NEA UBER ALLES

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The American Spectator -- Dec. 2000 /Jan. 2001

Failing Grades

How education unions ruined the public schools.

by Tom Bethell

I have written this column for the last 21 years -- every issue of the magazine -- but I don't recall ever having written about education. I say "don't recall" because you forget what you have written. Now you know why columnists repeat themselves. I was always aware that education is one of those great and hopeless causes in which progressives had invested so much hope. Education would change us all, society would be transformed, and so on. It was a doomed cause, obviously, so I ignored it for years. But it has turned out that I was wrong. Educators have indeed changed the world. What no one predicted was that they would change it for the worse.

My mistake was to assume that a constant, fairly decent level of education would be sustained indefinitely. It wouldn't get any better, to be sure. But at least it wouldn't get any worse. Wrong! When I was growing up, education was something stable and unobtrusive in the background. It was simply there for all who wanted it. Most didn't, of course, and most still don't. Beyond a certain level, in fact, most people don't need much in the way of academics.

How are we to explain the great decline that has taken place? In England in the 1950's it was often said -- and it was probably true -- that the grammar schools (state schools) were as good as the private schools. I hadn't come to America yet (I arrived in 1962) but I gather that in the 1950's the public schools here were pretty good. No harm was done if working or middle class parents couldn't afford the fees for private school. Their children would get a pretty good education anyway. But that is no longer true. The relative advantage of parents who can afford school fees is much greater now than it was 30 or 40 years ago. The same change has taken place in England.

My first job in the U.S. was as a school teacher -- at a prep school in Virginia. The students were good, on the whole, and the headmaster was a memorable figure. Above all, he made sure that everyone worked hard; and that included the teachers. I taught geometry and algebra, although I had no math degree and certainly had taken no education courses. Something called the New Math was coming down the education highway. But we were allowed to ignore it, so the students did okay. The astronomer and writer Clifford Stoll, growing up in Buffalo, had teachers who were afraid to seem old-fashioned, so he was subjected to New Math. He has fun with it in his entertaining book, High-Tech Heretic. Algebra "had to be learned outside of math class," he says. Now there is something called New New Math, apparently, or Connected Math, or Fuzzy Math. "It all adds up to Mickey Mouse Math," he adds.

Progressive education had been much touted earlier in the century, but in the 1940's and 50's (when I was growing up) it was in remission. "It sprang back to life in the early 1960's," Diane Ravitch writes in her new book, Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms. "Once the hierarchy of educational values was shattered, once the schools lost their compass, hawkers of new wares could market their stock to the schools. Every purveyor of social reform could find a willing customer in the schools, because all needs were presumed equal in importance, and there was no longer any general consensus on the central purpose of schooling."

The latest fad, and one of the silliest and most expensive, promoted by Al Gore, is that if only we can hook kids up to the Internet the problem of educating them will be solved. That only shows he has given the subject no thought. The idea is that education imparts information; information is available through the Web; therefore kids exposed to the Web will acquire all the information they need. Kids will be motivated, too, because computers are fun! Any teacher who believes that is simply looking for a quiet life. Education experts who believe it should get into another field. They won't, though, because theirs has been a playpen for mediocrities and daffy ideas for decades. That isn't about to change.

Government schooling was an important issue in the presidential campaign, but my sense is that George Bush hardly understood it any better than Al Gore. But the parents are catching on. More and more, they know it has not been working for their kids. People are even beginning to realize that, wait a minute, maybe more money isn't the solution after all. In that sense, the failure of government education is a crisis of liberalism, for the guiding philosophy of liberals is this: If there's a problem, the government should spend money on it. If the problem persists, that is because not enough money was spent.

It has been a great source of frustration to conservatives that so many Americans persist in believing this. It has seemed impossible to disabuse them of the idea that problems will be solved to the extent that government spends more money. Lousy schools and an incompetent education establishment have come close to doing the job, however. That's a plus. But Gore and Bush continued to see the problem through the eyes of the educators, not the pupils. When Gore touted the National Education Association line -- hire more teachers, give us more dollars -- Bush in effect responded: "More dollars? I'll go for more dollars. But not quite so many as my opponent." He conceded the premise and lowered the ante.

