The following piece appeared in the Washington Times. No further commentary is needed.
Improving public schools
TODAY'S COLUMNIST
By David White
March 12, 2007
Steve Jobs, the co-founder and CEO of Apple, just lost any friends he had in the executive offices of the nation's teacher unions. Speaking recently at an education reform conference in Austin, Mr. Jobs blamed the unionization of America's public schools for much of what's wrong with today's public education system.
"What kind of person could you get to run a small business," he asked, comparing school principals to CEOs, "if you told them that when they came in they couldn't get rid of people that they thought weren't any good?" Unfortunately for America's schoolchildren, Mr. Jobs' criticisms are just scraping the surface.
Across America, there are more than 3 million public-school teachers. Organized through the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers -- the nation's two largest labor unions -- they wield enormous political influence and aren't afraid to use it. Much of this power comes through the dues that union leaders deduct from teachers' paychecks, supposedly to improve the working conditions of the teachers they represent. In California, for example, the state teachers' association represents 340,000 workers and collects more than $150 million each year in mandatory dues.
But in reality, the unions often promote an agenda that doesn't reflect the interests of their members. Performance-based pay for teachers is a prime example of how the unions work directly against their members' own best interests. In inner-city schools, the best teachers often leave after just a year or two for better salaries, nicer neighborhoods and less stressful work. Merit pay, however, makes it possible for these schools to retain effective teachers by paying them more. But the unions usually fight tooth and nail against such measures.
By standing against proven reform, the union agenda also harms the nation's schoolchildren.
Using member dues, unions regularly lobby against efforts to allow students trapped in underperforming schools to transfer to better schools by using vouchers. Never mind the fact that study after study has demonstrated that voucher systems boost student achievement in both public and private schools, regardless of socioeconomic background.
Further, when using their collective-bargaining powers, teacher-union leaders often rely on tough, confrontational tactics to win concessions from local school boards. Across the country, they've negotiated generous taxpayer subsidies and other unfair benefits.
In cities like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Philadelphia, a teacher who decides against joining the local union is required by contract to pay a fee to that union.
Most large school districts also offer paid leave for teachers to conduct union business. For example, San Diego's contract gives union members an "unlimited number of workdays per fiscal year of leave to use for association business." And in Providence, teachers selected by their union to serve as delegates to any AFL-CIO meeting are eligible for five paid days of leave. This places a double cost burden on schools. In addition to paying the absent teachers their full salary, many districts are also responsible for finding and paying substitute teachers.
Shockingly, in some cities, teachers on paid leave can be hired as substitute teachers without terminating their leave. In other words, a teacher could take time off but continue working as a substitute teacher collecting two paychecks, at the same time, from the same school. In many districts, schools must give unions free use of equipment like copy machines, telephones and computers. Some districts are even contractually obligated to provide union presidents with free office space and time at faculty meetings.
Further, if city and state governments simply eliminated the taxpayer subsidies that are being used to support union activities each year, they could channel that money back to providing a high-quality education to every student, using the funds to raise teacher pay to attract the best and brightest.
Steve Jobs has started an important conversation about the impact of America's teachers unions. Those who seek to improve the quality of our nation's public schools -- parents, teachers and local school-board members -- would be wise to take part.
David White is an adjunct scholar at the Lexington Institute.
Showing posts with label Teachers' unions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Teachers' unions. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Teachers Unions Behind Group To Take Away School Choice From Utahns.
If you are not a regular reader of the Education Intelligence Agency you should be. This is some of the great stuff you are missing.
Utahns for Public Schools = NEA UniServ. With the passage of a statewide voucher program into law in Utah, opponents have decided to gather signatures for a referendum that would first suspend, then overturn the law. The main group is working under the banner Utahns for Public Schools. An alert EIA reader noticed something unusual about the organization. Upon deeper investigation, the roots of Utahns for Public Schools are beginning to show.
On its website, the coalition describes itself as "a group of parents, teachers, and others interested in the quality of education provided to Utah children." This sounds a lot better to the general public and the press than "a group of employees and officers of the Utah Education Association and the Utah PTA."
The organization lists 128 names as county contacts for people interested in signing or distributing the petition against the voucher law. The 128 names are of 50 individuals, almost all of whom can be identified by very specific job titles.
Of the 50 people, 13 are UniServ directors employed by the Utah Education Association, whose pay is subsidized by grants from the National Education Association. Another 12 contacts are elected officers or representatives of the Utah Education Association and its local affiliates, and another 14 contacts are regional directors of the Utah PTA. The jobs of the other 11 contacts could not be immediately determined.
Quote of the Week. "A 4% increase in teachers across the state is not particularly large, even amidst declining student enrollment." – Vermont-NEA Angelo J. Dorta. (March 2007 Vermont-NEA Today)
The Michigan Teacher Glut
"There are thousands and thousands of teachers without job opportunities in Michigan," says Michigan State Superintendent of Public Instruction Mike Flanagan.
Except when it comes to applying for federal supplemental loans for critical teacher shortage areas. Then the state of Michigan has a long, long list of openings for teachers.
Or is it indeed a glut? They are turning away candidates at the teacher colleges in Ontario, Canada, and part of the reason is the oversupply of teachers from "border schools" - that is, teacher colleges in Buffalo and other American cities.
"It's simple supply and demand," said a Canadian official.
Not so simple for some.
For more great information from the Education Intelligence Agency click here.
Utahns for Public Schools = NEA UniServ. With the passage of a statewide voucher program into law in Utah, opponents have decided to gather signatures for a referendum that would first suspend, then overturn the law. The main group is working under the banner Utahns for Public Schools. An alert EIA reader noticed something unusual about the organization. Upon deeper investigation, the roots of Utahns for Public Schools are beginning to show.
On its website, the coalition describes itself as "a group of parents, teachers, and others interested in the quality of education provided to Utah children." This sounds a lot better to the general public and the press than "a group of employees and officers of the Utah Education Association and the Utah PTA."
The organization lists 128 names as county contacts for people interested in signing or distributing the petition against the voucher law. The 128 names are of 50 individuals, almost all of whom can be identified by very specific job titles.
Of the 50 people, 13 are UniServ directors employed by the Utah Education Association, whose pay is subsidized by grants from the National Education Association. Another 12 contacts are elected officers or representatives of the Utah Education Association and its local affiliates, and another 14 contacts are regional directors of the Utah PTA. The jobs of the other 11 contacts could not be immediately determined.
Quote of the Week. "A 4% increase in teachers across the state is not particularly large, even amidst declining student enrollment." – Vermont-NEA Angelo J. Dorta. (March 2007 Vermont-NEA Today)
The Michigan Teacher Glut
"There are thousands and thousands of teachers without job opportunities in Michigan," says Michigan State Superintendent of Public Instruction Mike Flanagan.
Except when it comes to applying for federal supplemental loans for critical teacher shortage areas. Then the state of Michigan has a long, long list of openings for teachers.
Or is it indeed a glut? They are turning away candidates at the teacher colleges in Ontario, Canada, and part of the reason is the oversupply of teachers from "border schools" - that is, teacher colleges in Buffalo and other American cities.
"It's simple supply and demand," said a Canadian official.
Not so simple for some.
For more great information from the Education Intelligence Agency click here.
Friday, March 09, 2007
Houston Teachers Asked to Return Bonuses After School District Overpayed Them
The following story appeared on Foxnews.com
Houston Teachers Asked to Return Bonuses After School District Overpayed Them
Friday , March 09, 2007
The school district that runs the nation's largest merit pay program gave oversized bonuses to nearly 100 teachers and is asking them to give it back. The president of Houston's largest teachers' union is telling members not to return the overpayments, which range from $62.50 to $2,790.
A total of almost $75,000 was overpaid because a computer program mistakenly calculated the bonuses of part-time personnel as if they were full-time employees, according to the Houston Independent School District. Less than 1 percent of teachers were affected, the district said.
Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, said the district can't force the 99 teachers to sign forms authorizing it to deduct the money from their paychecks, and promised legal action if it attempts to do so.
"If it's the district's error, then the district should bear the loss," she said.
District spokesman Terry Abbott, however, said the money must be repaid.
The union opposes the merit system unanimously approved by the school board last year. The district doled out $14 million to almost 8,000 teachers two months ago, but distributed another $1 million after officials realized several hundred teachers had been overlooked.
Salaries for full-time teachers in the district range from about $40,000 to nearly $68,000.
Raise your hand if you think that the school should underpay the next paycheck. Do you think the union will just sit back and say it was an error you do not have to pay us more? When will the greed of the unions and teachers end?
Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers said "If it's the district's error, then the district should bear the loss." Nice job screwing the taxpayers Gayle.
Houston Teachers Asked to Return Bonuses After School District Overpayed Them
Friday , March 09, 2007
The school district that runs the nation's largest merit pay program gave oversized bonuses to nearly 100 teachers and is asking them to give it back. The president of Houston's largest teachers' union is telling members not to return the overpayments, which range from $62.50 to $2,790.
A total of almost $75,000 was overpaid because a computer program mistakenly calculated the bonuses of part-time personnel as if they were full-time employees, according to the Houston Independent School District. Less than 1 percent of teachers were affected, the district said.
Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, said the district can't force the 99 teachers to sign forms authorizing it to deduct the money from their paychecks, and promised legal action if it attempts to do so.
"If it's the district's error, then the district should bear the loss," she said.
District spokesman Terry Abbott, however, said the money must be repaid.
The union opposes the merit system unanimously approved by the school board last year. The district doled out $14 million to almost 8,000 teachers two months ago, but distributed another $1 million after officials realized several hundred teachers had been overlooked.
Salaries for full-time teachers in the district range from about $40,000 to nearly $68,000.
Raise your hand if you think that the school should underpay the next paycheck. Do you think the union will just sit back and say it was an error you do not have to pay us more? When will the greed of the unions and teachers end?
Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers said "If it's the district's error, then the district should bear the loss." Nice job screwing the taxpayers Gayle.
Thursday, March 01, 2007
A+ Illinois $500,000 from Gates to Ram HB 750 down your throats.
In a recent news release from A+ Illinois we learned that the Gates Foundation gave the "lobbying group" for the teachers' unions and public education monopoly, $500,000. Starting March 1st A+ Illinois will be using this money to encourage you and legislators to increase income taxes and business taxes for the "funding" problem in our public schools. It is not a funding problem it is a spending problem.
Pete Speer sent the following message to Mr. Gates.
Dear Mr. Gates:
I have just learned that the Gates Foundation has provided a $500,000 Grant to A+ Illinois.in its efforts to lobby legislators to increase Illinois school funding.
Regretfully, A+ Illinois does not have the same objectives as has been excellently presented in public speeches by Mr. Gates. Perhaps I have misread what I thought to be his clear train of logic.
The money from the tax increase which A+ Illinois is supporting is for two purposes. Part would go to increase funding for Illinois public schools without requiring reform. Part would go to increase taxes generally.
A small group of us in Illinois follow school funding closely. The State, according to the NEA, in combined state and local funding ranks 11th in the nation. However, it is the quality of the education output which concerns us.
In our view, the box that is Public Education is broken. What is clearly lacking is Education Value -- that which can be provided only by teachers with Subject Matter Mastery, a love of the subject and an affection for their students. The teachers in Illinois by this standard are underqualified. They are rewarded on a grid system of pay with longevity increases and additional increases for additional coursework. Of the graduate degrees held by Illinois High School teachers a large majority are not in the subject matter area they are teaching
Entry into the teaching force is tightly controlled by the Schools of Education who demand, we think unreasonably, multiple semesters of education theory and practice -- even of those who have had teaching experience in the military and wish to provide upon retirement continued public service. The environment is a closed shop, much like the industrial unions of the 1940s.
