In the Vergara trial, the judge’s verdict was based on unproven theories that a few incompetent teachers would ruin a child’s ability to earn an education. The numbers presented in one theory were one to two percent of teachers might be incompetent—not “are incompetent” but “might be incompetent” because of classroom observations of one man over a period of several years.
The judge should have asked for details. For instance, how many teachers can one person observe long enough to form a valid judgment, and how long was each observation? What if a teacher considered incompetent was having a bad day and the other 179-instructional days that teacher was competent?
Anyway, let’s look at a few numbers based on the 2011-12 school year in California:
There were 6,220,993 students enrolled and attending 10,296 public schools in California. Another 438,474 students attended 1,019 Charter schools.
There were 300,140 teachers in the public schools. If we go with the 1 to 2 percent observational unproven guesstimate, that means 3,001 to 6,223 teachers might be incompetent, but there are 10,296 schools (not counting Charters) in California, so that means thousands of schools couldn’t have even one incompetent teacher, but the teachers in those schools risk losing legal due process rights that allow them to challenge any accusations made against them that they were incompetent.
In other words, 292,917 to 297,139 could be fired for any reason at any time and there would be no way for the teacher to defend the accusations made against them.
If the Vergara verdict survives the appeals, every teacher in California would be at risk of being fired at any moment by an administrator who could be incompetent or be a stooge owned, for instance, by the Koch brothers, the Walton family, hedge fund billionaires, or Bill Gates—stooges who might have walking orders to get rid of as many teachers as possible and replace them with younger, less competent teachers like those five-week wonders from Teach For America. Did you know that the retention rate for TFA recruits was about 33 percent compared to more than 50 percent for teachers who earned their teaching credential through the traditional method or 86 percent for teachers who went through a yearlong residency program in a master teacher’s class room?
I think it’s obvious that Bill Gates is in charge of deciding how many teachers should go on an annual basis, because it is his “rank and yank” system that is part of the Common Core agenda, and all anyone has to do is look at the arbitrary numbers Bill Gates set in place at Microsoft to judge how many had to be ranked incompetent to be yanked and replaced by another crop who had to prove their competence on an annual basis. That anal, unproven, arbitrary number that Bill Gates must have pulled out of his crotch was 25 percent with no evidence to support the fact that so many Microsoft employees were actually incompetent.
In conclusion, it’s obvious where this is going. If President Obama’s partner in crime, Bill Gates, has his way, eventually 25 percent of public school teachers—not just the one-to-two percent that are alleged to be incompetent without any evidence to support the claim—would have to lose their jobs annually all based on student standardized test scores.
If you’ve read the recent news, Microsoft plans to lay off 18,000 workers this year in addition to 12,500 associated with the Nokia Device and Services team it acquired earlier this year. Microsoft has almost 130,000 employees across the world—the number losing their jobs is almost 24%. To replace them, Microsoft has requested that the U.S. increase the number of H-1 Visas at a time when there is no shortage of American citizens for jobs of this type. In fact, there are too many qualified applicants.
What could the reasons be for Microsoft to fire qualified American citizens and replace them with someone, for instance, from China or India?
How many teachers in California stand to lose their jobs annually to be replaced if the Gates “rank and yank” system is put in place in the public schools? The answer is about 75,000 annually. At that annual rate, every four years, California’s public schools would get rid of 300,140 teachers for a complete possible turnover in every school.
The Bill Gates “rank and yank” system used by Microsoft—and supported by President Obama and Arne Duncan to be used against teachers in the public schools—will rely on the test results of students to decide the teachers who must go, but first they must get rid of teacher due process job protection that exists under the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights.
However, the Economic Policy Institute reports that “there is broad agreement among statisticians, psychometricians, and economists that student test scores alone are not sufficiently reliable and valid indicators of teacher effectiveness to be used in high-stakes personnel decisions, even when the most sophisticated statistical applications such as value-added modeling are employed.” This report has been ignored by Bill Gates, President Obama and Arne Duncan.
What are the odds of one of those 6.2 million students ending up in a classroom with one of those estimated 3,001 to 6,223 so-called incompetent teachers with no proven, accepted, valid method to judge teacher competence properly?
Does anyone have an answer?
What about the odds of a teacher ending up with incompetent students who have dysfunctional, incompetent parents? Does anyone have a theory for that number? I think we could start with the number of children living in poverty and/or who have severe learning disabilities.
These numbers might help: California’s child poverty rates for Latinos (31.2%) and African Americans (33.4%) are much higher than the rates among Asians (13.2%) and whites (10.1%). The child poverty rate in families where both parents do not have a high school diploma is high in California (48.5%). Just the Facts: CHILD POVERTY IN CALIFORNIA by Sarah Bohn and Matt Levin
It might help to compare the poverty rates with the on-time high school graduation rates in California (2011-2012): State High School Graduation Rates by Race, Ethnicity
Asian/Pacific Islander 90%
White 86%
Hispanic 73%
Black 66%
Back to the Vergara trial—I think the verdict was bought and paid for in some way, or maybe the judge was blackmailed or biased.
In addition, reforming the public schools doesn’t mean that education for K to 12 children will improve, because it is obvious that the corporate war against the public schools is not about improving the schools. It’s about reforming the public schools into an economic engine that pours taxes into corporations who are out to make a profit.
If President Obama and his stooge, Arne Duncan, really wanted to improve the public schools, a good place to start would be to improve teacher training based on those yearlong internship programs that have the best teacher retention rate and enact a national, early childhood education program—both of which other countries have done with great success.
A must see documentary to discover what’s going on!
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Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).
His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves
Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).
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Crazy Normal - the Classroom Exposé 