Posted on 03/22/2010 3:30:43 AM PDT by Kaslin
Speaking a couple years ago about technology and education, Apple CEO and founder Steve Jobs said that technology wouldn't matter as long as you can't fire teachers.
"I believe that what is wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way," he said.
Jobs likened schools to running a small business that he said could never succeed if you can't hire and fire.
Reasonable? I think so.
Would anyone question that there is no single thing more critical to a nation's future than educating its children?
Yet, consider that 88 percent of our children get K-12 education in public schools and that 70 percent of the teachers in these schools have union protected jobs.
Gallup has been polling public opinion about unions since the 1930's. Last year, for the first time, less than half (48 percent) of those surveyed approved of unions. Fifty one percent said unions "mostly hurt" the U.S. economy and 39 percent said they "mostly help."
The percentage of the nation's private sector work force that belongs to a union has dropped precipitously. In the 1950's, over 30 percent belonged to unions. Today it's a little over seven percent.
But in our public schools, the direction is completely opposite. In 1960, about 35 percent of public school teachers belonged to unions and today it's twice that at 70 percent.
Is it not counterintuitive that most Americans feel unions hurt us, that we allow increasingly fewer goods and services produced in our private sector to be controlled by unions, but we turn increasingly more of our most precious commodity -- our children and their education -- over to a union-controlled workforce?
In an article in the latest edition of Cato Journal, Andrew Coulson notes that, on average, compensation of public school teachers is about 42 percent higher than their counterparts teaching in non-unionized private schools. Yet, according to Coulson, research shows that private schools consistently outperform public schools.
He attributes the higher average wages of public school teachers less to union collective bargaining and more to the political clout of unions to maintain the public school monopoly over K-12 education.
Over 95 percent of the political contributions of the two national teachers' unions -- the NEA and AFT --- go to Democrats or to the Democrat Party. Their $56 million in political contributions since 1989 equals that of "Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Lockheed Martin, and the National Rifle Association combined."
The main beneficiaries of education alternatives are minority children. Yet, at the state level, unions provide a unified lobbying front to block such initiatives.
A recent Wall Street Journal op-ed reported on the glowing success of charter schools in Harlem. "Nationwide the average black 12th grader reads at the level of a white eighth grader. Yet, Harlem charter students ....are outperforming their white peers in wealthy suburbs."
Yet, in 2009 the New York teachers union successfully lobbied the state legislature to freeze charter school spending and now is pushing to limit penetration of charters in school districts.
Kids in Los Angeles' public schools are overwhelming Hispanic and black. According to the Los Angeles Times, "just 39 percent of L.A.'s fourth-graders are even basically literate." Yet, the Times attributed union lobbying to undermining a recent attempt by the L.A. school board to open failing schools to non-unionized charters.
Similarly, unions played a major role in recently killing the successful private school scholarship program in Washington, DC.
But there's a significant and promising sign that blacks are beginning to fight back.
Rev. James Meeks, founder and senior pastor of the largest black church in Illinois, who is also a Democrat state senator, is taking on the unions. He has introduced a bill opening the door for vouchers for kids in Chicago's public schools.
Doesn’t matter if these poor children succeed or not
Only that their teachers all get huge union pay
benefits
retirement
and that the sheeple vote Demoncratic
Your sentiment is valid but the truth is worse. It does matter to the unions whether or not the kids succeed - they want them pass through the system while learning as little as possible. Is that success? The unions would say yes. A dumbed-down America is easier to fool and control that one of intelligent well informed citizens.
The unions have always been controlled by the Left and now the Democrat Party is. They work hand in glove for the destruction of America.
The assault on our lives is at full tilt, and it's on such a huge scale that the most we can do is pretty much as effective as peeing against a wave. If we don't find a way to identify the damage that's doing done, and been done, and come up with a way to counter it, we are done for as the world's greatest country. It is so insidious and widespread that nothing short of a revolution will begin to turn the tide of the waves we're peeing into now.
Nothing I've heard so far sounds like it will do the job. A couple of the ideas could be used to our benefit, but overall the problem is so big and so ingrained that something new and bold is needed. Obviously, they don't pay attention to rallies and visits and emails and phone calls, and personal confrontation at town hall meetings. They WILL listen to having their selfish, greedy, out-of-touch, butts kicked out of office. But this Nov. is almost certainly our last chance. They have managed to dumb-down enough of the voters that we are at critical mass for them being unbeatable. And for those who've not been dumbed-down to the point of being unable to cast an informed vote, they've made others moochers not producers. It's a perfect storm.
the teachers union is there to keep terrible teachers employed...however this statement is idiotic Yet, according to Coulson, research shows that private schools consistently outperform public schools.” Of course they can outperform...they don’t have to take everybody in. In fact private schools are extremely selective.
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