Union control over local Districts is absolute. It remains the largest source of contributions for a single political party. While Charter Schools are permitted in a limited fashion, only the political muscle of Chicago's Mayor has forced a single Charter School district through. The remainder of the state has not. The teachers unions and the administrators have advised Districts to opt out of the No Child Left Behind program, because of whatever small amount of rigor which it imposed. That would, of course, reveal the shortcomings to the public.
The "standards" agency -- the Illinois State Board of Education -- this last year has dumbed down the standardized tests, normed up the results and lowered the passing grade on subject matter competency for teacher certification. Once again, underqualified performance has been hidden behind inflated test scores...and grades.
Mr. Gates has spoken about the reform of the school system. The website www.wheresthemath.com deals with the math area and has a good short video by a professor in your state.
When the nadir of American car quality was reached in the 1960s, foreign competition entered the market and both amenities and qualities were increased across the board. We believe that this applies, not only to Illinois schools but across the nation. It is time for Competitive Competition in the Education field. The solution is simple, the cost would probably be less than the present cost of public education:
After accounting for special education needs vest the parents, on behalf of each child, with an equal amount of funding now going to Education Fund of each District. Funds would accrue from Federal, State and local resources. Let them choose from any accredited school -- in District or out. This would include the present District, a charter school, any accredited private school , and even a parochial school or a religious school, provided that the school's curriculum did not have religious courses during normal time.
This does two things. It empowers the family -- the building block of the Republic. It involves the parents in school selection and can remotivate them.
We are moving through a period during which early school leavers of the past, who had been ill served both at home and in the school, no longer believe that Education is an economic and a social good. Combined with a continuing program of GED equivalent education as a condition of welfare, Competitive Choice offers a way to form families to rejoin society.
In the case at hand, however, I am saddened to report that your grant will not reform schools, merely maintain the status quo.
Respectfully,
Paul D. (Pete) Speer, Jr.
Pete Speer sent the following message to Mr. Gates.
Dear Mr. Gates:
I have just learned that the Gates Foundation has provided a $500,000 Grant to A+ Illinois.in its efforts to lobby legislators to increase Illinois school funding.
Regretfully, A+ Illinois does not have the same objectives as has been excellently presented in public speeches by Mr. Gates. Perhaps I have misread what I thought to be his clear train of logic.
The money from the tax increase which A+ Illinois is supporting is for two purposes. Part would go to increase funding for Illinois public schools without requiring reform. Part would go to increase taxes generally.
A small group of us in Illinois follow school funding closely. The State, according to the NEA, in combined state and local funding ranks 11th in the nation. However, it is the quality of the education output which concerns us.
In our view, the box that is Public Education is broken. What is clearly lacking is Education Value -- that which can be provided only by teachers with Subject Matter Mastery, a love of the subject and an affection for their students. The teachers in Illinois by this standard are underqualified. They are rewarded on a grid system of pay with longevity increases and additional increases for additional coursework. Of the graduate degrees held by Illinois High School teachers a large majority are not in the subject matter area they are teaching
Entry into the teaching force is tightly controlled by the Schools of Education who demand, we think unreasonably, multiple semesters of education theory and practice -- even of those who have had teaching experience in the military and wish to provide upon retirement continued public service. The environment is a closed shop, much like the industrial unions of the 1940s.
Union control over local Districts is absolute. It remains the largest source of contributions for a single political party. While Charter Schools are permitted in a limited fashion, only the political muscle of Chicago's Mayor has forced a single Charter School district through. The remainder of the state has not. The teachers unions and the administrators have advised Districts to opt out of the No Child Left Behind program, because of whatever small amount of rigor which it imposed. That would, of course, reveal the shortcomings to the public.
The "standards" agency -- the Illinois State Board of Education -- this last year has dumbed down the standardized tests, normed up the results and lowered the passing grade on subject matter competency for teacher certification. Once again, underqualified performance has been hidden behind inflated test scores...and grades.
Mr. Gates has spoken about the reform of the school system. The website www.wheresthemath.com deals with the math area and has a good short video by a professor in your state.
When the nadir of American car quality was reached in the 1960s, foreign competition entered the market and both amenities and qualities were increased across the board. We believe that this applies, not only to Illinois schools but across the nation. It is time for Competitive Competition in the Education field. The solution is simple, the cost would probably be less than the present cost of public education:
After accounting for special education needs vest the parents, on behalf of each child, with an equal amount of funding now going to Education Fund of each District. Funds would accrue from Federal, State and local resources. Let them choose from any accredited school -- in District or out. This would include the present District, a charter school, any accredited private school , and even a parochial school or a religious school, provided that the school's curriculum did not have religious courses during normal time.
This does two things. It empowers the family -- the building block of the Republic. It involves the parents in school selection and can remotivate them.
We are moving through a period during which early school leavers of the past, who had been ill served both at home and in the school, no longer believe that Education is an economic and a social good. Combined with a continuing program of GED equivalent education as a condition of welfare, Competitive Choice offers a way to form families to rejoin society.
In the case at hand, however, I am saddened to report that your grant will not reform schools, merely maintain the status quo.
Respectfully,
Paul D. (Pete) Speer, Jr.
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Apple CEO lambasts teacher unions.
Our friend Pete the Finance Guy forwarded us the following information. A similar article can also be found on the Star-Telegram website.
The "Issues and Insights" page of Investors Business Daily, February 26 edition carried an excellent piece, which opened with:
"Steve Jobs recently addressed a forum on education reform in Austin TX. Jobs could contain his tough diagnosis no longer", according to the editorial:
" 'I believe what is wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way,' Jobs charged. "This unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers is off-the charts crazy."
The editorial continues:
"It was what you'd call a throat-clearing moment. Absorbing Job's comment, the room erupted into applause, even as another panelist, competitor Michael Dell, sat politely nearby. Assessing his impolitic outburst, Jobs grinned: "Apple just lost some business in this state, I'm sure."
"Maybe more than that. The Associated Press carried the story across the fruited plain. In teachers' lounges throughout the 50 states, iPod earplugs popped onto slumped shoulders as tenured pedagogues pondered life without their precious Macs.
"Jobs said a little more on the subject, comparing school principals to corporate CEOs: "What kind of person could you get to run a small business if you told them that when they came in they couldn't get rid of people that they thought weren't any good?" He answered himself to uproarious applause: "Not really great ones because if you're really smart, you go, 'I can't win.'"
"It took the estimable Dell seconds to seize some good will:
"Unions were created," Dell argued, "because the employer was treating his employees unfairly and that was not good. So now you have these enterprises where they take good care of their people. The employees won, they do really well and succeed."
"Dell vaguely prescribed a shot of competitive spirit to be imbibed by the school principals' employment market. So the longtime Jobs-Dell rivalry now rises from the respective merits of their products to the historic debate over organized labor's contributions-or lack thereof-to our economic health.
"It's a debate worth reviving, as has been discovered by the academic blogosphere, where one commentator even accused Jobs of abandoning corporate responsibility to Apple's shareholders by alienating such a large market for his computers.
"It's hard to know if Jobs intended such bluntness beforehand, but that kind of impromptu bravery should be saluted. Apple's chief has struggled lately with his own set of compensation issues, enough to have interested regulators, so he could be charged with diversionary bravado.
"But he adds his vision to other critics -- futurist Alvin Toffler and Microsoft's Bill Gates come to mind -- who've called for replacing government schools as we know them with a system friendlier to market principles.
"Jobs may be overenthusiastic about the prospect of scrapping textbooks for online, Wikipedia-like educational content. But he does grasp, tatter than most unionized and tenured end majors, the mental cybernetices of learning.
"His ideas are at least dynamic, theirs static. He's now advanced the revolution, deserving cheers far beyond that Texas auditorium."
Quote of the Day
" 'I believe what is wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way. "This unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers is off-the charts crazy." Steve Jobs
The "Issues and Insights" page of Investors Business Daily, February 26 edition carried an excellent piece, which opened with:
"Steve Jobs recently addressed a forum on education reform in Austin TX. Jobs could contain his tough diagnosis no longer", according to the editorial:
" 'I believe what is wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way,' Jobs charged. "This unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers is off-the charts crazy."
The editorial continues:
"It was what you'd call a throat-clearing moment. Absorbing Job's comment, the room erupted into applause, even as another panelist, competitor Michael Dell, sat politely nearby. Assessing his impolitic outburst, Jobs grinned: "Apple just lost some business in this state, I'm sure."
"Maybe more than that. The Associated Press carried the story across the fruited plain. In teachers' lounges throughout the 50 states, iPod earplugs popped onto slumped shoulders as tenured pedagogues pondered life without their precious Macs.
"Jobs said a little more on the subject, comparing school principals to corporate CEOs: "What kind of person could you get to run a small business if you told them that when they came in they couldn't get rid of people that they thought weren't any good?" He answered himself to uproarious applause: "Not really great ones because if you're really smart, you go, 'I can't win.'"
"It took the estimable Dell seconds to seize some good will:
"Unions were created," Dell argued, "because the employer was treating his employees unfairly and that was not good. So now you have these enterprises where they take good care of their people. The employees won, they do really well and succeed."
"Dell vaguely prescribed a shot of competitive spirit to be imbibed by the school principals' employment market. So the longtime Jobs-Dell rivalry now rises from the respective merits of their products to the historic debate over organized labor's contributions-or lack thereof-to our economic health.
"It's a debate worth reviving, as has been discovered by the academic blogosphere, where one commentator even accused Jobs of abandoning corporate responsibility to Apple's shareholders by alienating such a large market for his computers.
"It's hard to know if Jobs intended such bluntness beforehand, but that kind of impromptu bravery should be saluted. Apple's chief has struggled lately with his own set of compensation issues, enough to have interested regulators, so he could be charged with diversionary bravado.
"But he adds his vision to other critics -- futurist Alvin Toffler and Microsoft's Bill Gates come to mind -- who've called for replacing government schools as we know them with a system friendlier to market principles.
"Jobs may be overenthusiastic about the prospect of scrapping textbooks for online, Wikipedia-like educational content. But he does grasp, tatter than most unionized and tenured end majors, the mental cybernetices of learning.
"His ideas are at least dynamic, theirs static. He's now advanced the revolution, deserving cheers far beyond that Texas auditorium."
Quote of the Day
" 'I believe what is wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way. "This unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers is off-the charts crazy." Steve Jobs
Monday, October 09, 2006
Teachers’ unions a negative
The following letter to the editor appeared in the Northwest Herald. We posted this once before but it is well worth a second read.
Teachers’ unions a negative
Comments (0)
To the Editor:
As a former teacher, principal and superintendent of schools in New York, Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, New Jersey, and California, I have some knowledge of education in the United States.
My studies at the University of Dayton [B.A.], Xavier University [M.A.] and The Ohio State University [Ph.D.] with majors in English, philosophy, educational administration, and sociology have helped me understand public education.
I began my teaching career 51 years ago and I have come to the following conclusion: Teachers’ unions are the worst institution that have pervaded our schools and have the most deleterious and negative impact on education.
There are four reasons for this conclusion. Based on the union proposals that I have studied and negotiated for the past 30 years, they all contain the same demands: 1) Unions want more money; 2) Unions want more fringe benefits; 3) Unions want less work; and 4) Unions want more power.
That’s it.
Of all the demands in their negotiations, I never have seen one that redounds to the direct benefit of the child’s education.
Read teachers’ contracts. If you find one item that will contribute to the direct, positive learning of the student, let me know.
Donald E. Bond
Huntley
Teachers’ unions a negative
Comments (0)
To the Editor:
As a former teacher, principal and superintendent of schools in New York, Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, New Jersey, and California, I have some knowledge of education in the United States.
My studies at the University of Dayton [B.A.], Xavier University [M.A.] and The Ohio State University [Ph.D.] with majors in English, philosophy, educational administration, and sociology have helped me understand public education.
I began my teaching career 51 years ago and I have come to the following conclusion: Teachers’ unions are the worst institution that have pervaded our schools and have the most deleterious and negative impact on education.