Over and over again, the experience of public education has falsified that premise. More money has meant lower test scores. There is a correlation, but it is inverse. The big test came in Kansas City in the 1980's, when a power-drunk federal judge ordered taxes raised and the money spent on local schools. Two billion dollars were spent, more teachers were hired, salaries were increased. Test scores didn't budge. The judge was naively convinced that, until he imposed his own will on the district, the problem had been a shortage of good intentions.

Now, just as the voters have begun to see the need for a more radical look at the issue, and some long-delayed truth telling, along comes the GOP candidate. "Third graders need to read? Give me a billion dollars, and I'll see the job gets done." It really is a money problem, he agreed.

Diane Ravitch says next to nothing about the teachers' unions. But one who has studied them is Terry M. Moe of Stanford's political science department. I had a chance to talk to him recently at an education conference at the Hoover Institution. He has convinced me that the teachers' unions are the key to understanding the modern failure of public education. We are talking about two unions here -- the National Education Association (2.5 million members, 2 million of them practicing teachers) and the American Federation of Teachers (about one million members, half of them teachers).

The problem to be explained is why public education failed, having been reasonably successful for about a hundred years. The great decline took place at just the time when union power was rising. Their membership was inconspicuous in the 1950's, but in the following two decades both unions grew rapidly. In effect, they learned that they could "game" the system. They could exploit the nation's willingness to spend ever-larger sums on public education, and make it work to their own advantage; not just in wages and fringe benefits, but in controlling almost every aspect of their own employment. It is not easy to get the relevant information from the unions themselves. Even the simplest questions "must often be answered through sketchy information" assembled from other sources, Moe stresses. Journalists, meanwhile, have exempted teachers' unions from the usual media scrutiny.

Two things work greatly to the unions' advantage. The first is that parents often don't know what is going on in the schools. Many are too busy, too harried, too misinformed. This is especially true of single and inner-city parents, where a close watch is most needed. Parents who do pay attention, or who learn the bad news from others, often remove their children from government schools entirely. That is why there is now a large home-schooling movement in this country. The second point, stressed by Moe, is that the local school boards, nominally in control of schools, are in fact strongly shaped by the teachers' unions.

In a chapter of a forthcoming book, Public Education: A Primer with Attitude, Terry Moe writes: "Unions bargain with school boards, which play the role of management. But school boards cannot be expected to behave like the managers of private firms in resisting union demands. School boards face little or no competition, and needn't worry that they will lose 'business' by agreeing to union demands that raise costs, promote inefficiencies or lower school performance. The kids and the tax money will still be there. In the second place, school boards are composed of elected officials, whose incentives are explicitly political.... Moreover, the unions, by participating in local elections, are in a position to determine who the 'management' will be." For private-sector unions, this achievement would be "a dream come true."

How do they "participate" in elections? School board contests attract a low turnout (10 to 20 percent), and they are typically non-partisan, meaning that voters lack the information that party identification normally conveys. This allows the unions to shape that message. Unions also have lots of money. They control an army of workers -- teachers themselves -- who have a direct stake in the outcome. They can be organized to vote, make phone calls, ring door bells, distribute literature, serve as campaign staff. No other community group "can come close to matching them." They overshadow business and civic groups, parents especially. All this explains "the astounding fact" that teachers' unions can control "who they will be bargaining with," as Moe says.

There are regional differences -- the unions are still weak in most southern states -- but overall they have succeeded in getting control of almost all aspects of schooling. It's not just pay and fringe benefits. In urban districts where unions are strongest, contracts may run to two or three hundred pages. There are rules about hiring and (almost impossible!) firing; about how teachers are to be evaluated, how much time they can be required to work, class schedules and sizes; about teachers' roles in school policy decisions, grievances, time off for professional meetings; and about who has to join the union (there are big "agency fees" for those who don't).

