Public and private organizations are into a phase of creative disassembly where reinvention and adjustments are constant. Hundreds of thousands of jobs are being shed by Chevron, NUMMI, Wells Fargo Bank, HP, Bechtel, Starbucks, etc., as well as the state, counties and cities.

Even solid world-class institutions like the University of California Berkeley are firing staff, faculty and part-time lecturers. Estimates are that the state of California may jettison 47,000 positions.

Yet many employees, professionals and faculty cling to old assumptions about one of the most critical relationship of all: the implied, unwritten contract between employer and employee.

Until recently, loyalty was the cornerstone of that relationship. Employers promised job security and a steady progress up the hierarchy in return for employees fitting in, performing in prescribed ways and sticking around.

Longevity was a sign of employeer-employee relations; turnover was a sign of dysfunction. None of these assumptions apply today. Organizations can no longer guarantee employment and careers, even if they want to.

Organizations that paralyzed themselves with an attachment to “success brings success” rather than “success brings failure” are now forced to break the implied contract with employees — a contract nurtured by management that the future can be controlled.

Jettisoned employees are finding that the hard-won knowledge,

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skills and capabilities earned while being loyal are no longer valuable in the employment marketplace.

What kind of a contract can employers and employees make with each other? The central idea is both simple and powerful: the job or position is a shared situation.

Employers and employees face market and financial conditions together, and the longevity of the partnership depends on how well the for-profit or not-for-profit meets the needs of customers and constituencies.

Neither employer nor employee has a future obligation to the other. Organizations train people. Employees develop the kind of security they really need — skills, knowledge and capabilities that enhance future employability.

The partnership can be dissolved without either party considering the other a traitor. Loyalty is dead — so get used to it.

Milan Moravec is a consultant and a resident of Walnut Creek.

Not to mention comfy chairs for teachers (those who wanted them, at least), which happened at my school. But, even assuming that everything you say is true, what is your solution? To do nothing?

And, how can you make a blanket statement like, “specialists and extra money will not cure these ills”? If a new teacher wants to learn how to improve student writing or thinking or whatever, the District has people (often professors at local universities) who can say, “Well, here is what the research says.” If a kid walks up to me, as one did this year, and says, “Mr. Danning, I’m thinking of getting a mastectomy; I hate my breasts,” the school pays people to whom I can refer her (because I am certainly not competent to help her).

1. more stringent standards(due to NCLB).

2. less support at home(homelessness, divorce,general instability).

3. social promotion, this was a big mistake we will continue to pay for.

4. kids are dependent on electronic gadgets for entertainment, and study aids that they either can’t or don’t want to think on their feet.

5. Substandard teachers who never taught kids mastery of the core basics early on, and kids never do catch up and continue to struggle. That’s why I say bad teachers can do so much damage.

Specialists and extra money will not cure these ills(it only makes sure that adults are taken care of). Home support and stability are a much bigger factor than those things. Studies say we(USA) are on par with other nations K-3, but we are losing our children after that point. That could be that we don’t see the disparity until later on, I don’t know. The truth is we do have enough money to fund education properly, but there are many unnecessary expenditures that take away resources we are just so used to having them that we think they are necessary. I am sure you have heard all the stories about cappuccino machines, employees surfing the net on taxpayer time, well it has happened frequently over the last 5-10 years and every penny of that takes away from students, and it is a crime.

Right, that’s my point. Those are individual schools, not entire, 900-school districts. Hardly evidence that LAUSD is faking test data for every subgroup.

So, again, the only evidence we have in front of us is that, in LAUSD, increased downtown bureaucracy is correlated with higher test scores for all subgroups.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/education/11cheat.html

http://www.ajc.com/opinion/accountability-begins-at-top-560533.html

I give up. You say that LAUSD spends $23K per kid, yet this says they spend $11K http://www.ed-data.k12.ca.us/Navigation/fsTwoPanel.asp?bottom=/profile.asp%3Flevel%3D06%26reportNumber%3D16

You say that “the subgroup numbers are being played with,” but you cite no evidence for that. You do realise, don’t you, that state testing is handled at school sites, and that “playing with” the subgroup numbers in LAUSD would require altering test scores of a hundred thousand kids at 800 school sites. If the LAUSD bureaucracy is organized enough to pull that off, then they truly are model of efficiency, are they not?

Anyway, it you aren’t going to offer evidence for your assertions, there is nothing further to discuss.

http://www.schoolfinancecenter.org/data.php?action=summary&cds=01612590000000&type=roi&year=2008

Believe it or not, I, too, am a taxpayer. And, I have never in any of my posts argued that the amount of money spend on administration is the correct amount; rather, I have challenged your unsupported assumption that it is too high. For all I know, students would be better off if we spend less downtown, and as far as you know, they would be better off if we spent more downtown.

Specifically, i have tried to call attention to your rather slipshod use of evidence. For example, you keep saying things like, “there are no classes with less than 25 students,” but that is not the issue — “class size” is not the same thing as “teacher-student ratio” because many “teachers” are not in regular classes – eg: special ed teachers. Your original point was that “too much money is being spent on bureacracy,” and was supported by totally inaccurate estimates of how many teachers (let alone other adults) are employed at school sites.

Finally, your claim that LAUSD and OUSD’s improvement “would never happen without the kids in the hills and their high scores anyway” is manifestly wrong, because: 1) as Nextset has pointed out many times, those kids dont go to LAUSD schools; and 2) both of those districts — according to the site you referenced — have shown improvement for ALL subgroups, including “socio-economically disadvantaged” and “English learners,” neither of which are found in any numbers in hill schools.

But you’re right — you won’t convince me and I won’t convince you. You won’t convince me because you are unwilling or unable to marshal actual evidence in support of your arguments, and I won’t convince you because you don’t seem remotely interested in what is best for students, but rather seem interested only in saving taxpayers a buck (or, more accurately, a dime), or in remedying what you see as the horrible injustice in some people having greater job security than you do.