There are four reasons for this conclusion. Based on the union proposals that I have studied and negotiated for the past 30 years, they all contain the same demands: 1) Unions want more money; 2) Unions want more fringe benefits; 3) Unions want less work; and 4) Unions want more power.
That’s it.
Of all the demands in their negotiations, I never have seen one that redounds to the direct benefit of the child’s education.
Read teachers’ contracts. If you find one item that will contribute to the direct, positive learning of the student, let me know.
Donald E. Bond
Huntley
Monday, October 02, 2006
Golden Handcuff Award
Golden Handcuff Award
Since teachers have the Golden Apple Award I thought it only appropriate to have a similar award for politicians called the “Golden Handcuff Award”. Whereas the Golden Apple recognizes the highest achievement in the classroom, the Golden Handcuff would recognize those politicians with the highest achievement in garnering political contributions from the teacher unions. To get the Golden Handcuff you must have received at least $50,000 in teacher union contributions.
I call it the Golden Handcuff because once you have received money from the unions you are no longer able to lift anything heavier than a 5-figure contribution check. The heavy lifting involved in curbing 6-figure teacher salaries, $300,000 administrators salaries, multi-million dollar pensions, vouchers, endless property tax increases etc cannot be done when you are encumbered with the Golden Handcuffs. No sir, all you can do after your Golden handcuffs are snapped closed is sign on to (or sponsor) bills providing more money and benefits to the teachers.
Although the state does have a website to track political contributions http://www.elections.state.il.us/CampaignDisclosure/ContribCanSearch.aspx it is not easy because the contributors can use many different names thereby making tracking more difficult. Of course the various teacher union organizations do their best to confuse the public. For example the largest contributor ($11 million plus) the Illinois Political Action Committee for Education (IPACE) can be found using the following names: IPACE, I.P.A.C.E., 1 PACE, !PACE, IPACE PAC, IPACE-Il, IPACE-PAC, IPACE-ILLINOIS, IPACE/ILLINOIS, LPACE, Ipage, IPACE-EDUC. In addition the various teacher organizations launder their contributions by sending money back and forth to each other in a manner befitting a Columbian drug cartel.
Therefore the $23 million total I have managed to come up with is probably low even though that is frightening enough. For example if you search for contributions from organizations containing the word “teacher” in it you get $16 million, for the letters “ift” (Illinois Federation of Teachers) $8 million, the letters “aft” (America Federation of Teachers) $3 million plus the IPACE $11 million gives you $38 million including the money laundering amounts back and forth. The largest 3rd party contribution to Blagojevich was $300,000 from IPACE along with $250,000 and $225,000 from other teacher union funds. And all of the money does not come from Illinois: over $1.7 million came from the American Federation of Teachers headquarters in Washington DC. Over $500,000 from the teacher unions has been donated just since Jan 2006.
You will notice that although Democrats dominate the following list there are enough Republicans to make certain that the union’s demands are met no matter which party is in power. The biggest donations in 2006 have gone to Emil Jones ($27,500), the Madigans ($40,000), Tom Hynes ($20,000) and interesting enough 2 Republicans Sydney Mathias of Buffalo Grove and Mark Beaubien of Wauconda, $15,000 each.
If this kind of vote buying isn’t “special interest” what is?
Bill Zettler
To see a list of donations visit the The Champion.org website.
Since teachers have the Golden Apple Award I thought it only appropriate to have a similar award for politicians called the “Golden Handcuff Award”. Whereas the Golden Apple recognizes the highest achievement in the classroom, the Golden Handcuff would recognize those politicians with the highest achievement in garnering political contributions from the teacher unions. To get the Golden Handcuff you must have received at least $50,000 in teacher union contributions.
I call it the Golden Handcuff because once you have received money from the unions you are no longer able to lift anything heavier than a 5-figure contribution check. The heavy lifting involved in curbing 6-figure teacher salaries, $300,000 administrators salaries, multi-million dollar pensions, vouchers, endless property tax increases etc cannot be done when you are encumbered with the Golden Handcuffs. No sir, all you can do after your Golden handcuffs are snapped closed is sign on to (or sponsor) bills providing more money and benefits to the teachers.
Although the state does have a website to track political contributions http://www.elections.state.il.us/CampaignDisclosure/ContribCanSearch.aspx it is not easy because the contributors can use many different names thereby making tracking more difficult. Of course the various teacher union organizations do their best to confuse the public. For example the largest contributor ($11 million plus) the Illinois Political Action Committee for Education (IPACE) can be found using the following names: IPACE, I.P.A.C.E., 1 PACE, !PACE, IPACE PAC, IPACE-Il, IPACE-PAC, IPACE-ILLINOIS, IPACE/ILLINOIS, LPACE, Ipage, IPACE-EDUC. In addition the various teacher organizations launder their contributions by sending money back and forth to each other in a manner befitting a Columbian drug cartel.
Therefore the $23 million total I have managed to come up with is probably low even though that is frightening enough. For example if you search for contributions from organizations containing the word “teacher” in it you get $16 million, for the letters “ift” (Illinois Federation of Teachers) $8 million, the letters “aft” (America Federation of Teachers) $3 million plus the IPACE $11 million gives you $38 million including the money laundering amounts back and forth. The largest 3rd party contribution to Blagojevich was $300,000 from IPACE along with $250,000 and $225,000 from other teacher union funds. And all of the money does not come from Illinois: over $1.7 million came from the American Federation of Teachers headquarters in Washington DC. Over $500,000 from the teacher unions has been donated just since Jan 2006.
You will notice that although Democrats dominate the following list there are enough Republicans to make certain that the union’s demands are met no matter which party is in power. The biggest donations in 2006 have gone to Emil Jones ($27,500), the Madigans ($40,000), Tom Hynes ($20,000) and interesting enough 2 Republicans Sydney Mathias of Buffalo Grove and Mark Beaubien of Wauconda, $15,000 each.
If this kind of vote buying isn’t “special interest” what is?
Bill Zettler
To see a list of donations visit the The Champion.org website.
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Many Teachers Are OK; It's the Damn Teachers Unions That Are the Problem
As a former teacher, principal and superintendent of schools in New York, Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, New Jersey, and Califoria, I have a fairly good knowledge of how education works in the U.S.
My studies at the University of Dayton (B.A.), Xavier University (M.A.) and The Ohio State University (Ph.D.) with majors in English, Philosophy, Educational Administration, Sociology, and an S.T.B at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland have helped me to think through many issues in public education.
It has been 51 years since I began my teaching caareer in New York. I have come to the following major conclusion:
TEACHERS UNIONS ARE THE WORST INSTITUION THAT HAVE PERVADED PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND HAVE HAD THE MOST DELETERIOUS EFFECT AND NEGATIVE IMPACT ON EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES!
Think it through with me. There are four reasons why I have reached this rational conclusion. It is based on the union proposals that I have studied, argued, and negotiated for the past 30 years. They all contain the same major ideas and issues.
1) They want more money.
2) They want more fringe benefits.
3) They want less work and less responsibility.
4) They want more power.
That's it!
Of the hundreds of demands that I have read in their proposals for negoations, I have NEVER seen one that asks for some item to be placed in their contracts that will redound to the direct benefit for the child's education. Not one.
Read teachers contracts. If you find one positive item that states that they want some element or item added that will contribute to the direct, positive learning of the student, please let me know about it. It will be a FIRST.
Do you agree with this simple, but rational analysis?
Response to Don.
I do not agree. Teachers can choose to be a part of the union or not. If a person does not speak out against the problem they are not part of the solution. Cathy
"And if you are a teacher who belongs to the teachers union, thus helping to perpetuate with your dues their iron grip on the current system, you, too, are anti-education. " Charles Muth
My studies at the University of Dayton (B.A.), Xavier University (M.A.) and The Ohio State University (Ph.D.) with majors in English, Philosophy, Educational Administration, Sociology, and an S.T.B at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland have helped me to think through many issues in public education.
It has been 51 years since I began my teaching caareer in New York. I have come to the following major conclusion:
TEACHERS UNIONS ARE THE WORST INSTITUION THAT HAVE PERVADED PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND HAVE HAD THE MOST DELETERIOUS EFFECT AND NEGATIVE IMPACT ON EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES!
Think it through with me. There are four reasons why I have reached this rational conclusion. It is based on the union proposals that I have studied, argued, and negotiated for the past 30 years. They all contain the same major ideas and issues.
1) They want more money.
2) They want more fringe benefits.
3) They want less work and less responsibility.
4) They want more power.
That's it!
Of the hundreds of demands that I have read in their proposals for negoations, I have NEVER seen one that asks for some item to be placed in their contracts that will redound to the direct benefit for the child's education. Not one.
Read teachers contracts. If you find one positive item that states that they want some element or item added that will contribute to the direct, positive learning of the student, please let me know about it. It will be a FIRST.
Do you agree with this simple, but rational analysis?
Response to Don.
I do not agree. Teachers can choose to be a part of the union or not. If a person does not speak out against the problem they are not part of the solution. Cathy
"And if you are a teacher who belongs to the teachers union, thus helping to perpetuate with your dues their iron grip on the current system, you, too, are anti-education. " Charles Muth
Friday, September 01, 2006
Teachers And Unions Disregard For Laws And Ethical Behavior
Time and time again teachers and unions put their interests ahead of the very children they are to educate and the communities they serve. Public school teachers are no longer the noble professionals they once were. Public School Teachers are the first to whine and complain about the children they teach. Maybe if public school teachers would improve their actions and behaviors they would not have as many problems with behavioral issues in the classroom.
This past week we saw the highest paid teachers in Indiana go on strike. In Indiana teachers went on strike despite being illegal under Indiana statutes. Visit the Chicago Tribune website to see the full story.
The Education Intelligence agency reports how Detriot Teachers disregard the no strike law in Michigan.
The EIA further reports how Washington Teachers blatantly disregard the no strike laws. Teachers Union Lawyer Kathy O'Toole stated "They are not going to put 850 of you away," Gee what great examples public school teachers set for our children.
This past week we saw the highest paid teachers in Indiana go on strike. In Indiana teachers went on strike despite being illegal under Indiana statutes. Visit the Chicago Tribune website to see the full story.
The Education Intelligence agency reports how Detriot Teachers disregard the no strike law in Michigan.
The EIA further reports how Washington Teachers blatantly disregard the no strike laws. Teachers Union Lawyer Kathy O'Toole stated "They are not going to put 850 of you away," Gee what great examples public school teachers set for our children.
Saturday, August 26, 2006
Unions Serve Teachers, Fail the Students
The following piece appeared on the Real Clear Politics website. No commentary needed the piece speaks for itself.
July 23, 2006
Unions Serve Teachers, Fail the Students
By Ruben Navarrette
SAN DIEGO -- After five years of trying to undermine the No Child Left Behind Act, the nation's largest teachers union has decided that it can live with the education reform law after all -- as long as the legislation is gutted, its standards lowered and its accountability measures watered down.
Great. So we're making progress.
This month at its annual conference, the National Education Association voted to launch a nationwide campaign to lobby Congress to radically change NCLB when the law comes up for reauthorization next year. The goal behind the changes seems to be to wrest power away from government and put it back where the union thinks it belongs -- with educators and those who represent them.
Call me cynical, but I never thought for a minute that the NEA was really concerned about, well, education. I never believed the organization was eager to find new ways to empower students or to hold schools accountable for the educational products they turn out.
I always assumed that the NEA was focused primarily on what any union tends to focus on: the interests of its members. And since the education establishment has been trained to believe that it is not in the interests of teachers to demand more from them or tie them to the performance of their students, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that groups such as the NEA have reacted with hostility to No Child Left Behind.
That's exactly what's been happening since 2001, when the law -- perhaps the most significant domestic policy achievements of the Bush administration -- took effect.
