'Million Teacher March' Falls About 992,000 People Short

idiots-utter nonsense

I loved Matt Damon in Team America.

The only ones marching were probably teachers from Atlanta Government Schools and Clayton County Schools here in Georgia. Failed schools in democrat strongholds abusing minorities.

Any time you see a "Million Anything March," you can bet that they'll be struggling to get 20,000 to actually show up.

Of course, they can count on the lying leftist media to at least double the count for the 6 o'clock news.

If we want really good, functional education, then we need to offer the parents a viable alternative to the current GOVERNMENT-OPERATED, MONOPOLY school system.
That means vouchers, i.e. one voucher for EACH STUDENT in a family. Make it for an amount about one-half to two-thirds the average per-pupil annual expenditure in the local school district. That would be enough to pay for education in a GOOD alternative school, be it another public school or a non-public school. The parents would decide. [ SCOTUS ruled that this would be constitutional, since the parents would decide.]
Also, this would save the public (i.e. taxpayers) a pile of dough.

I live in Florida. Although I look askance at quite a few things Rick Scott does, I do like the face he is supporting vouchers. Both of my kids qualified for the McKay Scholarship and are in a good ACCREDITED private school. They take a simple, sane standardized test at the start and end of each year to measure progress and are happy, learning kids. The school is based on the traditional one-room school house.

The current form is testing.

According to the proper logic, this should mean there is enthusiasm for the current system.

8,000 out of a predicted 1,000,000......How do you like them apples Matt?

Just saw this story referenced on the Five. I don't see any 3 little piggies references here though.

Never mind. Apparently it's already an old story. Yeesh.

Our schools started up yesterday, so teachers couldn't travel if they wanted to. But what's funny is that they worked to elect our ultra-lib gov, who then proceeded to declare a bargaining impasse and imposed without bargaining a 5% pay cut on the teachers. Meanwhile, in our district (there is a single district for the entire state) no high schools made AYP last year. Reason given is "test is too hard". Union argues if NCLB was repealed all our education problems would be over.

NCLB was and is terrible. having states create their own test is, just, stupid. There is a test that all US students could take, the SAT-10. If every student in the US takes the same test, at least we would have a fair comparison! I am a non-union, charter school teacher and we've always made our AYP!

Only 992,000 shortjQuery15208612799533844099_1312314171835?

I know why. It's summer vacation. Union teachers have more important things to do in the summer (making extra cash out moonlighting and or those DIY repairs rather then hiring their expensive union brothers and sisters to fix their homes, cars and whatever)...best to wait till school is in session to go protesting on the tax payers dime.


SOVIET UNIONISM IS UN-AMERICAN

I heard that. Remember the Nation of Islam's Million Man March in the '90s? Why do the teachers think they're so all-fired special?

If one truly WANTS to do something for education, then abolish the DOE, make all states "right to work" (does anyone actually get the meaning of that term?), make sure all states enact laws that FORBID the federal government from interfering in education, and turn the schools BACK to the parents and teachers, controlled locally and overseen by the state.
Without these reforms, as a START, we will remain at 24-26 (or drop even lower) in math and science skills behind other developing nations that will eat our kids lunch, competitively, in the future.

Yep. Yep. Abolish the DoE and all the federal regulations that have destroyed our educational systems.

That's the best idea out there. The DOE is absolutely worthless!

I believe that most teachers did not enter the teaching profession to play politics. The unions force them to play politics. Many teachers are probably planning for the 2011-12 school year and thought that to be more important than being part of a political herd in DC.

Who is Matt Damon that I should care about what he thinks about educationjQuery152019570766910565662_1312305960222

He once played a smart person in Good, Will Hunting. That was as close to intelligence as this bunch of idiots could get.

His mom is a union teacher.

Turnout was low because the directions to the rally were too confusing. Map reading isn't taught in graduate education programs.

Should add that some districts, like NYC, have a minimum grade of 55. So you can do 0 and still get 55. It's all about the numbers and all blamed on the teachers. Yet in the same school--WEst African immigrants and Asians are busting it out and graduating at 15 and 16 whle the welfare hispanics go to summer school every year and can't pass the state exams on the 3rd try. ANd worse, when they're a week and a half away from graduation and must pass the exam to graduate, they still don't study.

If they pass a class even with the minimum grade and don't pass the final, they think they did well because they passed. There's no interest in really learning---they need to be in vocational tracks. One size does not fit all.

the 'teachers' were still at work, and only the 'educators' showed up to protest

Make welfare checks contingent on the kids getting better than passing grades and behaving well--then all of a sudden you will see mommies deciding to have their kids study. And make parents pay for high school and for books. They can get a partial refund at the end of each semester--which can ony go toward the next semester's schooling.

You dont value something if you don't pay for it. They through the school lunches all over, ut hae enough money to come in with %5 worth fo junk food --and to pay the guy in the odega a dollar a day to hold their cell phones.

I agree with William from Carpinteria (beautiful place by the way). Having been a student, teacher, volunteer treacher and tutor, I can tell you when schools are more than 25% hspanic, they are doomed. The dont' read, don't study don't do hw, come to school to socialize, fight, get laid, gossip and maybe even to score drugs. Why work when the welfar checks come in the mail and you only pay 10% of the rent? Why go to school when you can get pregnant and get checks?

Let be real here---having passed 8 NY State Regents exams, I will tell you how it's done--I (and my friends) STUDIED. We did not blame the teachers (except for one chemistry teacher whom we now know to be a rabid liberal, who didn't know what he was doing.) OUr parents wouldn't have put up with that ****. Now the lazy ***** dont read, don't study and like the so called "poor" who have more than the taxpayers paying their bills, they try to fix the teachers, who, somehow managed to get Master's degrees.

Maybe the cameraman is "shi**y" as Damon suggests. But if he is, he is going to lose his job. Not so the 10% bad teachers.

Be aware in half the states, right to work states, we do NOT have tenure. Tick off an administrator, fired.

Do you work in AZ as I do?

If they would have held the rally during the school year there would have been many more teachers in attendance. They would have called in sick and would have been protected by the union. Since this rally was held in the summer and many of these teachers have summer non-union jobs they would have been fired had they called in sick or taken the time off from work with another phony excuse.

Those were my thoughts as well, norm. Plus they could have bribed the students with better grades if they supported them as well.

I read somewhere, sometime back where a highschool principal was "earning" a million a year.

At any rate, the education establishment has to be changed and set up anew without Federal Gov't being involved.

Do you think a unionized teacher can tell the difference between 8,000 and 1,000,000?

Absolutely!!! The answer is 50.

Gold Star! You really care about your answer!

Want better schools and well educated students?

It's simple: get rid of the DOE and get the teachers unions out of the classroom. Allow teachers to teach; support the concept that students must study and not just prepare for government mandated tests.

To young to remember when an honest grade allowed parents to judge how their children were actually doing in school? Well we need to get back to honest grading, supported by strict and honest parenting and stop "educators" from indoctrinating our children with the latest fad in social engineering and political correctness.

If we got back to teaching the 3R's instead of focusing on social programs, perhaps we could start teaching our children to actually think for themselves instead of only echoing what they hear from radicalized teachers. The purpose of education is to teach the art of thinking.

If we got rid of the DOE, states wouldn't have to launder tax money through DC, their school systems would get the whole banana!

I suspect many of us are pretty tired of getting advice on policy from Hollywood types like Matt Damon, who has spent his life learning how to "emote" rather than how to think logically.