Posted on 01/29/2011 7:02:00 AM PST by Kaslin
A new spate of documentaries and media coverage have all centered on the role teachers unions play in blocking necessary change and innovation in public schools. At this point in the national discourse, a majority of Americans are convinced that our education system is in crisis and are looking for someone or something to blame. Unfortunately for effective teachers across America, the finger has been pointed in the wrong direction. It is the teachers unions – the NEA and the AFT – that are largely responsible for a system that is failing far too many of our children, especially those trapped in the inner cities.
It’s no secret that the rise of the teachers unions is aligned with the decline of public schools. For over forty years, unions have collected hundreds of millions of dollars in membership dues each year and used that money to elect friendly politicians and lobby for policies that favor the growth of unionism. Policies that, by the way, do very little to help little Johnny read, write and compute.
One area the unions block at all costs is school choice, the cornerstone of the growing education reform movement. School choice allows parents, regardless of income level or a zip code, to have the ability to choose a school that best suits their child. With school choice in play, children would not have to suffer in silence at the hands of failing schools.
Despite the hope of success for students and empowerment for parents, unions quickly condemn the idea of school choice as an “assault on public education.” School choice oriented options such as tax credits, charter schools, and virtual schools are all seen as threats; threatening enough for the unions to spend millions of dollars fighting them every year.
Why are the teachers unions the largest roadblock to school choice? The answer is simple: greed. School choice would allow teachers more opportunities to teach in environments that are not easily unionized –public charter schools, parochial schools, private schools, and virtual schools. If teachers aren’t paying dues to the union, the union loses money and power.
Furthermore, unions have been able to successfully unionize traditional public schools. Teachers unions have a building representative in nearly every schoolhouse in America who reports to a regional representative, who in turn reports to the state and national levels. It’s an extensive, costly system that took decades to build. So naturally unions are against any reform that threatens their system. The monopolist never wants to lose their monopoly.
This system, however, caters to adults and not to schoolchildren. With school choice options, the system is turned on its head and gives the power back to parents to determine what kind of learning environment is best for their children. How do the teachers unions protect a system that fills their coffers? Fear. Their rhetoric on school choice is classic double-talk and sends mixed messages to their members and the public at large. Careful not to sound too anti-reform, AFT leaders suggests that they support charter schools, and then go on to say that charters “exploit” staff and need to be unionized to “improve academic outcomes.”
NEA literature labels school choice backers as radical zealots, “Religious conservatives push ‘choice’ as a way of shoving children into private schools, and emasculating the effect of NEA.” The truth is school choice is neither left nor right but common sense policy. Leaders in this movement range from Democratic Mayor of Newark Cory Booker to Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner.
The unions are quick to silence those education reformers who work tirelessly to improve the system. Proven leader and former D.C. School Chancellor Michelle Rhee recently outlined school choice policies in her new student-focused organization’s policy agenda. Union leaders issued statements that same day accusing Rhee of fear mongering. Rhee’s “so-called solutions play to people’s fears rather than promote a positive and collaborative agenda for improving America’s public schools,” exhorted AFT President Randi Weingarten.
Reality tells a different story. It is the unions that play on the fear of teachers. The unions work tirelessly in making hard working educators believe they’ll be out of a job with school choice. What teachers need to know is that school choice does not threaten the teaching profession but improves it – creating more professional environments in which to work, flexible schedules, or opportunities to teach in a less bureaucratic setting such as a charter school.
School choice is a positive reform that will help improve public education. Indeed, school choice does not scrap the system we have but enhances it by providing options for student learning. Despite their rhetoric, the special interest of the unions is themselves. It’s time to tune out the unions and implement policies that give all children a shot at academic success.
Teachers are not educating ,,,, rather they are indoctrinating which is most important for their agenda .
First the positive:
Vouchers, tax credits, and privately owned and run charters that are non-unionized and using non-certified teachers can help build the private school infrastructure needed for complete privatization.
School choice can help wean the American public away from the idea that only government can school children and that schooling can only take place in collectivist prison-like settings.
School choice can help break up the collectivist government sports team monopoly that is essentially running collectivist government-paid minor leagues for the professionals. Collectivist government-school sports teams unfortunately create “rah rah” community support for the local collectivist schools.
Negative aspects to government sponsored school choice:
** Vouchers, tax credits, and charters can fall into the same cycle of ever increasing tuition hikes that is seen on our colleges and universities. The government increases the subsidy to colleges and there is an immediate increase in tuition.