According to a recent report by Education Sector, a Washington-based think tank, the NEA has given more than $8 million to various education, civil rights and public policy groups that opposed or criticized No Child Left Behind. Lead researcher Joe Williams says that what the union did wasn't illegal, but it is clear that it "actively pursued partnerships'' with groups intent on fighting NCLB. And questions remain about whether the funding that was given to some of these groups influenced the research some of these groups produced -- research that was, to no one's surprise, critical of the education reform law.
Not that the law doesn't have its critics. When I hear from teachers, or even school board members -- some of whom have accepted campaign contributions from the NEA and other teachers unions -- I get an earful about how NCLB is single-handedly destroying the public education system due to its emphasis on testing, its punishing of underperforming schools and its one-size-fits-all approach.
And yet, knowing all that, it's still frightening to get a peek behind the curtain at the specifics of what the NEA, if it had its druthers, would do to make NCLB more palatable to its members -- or at least, some of them, as the more hard-line members won't be satisfied unless the law is repealed.
Convinced that there is too much emphasis on regular testing, and that low-performing schools are being unfairly punished when students come up short, the union would prefer a broader-based accountability system that relies on "multiple measures of success.'' Whatever that means.
The union is also queasy about the requirement in No Child Left Behind that schools test students in math and reading and then report scores according to race, disability, English proficiency and economic background. The NEA instead wants benchmarks that take into account students' differing abilities and demographics. It seems that many educators are less than confident in the job they've done when it comes to teaching minorities, those with limited English proficiency and the economically disadvantaged, and they're not eager to broadcast their failures.
It's outrageous. If these people get their way, the practical effect would be a lower bar for students of different racial, ethnic or economic backgrounds -- and by extension, those who teach them. And they would do all this not for the good of students but for the professional welfare of those who are supposed to be teaching them and who have, for too long, been coming up short.
And why does the nation's largest teachers union want to make all these changes in No Child Left Behind? It's so the truth does not come out about whom the public schools serve and whom they sacrifice.
ruben.navarrette@uniontrib.com
(c) 2006, The San Diego Union-Tribune
July 23, 2006
Unions Serve Teachers, Fail the Students
By Ruben Navarrette
SAN DIEGO -- After five years of trying to undermine the No Child Left Behind Act, the nation's largest teachers union has decided that it can live with the education reform law after all -- as long as the legislation is gutted, its standards lowered and its accountability measures watered down.
Great. So we're making progress.
This month at its annual conference, the National Education Association voted to launch a nationwide campaign to lobby Congress to radically change NCLB when the law comes up for reauthorization next year. The goal behind the changes seems to be to wrest power away from government and put it back where the union thinks it belongs -- with educators and those who represent them.
Call me cynical, but I never thought for a minute that the NEA was really concerned about, well, education. I never believed the organization was eager to find new ways to empower students or to hold schools accountable for the educational products they turn out.
I always assumed that the NEA was focused primarily on what any union tends to focus on: the interests of its members. And since the education establishment has been trained to believe that it is not in the interests of teachers to demand more from them or tie them to the performance of their students, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that groups such as the NEA have reacted with hostility to No Child Left Behind.
That's exactly what's been happening since 2001, when the law -- perhaps the most significant domestic policy achievements of the Bush administration -- took effect.
According to a recent report by Education Sector, a Washington-based think tank, the NEA has given more than $8 million to various education, civil rights and public policy groups that opposed or criticized No Child Left Behind. Lead researcher Joe Williams says that what the union did wasn't illegal, but it is clear that it "actively pursued partnerships'' with groups intent on fighting NCLB. And questions remain about whether the funding that was given to some of these groups influenced the research some of these groups produced -- research that was, to no one's surprise, critical of the education reform law.
Not that the law doesn't have its critics. When I hear from teachers, or even school board members -- some of whom have accepted campaign contributions from the NEA and other teachers unions -- I get an earful about how NCLB is single-handedly destroying the public education system due to its emphasis on testing, its punishing of underperforming schools and its one-size-fits-all approach.
And yet, knowing all that, it's still frightening to get a peek behind the curtain at the specifics of what the NEA, if it had its druthers, would do to make NCLB more palatable to its members -- or at least, some of them, as the more hard-line members won't be satisfied unless the law is repealed.
Convinced that there is too much emphasis on regular testing, and that low-performing schools are being unfairly punished when students come up short, the union would prefer a broader-based accountability system that relies on "multiple measures of success.'' Whatever that means.
The union is also queasy about the requirement in No Child Left Behind that schools test students in math and reading and then report scores according to race, disability, English proficiency and economic background. The NEA instead wants benchmarks that take into account students' differing abilities and demographics. It seems that many educators are less than confident in the job they've done when it comes to teaching minorities, those with limited English proficiency and the economically disadvantaged, and they're not eager to broadcast their failures.
It's outrageous. If these people get their way, the practical effect would be a lower bar for students of different racial, ethnic or economic backgrounds -- and by extension, those who teach them. And they would do all this not for the good of students but for the professional welfare of those who are supposed to be teaching them and who have, for too long, been coming up short.
And why does the nation's largest teachers union want to make all these changes in No Child Left Behind? It's so the truth does not come out about whom the public schools serve and whom they sacrifice.
ruben.navarrette@uniontrib.com
(c) 2006, The San Diego Union-Tribune
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
The Education Intelligence Agency
I just want to remind people of a great resource the Education Intelligence Agency.
Below is the partial posting for the Communique for August 14, 2006 ,to view the full Communique visit the the Education Intelligence Agency website.
The full Communique is a must read for all taxpayers (that is everyone) and parents.
The Story Thus Far. I realize not all of you travel over to Intercepts during the week for the latest, so allow me to quickly recap.
Since last week's communiqué revealed the contents of AFT's communications audit and a number of audio files of interviews with AFT staffers, there has been widespread action and inaction – depending on where you sit and who you are. Inside AFT headquarters, there has been a lot of activity, not only as a response to EIA's story, but as a response to the recommendations of the audit itself. Personnel changes have been made, which EIA will report once they are confirmed.
Outside of headquarters, however, AFT has been silent. Not a single official or semi-official word has been uttered publicly. AFT's web sites and listservs merrily pretend everything's normal, which is either an indication that union officers hope the whole thing will dry up on its own, or they aren't yet primed to release a response. The media, for their part, don't seem to quite know what to do with it. If I remember correctly, the Kamber report didn't get a whole lot of mainstream press in 1997, either. The education blogosphere has been quicker, but still tentative.
Meanwhile, CleverSpin tried to cover all the bases by claiming it had notified the FBI and "state and federal law enforcement officials," while at the same time demanding, under threat of legal action, that EIA destroy the evidence (the audio files) those officials would undoubtedly want to see. Happily, EIA was able to quickly retain top-notch legal representation to attend to any harassment on that front.
Rumors, witch hunts and conspiracy theories are running rampant, all for naught, since AFT officials already know how I obtained these materials – because I told them, one hour before releasing the report last Monday.
Where it goes next, nobody knows, but EIA is ready for anything.
Below is the partial posting for the Communique for August 14, 2006 ,to view the full Communique visit the the Education Intelligence Agency website.
The full Communique is a must read for all taxpayers (that is everyone) and parents.
The Story Thus Far. I realize not all of you travel over to Intercepts during the week for the latest, so allow me to quickly recap.
Since last week's communiqué revealed the contents of AFT's communications audit and a number of audio files of interviews with AFT staffers, there has been widespread action and inaction – depending on where you sit and who you are. Inside AFT headquarters, there has been a lot of activity, not only as a response to EIA's story, but as a response to the recommendations of the audit itself. Personnel changes have been made, which EIA will report once they are confirmed.
Outside of headquarters, however, AFT has been silent. Not a single official or semi-official word has been uttered publicly. AFT's web sites and listservs merrily pretend everything's normal, which is either an indication that union officers hope the whole thing will dry up on its own, or they aren't yet primed to release a response. The media, for their part, don't seem to quite know what to do with it. If I remember correctly, the Kamber report didn't get a whole lot of mainstream press in 1997, either. The education blogosphere has been quicker, but still tentative.
Meanwhile, CleverSpin tried to cover all the bases by claiming it had notified the FBI and "state and federal law enforcement officials," while at the same time demanding, under threat of legal action, that EIA destroy the evidence (the audio files) those officials would undoubtedly want to see. Happily, EIA was able to quickly retain top-notch legal representation to attend to any harassment on that front.
Rumors, witch hunts and conspiracy theories are running rampant, all for naught, since AFT officials already know how I obtained these materials – because I told them, one hour before releasing the report last Monday.
Where it goes next, nobody knows, but EIA is ready for anything.
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Unions Defend Bad Teachers'Tenure - At Students' Expense
The following article was written by Michael Chapman, published and copyrighted by Investor's Business Daily - National Issue.on September 21, 1998. We found this article at the Waking Bear.com.
This article stands the test of time.
Unions Defend Bad Teachers'Tenure - At Students' Expense
The teacher was caught drinking in the classroom. But public school officials in Northern Virginia couldn't fire her.
Why? Tenure laws.
''Everybody in the county knows she's a drunk,'' one parent told IBD. ''But they can't fire her. Yeah, she's got a problem and needs help. But you have to draw the line -for the kids. It's a drug-free zone.''
Such stories are commonplace. Bad teachers, poor learning - nothing seems to change. And despite complaints, it doesn't look like teacher tenure in public schools will change soon.
''I don't see that forthcoming,'' said Chuck Sambar, a member of the Glendale (Calif.) Unified School District board. ''I recognize that the power and muscle of the teacher organizations in California are so dominant over the state Legislature that the legislators are not too inclined to mess with them.''
What about the students?
A University of Tennessee study found that student test scores are lower in classrooms run by incompetent teachers.
The effects seem to last. The study showed that fifth-graders who had studied under bad teachers since second grade scored 54 to 60 points lower on math tests than students under good teachers. Scores didn't change much when the poorly performing students were placed with better teachers.
''If an ineffective teacher isn't dealt with, children can be permanently harmed,'' said researcher William Sanders. ''They don't just bounce back.''
There are 2.6 million public school teachers. About 18%, or 468,000 teachers, are incompetent, according to Mary Jo McGrath, who runs McGrath Systems Inc. in Santa Barbara, Calif. McGrath, an attorney, has surveyed 50,000 school administrators and helped schools remove lousy teachers. Other estimates put the number of bad teachers at around 135,000, or 5% of the total. No one knows the exact number.
However, tenure makes firing bad teachers hard and costly. On average, it takes two to three years to dismiss a tenured teacher. Each case costs about $60,000. Appeals raise the costs.
A '94 study by the New York State School Boards Association found that it takes 455 days and $176,870 on average for a school board to fire a teacher in that state. If the teacher appeals, costs jump to $317,000.
Also, ''the public school bureaucracy controls the state legislatures' education committees,'' said Kay O'Connor, a GOP Kansas state representative. She's also head of the Kansas City-based Parents in Control, a school-reform lobbying group.
''Tenure is a very hot issue,'' she said. ''If a legislator brings it up, it's a battle royal. . . . Unless you're molesting children or robbing banks, you can't be fired. Unions fight for poor-performing teachers because then the schools hire more remedial teachers. More teachers equals more money for the union.''
A tenure reform in place in a few districts is ''peer review.'' Instead of principals watching teachers and deciding whom to fire, teachers evaluate teachers. It's a mentor- protege approach to tenure. Public school supporters see it as a plus. Critics, however, view it as a way for teachers unions to strengthen their hold over schools.
''Unions are aware of the criticism that tenure protects bad teachers,'' said education author Myron Lieberman, head of the Education Policy Institute. ''So, their attitude is, 'We'll take over the process.' If unions take over the review process, it'll make a worse disaster of the schools - if that's possible.'' He added that while such moves appear to be reform, they really aren't - the ''major practical effect will be to extend teacher union control over public education,'' Lieberman said.
About 80% of teachers have tenure. All states and the District of Columbia have tenure laws. The two major unions - the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers - negotiated these rules. The rules vary. However, most states require new teachers to go through a three-to five-year probation. Then they're tenured. Contracts may run to 100 pages.