In this analysis, institutional self-interest overrides everything else. Unions need to attract members and money, which entails not just winning higher wages and benefits but increasing the demand for teachers (that's what "smaller class size" means), supporting higher taxes, seeing that more money flows into union coffers, minimizing competition, and seeking political power. Notice what is not included here: considering what is best for the children, for the schools, or the public interest more generally.

Some conservatives who understand these things have developed a political philosophy that might be called Leninist: "The worse the better." Lenin supposedly said that, in the period before the Bolshevik revolution. Any amelioration of social conditions would only reduce the pressure for revolution. So, some on the right say: "No vouchers!" They would only extend federal control to private schools anyway. The unions are inadvertently encouraging people to take their children out of public schools and home-school them. The worse the better! I'm not sure I go that far, but it's something to think about. Home-schooling deserves a closer look.

Tom Bethell was recently a media fellow at the Hoover Institution.

This article also appears in the December 2000/January 2001 issue of The American Spectator.

Copyright © 2000 The American Spectator. All rights reserved.

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), December 27, 2000

Answers

The article said,

So, some on the right say: "No vouchers!" They would only extend federal control to private schools anyway.

I've got my kids in Catholic schools, and it initially suprised me that the Church was opposed to vouchers. I then learned that what they opposed was that any money given would come with strings, and I understood.

Frank

-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), December 27, 2000.

Good article, Lars. I hope that Anita will read it. We've had a few discussions on the disadvantages of the teachers' union. I seem to recall in one thread I wrote it sucks. Never let it be said that I hold back on my opinions. :)

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), December 27, 2000.

I don't think Anita hangs here anymore. I hope I am wrong.

Remember Tip O'Neil's quote "all politics is local"? I think that exlains most of what the NEA and the Ed School faculties are all about. Control. Self enrichment. Self aggrandizement. To make it worse, there is often an ideological agenda underlying their prescribed policies. And it all is couched in feel-good Educationist rhetoric about benefitting the student.

Heck I don't blame them. If I were a teachur, I would be gung-ho NEA. If I were a trucker, I would be gung-ho Teamsters, etc. But that doesn't mean we should buy into the BS and keep sending them the money. Bethell mentioned the Kansas City experience. I wish he had elaborated. My hazy impression is that huge sums were spent to modernize KC schools (exactly what we are always told is necessary) and there was no corresponding improvement in student performance.

Frank, I am glad your kid's schools are not seduced by Federal money. It is the proverbial camel's nose under the tent.

I think that public education as we know it is almost done for. Good riddance. Let's get some competition. Let's allow teacchers that are educated in their subject even if they are not "certified". I say this as someone who was married to a HS math teacher. Jan was a good teacher. It was a difficult and stressful job. But she did make good money, had good perq's and she was very pro-NEA.

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), December 27, 2000.

There is faulty logic in this article, and simplistic thinking. It does NOT follow, for instance, that a) We gave schools more money b) test scores went down, so c) Giving more money results in lower test scores.

A rudimentary application of logic shows the fallacy in this kind of argument. For example a) I only believe what I can see b) I have never seen Idaho c) therefore Idaho does not exist.

The supposed failure of the publication education as measured by test scores is a misnomer; there is much evidence that test scores merely measure how students take tests and not how much they have learned. The article also does not give weight to the lessened role of the parents in their child's education. The teacher cannot follow the student home and make them do their homework.

If there is indeed a problem in the education our students are getting, it is part of a larger societal problem; Folks are too "busy" to see to their children's needs. Children are not encouraged by their parents to excell-are not given guidance. To blame the "demise" of education on the failure of schools and the rise of their unions is a red herring to hide the failure of our families to help in the educational process.

Union bashing is a popular thing for conservatives to do, and frankly, frightens the hell out of me. Good 'ol Reagen was the biggest union buster of the bunch. The fact is, folks, that starting salaries for teachers still suck, and the best and brightest of our generation are not going to look at a teaching career UNLESS the stakes are raised.

