The problem with these movies is lack of balance - you take a microcosm of the whole system that is failing and then brand the whole system as a failure. That's ridiculous and suspiciously self-serving. The stench of videos like this is as bad as Michael Moore's, because they clearly are promoting a political agenda. I agree that there is inequity for struggling poor districts, but our education system doesn't consist wholly of inner city schools.

Dismissing teachers is also state controlled - in my state (Pennsylvania) you could never get away with that kind of blatant negligence as a teacher.

Neither of them brand the whole system as failing. Both brand specifically inner city public education as failing, which I'd consider fairly accurate. Kids aren't cars also tries to highlight that teachers' unions do not have what's best for education at heart, which is totally true and spokesmen for the major teacher's unions have admitted to this.

Interesting factoid, but the leaders of the AFT and NEA make 4 times Warren Buffet's salary and there are 600 staffers in both organizations that make 6 figure incomes.

So all those college graduates in sitting parks across the nation are unskilled?

the unemployment rate for college graduates is only at 4.3%.

[quote name='Alpha_ProgDes' timestamp='1320419724' post='4880487']
So all those college graduates in sitting parks across the nation are unskilled?

the unemployment rate for college graduates is only at 4.3%.
[/quote]

Depends on the graduation year. It's about 5x that for recent graduates. Plus about the same percentage of graduates hold jobs that don't require a degree at all.

Besides, even if I accept your number that doesn't match well with your point above. If a college degree is the key to gainful employment, then our failing education system wouldn't be churning out record numbers of college graduates who are ready and able to participate successfully in the labor market, which a 4.3% unemployment rate among graduates would suggest under current conditions.

Plus, as maligned as teachers' unions are (and sometimes rightly), educating kids is difficult. Union-free charter schools haven't posted compelling results that unions are the key factors in holding kids back.

The reason schools are "failing" now is because failure has been continually defined by a higher standard.

That higher standard is CRITICAL. To say that we're doing better than 15 years ago, while may be true, it's not good enough. Today's students are going to be competing in a global work force where the US is smoked year after year in academic achievement. Every time I'm trying to higher a new developer, I get dozens and dozens of Indian developers with masters degrees in computer science while the number of born and raised American applicants is shockingly small and of them.

Teachers unions have nothing to do with it - in fact, states with teachers unions outperform those who don't. This is likely because unions can negotiate for better wages, thus attracting a larger applicant pool for schools to select from. The idea that teachers can't be dismissed or fired because of tenure is also patently false - it doesn't take much more than a few negative evaluations to boot a teacher regardless of tenure.
[/quote]


This is quite simply wrong. Just looking at the termination stats for teachers should be proof enough of that, unless you really think that only one out of every thousand teachers deserves to be fired a year. I guarantee you, there are a lot more bad teachers out there then that. In a ten year timespan 1995 to 2005, only 112 teachers were fired in LA Unified. That's 0.2% over the course of ten years in a school district with a graduation rate of just over 50%. If you can't see anything wrong with that, then I'm afraid discourse with you regarding the problems with our education system is going to be impossible.

[quote name='way2lazy2care' timestamp='1320421678' post='4880494']
[quote name='Alpha_ProgDes' timestamp='1320419724' post='4880487']
So all those college graduates in sitting parks across the nation are unskilled?

the unemployment rate for college graduates is only at 4.3%.
[/quote]

Depends on the graduation year. It's about 5x that for recent graduates. Plus about the same percentage of graduates hold jobs that don't require a degree at all.

Besides, even if I accept your number that doesn't match well with your point above. If a college degree is the key to gainful employment, then our failing education system wouldn't be churning out record numbers of college graduates who are ready and able to participate successfully in the labor market, which a 4.3% unemployment rate among graduates would suggest under current conditions.

Plus, as maligned as teachers' unions are (and sometimes rightly), educating kids is difficult. Union-free charter schools haven't posted compelling results that unions are the key factors in holding kids back.
[/quote]

I don't know about the unemployment rate for college grads, but in the technical sector the unemployment rate is around 3.3%. This is the fastest growing job sector in the USA, and we do not have enough qualified Americans to fill these positions. Not all degrees are created equal. I don't think the figures exist showing the breakdown of the various degrees that OWS protesters have, but I'd be willing to bet there is a disproportionally low number of computer science or engineering degrees represented.

If we want things to get better, then we as consumers need to start putting our money into smaller businesses. What happened to locally owned gas stations, locally owned grocery stores, locally owned video rentals, or even locally owned coffee shops. Instead, we shop at huge chains such as walmart or blockbuster or Starbucks. The more big businesses you feed into, the more money gets funneled to the top. Big businesses are the ones who are outsourcing to foreign countries. They are the ones who pay their CEO's ungodly amounts of money. They are the one's who can do a lot more with less labor causing a decrease in jobs. Big businesses are definitely useful for things like manufacturing and research and I am not against big businesses, but we need a balance and lately all of our money has been shifting to big businesses.

