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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ManyMoose who wrote (472704)	2/18/2012 2:56:12 PM
From: goldworldnet	1 Recommendation Respond to of 794315

Vouchers and private schools are the only way we can reform education. * * *

To: ManyMoose who wrote (472704)	2/18/2012 3:13:27 PM
From: simplicity	3 Recommendations Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 794315

The NEA and the AFT are two of the most powerful lobbies in Washington. My husband was offered an early retirement buyout at age 55 and he took it. Since then, he has served as an independent computer consultant, and he also substitute teaches. In our state there is what is known as 'emergency certification', where one can pass a test, submit non-teaching, private sector credentials, and become 'emergency certified' to teach, because there is an insufficient number of available, good teacher-certified substitutes. Up until this year, he student taught (math and science) an average of about two days a week in two different nearby school districts. He loved teaching (I say he missed his calling), and the students loved him. We can hardly go anywhere now (grocery shopping, out to eat in a restaurant, etc.) without some young person recognizing him and telling him how much they liked having him as a student teacher over the past ten years. Several of the fulltime teachers also regularly requested him as a substitute because they liked the fact that he actually taught, rather than simply babysitting. As of this year, there is a new rule in both school districts (I suspect as a result of NEA and/or AFT pressure) that, unless every certified teacher available has been called and asked to substitute (even if they are not certified in the subject to be taught), no 'emergency certified' teacher may teach. Now teachers who are certified in, for instance, elementary education are substitute teaching in, for instance, high school pre-Calculus, which means that many of them are simply babysitting until the fulltime teacher returns. The result is that my husband is hardly teaching anymore. (He doesn't need the teaching jobs, but does miss doing it.) And he is certainly not the only non-certified person in these districts who was well-qualified to teach specific subjects because of his immersion in those subjects in the private sector, and well-received and well-liked by both the students and the fulltime teachers. Yet now very few of these excellent substitutes are being called because the teachers' unions resented the 'intrusion' of many qualified people who did not go through the 'proper channels' by having a degree in education.