Here is a link to the the 1997-1998 statistics on starting salaries:

http://www.aft.org/research/survey/tables/tableI-8.html

There are many more tables at that site to play with(oh, and by the way, Texas aint looking to good in these tables). While I agree that simply "throwing money" at a problem does not solve it, I do not think we should draw the conclusion that we need to withdraw funding from public schools and give vouchers to private schools. The funds must be earmarked to give a living starting salary for teachers.

It is truly fucked up that the minimum salary, let's say, in baseball is $200,000 a year, and the average starting salary for a teacher is about $23,000 a year.

Where the hell are our prerogatives. It is nice to sit in an ivory conservative tower and exclaim too much money is going to our schools, but until our society is willing to address issues like the one above, we will go nowhere. Our society is demented. We need to make the teaching profession attractive or all we will continue to get, on average, is mediocraty.

-- SydBarrett (dark@side.moon), December 27, 2000.

Syd,

A bit of faulty logic on your part: The baseball players that earn large salaries are the creme de la creme of their profession, whereas your average grade school teacher isn't. It might suprise you, but a good university professor/researcher also draws a high salary, with prestige to boot.

BTW, if all the minor league ballplayers out there were getting 200k+, there'd be a lot more people trying out.

The bottom line Syd is that in ANY field the best and the hardest working make a lot of money. The baseline for everyone else is lower. If you're complaining about teachers' pay, why not complain about salesmen? Some work on commission only, their base pay is ZERO. But a good salesman can make lots of cash, too.

Frank

-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), December 27, 2000.

Lars, I agree with your comment on competition and the unions don't want competition. I found the comment on "smaller class size" to be very illuminating. The unions first and foremost want to grow their base not diminish it.

Syd if the unions were for the benefit of teachers and their salaries, then they have totally failed, haven't they? With 23K, I'd say the unions deserve an F. (And since you drag Reagan into it, I applauded his firing of striking FAA controllers.) Unions once had a place in America but I think their role has decreased. With competition in the workforce, employers are "forced" to pay for good workers.

You cite the baseball deferential in salaries and Frank corrects you. (Actually I agree with you there but please get off your soap box and back to the topic at hand.) The best should be compensated for their work. Good teachers should be compensated for their hard work and long hours. They are not. The union has seen to it that all teachers are paid according to "time in job", tenure, not capability. To earn more money in teaching, one needs to go into administration. What message does that give? Do you know the criteria for getting a principal's position? I can assure you (at least in my state) it doesn't depend on the quality of your work or on how well you can manage a classroom. Sad isn't it? Now tell me how good the union is again.

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), December 27, 2000.

I was always aware that education....

He barely pays attention and suddenly is an expert? He's wrong, not completely but only because he was bound to hit something if he wrote enough.

The demise of the school system started in the late 1960's.

I think the worse thing that happened was the breakdown of discipline. Schools started making excuses for bad behavior, allowing disruptions which prevented other children from learning. Now we have a generation of adults that have an excuse for everything, rather than taking responsibility for their actions. When you have just one kid disrupting a class, the entire room full of kids fail to learn what they should have that day.

It doesn't help that school is portrayed as a negative.

School is now taught in a way that seems to almost apologize to the child for forcing them to do things they don't want to do.

The entire American culture belittles school, treats it as some sort of burden that kids have to bear.

Another problem is the fact that it is almost impossible to fire a teacher. One year with a teacher like this and a child looses out for the rest of their school life. After loosing a years worth of learning with a incompetent teacher, it is almost impossible for them to catch up in the following years.

Large class sizes ARE a negative factor. Learning algebra is difficult for some people, sometimes they need individual help to explain formulas etc., and in a class of 30+ student, that just isn't going to happen. 5 minutes of individual instruction could allow a student to understand something that otherwise would prevent them from learning the rest of the subject.

Throughout the decades the bar has been lowered in what is taught in school. Unfortunately the slower students have been accommodated which has dummied down the more capable students.

