NFL Union Referees are locked out — and the biggest news story covered by the media is how inept the Replacement Referees are
It is decided by virtually all, that the Replacement Refs do not have the experience, knowledge or the temperament to handle the arduous task of refereeing a game.
Under ceaseless bombardment by fans and the media, the NFL capitulates and calls back the Union Refs to work. Agreeing to a pay level north of $150,000 per year, for how many hours per year of refereeing games ???
Meanwhile, many of the same folks who are ready to boycott the NFL for what is perceived to be inept refereeing — do not blink an eye, when School Districts lose experienced teachers to Act 10.
Many of the same folks have cried out in anger about how the Teachers only work 180 DAYS (not games) -- and by God, some of them make as much as $100,000 !!!
What does it say about us, as a society, that we will not tolerate Replacement Referees for our National Bloodsport Past-time — while we throw Teachers under the School Bus, and feel fine about their Replacements, teaching our kids?
As the test scores fall, and as increasing numbers of graduates do not have the skills necessary to succeed in the workplace — at least we can rest assured, that the NFL will have a quality product to view, as we suck our beers and cheer.
There's really no similarity making the analogy a logical one.
"If you have really good teacher, but a kid whose got too much on their plate and can't/doesn't learn -- does that mean the teacher is bad?" Yes and no - it depends. Ultimately, it depends on the student to take full advantage of the opportunities that our public education system provides them. However, there have been examples of people such as Jaime Escalante, Joe Louis Clark, and Michelle Rhee, just to name a few, who managed to reform and effectively teach the so-called 'worst of the worst' students - with problems ranging from drug abuse to teen pregnancy to parents who neglect and abuse them. Instead of these educators being the exception to the rule, shouldn't they be the standard by which we hold all teachers to? Many teachers, and their unions, appear to believe that a teacher's worth is premised upon the amount of education that the teacher has received. However, nothing could be further from the truth. The most effective educators are those who are able to reach and encourage learning by their students - even if that means that they have no formal education in teaching at all. After all, the learning is done by the student. What most teachers really do is merely guide the student, evaluates the student's performance, and provides clarification/assistance when the student has a question. The exceptional teachers encourage learning by adjusting attitudes and motivating and challenging their students.
I'm seeing some real change taking place in some of our most challenged schools (because I volunteered to be a tutor at a Racine School through Schools of Hope) -- everything from discipline to how committed teachers are to adapting their teaching styles. I plan to write more about this. But what other issues would you want to see addressed?
Imagine what kind of product our schools could be if they could release players, or reward better performing ones to even a fraction of the same degree.
Perhaps you can investigate why teachers are resisting efforts to put evaluations in place. Perhaps you can investigate why some school districts chose to not join/attend/participate in the Southeastern Wisconsin Teacher Evaluation Consortium last year. Perhaps you can compare the evaluation methods and effectiveness of the schools that attended the Consortium with the methods/effectiveness of the schools that didn't.
Randy1949 is not dumb - no need to make personal attacks here.
Actually their average pay is less than $60,000, but benefits do add up to an average over $100,000 --- source Politifac below --- and by the way, I was using what is known as sarcasm. We asked MacIver spokesman Brian Farley if he had any additional evidence. He cited a February 2011 posting from the School Zone blog on JSOnline.com, which reported slightly different numbers than those in MacIver’s video. The posting quoted MPS’ budget manager as saying that in 2011-2012 (the fiscal year that begins July 1, 2011), the average MPS teacher would receive total compensation of $101,091 -- $59,500 in salary and $41,591 in benefits. We double-checked with MPS spokeswoman Roseann St. Aubin and she confirmed the figures. We wanted to compare the $101,091 for MPS teachers to other teachers, but the latest figures compiled by the state Department of Public Instruction are for 2009-2010, two years earlier. Those figures show for 2009-2010, MPS teachers earned, on average, $56,095 in salary plus $30,202 in benefits, for a total of $86,297. That was lower than eight other school districts in Milwaukee County, including Greendale, Greenfield, Shorewood, Cudahy, Fox Point, South Milwaukee, Franklin and Nicolet, which was highest at just over $103,000.
It's not the same thing and I think I pretty much made clear the reasons why it isn't. When someone's trying to use an analogy or make a comparison of two things to make a point, there has to be some sort of logical relationship between the two things or the analogy or comparison fails on its formulation. As for evaluating teachers and rewarding them based on merit rather than educational attainment or longevity, I think the unions and the teachers have made it abundantly clear they'd rather stick with the system the have now, which is based on the latter. If that's what they want and they're going to effectively refuse to accept any evaluation system that's proposed, what's the point in even discussing such? All we hear, repeatedly, is that if we don't pay them more we're not going to get quality education. That's the only standard they're interested in.
In general, there are more than enough qualified applicants for open teaching positions. Until that changes, they're effectively a dime a dozen compared to the number of qualified NFL referee candidates.
Why don't you consider the benefits package as being a part of their average pay? In all fairness, shouldn't we be looking at the total compensation package? After all, the teachers are the ones who chose (actually practically demanded), via their union, a large deferred compensation package over additional take home pay. No one forced that upon them. Let's be fair here. After all, when you guys on the left are discussing CEO pay, you ALWAYS mention the stock options, bonuses, benefits, etc, in addition to their base salary. So why not use the same standard for teachers or any other occupation? More double-standards from the left!
Your tin hat is on too tight regarding the betting issue. Betting was very restricted to small portions of the country for most of the NFL's history. As for the teachers and education, we do take the issue very seriously. The suburbs would still be mostly farmland if we didn't. But we put our money where our values were, and were forced to move.
Randy's analogy is dumb, feel better?
Bear in mind those are averages! So the low end 1st year teacher pay of 35,000 per year must be offset by some other teacher pay of 90,000. For 2/3 a year of work!!! Put that into perspective for once: How many other professionals, which require more intelligence and ability, have -average- pay lower than that? Quite a bit if you think about it.
Taught by teachers. Whether or not they were union is irrelavant.
Before the government decided it was ok to bet, people used Bookies --- as a matter of fact, many people still do, as they can get credit from them. You remind me of a friend of mine, who use to be a DC Cop. One morning his elderly mother asked him what the "number" was that day --- he explained to his mother that they didn't call it the numbers anymore, since it was all run by the state now, they call it the Lottery. When I was working at the Sun Times Daily News as a summer job delivering papers from the plant to the agencies, one of the drivers did the Numbers, and I use to play it often --- oh yeah, same guy also had really cheap cigarettes for sale --- no tax stamps :-)
Not quite sure if I am "from the Left" --- although I am surely Left of most commentators on this forum. I definitely do not want to be confined to any one ideology --- I think there is some good and bad in all of them --- I have probably voted for as many Republicans over the years as I have voted for Democrats. For the most part, other than the last few years when the Republicans seemed to cop an attitude, there has not been much real difference between them. And increasingly, they have less and less control over the candidates who run under their labels.
Now, where can I apply to get back the taxes I already paid for them?