The ironic thing is that I meet a lot of kids of public school teachers in the private schools ("I know what those schools are like! I work there!).
That is a new one to me - it is indeed ironic that even the people working in CA public schools do not trust their schools to do right by their kids. Everyone seems to agree that public schools need to improve. They also agree that there are too many tenured teachers who are "chronically ineffective". The lawsuit was looking to highlight how toxic the unionization of tenured teachers was and instead they managed to convince the judge that children's rights were being violated.
Blackcat, if we were to write a job description of a typical tenured PS teacher in my school district, it would look like this - able to walk off the job at 3:45 pm, work for 9-10 months in a year, work in a high performing district where the parents ensure that their kids perform, get a 6 figure salary, retire and reap a pension based on the final salary in 6 figures, lobby union to allocate monster share of budget to pension fund and then ask parents for $$$ for classroom supplies, not be held responsible for slacking, "don't care" attitude to customers, lazy, constantly asking for free labor from parents, watching netflix movies with kids as a "treat", taking time off constantly, not having to teach on furlough days, not much going on during "early dismissal days" either, no need to differentiate instruction for gifted kids because there is no GATE program, write detailed notes to parents when unchallenged kids act out in frustration, write even more detailed notes in the progress report cards on how the bored kids behave, if all this is too tiring, then go back and take more vacation time off.
PS: my friend teaches 1st grade in an underprivileged community in Ventura county - she fights every day to bring learning and growth and a better life for the kids in her class whose first language is not english. She spends her time going to evening college to learn their language so that she can be a better teacher to them. She also pays for classroom supplies out of her pocket and goes in on weekends to set up her classroom projects and leads afterschool group activities etc. These teachers are exceptions. I hardly see any such teacher in my school district.