The idea that if you are smart in school you are some kind of freak is another attitude that has been exploited by the media.

When I went to school, we used to walk 20 miles one way for the privilege of learning reading, riting and rithmatic.

Seriously, there is no justification for kids not to learn the basics by their third year of school. People don't seem to comprehend the abilities of children to learn at a young age.

We could learn a lot from Australia, they find the strong areas children have and guide them in those directions. They have year round school with breaks, they also have a system where everyone has the opportunity to go to a school of higher learning.

It doesn't help that school, starting in middle (or Jr. high) school is such a social arena. This is where kids develop their social attitudes based on wrong assumptions.

The answer is not school vouchers. The answer is smaller class sizes, standards that kids are held to with no excuses, teacher accountability. Money has been thrown at schools but that money has been siphoned off to the "middleman", it has seldom reached the students.

-- Cherri (sams@brigadoon.com), December 27, 2000.

I do not see anything in my response that celebrates the accomplishments of the teacher unions. If I recall, I stated that the unions are not completely to blame-no one has yet spoken to my position that our parents have failed our children, too, not just the "education" system.

You may not like unions, personally, and they may have gotten too big for themselves in a lot of cases(remember what happened to the baseball umpires), but it is a dangerous course to go on if we were to unilaterally condemn the union movement. I do not trust big business as far as I could spit-people DIED, were KILLED, to fight for workers rights, and I believe that big business would be more than happy to have unions busted right and left so they can take benefits and salary away from workers.

The job market has been tight for awhile, so business has HAD to pay top salaries to top talent, but this will not always be the case. We will have economic hard times again. Bust the unions and many of the little people get hurt. And that is the Republican motto-Fuck the little people-they play the game by supporting CEO's-not entry level teachers-look at the record in Texas on teacher salaries.

And Frank, you really think it is okay to pay a fucking baseball player 252 million dollars? You think it is okay to give this guy more money for ONE AT BAT($45,000) then a teacher makes in their first year? Almost double? You really do not think we have our priorities screwed up? You think that $23,000 a year for a grammer school teacher is a-ok?

That really says a lot about your point of view, Frank, that on the one hand you are so concerned about "the children"(as a witness of your many comments over the years) and on the other accepting a mere pittance as starting salaries for teachers.

And I bet the minor league ball players at triple AAA are making more on average than a teacher.

-- SydBarrett (dark@side.moon), December 27, 2000.

Syd, you said,

And Frank, you really think it is okay to pay a fucking baseball player 252 million dollars? You think it is okay to give this guy more money for ONE AT BAT($45,000) then a teacher makes in their first year? Almost double? You really do not think we have our priorities screwed up? You think that $23,000 a year for a grammer school teacher is a-ok?

Grow up Syd. The only reason some guy can make 252 mil. for playing a game is that Americans VOLUNTARILY pay that much to buy tickets, etc. to watch him! If you don't like it, never go to a single sporting event (or watch one on T.V.), and convince everyone else to do the same. Believe me Syd, if there was no (VOLUNTARILY paying) audience for this guy, he wouldn't make squat, and less so next year, and would soon be out there flipping burgers with the highschoolers. If you want everyone to make the same, look at the USSR. There the mediocre didn't make *more*, it's just that those who were the best weren't rewarded for it. Look at the result. Would you want to live there? I wouldn't.

Why don't teachers make more? I agree that they're underpaid in the public schools, but then who decides what their salaries are? Are they paid for what they do like a ballplayer? How are their salaries set?

Next, how are "our" priorities screwed up here? I'm not personally contributing to major league baseball players, although I occasionally would get to a minor league game, how am I involved in this guy's salary (or the immorality of it) at all?

That really says a lot about your point of view, Frank, that on the one hand you are so concerned about "the children"(as a witness of your many comments over the years) and on the other accepting a mere pittance as starting salaries for teachers.

