AMERICANWELCOME TO YOUR

EDUCATION

If the forces behind truly meaningful reform seem scattered and weak, those defending the status quo—the unions, the politicians, the bu-reaucrats, and the vendors—are well organized and well financed. The two national unions—the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association—together have some 4.7 million members, who pay hundreds of millions of dollars in national, state, and local dues, much of which is funneled to political causes.Teachers unions consistently rank among the top spenders on politics.

And what do the members want? Employees understandably want lifetime job security (tenure), bet-ter pay regardless of performance (seniority pay), less work (short days, long holidays, lots of sick days), and the opportunity to retire early (at, say, 55) with a good lifetime pension and full health benefits; for their part, the retirees want to make sure their benefits keep coming and grow through cost-of-living increases. The result: whether you work hard or don’t, get good results with kids or don’t, teach in a shortage area like math or special education or don’t, or in a hard-to-staff school in a poor community or not, you get paid the same, unless you’ve been around for another year, in which case you get more.

Not bad for the adults.

IN 2009, ONLY 67% OF 4TH-GRADE STUDENTS PERFORMED AT OR ABOVE BASIC IN READING.

WE’RE RAPIDLY MOVING TOWARD TWO

AMERICAS:A WEALTHY ELITE,

AND AN INCREASINGLYLARGE UNDERCLASS

THAT LACKS THE SKILLS

TO SUCCEED

ALMOST BY DEFINITION, THE PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM IS FOCUSED ON ITSELF AND ITS OWN PERPETUATION RATHER THAN THE KIDS THAT THE SYSTEM IS SUPPOSED TO BE PREPARING FOR THE FUTURE.

WHEN SCHOOLCHILDREN START PAYING UNION DUES, THAT’S WHEN I’LL START REPRESENTING THE INTERESTS OF SCHOOLCHILDREN.”

ALBERT SHANKER:THE LATE, ICONIC HEAD OF THE UFT.

“

This should come as no surprise. Remember that public education in the United States is a government monopoly. Don’t like your public school? Tough. The school is terrible? Tough. Your taxes fund that school regardless of whether it’s good or bad. That’s why government monopo-lies routinely fail their customers. Union-dominated monopolies are even worse. Firing a public-school teacher for non-performance is virtually impos-sible. Steven Brill wrote an eye-opening piece in The New Yorker about the “rubber rooms” in New York City, where teachers were kept, while doing no work, pending resolution of the charges against them—mostly for malfeasance, like physical abuse or embezzlement, but also for incompetence. The teachers got paid regardless. In addition, more than 1,000 teachers get full pay while performing substitute-teacher and administrative duties because no principal wants to hire them full-time. This practice costs more than $100 million annually.

THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT FACTOR IN DETERMINING STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT IS NOT THE COLOR OF STUDENTS’ SKIN OR WHERE THEY COME FROM. IT’S NOT WHO THEIR PARENTS ARE OR HOW MUCH MONEY THEY HAVE. IT’S WHO THEIR TEACHER IS.”

PRESIDENT OBAMA

Only after six years of litigation were they able to fire him. In the meantime, they paid the teacher more than $300,000. Klein said he employs dozens of teachers who he’s afraid to let near the kids, so he has them sit in the rubber rooms. This year he will spend $20 million dollars to warehouse teachers in five rubber rooms. It’s an alternative to firing them. In the last four years, only two teachers out of 80,000 were fired for incompetence. including at least one who was found guilty—whom the union-approved arbitrators refuse to terminate.

Perhaps the most shocking example of the City’s having to pay for teachers who don’t work involves several teachers accused of sexual misconduct. It took years to fire a teacher who sent sexually oriented e-mails to “Cutie 101,” a 16-year-old student. NYC School Chancellor, Joel Klein said, “He hasn’t taught, but we have had to pay him, because that’s what’s required under the contract.”

“

Although the City is required to put them back in the classroom, it understandably refuses to do so. And the union has never sued the City to have these teachers reinstated, even though it knows it could readily win. It has also never helped figure out how to get these deadbeats off the payroll, where they may remain for decades at full pay, followed by a lifetime pension. No one—and the union

SAID KLEIN, BECAUSE “PEOPLE GET PAID THE SAME, WHETHER THEY’RE OUTSTANDING, AVERAGE OR WAY BELOW AVERAGE.”

Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, she said, “They [the NYC school board] just don’t want to do the work that’s entailed.” But the “work that’s entailed” is so onerous that most principals just have just given up, or gotten bad teachers to transfer to another school. They even have a name for it: “the dance of the lemons.”

WE TOLERATE MEDIOCRITY,”

“

means no one—gets fired.

AS LONG AS THERE ARE NO CONSEQUENCES IF KIDS OR ADULTS DON’T PERFORM, AS LONG AS THE DISCUSSION IS NOT ABOUT EDUCATION AND STUDENT OUTCOMES, THEN WE’RE PLAYING A GAME AS TO

WHO HASTHE POWER.

18 year old Dorian Cain in South Carolina, struggled to read a single sentence in a first-grade level book. Although his public schools had spent nearly $100,000 on him over 12 years, he still couldn’t read. “20/20” sent Dorian to a private learning center, Sylvan, to see if teachers there could teach Dorian to read when the South Carolina public schools failed to. Using computers and workbooks, Dorian’s reading went up two grade levels—after just 72 hours of instruction. His mother, Gena Cain, is thrilled with Dorian’s progress but disappointed with his public schools. “With Sylvan, it’s a huge improvement. And they’re doing what they’re supposed to do. They’re on point. But I can’t say the same for the public schools,” she said. Gena Cain, like most parents, doesn’t have a choice which public school her kids attend. She followed the rules, and her son paid the price. In San Jose, Calif., some parents break the rules to get their kids into Fremont Union schools. They’re so much better than neighboring schools that parents sometimes cheat to get their kids in by pretending to live in the school district. “We have maybe hundreds of kids who are here illegally, under false pretenses,” said District Superintendent Steve Rowley.

CHOICE IS THE ONLY WAY. I BELIEVE THAT WE CAN FORCE THE SYSTEM FROM AN EXTERNAL VANTAGE POINT TO CHANGE ITSELF. IT WILL NEVER CHANGE ITSELF FROM WITHIN…

THAT THEY CAN CONTINUE TO

CAPTIVE MONOPOLY

INFUSED IN THE EQUATION, UNLESS THAT OCCURS, THEN THEY KNOW THEY HAVE A

COMPETITIONUNLESS THERE IS SOME

DOMINATE.”

CHANGEMeaningful teacher accountability means major consequences for student outcomes. Those teachers and principals whose students do well should get substantial merit pay; those who don’t should be fired. Similarly, schools that do poorly should be replaced. Without real consequences tied to performance, the results won’t significantly change.

IS POSSIBLEWithout political leadership willing to take risks and build support for “radical reform,” and without a citizenry willing to insist on those reforms, our schools will continue to decline. McKinsey estimates that the benefits of bringing our educational levels up to those of the highest-performing countries would have raised our gross domestic product by about $2 trillion in 2008. By the same token, every year we fail to close that gap is like living with the equivalent of a permanent national recession. Shocking as that may sound, the costs in human terms, to our nation and to the kind of people we aspire to become, will be even greater.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar-chive/2011/06/the-failure-of-american-schools/8497/

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1500338#.TrMUG78mwao

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