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This Speakout has not been edited.

By Gary Leininger

I am looking forward to seeing the details of the teachers/DPS agreement so I can use the same strategy with my boss. If it goes as we all expect, my discussion with my boss might go like this:

“Boss, I intend to go on strike and bring as many of my colleagues as possible, unless we receive considerable remuneration and control accommodation of operations from you and the company.

“Now, we know that by any measurable document standards our performance has been well below the expectations of you and the corporate higher-ups. We also know that the company clients and their supervisors have been complaining about the level of service that we have been giving for the past several years. But Boss, consider the fact that our client base is not providing the requisite raw materials for which we are expected to deliver improved goods and these same clients do not have supervisors that are willing to accept responsibility for their offspring’s lack of motivation or abilities.

“Now Boss, doesn’t it seem perfectly logical that all the blame rests with our clients and their supervisors and that we as highly educated employees deserve a higher pay raise than that which you have previously offered? And NO, we don’t expect any changes in our performance unless you turn over some control of when we work, what we do when and if we work, how we perform our work and most importantly we do not want to be measured on our performance should anything result from our work.

“So Boss, what do you say? Give me your response and if you are willing to give us more pay with some control of company procedures and technical production details, I will take it to my colleagues and see if we accept your proposal. Please understand, that we want to work less hours, receive higher pay, have more control of operations and have no accountability for our actions or results we produce.

“Also please be assured that if plant closures result in increased production ratios or should client dissatisfaction persist in the future we intend to return to your office with additional demands for relief.

“We certainly appreciate your understanding of our situation and look forward to your negotiated settlement.”

Teaching is a profession where the rewards for accomplishment should be highly correlated to results produced. To simply reward poor teachers with a pay raise of any significance is counterproductive. Situations where the CSAP scores are stagnant call for a stagnant salary or in many cases a severe reduction in salary. In many professions, workers are “at will” employees which either produce according to specifications and expectations or they are properly disciplined, reduced in stature and salary or removed from service. It is time to rethink the concept that salaries can only increase and an increase employee involvement is the remedy.

The teacher’s union seems to think that higher teacher salaries, more teacher involvement in curricula design and more say in school reforms will solve the problem. This defense has more holes in it than the Denver Broncos defensive unit.

Dr. Gary Leininger is a resident of Lakewood.

READER COMMENTS

Perhaps we need to take a different look at teachers and teaching.

Most of the difficulty does not rest with the teacher. It is with the system. Until we reform the system no meaningful improvement will be possible.

Imagine if, in your conversation with your boss, you were told that you would receive a general job description, an incomplete set of tools and a production quota that would be high even if everything else was perfect. Imagine also that your supervisor had an office where he had six assistants for every group of five workers on the plant floor. Add in that the supervisor could exercise complete control over your work but have no responsibility for any problems created. His lunches were catered by gourmet chefs while you had your lunch breaks shortened because your production was not high enough. Also imagine you have a union that collects dues, demands full participation, openly punishes any dissidents and totally ignores the overstaffed administration part of your plant. Add another imaginary scenario. You are doing your job very well. Your production is high your quality is near perfect. You work long hours off the clock to accomplish this. You are confronted by a supervisor, or one of his assistants, and told you must conform to his methods or you will be terminated. You tried those methods and they didn't work. You ignore the order. Another complaint is filed and you discover that it came from the other workers. They're afraid they will be measured against your work and don't want to go the extra distance. You explain yourself and are again warned you could be terminated for this. The union ignores you because the others workers are more dedicated union members. You decide to keep doing the job right, then the customer for one of your units files a complaint that you failed to produce the unit that customer ordered. You are not permitted to answer the accusation. You may or may not be defended by the supervisors. You attempt to explain that the constant interference of the supervisors and the lack of interest in the production of the unit by the customer make it impossible to do the job right. You are handed a list of rules with the ones you ignored or broke highlighted. You are told you are under review for failure to do your job properly.

That is the half of the problem in the schools you didn't address Mr. Leininger. Your observations and complaints are valid.

Education in the public schools is a mix of government mindset, union power grabs, intellectual experimentation, social engineering and disdain for the parents, students and teachers.

Administration is top heavy and heavy handed. New books and learning systems are proposed and implemented with minimal input from actual classroom teachers. Sometimes the teacher receives the materials so late that it is impossible to be comfortable or competent with it.

The classroom is a place where the teacher is the target of the parents, the servant of the system and the slave of the union. Today's teachers are not permitted to use techniques and learning systems that aren't part of the current curriculum even if those techniques work better than the approved ones.
Teachers are not permitted to have students removed from classes even when the student consumes class time that could benefit other children. Teachers are not permitted any control in the classrooms. This lack of authority makes it so difficult that many who would be excellent teachers opt out of the classroom. Some leave to enter better paying jobs. Others leave to get jobs within the system in the hope that they can make a difference. They have as much chance of success as they do of winning a game of badminton using a water balloon for a shuttlecock. Some of the best manage to teach in spite of the system and eventually earn the right to teach, but still don't have control of their classroom.