I'm quite concerned with "the children", especially my own. I try and prove that in deed to them on a regular basis. In fact, YOUR kids benefit from me too, in that my (high) taxes help fund kids in schools that I don't even belong to. And what's with the personal attack? Why would my realizing that someone who works in an entertainment field could make a lot of money make me a bad guy?

In the end Syd, no one forces college educated people to be teachers at a low salary. The salary for teachers was low when they started college, and it hasn't changed. The pay for their chosen profession should have been well known to them before they became committed to entering the field, when they wouldn't have suffered from changing to do something else. If they just wanted to "make money", they could go to a better paying field. If they want to BE teachers in spite of the low pay, that's their choice. If enough people refused to enter teaching because of the conditions, the pay would keep increasing until the slots were filled. That's supply and demand, Syd. Learn it, love it, live it! The only reason teachers' pay is low is that that's what the State can get away with paying them at this time, AND BY THE TEACHERS' CHOICE.

No profanity in my post,

Frank

-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), December 27, 2000.

I've been substitute teaching this year. I was never interviewed for the job. The application did not ask me if I had ever seen or spoken to a child. I was not required to provide proof of educational level. My references were not contacted.

I had to pass a background check, but not a drug test. The background check had several areas listed. The fact that I have never applied for workmen's compensation was listed first.

The pay does not equal minimum wage. I guess you have to "love kids" to want to do this job.

The teachers I assisted had over twenty years apiece in the teaching profession. They constantly mentioned that they were not allowed to discipline the kids effectively.

The kids acted out sexually, used vulgarities casually, and often refused to cooperate with any of the tasks at hand. Most of them were unable to sit quietly for any length of time.

Some had not had adequate sleep. Some did not have adequate clothing. Some arrived hungry. Over half of the kids came from a home with only one parent. Of those, over half had never lived in a home with more than one parent. Only a few of the kids appeared to have consistent rules and schedules at home.

The students were four and five years old. God help us.

-- faceless (you@know.me), December 27, 2000.

Faceless,

What are you, some senseless bigot? How dare you say that what these people are doing to their kids is less then perfect! Get out of Amerika.

Frank

-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), December 27, 2000.

Frank

I find it difficult to discuss things with you; it always seems to go in a circle. I have said previously in this thread that it is the parents that are to blame for a huge part of this, and that our SOCIETY as a whole has their head up their ass when it comes to entertainment. There is something wrong with a society that keeps going to games and supporting these kind of salaries-I for one do not go-and I would not take my kids if I had any. You are saying this is the american way-make what you can-take what the market will give-and that is fine as far as it goes-but it is hard for me to believe that you do not take issue with how out of hand this is-being a man most interested in morals.

As far as your assertion that if people boycotted the teaching profession salaries would go up-well guess what? It has not worked- young people ARE avoideing the profession like the plague-that is my whole point-at those salaries, no one wants the job-and many large public school systems are understaffed.

I do not want to get away from the original article-which blamed teachers unions for bad education, and stated that providing more money for education has failed. Do you agree or disagree with the article? How would you solve the crisis in our education system? Do you believe it is the result of parents not being interested in their child's education?

-- SydBarett (dark@side.moon), December 27, 2000.

Syd:

Keep your eye on the ball [grin]. You are absolutely correct, school can assist what goes on at home, but it can't create it. If the parents don't care, schools can't do anything about it, they can only provide buckets to shovel kids into during the day. And yeah, the unions today only serve as guardians of mediocrity.

But where you lose vision is in blaming society for this. "Society" is you and me, man. You are correct to blame poor parents for poor students, and conversely give good parents credit for good students. Most of a child's character is already formed by the time school really starts anyway. We can only cure the flaws of "society" one person at a time, and that requires that we *accept* the blame for what we have done, and not try to pass it off onto some abstraction.

As for Alex Rodriguez, hell, he'll be making less per year than Bill Gates pays in taxes. Let's have some perspective here.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), December 28, 2000.

Good points, Flint. But you only say that about A-Rod cause your team got him. What are you going to do, however, about pitching?