School boards may try to dismiss a teacher for lots of reasons: incompetence, immorality, unprofessional conduct and, in California and Nevada, for teaching communism. Also, there are state and federal laws that teachers may use to hold onto their jobs or their teaching certificates.
Firing a bad teacher is tough. In Connecticut, for instance, superintendents cannot dismiss teachers without pay. This is ''tantamount to a paid vacation,'' reported the Yankee Institute, a regional think tank.
The suspended teacher gets full salary while the superintendent plans a due process hearing. This takes about six months. At the same time, the school has to pay for a substitute teacher. An Impartial Hearing Panel then must issue a recommendation. The cost of each hearing ranges from $400 to $750.
While this occurs, the teacher, backed by the union and its lawyers, may appeal. This delay raises the school board's costs, often by more than $100,000. Eventually, most schools either pay the teacher off or transfer him.
The Yankee Institute reported that a teacher in Ridgefield, Conn., continued to get a salary of $55,000 while suspended. The school board's hearing and legal costs totaled more than $250,000. The teacher then countersued under federal law, claiming age discrimination and alleged violations of free speech.
Another Connecticut teacher was essentially paid off. She resigned, withdrew her countersuits, and got $200,000 plus severance and legal fees.
''Our tenure laws protect ineffective and unmotivated teachers and administrators,'' said Republican New York state Assemblywoman Debra Mazzarelli. ''Removing a tenured employee from his or her position is so difficult, expensive and time-consuming that for all intents it is impossible.''
Mazzarelli introduced a bill in '97 to replace tenure with five-year renewable contracts. It didn't pass. ''The teachers unions were able to stop this,'' Dave Kinley, deputy executive director of the New York State School Board Association, said.
According to Tampa, Fla.-based Family First: ''Tenure creates an environment where there is simply no incentive to be a good teacher. . . . Serving time is what is rewarded, not teaching excellence. . . . Only truly egregious cases are likely to lead to attempts at dismissal. The reason is simple: It can cost local districts a fortune.''
Teachers may have needed union protection and tenure decades ago because of racial or religious bigotry. But there are so many laws to protect people today, Sambar says, teachers don't need the unions anymore. And the unions know this.
''The unions' mission is teachers, not children,'' said O'Connor, noting that there are more than 50 pro-union education lobbyists at the Kansas Legislature. ''They want as many teachers as possible making as much money as possible. This is why they support smaller classes. It means more teachers, more pay, more money for the union.''
Sambar agrees. ''Good teachers do not need tenure. Poor or incompetent teachers use it to protect their jobs.''
(The article " Unions Defend Bad Teachers" Tenure - At Students' Expense " was written by Michael Chapman,
published and copyrighted by Investor's Business Daily - National Issue.on September 21, 1998.)
This article stands the test of time.
Unions Defend Bad Teachers'Tenure - At Students' Expense
The teacher was caught drinking in the classroom. But public school officials in Northern Virginia couldn't fire her.
Why? Tenure laws.
''Everybody in the county knows she's a drunk,'' one parent told IBD. ''But they can't fire her. Yeah, she's got a problem and needs help. But you have to draw the line -for the kids. It's a drug-free zone.''
Such stories are commonplace. Bad teachers, poor learning - nothing seems to change. And despite complaints, it doesn't look like teacher tenure in public schools will change soon.
''I don't see that forthcoming,'' said Chuck Sambar, a member of the Glendale (Calif.) Unified School District board. ''I recognize that the power and muscle of the teacher organizations in California are so dominant over the state Legislature that the legislators are not too inclined to mess with them.''
What about the students?
A University of Tennessee study found that student test scores are lower in classrooms run by incompetent teachers.
The effects seem to last. The study showed that fifth-graders who had studied under bad teachers since second grade scored 54 to 60 points lower on math tests than students under good teachers. Scores didn't change much when the poorly performing students were placed with better teachers.
''If an ineffective teacher isn't dealt with, children can be permanently harmed,'' said researcher William Sanders. ''They don't just bounce back.''
There are 2.6 million public school teachers. About 18%, or 468,000 teachers, are incompetent, according to Mary Jo McGrath, who runs McGrath Systems Inc. in Santa Barbara, Calif. McGrath, an attorney, has surveyed 50,000 school administrators and helped schools remove lousy teachers. Other estimates put the number of bad teachers at around 135,000, or 5% of the total. No one knows the exact number.
However, tenure makes firing bad teachers hard and costly. On average, it takes two to three years to dismiss a tenured teacher. Each case costs about $60,000. Appeals raise the costs.
A '94 study by the New York State School Boards Association found that it takes 455 days and $176,870 on average for a school board to fire a teacher in that state. If the teacher appeals, costs jump to $317,000.
Also, ''the public school bureaucracy controls the state legislatures' education committees,'' said Kay O'Connor, a GOP Kansas state representative. She's also head of the Kansas City-based Parents in Control, a school-reform lobbying group.
''Tenure is a very hot issue,'' she said. ''If a legislator brings it up, it's a battle royal. . . . Unless you're molesting children or robbing banks, you can't be fired. Unions fight for poor-performing teachers because then the schools hire more remedial teachers. More teachers equals more money for the union.''
A tenure reform in place in a few districts is ''peer review.'' Instead of principals watching teachers and deciding whom to fire, teachers evaluate teachers. It's a mentor- protege approach to tenure. Public school supporters see it as a plus. Critics, however, view it as a way for teachers unions to strengthen their hold over schools.
''Unions are aware of the criticism that tenure protects bad teachers,'' said education author Myron Lieberman, head of the Education Policy Institute. ''So, their attitude is, 'We'll take over the process.' If unions take over the review process, it'll make a worse disaster of the schools - if that's possible.'' He added that while such moves appear to be reform, they really aren't - the ''major practical effect will be to extend teacher union control over public education,'' Lieberman said.
About 80% of teachers have tenure. All states and the District of Columbia have tenure laws. The two major unions - the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers - negotiated these rules. The rules vary. However, most states require new teachers to go through a three-to five-year probation. Then they're tenured. Contracts may run to 100 pages.
School boards may try to dismiss a teacher for lots of reasons: incompetence, immorality, unprofessional conduct and, in California and Nevada, for teaching communism. Also, there are state and federal laws that teachers may use to hold onto their jobs or their teaching certificates.
Firing a bad teacher is tough. In Connecticut, for instance, superintendents cannot dismiss teachers without pay. This is ''tantamount to a paid vacation,'' reported the Yankee Institute, a regional think tank.
The suspended teacher gets full salary while the superintendent plans a due process hearing. This takes about six months. At the same time, the school has to pay for a substitute teacher. An Impartial Hearing Panel then must issue a recommendation. The cost of each hearing ranges from $400 to $750.
While this occurs, the teacher, backed by the union and its lawyers, may appeal. This delay raises the school board's costs, often by more than $100,000. Eventually, most schools either pay the teacher off or transfer him.
The Yankee Institute reported that a teacher in Ridgefield, Conn., continued to get a salary of $55,000 while suspended. The school board's hearing and legal costs totaled more than $250,000. The teacher then countersued under federal law, claiming age discrimination and alleged violations of free speech.
Another Connecticut teacher was essentially paid off. She resigned, withdrew her countersuits, and got $200,000 plus severance and legal fees.
''Our tenure laws protect ineffective and unmotivated teachers and administrators,'' said Republican New York state Assemblywoman Debra Mazzarelli. ''Removing a tenured employee from his or her position is so difficult, expensive and time-consuming that for all intents it is impossible.''
Mazzarelli introduced a bill in '97 to replace tenure with five-year renewable contracts. It didn't pass. ''The teachers unions were able to stop this,'' Dave Kinley, deputy executive director of the New York State School Board Association, said.
According to Tampa, Fla.-based Family First: ''Tenure creates an environment where there is simply no incentive to be a good teacher. . . . Serving time is what is rewarded, not teaching excellence. . . . Only truly egregious cases are likely to lead to attempts at dismissal. The reason is simple: It can cost local districts a fortune.''
Teachers may have needed union protection and tenure decades ago because of racial or religious bigotry. But there are so many laws to protect people today, Sambar says, teachers don't need the unions anymore. And the unions know this.
''The unions' mission is teachers, not children,'' said O'Connor, noting that there are more than 50 pro-union education lobbyists at the Kansas Legislature. ''They want as many teachers as possible making as much money as possible. This is why they support smaller classes. It means more teachers, more pay, more money for the union.''
Sambar agrees. ''Good teachers do not need tenure. Poor or incompetent teachers use it to protect their jobs.''
(The article " Unions Defend Bad Teachers" Tenure - At Students' Expense " was written by Michael Chapman,
published and copyrighted by Investor's Business Daily - National Issue.on September 21, 1998.)
Sunday, July 09, 2006
Break teachers union
The following letter to the editor appeared in the Sun-Times.
Break teachers union
As a homeowner and as a person without a great pension plan, I am forced to pay higher taxes so that the teachers union can have $70 million added to their pension fund. When will our government have the guts to break this teachers union?
Tenure is an insult to anyone who works on merit. In every other occupation, people keep their jobs only if they do them well. Why are new, vibrant, teachers being laid off when tenured teachers can't be touched (some of whom should retire)? In this wonderful country that boasts democracy, we are harboring a socialistic school system. Pouring money into a broken system and not fixing the real problem is a waste of homeowners' money.
Jackie Granlund,
Lincoln Square
Break teachers union
As a homeowner and as a person without a great pension plan, I am forced to pay higher taxes so that the teachers union can have $70 million added to their pension fund. When will our government have the guts to break this teachers union?
Tenure is an insult to anyone who works on merit. In every other occupation, people keep their jobs only if they do them well. Why are new, vibrant, teachers being laid off when tenured teachers can't be touched (some of whom should retire)? In this wonderful country that boasts democracy, we are harboring a socialistic school system. Pouring money into a broken system and not fixing the real problem is a waste of homeowners' money.
Jackie Granlund,
Lincoln Square
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Is Michigan's Largest School Employee Union Helping or Hurting Education?
The following is a link to a series by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
This is a must read series. Although this series is about the Michigan Education Association the information contained in the series could be applied to any of the teachers unions in the United States including Illinois.
This is a must read series. Although this series is about the Michigan Education Association the information contained in the series could be applied to any of the teachers unions in the United States including Illinois.
Saturday, June 24, 2006
Small Classes: Union Scam
Senator Meeks and our state government in order to placate one of their biggest political donors the teachers union have been touting the small class size scam. The following piece appeared in the New York Post and is posted at Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.
Small Classes: Union Scam
June 12, 2003
By Jay P. Greene and Greg Forster
THE local teachers unions are circulating a new petition to push their perennial pet cause: reducing class sizes.
Never mind that various efforts across the country to shrink classes have consumed rivers of money and produced no discernable improvements in education outcomes. The unions know that a mandate to shrink classes does have onenear-inevitable effect: mass hiring of teachers swelling the unions' membership and bank accounts.
Class sizes could theoretically be reduced in other ways right now, as many as just under half New York City's teachers aren't in the classroom. But in practice, the unions' stranglehold on the system ensures that shrinking classes means massive teacher hiring.
Asking people whether they want smaller classes for their children is like asking them whether they want to have a personal chef everyone imagines he'll get Emeril shouting "bam!" right in his own kitchen. But there aren't enough really great chefs to hire one for everybody. Once you've hired Emeril, Julia Child and all four Iron Chefs, you have to start lowering your standards. So if every New Yorker were to get his own personal chef, you'd most likely get a teenage fry cook from a fast-food joint.
The same is true for class-size reduction. To dramatically cut class sizes by hiring many new teachers, New York would have to dip deeper into the labor pool. So the person in front of your child's smaller class would probably be significantly less qualified than the teacher your child enjoys now.