[quote name='tstrimple' timestamp='1320382872' post='4880379']
[quote name='Alpha_ProgDes' timestamp='1320347790' post='4880244']
I just really wish people would stop attributing the wealth redistribution complaint to OWS. That's not what they are asking for. They are asking for jobs. They are asking for corporations to be corporations not the 4th branch of the government. They are asking "why are you sitting on trillions of dollars, but are not hiring?".

This is the biggest problems I have about the OWS complaints. These people need to realize that corporations do not owe them jobs. It's not their right to be employed at a large company just because the company is successful. The large companies did not force them to go tens of thousands of dollars into debt getting a useless degree. Lets be perfectly clear, corporations exist to make money and I don't believe that there is anything wrong with that as long as those corporations cannot simply buy monopolies via the government. I expect corporations to be greedy to an extent, but it's a problem when politicians who are supposed to be representing us are that greedy.
[/quote]

I guess that's not really my take on what the OWS protests are about (though there are so many disparate voices, you can probably pick about anything you want and find a decent segment of protesters supporting it). I agree that no corporation owes anyone a job. However, there are a couple of issues with the current economy that produce complaints that sound a lot like that.

A major factor affecting the poor economy is slack demand, which is fostered by low employment and poor wages. Even though many (but certainly not all) large corporations have returned to record profits, something like ~88% of that money has been captured by those corporations, even though what workers are more productive than ever. There are definitely reasons why that money might defensibly go elsewhere, like to prop up share prices, but there are others that are less so, like record executive compensation. Those corporations may not owe jobs to people, but nor do they owe an extra million to a CEO's salary. And yet they still manage to do the second.

There is little reason why the company's income needs to be directed so overwhelmingly to the top rather than being spread more evenly, either with more jobs or fewer but better paying jobs. And yet that's exactly what's happened (here's a broader graph), including in firms where those executives were either incompetent or did well for their companies by tanking the world economy. It's not that they can't do so, or even that the richest don't deserve a greater share of the national income than they had previously. But to happen to that degree while worker productivity has risen with only a modest increase in real wages for the vast majority of workers over the same period definitely sucks (unless you're one of the rich, of course). People really don't have any other recourse, so why not protest?

Additionally, corporations didn't just conjure the cash they're sitting on out of nowhere. It came out of the pockets of everyone, consumers and investors alike. Even if they have the best reasons in the world for not disbursing it as wages or new jobs or anything else, and there are valid reasons why they won't, it still sucks to have ~1/15 of the GDP tied up and not doing anything.

Another thing is that college degrees which might be called worthless now weren't worthless the farther back in time you go. For a long time a college degree was a sure way to get to a good job. A degree is still a huge help in landing a good job-- but there are way, way fewer of them to go around. Not to mention the hyper-specialization of certifications that exists in a lot of fields now making broader degree less valuable, and limiting the flexibility a job seeker has based on training. And one of my favorite quotes from the Simpsons demonstrates a reality that college graduates are facing now, "Joblessness: it's not just for philosophy majors anymore." It's not just English majors that are having trouble getting work. And it's not just college graduates that are unable to find work either; the job market is awful for a huge segment of the population including those who determined that college was too expensive.

I too expect corporations to be greedy, but that doesn't stop that greed from impeding the economy or hollowing out economic opportunity for vast numbers of people. Bad politicians are also a problem, as well as the corporate subversion of democracy. So is an increasingly bad payoff for college degrees, since there isn't a replacement for the opportunity they used to provide. And there are still other serious problems as well. But to say that the protesters are wrong for wanting jobs when there is at most one available for every three unemployed people, and when an extremely tiny portion of the country has sucked up a hugely disproportionate share of economic gains and still seeking to push the burden onto those who have barely progressed, suggests to me that you aren't perceiving the motivations behind the protests accurately. Even if one of their most popular talking points is somewhat inapt.
[/quote]

Just to be clear, I know that the OWS movement has multiple motivations and that the jobs portion is just one of them. I even agree with most of them, but this one in particular irks me.

[quote name='Michael Tanczos' timestamp='1320413180' post='4880458']
The reason schools are "failing" now is because failure has been continually defined by a higher standard.

That higher standard is CRITICAL. To say that we're doing better than 15 years ago, while may be true, it's not good enough. Today's students are going to be competing in a global work force where the US is smoked year after year in academic achievement. Every time I'm trying to higher a new developer, I get dozens and dozens of Indian developers with masters degrees in computer science while the number of born and raised American applicants is shockingly small and of them.

Teachers unions have nothing to do with it - in fact, states with teachers unions outperform those who don't. This is likely because unions can negotiate for better wages, thus attracting a larger applicant pool for schools to select from. The idea that teachers can't be dismissed or fired because of tenure is also patently false - it doesn't take much more than a few negative evaluations to boot a teacher regardless of tenure.
[/quote]


This is quite simply wrong. Just looking at the termination stats for teachers should be proof enough of that, unless you really think that only one out of every thousand teachers deserves to be fired a year. I guarantee you, there are a lot more bad teachers out there then that. In a ten year timespan 1995 to 2005, only 112 teachers were fired in LA Unified. That's 0.2% over the course of ten years in a school district with a graduation rate of just over 50%. If you can't see anything wrong with that, then I'm afraid discourse with you regarding the problems with our education system is going to be impossible.
[/quote]

That higher standard we're shooting for has been overshot by top 20% students nigh on forever and met by most of that next 40%. Termination of teachers depends on the state, but any district willing to go through the process can fire a teacher. Also, graduation rate could certainly be much higher if teachers lowered the bar and allowed students to graduate.