-- SydBarrett (dark@side.moon), December 28, 2000.

Syd:

As I recommended before, A-Rod should use his money to *buy* the team, and then find some pitching for it. Otherwise, if you substitute his numbers last year for the numbers the Rangers actually got out of shortstop, the team *still* finishes last.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), December 28, 2000.

Syd,

I find it difficult to discuss things with you; it always seems to go in a circle.

Communication in short text is ponderous at times. From my perspective, I feel that I sometimes have to repeat my points as it SEEMS to me that people would rather start out disagreeing with them than think about them.

Again, I really DON'T think that anyone's salary should be "tied" to anyone else's. The USSR tried it, and as a result everyone was poorer -- even those who were supposed to benefit. In our country, the people on welfare earn more than many people who are WORKING in third-world countries. Although it may seem unjust for one person to make more than they can ever spend, the end result for society is that everyone, even the poor, benefit.

With the teachers, I think your perspective is just too short. Remember, the unions didn't come about until a LOT of society was suffering for a long time. With teachers, the crunch is only just beginning. Many people don't care about the inner cities, wait until 70% of the schools can't find teachers, and there will be change. It may take another 30 years to drain out the system of the existing teachers, but if no one new enters, when the crunch is bad enough, things will change.

As far as how to correct the problem with the schools, you can probably guess my answer: parents need to take responsibility for their actions and those of their children. This is now called "moralizing" (perjorative) on my part. The fact is though, that we didn't have these problems 50 years ago. Today, kids are becoming more uncontrollable in real ways, and as human biology hasn't changed much in this time, it's likely due to the CULTURE in this country. One that says "it's o.k.", and "you're not accountable". These ideas have costs associated with them, and we're starting to see them now. As the current generation grows up, and become the decision makers, it'll be interesting to see what happens in society, and whether we can go back, or even if people WANT to. Who knows, 40 years from now people may not even CARE that they can't read, as long as their basic wants are fulfilled by someone who can.

But then that's their generation's problem, not mine.

Frank

-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), December 28, 2000.

I do not see anything in my response that celebrates the accomplishments of the teacher unions. If I recall, I stated that the unions are not completely to blame-no one has yet spoken to my position that our parents have failed our children, too, not just the "education" system.

But you did say, "Union bashing is a popular thing for conservatives to do, and frankly, frightens the hell out of me." This may not have celebrated union accomplishments but certainly defended them.

Well it seems that Flint actually addressed your comment on parenting. I didn't address it because it didn't talk directly to problems with schools. Negligent parenting is a totally different topic, which may or may not be related to society woes. But you eat an elephant one bite at a time.

I agree with Cherri's point on discipline. Besides teachers who are apathetic at best and detrimental at worst, for our children's education, the administration has tied their hands in managing the classroom. Bad kids just continue to be passed along from grade to grade, disrupting the class when others are actually trying to learn. Teachers can not control the classroom. My daughter was suspended for throwing a can of varnish at a kid who was tormenting her. She constantly went to the teacher to explain how this kid behaved in class. Teacher did nothing, so she finally one day had enough. I applauded her. My daughter has straight A's and is headed for valedictorian, yet she is punished for wanting to learn in school. BTW we can also thank the union for instituting these kinds of "student rights" policies.

Teachers have a tough job, no doubt about it. Many good ones get burned out quickly. Too sad. My SO taught second grade. Many kids had serious discipline problems; one brought a knife to school and threatened a follow student. My SO didn't think twice about taking the disruptive kids out of class. He had a no-nonsense line that if crossed one suffered the consequences. His students who couldn't even recite the alphabet were reading at second grade level when they went on to third grade. Others were reading at fifth grade level. They have since participated in science projects and have been propelled to the top of their class. He was never rewarded for his successes (which he really didn't need) but got burned out by the administration crap not allowing him to do his job.

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), December 28, 2000.

I receeved a soshul promoshun frum ed skul.

-- (nemesis@awol.com), December 28, 2000.