** Government paid school choice can lead to government control of the curriculum and policies. We see some of this in the affirmative action and Title IX policies on the college level. In essence the private schools would simply become collectivist government schools.
My conclusion:
I support school choice but it MUST MUST MUST be firmly directed at complete privatization of all schooling with charity paying for the poor.
School choice bump.
Home school bigger bump.
Where is the evidence that collectivist government teachers ever taught any student anything? Really? It's a serious question. How much learning is acquired in the classroom? How much is **entirely** due to the efforts of the parents and the child IN THE HOME? Where are the scientifically controlled studies?
I have asked this question frequently over the years on various political message boards and I have **never** received and answer. One would think that a true “professional” teacher would have those studies immediately available, but apparently they don't.
Anecdotally, I have questioned the parents of academically successful children about their home habits. There is **NO** difference between the study habits of academically successful homeschoolers and institutionalized children. Both spend about the **SAME** amount of time in formal study in the **HOME**.
Also...Both sets of parents of academically successful children ( home and institutionalized) share similar values about acquiring an education, having a regular schedule of meals and rest, controlling TV and electronics, and enriching outside activities.
So?...What would happen if every government school in this nation magically disappeared tomorrow?
Answer: The **same** children who are being educated today would be educated tomorrow.
The only thing collectivist government schools do for education is send home a free curriculum for the parents and children to follow. **ALL** academically children that I have ever met in my lifetime were either homeschooled or afterschooled. ( without exception.)
public school teachers..vilest group in the USA.
The above statement implies that collectivist government schools were OK before the advent of teachers unions...or...That if somehow we got rid of the teachers unions that collectivist government schools would be fixed.
No! no! no!
Our modern system of schooling ( instituted in the mid-1800s to early 1900s) has **ALWAYS** been collectivist, socialist-funded, voting mob and people's commitee controlled ( misnamed “school boards”), government owned and run, and compulsory. Since the early 1900s the setting for this abuse has been mostly in prison-like settings. Since the mid-1950s it has been exclusively in prison-like buildings ( although some rare exceptions may exist.) While at one time it offered up lukewarm, fence sitting, generic Protestantism, today it is utterly GODLESS in its worldview.
Simply by attending children learn to be comfortable with socialism, collectivism, GODLESSNESS, taking money from their neighbor by government force, government prison control and even government and voting mob management of their lives, and soon, even their deaths.
How can that be fixed? Answer: It can't!
Just wait til your local tax-vouncher-funded "private" school tries to fire an openly gay teacher or require the Pledge of Allegiance or recognize Christmas and Easter but not Eid Al-Fitr and Eid Al-Adha.
No, I'm not defending private schools. I'm advocating --- serioously --- the separation of school and state.
What ahout the poor? Especially for the poor.
Learn more:
http://tinyurl.com/separate-school-and-state
http://tinyurl.com/market-education
It can’t be fixed because the University system that “trains” and turns out teachers can’t be fixed. This is were the Leftist indoctrination occurs — this is where the failure of the Education system begins. If I had a small child to raise today, that child would be home schooled. All you mothers and fathers out there who say you can’t afford to do that should really look into your hearts to see if that is true. You delayed having your children. You have a job you can’t/won’t leave. You owe a lot of money for the big house and cars. Your priorities are screwed up, but that’s not your fault - that’s how society has groomed you. Now the State has taken over your most precious child, and there’s nothing you can or will do about it.
If only 1 school district can make the change, once the budget shows on the positive side, the dominos will fall.
We need just one district to throw out the union, change the curriculum and put in a system of rewarding good teachers and getting rid of the bad teachers.
It starts with 1. Our job is to find that district. That’s how the commies work. Find the opening and exploit it.
Public school education has become a tool for social engineering, another form of redistribution and social justice. The plan is to increase graduation rates among the minorities by making the senior year optional ( in some states, it’s the junior and senior years) and hand out diplomas to kids at 15 or 16, putting them directly into union apprenticeships.
While certainly an improvement, the schools will still be collectivist, socialist-funded, voting mob supervised by the comrade people's committees ( mis-named "school boards"), GODLESS ( or offering a lukewarm and generic Protestantism), government owned and managed, and prison-like.
Simply by attending children learn that government has enormous power to take money from their neighbor for social programs. If the government can threaten a neighbor with armed police action just for tution-free schools, why not a thousand other "free" things?
Children, simply by attending, learn to be comfortable with collectivism, mob rule over their very thoughts, government ownership and management of their lives ( and now even death). And...They learn to be compliant prisoners.
...change the curriculum and put in a system of rewarding good teachers and getting rid of the bad teachers.
