_____
Some sage advice from a Nevada educator talking about the absolutely shitty school system there. It isn't just confined to Clark County or even to Nevada: bad administrators and ineffective unions are rampant throughout the United States.
It is indeed a crapshoot whether a teacher survives in public schools. One rotten, sociopathic principal, and it's all over, not just in Nevada but in every school district in the entire United States. You are blackballed and prevented from ever teaching again.
A snip:
First, the average annual teacher salary, roughly $46,000, is about half what police officers and firefighters make. In the first three years of this decade, as prices were tripling here, teachers received 0 percent (zero) in cost-of-living increases. In fact, teachers' cost-of-living raises for the entire decade have totaled only 16 percent, while police and firefighters have gotten between 35 and 45 percent.
In this derelict academic climate, psychopathic principals have frequently run rampant to create "lasting wounds and damaged schools," to quote Jo and Joseph Blase, co-authors of the book Breaking the Silence. According to one study cited by the Blases, 40 percent of principals nationally are knuckle-dragging troglodytes. In Vegas, this figure is probably closer to 60 percent. Hence, getting in a school here with a good principal is a crapshoot. The odds are stacked against you.
In a revealing speech to our school board recently, Ruben Murillo, president of the local teachers union, said, "We ask teachers to speak up [about working conditions], and they can't because they're afraid of retaliation." Sadly, Murillo's statement was a tacit admission the union has consistently failed its job of protecting teachers from unethical administrators.
One must understand, however, these "unions" aren't real unions at all and are nothing more than subsidiaries of school districts. And the problems with teachers' unions are the same all over the United States.
No comments:
Post a Comment