Unions Vs. Children

The Oakland Press reports on how teacher’s unions sabotaged a $200 million gift that would have created 15 new charter high schools in Detroit dedicated to producing a 90% graduation rate.

The stubborn opposition of teachers unions to change in America’s failing educational system is inexcusable. Minority students stuck in failing schools desperately need a voucher system that would force school administrators to fix problems and would allow those students living in districts that won’t deal with problems to go elsewhere. Instead of giving parents choice, the teacher’s unions want to defend their fiefdoms regardless of the fact that inner city schools are falling apart due to the neglect and corruption of many inner city governments – governments overwhelmingly controlled by leftist Democrats.

The only way to make America’s educational system work is to offer choice and demand accountability – with both goals being strongly opposed by the arrogance of the educational bureaucracy.

7 thoughts on “Unions Vs. Children

  1. There are so many things wrong with the premise of vouchers that I’ve previously addressed that it would be futile to spend half my lunch hour listing them all again. If vouchers were to become a reality, they would serve two purposes dear to GOP hearts (if that concept doesn’t seem like a contradiction in terms, I don’t know what does).

    Primarily, vouchers are a political ploy to weaken the Democrats’ chief campaign contributor and bolster one of their own chief campaign contributors–the religious right–by stealing public funds to finance religious education, unconstitutional as that may be.

    Secondly, the weakness of what’s left of public education if their voucher fantasy became a reality would fall woefully short in educating the vast majority of have-nots. A poorly-educated minority of Americans ensures a ready supply of disempowered laborers for the GOP’s corporate constituency to sink their venomous fangs into. In short, vouchers would aid and abet the already frightening expansion of the American Third World subculture, a prospect that Republicans lust for.

    So far, vouchers have been one Republican fairy tale that the public hasn’t bought into….yet. God help America if they eventually do.

  2. Apparently the public school system is having a disasterous effect on American families by driving up property values in zip codes with better schools. Property values are so high now that a family with only one income can’t even begin to afford a home in a decent school district.

    Sorry, Mark, I have to disagree. This isn’t a case of vouchers leaving behind those too poor to afford decent schools. That’s already happened because it costs too much for low-income families to live where the good schools are.

    The only thing that’s going to bring the “market price” of schools down is consumer choice. That means schools have to be able to compete. I don’t know that vouchers is the best way to do that, but anything’s better than what’s going on now. But to have choice we need student mobility.

    What I’m not sure about is a market factor increasing quality of education. With schools competing against each other it would seem like there’s far too great an incentive to cut costs to the detriment of the students.

  3. As bad as you suggest public schools are today, imagine how much worse they would be if this subculture represented an even higher percentage of the student body in public schools, thanks to vouchers siphoning off the achievers or those deemed to have the most potential from the worst public schools.

    You make it out to be the students’ fault a school sucks. How much sense does that make? How does it improve another child’s educational opportunity if my (hypothetical) brilliant child’s education is squandered at a sub-par school?

    The purpose of schools is not to have high test scores. It’s to educate children. Let’s go ahread and group children by achevement. That way we’ll be able to get the teachers the underperforming chldren need. And the really brilliant ones won’t be squandered, waiting for their classmates to catch up.

    seem to be too far removed from the reality of life in the underclass to comprehend that the son of a strawberry-picker in Fresno will NEVER have the same opportunity to succeed as the daughter of the strawberry plantation owner

    That may very well be. But forcing the affulent daughter to waste her time in the same sub-par school as the poor son does nothing to further either of their educations. Let’s get the affulent out of the way so we can focus on the children who lack the same level of access.

    Honestly I’m not ever sure what you’re trying to say. On one hand you seem to realize that hanging around the rich kids doesn’t make you smarter. But then you oppose school choice because it takes the rich out of the public schools. Maybe you can help me understand what you’re trying to say.

  4. What I specifically alluding to in my last post, however, were the limited-English speaking immigrant students not seeing an academic performance improvement…

    As someone whose native language is not English and who attended “inner city” schools (Brooklyn, NY)… I can say that kids who want to succeed – do so. In fact, I blame preferential treatment on failure of these kids who you claim to care for.
    You simply can not claim that certain groups fail because of poor schooling, when other kids who attend these very same school succeed. How about personal responsibility? Why not start blaming parents? Why are Asians always excluded from the “minority” label? Because they are succesful?
    Throwing money at the problem will not make it go away, you know.

  5. The biggest problem with communism is that it requires everyone to think alike in order to be effective, which goes against the grain of human nature. “Equality of opportunity” has even less chance of working since it assumes that not only does everyone arrive at the same conclusion when they think, but they have the same capacity to arrive at that conclusion. It’s impossible to persaude the Stans of this world that their personal experience may not be a one-size-fits-all case study that guarantees success for all, so the best one can do is cite examples that should prove the theory false. There are students who are inserted into my school district as sixth graders, but can’t speak a word of English. They are given expensive ESL training, but usually move on with their parents to another school district in two or three months to start the process all over again. I can assure you these kids are very unlikely to succeed–no matter how bad they “want to”. To pretend that he can succeed as a justification for accepting his dire poverty when he doesn’t is a huge disservice to humanity….not that that would matter to most conservatives.

  6. They are given expensive ESL training, but usually move on with their parents to another school district in two or three months to start the process all over again.

    Well, what could we possibly do for these kids? Maybe get a handle on the out of control lending industry and make it a little easier for their parents to achieve the sort of stability that would let them live in one place for a while?

  7. The problem with developing public policy is that there will always be people you can’t help. One cannot craft a policy that gives preference to migrant workers and leaves millions other behind. The best way of dealing with these issues is by controlling illegal immigration, an act which is opposed by Democrats. (See Victor Davis Hanson’s excellent book Mexifornia: A State of Becoming for more on this subject.)

    However, public policies can be created to help some people, and vouchers would help the millions of inner-city children stuck in failing schools. By giving them the opportunity to accept vouchers it would give them the opportunity to succeed. Where school choice initiatives have been tried they have improved learning conditions for all students, even those who remained in the public school by virtue of smaller class sizes and an increased push for accountibility.

    Considering that we spend an average of $10,240 per student per year on K-12 education that figure is more than enough to provide a quality education for those who want it.

    The problem is that the teacher’s unions don’t care about the educational quality of the system, they represent the interests of the educational bureaucracy rather than those of students. There is an overwhelming base of support, especially among African-Americans, for voucher systems, and vouchers are the best way of providing for a quality education.

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