We need a district that will privatize all government K-12 schooling, fund all schooling through tax credits, and then immediately and permanently abolish the school board. The county managers then need to gradually decrease property taxes and increase the amounts paid by the parents for the child's tuition. Eventually, parents would pay the full cost of their child's education and charity would pay for the poor.
By the way...My grandson will be attending a Christian school in Kansas. The tuition is $3,000. That is **less** than babysitting. It is amazing that parents who can afford to pay for day care for their pre-schoolers suddenly can't afford to pay private school tuition.
Find the opening and exploit it.
Having collectivist, socialist-funded, government owned and run schools, supervised by comrade people's committees ( misnamed "school boards") was all the "opening" the commies needed.
Please remember that compulsory socialist-funded government schools were a progressive idea from the very beginning in the mid-1800s from early 1900s. The curriculum and teacher training, has **always** been under the control of the nation's progressives, socialists, and communists. There is NO possible way these "schools" can be fixed.
For all the reasons that you stated, I too support complete separation of school and state, and have serious problems with vouchers, tax credits, and charters.
If there are vouchers, tax credits, or charters they must be temporary measures only merely to help build up the private sector that will wean parents off government school welfare.
The link goes to comments—not the article.
Here is my suggestion that does not involve government in any way:
Conservatives should form **temporary** educational foundations that would award grants to conservative teachers. The conservative teachers would open one room schools, tutoring centers, mini-schools, or dame schools in their homes. The foundations would test the students, approve the curriculum, and certify the teacher. The tuition to the student would be tuition-free.
The **temporary** educational foundations would organize community-wide science labs, sports, theater, dance, and music for their students. ( This would break the monopoly that government has now on minor league or “farm team” sports).
The foundations would organize parents to lobby for lower property, sales, and income taxes, and for the complete shut down of all government K-12 schooling.
I believe that the foundations should be temporary because, history has shown that conservative philanthropies eventually become communist dominated.
The foundations should focus their efforts in limited areas first so that they can completely undermine government schooling one county at a time. Sam Walton made the mistake of spreading his private voucher too thinly over too many areas, therefore, the full effect of having parents and children swarm to the private alternative and completely shutting down entire government schools was never fully realized.
As government schools shut down, the private educational foundations would expect parents to take on the full cost of educating their own children. Charity would help pay for the poorest.
The prison-like Prussian system should be abandoned. It is expensive and fraught with zoning issues. A dame school in a teacher's home should have no more zoning or health issues than any current day care situation and would greatly reduce the cost of maintaining buildings. Also...Prison-like schools teach children to be compliant little prisoners.
Our Founding Fathers wanted an educated citizenry. They likely had in mind their **own** educational experiences: Homeschooling, private tutoring, dame schools, one room schools organized by parents, very small home-based academies, apprenticeships, and college for the brightest ( who could afford it) when in their early teens.
Good ideas. You put a lot of thought into this.
Actually, I had an excellent public school education, better than kids, today, get in college, including four years of Latin and two of French.
When I was in eighth grade I was assigned a 20 page paper on the effect of the Monroe Doctrine on the US foreign policy during the pre-Civil War period. The paper had to be typed, include 10 different types of foot notes, an appendix and bibliography.
As a freshman in college we were required to take a philosophy of religion class which covered everything from Angels dancing on the head of a pin to Bonhoeffer, Tillich and Niebuhr. This was a 101 course.
Where I live in WA state, most of my neighbors all home school. There must be thirty kids being home schooled near by, maybe more. One family are both teachers, the husband works for the school district and the mother stays home to teach their own kids and her sister-in-laws kids. The home schooling parents have the help of a neighbor who is a retired bio-chemistry professor from Purdue, who writes text books.
The reasons for home schooling are more than just conservative social concerns. The schools just aren’t doing the job. WA state has what is termed, outcome based education. They describe that as educating student for the jobs that are available, not for jobs that they are interested in performing. The elitist social planners believe that an over educated populace is an unhappy populace, so they pick and choose the students who will be in the “Aiming High” sections and the rest get, “Aim for Mediocrity.”
What outcome based education really means is an equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity. It’s tool for redistribution of wealth.
So?...Where are the controlled studies showing exactly where learning is acquired? Home? Classroom?
How much is absorbed at home?
How much knowledge is accumulated in the classroom?
Are government schools merely sending home a curriculum, administering tests, and grading assignments?
Is the real work of learning being done by the parents and the student in the home?
I would think that so-called professional “educators” would have determined the answers to these questions many decades ago. They would have **if** they were seriously interested in the child.
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