Idaho teachers to lose certification if they challenge Luna

[jmowreader]

http://www.spokesman.com/blogs/boise/2011/may/16/luna-teachers-tussle-over-referendum-campaign-political-activity-ethics/

(I would have posted a link to my own newspaper but we didn't put this story on the website today, sorry...)

Bringing you up to date: Idaho recently passed an educational deform bill very similar to the Wisconsin bill that's got everyone in an uproar here. One of the more entertaining features of the bill calls for the state to equip each 9th grader with a laptop, which would follow the student through his or her high school years, and to fire 770 teachers to pay for it. This is Idaho, kids; we can't even raise the Cigarette Tax, for God's sake. Some of Superintendent Luna's best campaign donors are companies that make courseware. So...there at least appears to be a quid pro quo going on, and there's a recall campaign afoot.

Today, every newspaper in the state is carrying an AP article (you can read it at the link above) that says if a teacher decides to join in the campaign to recall this maniac, the state will revoke the teacher's credentials and he or she will never teach again.

It's a good thing you don't need much education to wash boats for the Hagadone Corporation, because that's the kind of people Luna wants this state's educational system to turn out.

[cayanne]

1. I've been working to get referendums on the ballot

and repeal his idiotic education bills. I doubt we will get enough signatures to recall him, he was never an educator. I have friends who are teachers and are working on the petitions on their own time. One is in trouble and has had her computer at work subpoenaed.

Luna and the majority of Rebublicans in state office are mean spirited, sorta like Scott Walker and the Fitzgerald brothers in Wisconsin.

[eppur_se_muova]

2. IDIOTS -- give each child a thumb drive. They don't need their own laptops.

Spend the money on whatever desktops they need, and get twice the bang for the buck.

[jmowreader]

3. You don't understand! This isn't about bang-for-the-buck

This is about spending enough money to employ 770 teachers on something besides teacher salaries. When the "Students Come First" deform package was first unveiled, it specifically called for terminating exactly 770 teachers and requiring every high schooler in the state to take online classes to graduate. The plan also called for increasing class sizes, eliminating tenure for new teachers, and so on and so forth.

Then again, this is Idaho, land of whacked out technology decisions. My mother is a retired librarian. A few years before she retired, the state library board decided to embrace e-books in a huge way: they were going to remove every book from every library in the state and replace them all with e-book readers. This was years before there were usable e-book readers. Hell, this was years before amazon existed at all.

[eppur_se_muova]

4. Silly me. Let's make that diamond-encrusted laptops then.

Like asbestos cigarettes, it gets you where you're going anyway, only faster.

[JoeyTrib]

5. Who is making these tech decisions, even before the products exist?

Odd to plan to remove books from libraries.

Remember that Palin's first big move as mayor of Wassila Alaska was to go after the library. It's a real attack on public information not controlled by a commercial provider.

[Snoutport]

8. I know that librarian...she was a really awesome lady!

She would hold reading contests for kids who read the most books over the summer. I was the very proud winner in 1977. I read almost the entire Hardy Boys series.

[proud2BlibKansan]

6. WTF

That's unconstitutional.

[eridani]

7. And to think that Frank Church used to be their senator

Wha hoppen?

[jmowreader]

9. Wha hoppen is out-of-state Repukes decided to use our state as a laboratory

Idaho has always been a Republican state--it was controlled for a very long time by the Mormon Church. We had some very good Democrats, though--Frank Church and Larry LaRocco at the national level, and there were some really good state-level Democrats. In 1979, the Republicans decided Idaho was theirs and ran Steve Symms against Frank Church.

The strange thing is, Idaho was far better off with Democrats in charge but no one remembers that.

[eridani]

10. Could a Dem run a campaign on how it used to be better and win?

Or is that just wishful thinking?

[Posteritatis]

11. Well that certainly seems spectacularly unconstitutional. (nt)