Hehe, unions again. I'm not touching it.

My oldest sister, mother and step mother all are teachers. The problems I hear most are related to discipline in the class and the dance you have to do to get the right help for the right problem a child is having. My mother is a fiscal conservative type so I don't know whether she hates the union or not. I have no idea what my sister believes about unions. My step mother is a liberal to the bone and I imagine would defend the union if she were here. She gave me the George Bush rant the last time I visited and after about 15 minutes of it I told her, "You've gone paranoid on me, Lee." She allowed as if it might be true, but she felt she was a high functioning paranoid.

My favorite horror story is this friend of my sister's who had a problem child in her class. He would literally growl at his teaches like a little animal, among other things. He would crawl off by himself in corners, not mind, make noise, etc etc etc. In order to mark him down as disobedient once, the teacher had to tell him seven times. SEVEN times to mark him down as having been told to do something ONCE. You have to have 3 instances of disobedience in I guess a day to send the kid to the office, or something odd like that. Anyhow, so that's 21 warnings per kid per class.

You can't just send any kid who seems to need help to get extra help. If a child is underperforming, he or she can get help. If a kid is performing at the level of his testing but still failing (why the hell are they in the level class they are in if they are performing at their level and still failing?) then they do not qualify for extra help.

So if you are trying and failing, you are out of luck. If you are a little twink who is underperforming and misbehaving, you can disrupt class all day not doing your work then go get help with the classes you were not paying attention to.

???

Bear in mind, I am not a teacher and I may have horribly mangled these stories. But these are along the lines of the sorts of things that I think are making school such a money sinkhole.

Hopefully Cyrinne will chime in here sooner or later. She seems to be the teaching expert.