From Rasmussen:
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 68% of American Adults view being a teacher as one of the most important jobs in our country today…
…Thirty-seven percent (37%) say, in terms of its impact on the nation, it’s a good thing that most teachers belong to public employee unions. Forty-six percent (46%) disagree and say it’s a bad thing that most teachers are unionized. Seventeen percent (17%) are not sure…
Which is pretty much as one would suspect it to be – we like teachers, don’t like the unions. Not too long ago I was doing a little research on the Clark County (NV) school system and discovered that about half of the district’s employees are not teachers. That, actually, is the result of having teacher’s unions…the massive and steady increases in education funding we’ve provided over the years (rising, in inflation-adjusted dollars, from $3,101.00 per student in 1960 to $8,682.00 per student in 2007) hasn’t gone for teachers, but for piles of flapdoodle which has little or nothing to do with teaching kids. This is because, for the unions, it is irrelevant whether or not the kids learn.
You see, for the unions, the whole point of existence is to obtain the highest number of unionized employees making the highest amount of pay possible (and thus providing the highest possible union dues) for doing the least work possible. This is what all unions do, all the time – not one of them is actually interested in providing a superior product at a lower cost; there is no upside for a union in doing that. In fact, doing such would be negative for a public sector union because greater efficiency means less employees needed. As long as teachers have to belong to a union, things will never improve – for teachers or students.
It would be better if we just did it with individual contracts – start off with a 1 year contract renewable for five years. If the teacher does well, then make a new 5 year contract renewable for 15 years. That gets a teacher to 20 years at which time the teacher can either retire, or just keep on with additional five year contracts – and all renewals dependent upon both the need of the school district and the performance of the individual teacher. There would still be room for corruption and failure, but no central union making back room deals which eventually have half the staff being made up of non-teachers – at massive monetary cost and to the detriment of actual education.
It is time for a change – and getting rid of the public sector unions, especially in education, is the vital first step. In this, Wisconsin is leading the way – and if the GOP wins there, we can start to at long last really address education reform.
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