industry) then would unions have grounds for their collective bargaining to apply only to union members? After all they aren't representing in any way non-union members who may even disagree with their position. It would make sense that if certain employees show their disagreement with a position (that being the bargaining position as demonstrated by their choice not to help fund it) then those employees shouldn't be bound by the result. Obviously for unions this has a potential downside (needing to convince enough people to join that they can collectively bargain, short term school districts that don't want unions may ensure they offer equivalent deals to non-union members until the union dies off). It does have some potential upsides though, if they can create a strong enough incentive for the majority of people to sign up then they would have a greater source of funding for other political activities (if you're on board with collective bargaining you are now de facto on board with the other political speech). Of course that doesn't guarantee killing unions so I'm guessing the representation issue would need to be challenged in the Courts and it would probably be dicey that it makes it through before unions collapse/they'd be in a weak enough position the downsides may still finish them off.
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# ? Jul 1, 2015 04:00 |
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Obdicut posted:This derail probably should get its own thread or join some education thread already in existence. You're right, apologies.
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# ? Jul 1, 2015 04:08 |
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Someone shared several times what they though the "perfect' court ruling on gay marriage was, and held it up as a much better document than the one Kennedy wrote. Does anyone remember what that was? I'm having trouble finding it. Thread's been busy.
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# ? Jul 1, 2015 04:34 |
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GlyphGryph posted:Someone shared several times what they though the "perfect' court ruling on gay marriage was, and held it up as a much better document than the one Kennedy wrote. Does anyone remember what that was? I'm having trouble finding it. Thread's been busy. The original Prop. 8 decision, I think. Phone posting, so I don't have a link handy.
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# ? Jul 1, 2015 04:36 |
Zoran posted:The original Prop. 8 decision, I think. Phone posting, so I don't have a link handy. This is it, I think: http://www.scribd.com/doc/35374462/California-Prop-8-Ruling-August-2010
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# ? Jul 1, 2015 04:38 |
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Zoran posted:The original Prop. 8 decision, I think. Phone posting, so I don't have a link handy. Thanks, with that I managed to find it.
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# ? Jul 1, 2015 04:46 |
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MrNemo posted:would unions have grounds for their collective bargaining to apply only to union members? Collective bargaining also covers the work environment. If the union goes on strike for six weeks to get a guardrail installed in front of the Kill-O-Maim-3000 Rapidly Oscillating Sawblade Armature, there's no way to limit the safety benefit to card-carriers only. If the union gets the carbon monoxide filters replaced, there's no way to force the libertarians coworkers to keep suffering headaches. If the union fights for a more equitable dispute-resolution process, then it will probably apply to everyone (because maintaining two parallel systems would be a giant pain-in-the-rear end for HR). If the union demands that a browbeating (or sexually-harassing) supervisor be sent for retraining, then all employees will see a reduction in workplace toxicity. And so on. There are some positive outcomes of collective bargaining which aren't amenable to an individual's [opt in] [opt out] choice. The free rider problem rears its ugly head, and so the standard regulatory response is to simply force everyone to pay dues. Aside from weird cases like France wherein the free rider problem does not apply due to external funding.
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# ? Jul 1, 2015 04:49 |
I asked in the USPol thread but no response. In regards to the public union court case: I thought that unions already gave the ability to make sure that your fees were not being used for political contributions. Would that ruling cover this case already?
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# ? Jul 1, 2015 04:55 |
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MrNemo posted:) then would unions have grounds for their collective bargaining to apply only to union members? Then no members of a union would have jobs.
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# ? Jul 1, 2015 05:56 |
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From the OP:The Warszawa posted:Associate Justice Ruth Joan Bader Ginsburg I'm failing miserably attempting to find this. I'm at the "Search Center" of the SCOTUS site (http://www.supremecourt.gov/search_center.aspx) and I cannot for the life of me work out to retrieve this. I just seem to keep only getting Court Orders. Can someone please give me some advice on how to actually effectively search for old decision documents, thanks heaps in advance vvv: Awesome, thanks! I'd actually forgotten about Google Scholar. markgreyam fucked around with this message at 07:09 on Jul 1, 2015 |
# ? Jul 1, 2015 06:33 |
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markgreyam posted:From the OP: You're looking for the actual decision? Google Scholar, case law, ledbetter. It should be the first result.