Second, what does graduation rate have to do with anything?

If I put you in a room in front of a kid who has absolutely no desire to learn anything from you.. who has no interest in mathematics.. and thinks that it's more fun to do zig-zag lines on standardized tests because they don't count for anything or draw cartoons on every other test, I'd love to see you held accountable for that kid. I'd love to see everyone outside that room mock you for being a failure of a teacher or for refusing to allow this student to graduate because you can't reach that one kid. With every city school there are kids who are absolute boat anchors.. they have a firmly entrenched mentality that they don't have to do anything. The truth is that parents have a more profound impact on student success than teachers, and it starts when the students are young. Our "failing" school system doesn't acknowledge whatsoever the large percentage of students who ARE succeeding.

It would be interesting to see how someone would grade your own performance on educating me as to why you are right - because what I walk away with is entirely beyond your control. If you were a teacher, you'd have to be considered a failure by "modern" standards because I'm like that bottom 10% kid who isn't going to gain anything from you regardless of what you say.. even if 90% of the rest of the population does in fact learn something valuable from your contributions.

I just saw this link about the Vatican calling for a central world bank for tracking financial matters.
[quote="Vatican"]It is obvious that to some extent this is equivalent to putting the existing exchange systems up for discussion in order to find effective means of coordination and supervision. This process must also involve the emerging and developing countries in defining the stages of a gradual adaptation of the existing instruments.
In fact, one can see an emerging requirement for a body that will carry out the functions of a kind of “central world bank” that regulates the flow and system of monetary exchanges similar to the national central banks. The underlying logic of peace, coordination and common vision which led to the Bretton Woods Agreements needs to be dusted off in order to provide adequate answers to the current questions. On the regional level, this process could begin by strengthening the existing institutions, such as the European Central Bank.[/quote]
Always wanted such a central world bank for dealing with currencies and managing transactions in a completely open way. It's interesting that the Vatican, which has run it's own city like a clockwork with only a few problems (corruption), would suggest such a sensible idea.

If we want things to get better, then we as consumers need to start putting our money into smaller businesses. What happened to locally owned gas stations, locally owned grocery stores, locally owned video rentals, or even locally owned coffee shops. Instead, we shop at huge chains such as walmart or blockbuster or Starbucks.

Vertical integration. The reason big grocery stores and franchises work so well is they offer convenience and do it cheaply. There are documentaries about how things used to be. You'd go to a single place to buy a few things. It was a lot more work. Now you stop at one place and get everything you need. For a locally owned place to compete would cost millions in investments to construct and then you'd need recognition through advertisement. It's a tough market where people already have habits. Also it's impossible to support local gas stations. They were all bought out by franchises. I for one haven't seen one ever. I go to a speedway since they offer a rewards program to get free gas.

Pretty sure blockbuster died. Netflix and Red Box took over. Family Video is still going strong. Again convenience.

If I put you in a room in front of a kid who has absolutely no desire to learn anything from you.. who has no interest in mathematics.. and thinks that it's more fun to do zig-zag lines on standardized tests because they don't count for anything or draw cartoons on every other test, I'd love to see you held accountable for that kid. I'd love to see everyone outside that room mock you for being a failure of a teacher or for refusing to allow this student to graduate because you can't reach that one kid. With every city school there are kids who are absolute boat anchors.. they have a firmly entrenched mentality that they don't have to do anything. The truth is that parents have a more profound impact on student success than teachers, and it starts when the students are young. Our "failing" school system doesn't acknowledge whatsoever the large percentage of students who ARE succeeding.

Of course there are some students succeeding, but not enough. We are well below other industrialized nations in national scores, and it's having a significant impact on our economy and employment rate.

It would be interesting to see how someone would grade your own performance on educating me as to why you are right - because what I walk away with is entirely beyond your control. If you were a teacher, you'd have to be considered a failure by "modern" standards because I'm like that bottom 10% kid who isn't going to gain anything from you regardless of what you say.. even if 90% of the rest of the population does in fact learn something valuable from your contributions.
[/quote]

It is NOT beyond your control. If that were true, you would not have teachers with consistently better results in the same school system. Like it or not, a large part of the teachers job is motivating students to want to learn. That's what separates the great teachers from those who are just handing out assignments from the lesson plan. It is those teachers we should be paying higher salaries and encouraging, but teachers unions make this impossible. To throw up your hands and give up because some students aren't interested in learning is ridiculous. Of course there are students you're not going to be able to reach, but a 50% graduation rate is unacceptable.