Simple suggestion is to give the teachers the control over the system. Let them remove disruptive students. (I'm talking about those who constantly disrupt a class day after day.) If they are deliberately disruptive, send them to a school for "class breakers" to allow the rest of the class to learn. If they are accidentally causing problems due to a disability or other non-intentional reason, remove them to a place where they can still see and hear the class and the teacher but where their problems don't impact the class. (an AV link could be used at a low cost compared to the priceless learning time lost to the majority of the students.) My grand daughter is in this category and I left a written request with the school to remove her from the class rather than let her be a distraction. Last year she was removed at least twice a week. This year she has been removed three times. This is in a public school too.

Design the curriculum with the teachers and give them the right to veto any upper level demands for new programs they feel will not be improvements. Require any changes to be known early enough for teachers to understand the changes and make the best use of them.

Fire 80% of the administrative assistants at the union hall and the school administration's main office and hire teaching aides, assistants and special ed teachers.

Trust the teachers. Yes, there are some bad ones out there. They might just be bad because they're fed up fighting a system more interested in politics and power than in education of children. Truly bad ones will stand out instantly.
The truly bad parents will also stand out, but we can't expect teachers to teach the kids and the parents. They can just try to give those kids a love of learning.

Lastly, and I promise it is lastly, do whatever it takes to make students proficient in English. By third grand, at the latest, end double language instruction. A common language will make it easier for a teacher to teach and a student to learn..

It is probably hard to produce any good outcome when these teachers are stuck with ghetto trash and illegal litters that cant speak a word of english.... Take that on top of having no course to disipline these brats! Your product will always only be as good as the materials that you are working with!

It is probably hard to produce any good outcome when these teachers are stuck with ghetto trash and illegal litters that cant speak a word of english.... Take that on top of having no course to disipline these brats!

What poppycock! As a parent of highly successful public school students, it has always been my responsibility to see that my children take advantage of the education presented to them. With my kids, we've had great teachers, good teachers, really bad teachers and teachers with very flawed characters who should not be around children regardless of their professional expertise.

That said, I always accepted that it was MY JOB to monitor the educational progress of my children. If there is a problem,we solved it at as team - the teacher, myself and my child.

If more parents embraced their responsibility toward their children, this discussion would never occur.

Under Bennett, who apparently does not have a clue how to run a school district WELL, teachers do need more money - so they can pay for the stress management sessions working under Bennett must require.

Who do you suppose is responsible for Dr. Leininger knowing how to read and write in the first place?

This criticism coming from a Dr. gave me a laugh.

The same can be said about Dr's. If you just put Doctor in the place of teacher's then I would support the letter writer's assumption that teacher's don't deserve a raise and the poor one's need to be fired and not rewarded.

The medical industry has no oversight.Their are plenty of Dr's out there that should not be practicing,let alone getting paid for their shoddy work.

I'd rather my kid be in a class with a poor teacher than be at the Dr's with a poor Dr., which in my lifelong experience there are far more poor performing Dr.'s than poor performing teacher's.

I can pull my kid out of school and choose another. I can teach my child at home . I can request a different teacher.I can do alot to offset the poor performance of a teacher.

Some might say,Well you can go to another Dr. That is true.I have found though most Dr.'s are smug and think they know it all because they went to medical school.They could care less about their patients.Very few are truly dedicated to their patient.

I have found one after 12 years of searching. In the time that it took me to find a good Dr. my health has declined ,due to the neglect of Dr.'s.

Our healthcare system or lack thereof can be a parrelel to the school system.

We have to pay for something less than we get. We can't get a refund for bad service.
We have to tolerate what they feel is right for us without even knowing us.Both professions are always wanting more money for less service.We have no say in the care or teaching we are supposed to recieve.

I'd rather pay a poor performing teacher triple what a Dr. makes than continueing to see Dr.'s that should not be practicing at all.

A Dr. can complain about teacher's wanting a better living,but a Dr. can make 10 times more money than a teacher and still provide poor medical service,even though to get through medical school they had to have teachers.

Dr. L - Your solution would be possible if students were like machines that rolled off the assembly line under full control of the assemblee (teacher). But what if you worked at a factory where every 7th machine walked away before you could assure its quality; if someone earlier in the process randomly installed software (values) that rendered your work ineffective; if every 6th machine just didn't want to work no matter what steps you took to make it conform to company standards; if the originator of the machine (parent) did nothing to encourage the product to do better. Would you still have the same conversation with your boss? Would you cite extenuating circumstances to your production line quality, or take full responsbility for those items beyond your control? If your boss said no raise because your products were still defective, would you happily go back to work knowing what you were turning out would never be up to standards because the assembly line had too many flaws in- and out- of the factory? You might be the best assembly line worker in the state. But if your product doesn't want to cooperate with your efforts, what really needs to change? I suspect you've never been a teacher or you'd know the answer.

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