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# ? Jul 1, 2015 07:03 |
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Oyez.org is the nuts for summaries and listening to the oral arguments and reading of the opinion. If you google Oyez + thing it'll usually pop right up. http://www.oyez.org/cases/2000-2009/2006/2006_05_1074
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# ? Jul 1, 2015 13:33 |
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this_is_hard posted:Hmm yes, teachers should willingly bloody their own noses at every single opportunity because ~the children~ are on the line! Same number of teachers are going to get fired in either case, how is it "willingly bloodying" their noses? The only difference will be that in one case the quality of the fired teachers will be random, and in the other case it won't be. The district could hardly have negotiated in favor of using an eval system that did not yet exist.
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# ? Jul 1, 2015 15:36 |
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Bizarro Kanyon posted:I asked in the USPol thread but no response. http://onlabor.org/2015/03/09/friedrichs-v-california-teachers-association-heads-to-the-supreme-court/
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# ? Jul 1, 2015 18:48 |
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So remember when Breyer (joined by Ginsburg) dissented on Monday to say that the death penalty is unconstitutional? Maybe it's because he think there are enough votes for the Court to hold it so. Or maybe not. Regardless of what Breyer was intending to say, what we will likely see in the next few years is a direct challenge to the death penalty based off of anti-death penalty folks thinking that this is a hint that they need to bring a case ASAP. In fact, such a case might come up the system sooner rather than later, as there is a federal district court that has already held that the death penalty is unconstitutional, and its being appealed to the 9th Circuit: Article about the federal district court decision. Whether that is the case that makes it up to SCOTUS is uncertain, but possible.
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# ? Jul 2, 2015 18:52 |
Green Crayons posted:So remember when Breyer (joined by Ginsburg) dissented on Monday to say that the death penalty is unconstitutional? First source is desperately reaching for its interpretation, second source states that the decision was on the specific defects of implementation, not a general finding of unconstitutionality.
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# ? Jul 2, 2015 19:09 |
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Antonin Scalia thinks hotels are hotbeds of vice:New York Times posted:In a 5-to-4 decision in the case of Los Angeles v. Patel, the court on June 22 invalidated a 116-year-old local ordinance that required hotel owners to hand over simple information about their patrons, gleaned from check-in forms, to law enforcement, even if there was no warrant.
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# ? Jul 2, 2015 19:15 |
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This fight over unions is hilarious since I'd be happy if we could, you know, have them? Whether or not it meant old people remain teachers, it'd be pretty cool for unions to be a thing here in Texas.
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# ? Jul 2, 2015 19:24 |
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Slate on the more galling death penalty case returned by SCOTUS on Monday.
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# ? Jul 2, 2015 21:03 |
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Discendo Vox posted:First source is desperately reaching for its interpretation, second source states that the decision was on the specific defects of implementation, not a general finding of unconstitutionality. As to the first: Yes, but that doesn't alter the point of my post: "Regardless of what Breyer was intending to say, what we will likely see in the next few years is a direct challenge to the death penalty based off of anti-death penalty folks thinking that this is a hint that they need to bring a case ASAP." As to the second: Yes, but "right for the wrong reason" would allow appellees (death penalty opponents) to argue that the district court was right on a multitude of reasons - even those that the district court did not adopt (e.g., that the death penalty is per se unconstitutional). It's a viable vehicle, at least looking at it from the outside, depending upon how the appellees defend the district court's ruling.
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# ? Jul 2, 2015 22:08 |
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If push came to shove and the constitutionality of the death penalty came up I think it would probably end up being 5-4 in favor of the death penalty. You have 4 sure votes for it. Kennedy is generally in favor of restrictions of the death penalty, but he consistently avoids ruling against it in principle.
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# ? Jul 2, 2015 22:49 |
Are there any non-religious people on the court?
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# ? Jul 2, 2015 23:40 |
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Non-religious or don't identify with a religion? I don't think Breyer is all that religious.
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# ? Jul 2, 2015 23:47 |
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# ? Jun 1, 2024 06:24 |
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None of them come off particularly religious to me besides Roberts.
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# ? Jul 2, 2015 23:48 |