Smaller-class proponents often point to Tennessee's STAR project, which randomly assigned elementary-school students either to relatively small classes or to regular classes for four years. Princeton researchers found that where 40 percent of the regular-class students went on to take either the SAT or ACT college-entrance exam, 43.7 percent of small-class students took one of those exams a modest but significant gain.
But that test program stands in marked contrast to the track record of class-size reduction on a broader scale, which can only be done by hiring many less-qualified teachers. In 1996, California devoted $1 billion to its much-ballyhooed effort to shrink elementary-school classes. A Rand Corporation study shows that the students in larger elementary-school classes have improved at about the same rate as students in smaller classes, and concludes that no link can be shown between smaller class sizes and improvement in test scores.
But the study did find one major change: a breathtaking rise in the number of people without full credentials serving as teachers. The new policy obliged the state to add 30,000 teaching staff in just three years. By the end of this frantic hiring spree, teachers without full credentials had jumped from 1.8 percent of the total to 12.5 percent a sevenfold increase.
This fits the national picture: U.S. class sizes have been falling for half a century, with no sign of significant gain in education. The Education Department says there were 22.3 students per teacher in 1970; since then, the ratio has dropped steadily, to 15.1 in 2001. Yet over the same period, national test scores have been flat and graduation rates have fallen slightly.
Remember this if you're asked to sign the teachers unions' petition: When class-size reduction has been applied on a large scale, any gains from having fewer students in each classroom seem to have been negated by the need to hire less-qualified people to fill all those new teaching jobs. Large-scale class-size reduction has only two proven results: less-qualified teachers and much higher education costs.
All that extra spending may be delightful for the unions, but why pay more for less?
Jay P. Greene is a senior fellow and Greg Forster is a senior research associate at the Manhattan Institute's Education Research Office.
©2003 New York Post
Small Classes: Union Scam
June 12, 2003
By Jay P. Greene and Greg Forster
THE local teachers unions are circulating a new petition to push their perennial pet cause: reducing class sizes.
Never mind that various efforts across the country to shrink classes have consumed rivers of money and produced no discernable improvements in education outcomes. The unions know that a mandate to shrink classes does have onenear-inevitable effect: mass hiring of teachers swelling the unions' membership and bank accounts.
Class sizes could theoretically be reduced in other ways right now, as many as just under half New York City's teachers aren't in the classroom. But in practice, the unions' stranglehold on the system ensures that shrinking classes means massive teacher hiring.
Asking people whether they want smaller classes for their children is like asking them whether they want to have a personal chef everyone imagines he'll get Emeril shouting "bam!" right in his own kitchen. But there aren't enough really great chefs to hire one for everybody. Once you've hired Emeril, Julia Child and all four Iron Chefs, you have to start lowering your standards. So if every New Yorker were to get his own personal chef, you'd most likely get a teenage fry cook from a fast-food joint.
The same is true for class-size reduction. To dramatically cut class sizes by hiring many new teachers, New York would have to dip deeper into the labor pool. So the person in front of your child's smaller class would probably be significantly less qualified than the teacher your child enjoys now.
Smaller-class proponents often point to Tennessee's STAR project, which randomly assigned elementary-school students either to relatively small classes or to regular classes for four years. Princeton researchers found that where 40 percent of the regular-class students went on to take either the SAT or ACT college-entrance exam, 43.7 percent of small-class students took one of those exams a modest but significant gain.
But that test program stands in marked contrast to the track record of class-size reduction on a broader scale, which can only be done by hiring many less-qualified teachers. In 1996, California devoted $1 billion to its much-ballyhooed effort to shrink elementary-school classes. A Rand Corporation study shows that the students in larger elementary-school classes have improved at about the same rate as students in smaller classes, and concludes that no link can be shown between smaller class sizes and improvement in test scores.
But the study did find one major change: a breathtaking rise in the number of people without full credentials serving as teachers. The new policy obliged the state to add 30,000 teaching staff in just three years. By the end of this frantic hiring spree, teachers without full credentials had jumped from 1.8 percent of the total to 12.5 percent a sevenfold increase.
This fits the national picture: U.S. class sizes have been falling for half a century, with no sign of significant gain in education. The Education Department says there were 22.3 students per teacher in 1970; since then, the ratio has dropped steadily, to 15.1 in 2001. Yet over the same period, national test scores have been flat and graduation rates have fallen slightly.
Remember this if you're asked to sign the teachers unions' petition: When class-size reduction has been applied on a large scale, any gains from having fewer students in each classroom seem to have been negated by the need to hire less-qualified people to fill all those new teaching jobs. Large-scale class-size reduction has only two proven results: less-qualified teachers and much higher education costs.
All that extra spending may be delightful for the unions, but why pay more for less?
Jay P. Greene is a senior fellow and Greg Forster is a senior research associate at the Manhattan Institute's Education Research Office.
©2003 New York Post
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Are Teacher Unions the Fourth Branch of Government?
The following piece was taken in part from the Education Intelligence Agency to view the rest of the piece click here.
In Illinois, Gov. Rod Blagojevich is under fire for consulting with the Illinois Education Association (IEA) and the Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT) while crafting his school oversight plan. He didn’t, however, consult with legislators or state education officials. “I can’t bring a check to the table,” state Superintendent of Instruction Robert Schiller told the Chicago Tribune. The governor’s plan would strip power from the state board of education and place it in the hands of a new agency under the governor’s control. The unions held a news conference to express their support for the idea.
Arguing over the relative merits of each of these proposals is part of the democratic process. But who gave Barbara Kerr, Paul Hubbert and the IEA/IFT officials the right to negotiate state policy? If Gov. Schwarzenegger announced a budget proposal after negotiations with WalMart, people would be upset. If Lockheed held meetings with Alabama legislators and then announced a list of corporate tax breaks it desired, voters would be outraged. Gov. Blagojevich’s predecessor was indicted for steering state business to his friends and associates.
In Illinois, Gov. Rod Blagojevich is under fire for consulting with the Illinois Education Association (IEA) and the Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT) while crafting his school oversight plan. He didn’t, however, consult with legislators or state education officials. “I can’t bring a check to the table,” state Superintendent of Instruction Robert Schiller told the Chicago Tribune. The governor’s plan would strip power from the state board of education and place it in the hands of a new agency under the governor’s control. The unions held a news conference to express their support for the idea.
Arguing over the relative merits of each of these proposals is part of the democratic process. But who gave Barbara Kerr, Paul Hubbert and the IEA/IFT officials the right to negotiate state policy? If Gov. Schwarzenegger announced a budget proposal after negotiations with WalMart, people would be upset. If Lockheed held meetings with Alabama legislators and then announced a list of corporate tax breaks it desired, voters would be outraged. Gov. Blagojevich’s predecessor was indicted for steering state business to his friends and associates.
Saturday, May 06, 2006
Rotten Apples - Teachers Unions
The following editorial appeared in the Wall Street Journal.
This editorial hits the nail on the head describing how teachers unions are the worms in the apple of the American public education system. Copy and forward this Wall Street Journal editorial to all of your friends who do care about the public education system.
Rotten Apples
May 4, 2006
If there were lingering doubts that teachers unions are the worms in the apple of the American education system, take a look at the monumental setback for school reform in Florida this week.
On Monday the unions in Tallahassee bullied all but one Democrat and four Republicans in the state senate to kill a school voucher bill that has already had a sterling record of success for thousands of children in districts with failing public schools. If that decision isn't reversed by Friday, one of the most heralded school reform measures anywhere in the country will be dismantled, and 775 school kids, 90% of whom are minorities, will be returned to the warehouses that are failed inner-city schools. A related voucher program that serves 18,000 learning disabled kids is also in jeopardy.
The program at issue is Governor Jeb Bush's seven-year-old "Florida A+ School Accountability and Choice Program." For the first time, schools have been graded on the reading, writing and math progress made by the children they are supposed to be teaching. (Imagine that.) Any school that received an F in two of four years is deemed a failure, and the kids then get a voucher to attend another school, public or private.
One immediate impact -- according to researchers at Harvard, Florida State, and the James Madison Institute -- has been that the mere threat of competition caused many inner-city school districts to improve. The percentage of African Americans who are now performing at or above grade level surged to 66% last year, from 23% in 1999. No union-backed school "reform" has had that rate of success -- not more funding, not higher teacher pay, not smaller class sizes, and so on. Two school districts in the state failed the program and the families were given vouchers. Those children have since made big academic gains.
But in one of the most absurd legal decisions in modern times, the Florida Supreme Court ruled 5-2 that the voucher program violated the "uniformity clause" of the state constitution guaranteeing a high-quality system of public schools. Because the performance of the voucher kids was superior to those in public schools, the court ruled that education was not uniform -- or in this case not uniformly miserable. As they used to say in the Soviet Union, everyone gets to share their poverty equally.
Governor Bush and minority families throughout the state were so enraged that they vowed to change the state constitution through a vote of the people to allow the A+ Program to go forward. But the state senate this week failed by one vote to allow that referendum to take place. Union pressure was so intense that the GOP state senate majority leader broke with his own party, his own governor and the pleas of parents and voted to topple the measure; he was removed from leadership by his fellow Republicans on Tuesday.
We're not sure whom to hold in highest contempt here: the four Republicans who buckled to union pressure, the Democrats who voted en masse against the interests of their own constituents, or the unions that pretend their political actions are in the interests of "the children" -- except when that conflicts with their own economic self interest.
The senate Republican president says he will force one more vote before Friday. The lone Democrat to vote for the measure, state senator Al Lawson, charged that his fellow party representatives, including other black members, put their fealty to the unions ahead of what's best for poor children. "Don't their parents have a right, when they pay taxes, to have their kids get the best education?" he asked.
In Florida, at least for now, the sad answer is no. And what is worse is that this week the unions and their Democratic allies -- who claim to represent these black and Hispanic families -- are celebrating their triumph in relegating another generation of children to their educational ghetto.
This editorial hits the nail on the head describing how teachers unions are the worms in the apple of the American public education system. Copy and forward this Wall Street Journal editorial to all of your friends who do care about the public education system.
Rotten Apples
May 4, 2006
If there were lingering doubts that teachers unions are the worms in the apple of the American education system, take a look at the monumental setback for school reform in Florida this week.
On Monday the unions in Tallahassee bullied all but one Democrat and four Republicans in the state senate to kill a school voucher bill that has already had a sterling record of success for thousands of children in districts with failing public schools. If that decision isn't reversed by Friday, one of the most heralded school reform measures anywhere in the country will be dismantled, and 775 school kids, 90% of whom are minorities, will be returned to the warehouses that are failed inner-city schools. A related voucher program that serves 18,000 learning disabled kids is also in jeopardy.
The program at issue is Governor Jeb Bush's seven-year-old "Florida A+ School Accountability and Choice Program." For the first time, schools have been graded on the reading, writing and math progress made by the children they are supposed to be teaching. (Imagine that.) Any school that received an F in two of four years is deemed a failure, and the kids then get a voucher to attend another school, public or private.
One immediate impact -- according to researchers at Harvard, Florida State, and the James Madison Institute -- has been that the mere threat of competition caused many inner-city school districts to improve. The percentage of African Americans who are now performing at or above grade level surged to 66% last year, from 23% in 1999. No union-backed school "reform" has had that rate of success -- not more funding, not higher teacher pay, not smaller class sizes, and so on. Two school districts in the state failed the program and the families were given vouchers. Those children have since made big academic gains.
But in one of the most absurd legal decisions in modern times, the Florida Supreme Court ruled 5-2 that the voucher program violated the "uniformity clause" of the state constitution guaranteeing a high-quality system of public schools. Because the performance of the voucher kids was superior to those in public schools, the court ruled that education was not uniform -- or in this case not uniformly miserable. As they used to say in the Soviet Union, everyone gets to share their poverty equally.
Governor Bush and minority families throughout the state were so enraged that they vowed to change the state constitution through a vote of the people to allow the A+ Program to go forward. But the state senate this week failed by one vote to allow that referendum to take place. Union pressure was so intense that the GOP state senate majority leader broke with his own party, his own governor and the pleas of parents and voted to topple the measure; he was removed from leadership by his fellow Republicans on Tuesday.
We're not sure whom to hold in highest contempt here: the four Republicans who buckled to union pressure, the Democrats who voted en masse against the interests of their own constituents, or the unions that pretend their political actions are in the interests of "the children" -- except when that conflicts with their own economic self interest.
The senate Republican president says he will force one more vote before Friday. The lone Democrat to vote for the measure, state senator Al Lawson, charged that his fellow party representatives, including other black members, put their fealty to the unions ahead of what's best for poor children. "Don't their parents have a right, when they pay taxes, to have their kids get the best education?" he asked.
In Florida, at least for now, the sad answer is no. And what is worse is that this week the unions and their Democratic allies -- who claim to represent these black and Hispanic families -- are celebrating their triumph in relegating another generation of children to their educational ghetto.
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Do teachers really want you to know what is happening in the classroom?
John Stossel sent out the following email.
Last week I wrote you to say that this week I would teach school.
Last month, 500 angry schoolteachers assembled outside my office. The United Federation of Teachers (UFT) was furious that "Stupid in America" suggested that some union teachers were lazy. Randi Weingarten, head of New York City's union, took the microphone and hollered, "Just teach for a week!" She said I could select from many schools. "We got high schools, we got elementary schools, we got junior high schools!"
I accepted. I even said I'd let the union pick the school. I thought I'd learn more about how difficult teaching is. Above all, it was a chance to get our cameras into schools--something the N.Y. bureaucracy had forbidden -- so we could show you what was really going on.
But like most of our dealings with the union, nothing was easy. It took weeks of phone calls to make any sort of progress. I suspect this will not surprise public-school parents.
Finally, the union picked a school: Beacon High. Unfortunately, it's not a typical public school--it's "special." Beacon doesn't have the full incentives or flexibility of a private school: It can't go out of business, and it is burdened by bureaucratic rules and a union contract. But Beacon offers a limited form of what the union opposes: school choice. As with a private school, you don't have to go there, and they don't have to take you. Applicants must submit portfolios, and if too few chose Beacon, it wouldn't be able to remain special. To remain what it is, it must compete.
Beacon students have taken field trips to France, South Africa, and tellingly, Venezuela and Cuba. Beacon has rooms filled with computers. Ninety percent of Beacon's students graduate, while the average graduation rate for New York City public schools is only 53 percent.
I guess they didn't want me to look at a normal public school.
But this is the school the UFT picked, and I was up for the challenge. Who knows what I might have learned by teaching?
My producers went to a meeting at the school. The union representative didn't come, so we were told no decisions could be made. Lots of people came to a second meeting at the school: four people from the union, one person from the city Department of Education, and administrators and teachers from Beacon. They decided I might teach history classes and "media studies," but they would have to talk to more people.
You would think my teaching had been my crazy idea.
I prepped for my history classes. We had more meetings. The school principal had me sit in on a class with a "superstar" teacher. It was supposed to a history class, but he seemed to teach "victimhood in racist America." On the class door he posted a New York Times column denouncing the president for spending too much money on war. Can we say "left-wing"?
Then there were more meetings. Finally, after I sent last week's e-mail, they canceled. They said that it might "set a precedent" that would open their doors to other reporters.
Too bad. Letting cameras into schools would be a good thing. Taxpayers might finally get to see how more than $200,000 per classroom of their money was being spent. Maybe that's not something the government school monopoly wants people to see.
Last week I wrote you to say that this week I would teach school.
Last month, 500 angry schoolteachers assembled outside my office. The United Federation of Teachers (UFT) was furious that "Stupid in America" suggested that some union teachers were lazy. Randi Weingarten, head of New York City's union, took the microphone and hollered, "Just teach for a week!" She said I could select from many schools. "We got high schools, we got elementary schools, we got junior high schools!"
I accepted. I even said I'd let the union pick the school. I thought I'd learn more about how difficult teaching is. Above all, it was a chance to get our cameras into schools--something the N.Y. bureaucracy had forbidden -- so we could show you what was really going on.
But like most of our dealings with the union, nothing was easy. It took weeks of phone calls to make any sort of progress. I suspect this will not surprise public-school parents.
Finally, the union picked a school: Beacon High. Unfortunately, it's not a typical public school--it's "special." Beacon doesn't have the full incentives or flexibility of a private school: It can't go out of business, and it is burdened by bureaucratic rules and a union contract. But Beacon offers a limited form of what the union opposes: school choice. As with a private school, you don't have to go there, and they don't have to take you. Applicants must submit portfolios, and if too few chose Beacon, it wouldn't be able to remain special. To remain what it is, it must compete.
Beacon students have taken field trips to France, South Africa, and tellingly, Venezuela and Cuba. Beacon has rooms filled with computers. Ninety percent of Beacon's students graduate, while the average graduation rate for New York City public schools is only 53 percent.
I guess they didn't want me to look at a normal public school.
But this is the school the UFT picked, and I was up for the challenge. Who knows what I might have learned by teaching?
My producers went to a meeting at the school. The union representative didn't come, so we were told no decisions could be made. Lots of people came to a second meeting at the school: four people from the union, one person from the city Department of Education, and administrators and teachers from Beacon. They decided I might teach history classes and "media studies," but they would have to talk to more people.
You would think my teaching had been my crazy idea.
I prepped for my history classes. We had more meetings. The school principal had me sit in on a class with a "superstar" teacher. It was supposed to a history class, but he seemed to teach "victimhood in racist America." On the class door he posted a New York Times column denouncing the president for spending too much money on war. Can we say "left-wing"?
Then there were more meetings. Finally, after I sent last week's e-mail, they canceled. They said that it might "set a precedent" that would open their doors to other reporters.
Too bad. Letting cameras into schools would be a good thing. Taxpayers might finally get to see how more than $200,000 per classroom of their money was being spent. Maybe that's not something the government school monopoly wants people to see.
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Taking on the teachers unions
Taking on the teachers unions
By Frederick M. Hess and Martin R. West | March 29, 2006
IT IS RARE -- and risky -- for a governor and national political aspirant to put the interests of children above those of a constituency that has as much electoral clout as the teachers unions. Yet Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has done just that with the education reform package he proposed last September and is touting nationwide.
The governor's bill seeks to upend the status quo in teacher pay and evaluation that has been written into collective bargaining agreements across the Commonwealth. Specifically, it would offer annual bonuses for teachers with a math or science degree who pass the teacher test in their subject, forgo tenure, and receive a satisfactory year-end evaluation. It would also make teachers in all subjects eligible for a bonus upon receiving an exemplary evaluation and empower superintendents to reward teachers who work in low-performing schools. Crucially, the bill would remove teacher evaluation from the collective bargaining process and establish statewide criteria for assessing each teacher's ''contribution to student learning."
While several states and districts nationwide are experimenting with differential pay for teachers, Romney's proposals are noteworthy for their breadth and the size of the proposed bonuses. All told, an effective math or science teacher could receive up to $15,000 a year in three bonuses.
Catherine Boudreau, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, predictably criticized Romney's proposals as ''inequitable, divisive, and ineffective." The MTA denounced the proposal as ''uniquely designed to destroy collegiality in a school," ignoring the fact that performance pay is routine in such other professions as medicine, law, and engineering, not to mention in the Commonwealth's first-rate universities, including those that are unionized by the MTA.
The governor can expect a similarly abrupt reception nationwide -- a fact he should consider as he eyes a presidential run. Teachers unions control enormous political resources, including a network of readily mobilized voters. Moreover, the public likes to think that the interests of teachers and kids are always aligned, a line tirelessly advanced by the unions. The National Education Association's political action committee even bills itself as the ''Fund for Children and Public Education."
However, what the unions want may not always be good for students. Teacher pay is exhibit one. While unions have fought to boost salaries, they have resisted efforts to ensure that this money recruits, rewards, and retains the most essential or effective teachers. Current pay scales reward teachers only for experience and graduate credits, neither of which is a meaningful predictor of quality. The result is that districts reward long-serving veterans while failing to recognize those teachers who improve student achievement, possess high-demand skills, or take on more challenging assignments.
Proposals to revamp collective bargaining by tackling teacher pay are only a start. Teacher collective bargaining agreements extend far beyond bread and butter matters, frequently privileging the interests of employees over those of students.
Across the nation, contracts include clauses that prohibit principals from factoring student achievement into teacher evaluation, that allow senior teachers to claim the most desirable school and classroom assignments, and that engage in a dazzling array of minutiae, such as when teachers are allowed to wear an NEA membership pin. As a result, schools are organized and managed more like mid-20th century factories than professional 21st century centers of learning. None of this serves students, valuable teachers, or communities.
Improving teacher collective bargaining is not only a question of knowing what to do, but of persuading school boards and the public to tackle the issue. State policymakers must change the environment in which negotiations take place by maintaining pressure on local officials to raise student achievement. Local newspapers must shine light on contract provisions that serve adults rather than children. School boards and superintendents need to push for fundamental changes in contract language and fully exploit ambiguous language where it exists. Civic leaders and citizens must support management measures that may entail, at least initially, disgruntled unions and increased labor unrest.
For the rest of the story go to Boston.com
Frederick M. Hess is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Martin R. West is a research fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution.
By Frederick M. Hess and Martin R. West | March 29, 2006
IT IS RARE -- and risky -- for a governor and national political aspirant to put the interests of children above those of a constituency that has as much electoral clout as the teachers unions. Yet Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has done just that with the education reform package he proposed last September and is touting nationwide.
The governor's bill seeks to upend the status quo in teacher pay and evaluation that has been written into collective bargaining agreements across the Commonwealth. Specifically, it would offer annual bonuses for teachers with a math or science degree who pass the teacher test in their subject, forgo tenure, and receive a satisfactory year-end evaluation. It would also make teachers in all subjects eligible for a bonus upon receiving an exemplary evaluation and empower superintendents to reward teachers who work in low-performing schools. Crucially, the bill would remove teacher evaluation from the collective bargaining process and establish statewide criteria for assessing each teacher's ''contribution to student learning."
While several states and districts nationwide are experimenting with differential pay for teachers, Romney's proposals are noteworthy for their breadth and the size of the proposed bonuses. All told, an effective math or science teacher could receive up to $15,000 a year in three bonuses.
Catherine Boudreau, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, predictably criticized Romney's proposals as ''inequitable, divisive, and ineffective." The MTA denounced the proposal as ''uniquely designed to destroy collegiality in a school," ignoring the fact that performance pay is routine in such other professions as medicine, law, and engineering, not to mention in the Commonwealth's first-rate universities, including those that are unionized by the MTA.
The governor can expect a similarly abrupt reception nationwide -- a fact he should consider as he eyes a presidential run. Teachers unions control enormous political resources, including a network of readily mobilized voters. Moreover, the public likes to think that the interests of teachers and kids are always aligned, a line tirelessly advanced by the unions. The National Education Association's political action committee even bills itself as the ''Fund for Children and Public Education."
However, what the unions want may not always be good for students. Teacher pay is exhibit one. While unions have fought to boost salaries, they have resisted efforts to ensure that this money recruits, rewards, and retains the most essential or effective teachers. Current pay scales reward teachers only for experience and graduate credits, neither of which is a meaningful predictor of quality. The result is that districts reward long-serving veterans while failing to recognize those teachers who improve student achievement, possess high-demand skills, or take on more challenging assignments.
Proposals to revamp collective bargaining by tackling teacher pay are only a start. Teacher collective bargaining agreements extend far beyond bread and butter matters, frequently privileging the interests of employees over those of students.
Across the nation, contracts include clauses that prohibit principals from factoring student achievement into teacher evaluation, that allow senior teachers to claim the most desirable school and classroom assignments, and that engage in a dazzling array of minutiae, such as when teachers are allowed to wear an NEA membership pin. As a result, schools are organized and managed more like mid-20th century factories than professional 21st century centers of learning. None of this serves students, valuable teachers, or communities.
Improving teacher collective bargaining is not only a question of knowing what to do, but of persuading school boards and the public to tackle the issue. State policymakers must change the environment in which negotiations take place by maintaining pressure on local officials to raise student achievement. Local newspapers must shine light on contract provisions that serve adults rather than children. School boards and superintendents need to push for fundamental changes in contract language and fully exploit ambiguous language where it exists. Civic leaders and citizens must support management measures that may entail, at least initially, disgruntled unions and increased labor unrest.
For the rest of the story go to Boston.com
Frederick M. Hess is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Martin R. West is a research fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution.
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
The Politicization of Teacher Education
The article below can be found at the website Students for Academic Freedom.
The article below points out why we must get rid of teachers colleges. The quality of education provided to the students in this country is dismal. We can improve the quality by having teachers become masters of the subjects they teach. Einstein and Feynman would not be qualified to teach physics in a high school class because they would not have a teaching degree. Would you rather have a teacher with a teaching degree teach your students or someone with a masters degree in math, biology, art, physics, english, etc teach your children? It is time to get rid of the teaching degree and move toward subject mastery to improve the quality of education in our schools.
The Politicization of Teacher Education
(The following remarks were delivered by Candace de Russy, a trustee of the State University of New York, at a panel discussion titled “Political Bias in Education Schools.” The event was sponsored by the New York Association of Scholars in New York City on May 15, 2005.)
The thoroughly politicized state of teacher education should be of grave concern to us all. Alluding to James Loewen’s book, Lies My Teacher Taught Me, education critic Sheldon Stern wrote of the danger which this poses to our society: “…[T]ruth and democratic institutions [will not] flourish if young people swallow the distortions and half-truths promoted by leftist ideologues like Loewen, who dominate the social studies establishment in our schools, the faculty in our graduate schools of education, and the history and ‘studies’ departments in our colleges and universities. Young Americans are being consciously taught to hate and be ashamed of their nation’s history and to believe that America is a uniquely evil and oppressive society.” Such indoctrination, Stern warns, is all the more “destructive” at this time of War on Terror.
Teacher colleges have long been scathingly criticized, as noted by Charles J. Sykes’s in Dumbing Down Our Kids. Critics from the 1960s onward – such as James Koerner, James Conant and Charles Silberman – characterized education curricula as “puerile, repetitious, dull,” …”stultifyingly…trivial,”…intellectually barren and professionally useless.”
But one of the first to speak out against political bias in these programs was Rita Kramer. In her 1991 study Ed School Follies, she criticized their mindless adoption of multiculturalism. This ideology, she wrote, is part of a broader movement to replace “the measurable learning of real knowledge” with “politics….” Expanding on Ms. Kramer’s point, Sykes called this fixation on racial, ethnic, and gender identities “a heavy club wielded against traditional curricula, reading lists, ability tracking, grades, standardized tests, discipline policies, and attempts to raise academic standards (which can be denounced as ethnocentric if they result in lesser rewards for any racial group).”
The virulence of classroom politics – its potential to instill resentment, divide society, and destroy self-reliance – is apparent in texts used to educate teachers in multiculturalism. One text cited in a recent study by the Pacific Research Institute instructs: “We cannot afford to become so bogged down in grammar and spelling that we forget the whole story.” This story, the text states, is one of “racism, sexism, and the greed of money and human labor that disguises itself as ‘globalization.’”
This is the twisted mindset so pervasive in today’s teacher colleges, which mold those who in turn mold our children and children’s children. In Sykes’s dire phrase: “Into their hands we commend our future.”
Were it not for entrenched special interest politics, the problem of teacher colleges could be solved by abolishing them. Sound teacher preparation could easily, and much more cost-effectively, be provided within traditional departments. Absent such radical restructuring, greater school choice (unlimited charter schools and school vouchers) would force those who prepare our teachers to compete and improve.
But a revolution of this sort is unfortunately glacially slow in coming.
Other solutions include calling upon governing boards to reform teacher colleges. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni has launched an initiative named Trustees for Better Teachers (TBT), which I have the honor of chairing. In Teachers Who Can: How Informed Trustees Can Ensure Teacher Quality, a TBT publication by Michael Poliakoff, the group urges trustees to inquire whether textbooks used in these programs are “fair, balanced, and factual,” to obtain the data needed to assess these programs, to ensure future teachers know the subjects they will teach, to interpret state teacher certification exam results with the appropriate skepticism, to combat grade inflation, to guard against the limitations of accrediting agencies, and to distinguish “best practices from malpractice in education methods courses.”
Trustees are of course obliged and empowered by law to ensure the integrity of all curricula, including that of teacher colleges, but all too typically they elect not to do so. A primary cause of this failure is the fear of even appearing to tell professors what they can or cannot teach, of intruding upon faculty prerogatives. At the same time, however, the professoriate is largely failing to play by its own historic rules, to uphold its end of its compact with the public: While basking in the privilege of self-governance, it forsakes the public trust.
What did the profession’s own representative organization have to say on this subject? In its 1915 “Declaration of Principles” (among many other pronouncements) the AAUP warned that if the professoriate “should prove itself unwilling…to prevent the freedom which it claims…from being used…for uncritical and intemperate partisanship…it is certain that the task will be performed by others.”
But in reality governing boards shrink from confronting partisanship and ideology on campuses. Take, for example, a recent meeting of the Academic Standards Committee of the State University of New York Board of Trustees, where I repeated my essential objection to SUNY’s touted reform of its 16 teacher colleges (which, I might add, is said to educate more teachers than any other institution in the world). I reiterated that such initiatives are meaningless unless they are grounded in an honest and through assessment of the curricula (disciplinary and pedagogical) used in these programs. System Provost Peter Salins’s response to this, unchallenged by any other trustee, was: “It is not our role to critique existing programs.”
“It is not our role….” Therein why failed programs such as teacher education endure and endure. Neither faculty nor administrators nor boards are in fact in charge. No one is ensuring high curricular and other academic standards. For this reason the governance of the academy today has rightly been labeled “organized anarchy.”
Until such accountability is instituted, our future will remain in the hands of ideologues hostile to our best traditions, and this nation will remain at risk.
Candace de Russy, Ph.D., a trustee of the State University of New York, writes on educational and cultural issues.
The article below points out why we must get rid of teachers colleges. The quality of education provided to the students in this country is dismal. We can improve the quality by having teachers become masters of the subjects they teach. Einstein and Feynman would not be qualified to teach physics in a high school class because they would not have a teaching degree. Would you rather have a teacher with a teaching degree teach your students or someone with a masters degree in math, biology, art, physics, english, etc teach your children? It is time to get rid of the teaching degree and move toward subject mastery to improve the quality of education in our schools.
The Politicization of Teacher Education
(The following remarks were delivered by Candace de Russy, a trustee of the State University of New York, at a panel discussion titled “Political Bias in Education Schools.” The event was sponsored by the New York Association of Scholars in New York City on May 15, 2005.)
The thoroughly politicized state of teacher education should be of grave concern to us all. Alluding to James Loewen’s book, Lies My Teacher Taught Me, education critic Sheldon Stern wrote of the danger which this poses to our society: “…[T]ruth and democratic institutions [will not] flourish if young people swallow the distortions and half-truths promoted by leftist ideologues like Loewen, who dominate the social studies establishment in our schools, the faculty in our graduate schools of education, and the history and ‘studies’ departments in our colleges and universities. Young Americans are being consciously taught to hate and be ashamed of their nation’s history and to believe that America is a uniquely evil and oppressive society.” Such indoctrination, Stern warns, is all the more “destructive” at this time of War on Terror.
Teacher colleges have long been scathingly criticized, as noted by Charles J. Sykes’s in Dumbing Down Our Kids. Critics from the 1960s onward – such as James Koerner, James Conant and Charles Silberman – characterized education curricula as “puerile, repetitious, dull,” …”stultifyingly…trivial,”…intellectually barren and professionally useless.”
But one of the first to speak out against political bias in these programs was Rita Kramer. In her 1991 study Ed School Follies, she criticized their mindless adoption of multiculturalism. This ideology, she wrote, is part of a broader movement to replace “the measurable learning of real knowledge” with “politics….” Expanding on Ms. Kramer’s point, Sykes called this fixation on racial, ethnic, and gender identities “a heavy club wielded against traditional curricula, reading lists, ability tracking, grades, standardized tests, discipline policies, and attempts to raise academic standards (which can be denounced as ethnocentric if they result in lesser rewards for any racial group).”
The virulence of classroom politics – its potential to instill resentment, divide society, and destroy self-reliance – is apparent in texts used to educate teachers in multiculturalism. One text cited in a recent study by the Pacific Research Institute instructs: “We cannot afford to become so bogged down in grammar and spelling that we forget the whole story.” This story, the text states, is one of “racism, sexism, and the greed of money and human labor that disguises itself as ‘globalization.’”
This is the twisted mindset so pervasive in today’s teacher colleges, which mold those who in turn mold our children and children’s children. In Sykes’s dire phrase: “Into their hands we commend our future.”
Were it not for entrenched special interest politics, the problem of teacher colleges could be solved by abolishing them. Sound teacher preparation could easily, and much more cost-effectively, be provided within traditional departments. Absent such radical restructuring, greater school choice (unlimited charter schools and school vouchers) would force those who prepare our teachers to compete and improve.
But a revolution of this sort is unfortunately glacially slow in coming.
Other solutions include calling upon governing boards to reform teacher colleges. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni has launched an initiative named Trustees for Better Teachers (TBT), which I have the honor of chairing. In Teachers Who Can: How Informed Trustees Can Ensure Teacher Quality, a TBT publication by Michael Poliakoff, the group urges trustees to inquire whether textbooks used in these programs are “fair, balanced, and factual,” to obtain the data needed to assess these programs, to ensure future teachers know the subjects they will teach, to interpret state teacher certification exam results with the appropriate skepticism, to combat grade inflation, to guard against the limitations of accrediting agencies, and to distinguish “best practices from malpractice in education methods courses.”
Trustees are of course obliged and empowered by law to ensure the integrity of all curricula, including that of teacher colleges, but all too typically they elect not to do so. A primary cause of this failure is the fear of even appearing to tell professors what they can or cannot teach, of intruding upon faculty prerogatives. At the same time, however, the professoriate is largely failing to play by its own historic rules, to uphold its end of its compact with the public: While basking in the privilege of self-governance, it forsakes the public trust.
What did the profession’s own representative organization have to say on this subject? In its 1915 “Declaration of Principles” (among many other pronouncements) the AAUP warned that if the professoriate “should prove itself unwilling…to prevent the freedom which it claims…from being used…for uncritical and intemperate partisanship…it is certain that the task will be performed by others.”
But in reality governing boards shrink from confronting partisanship and ideology on campuses. Take, for example, a recent meeting of the Academic Standards Committee of the State University of New York Board of Trustees, where I repeated my essential objection to SUNY’s touted reform of its 16 teacher colleges (which, I might add, is said to educate more teachers than any other institution in the world). I reiterated that such initiatives are meaningless unless they are grounded in an honest and through assessment of the curricula (disciplinary and pedagogical) used in these programs. System Provost Peter Salins’s response to this, unchallenged by any other trustee, was: “It is not our role to critique existing programs.”
“It is not our role….” Therein why failed programs such as teacher education endure and endure. Neither faculty nor administrators nor boards are in fact in charge. No one is ensuring high curricular and other academic standards. For this reason the governance of the academy today has rightly been labeled “organized anarchy.”
Until such accountability is instituted, our future will remain in the hands of ideologues hostile to our best traditions, and this nation will remain at risk.
Candace de Russy, Ph.D., a trustee of the State University of New York, writes on educational and cultural issues.
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