I know you are probably sick of me harping on government schools and teachers unions.  Well then, I guess is sucks to be you.  As long as I’m on the air I’ll keep preaching against government education; and especially against teacher’s unions.  I’ve said and I will repeat that there is no other entity in this country – or anywhere in the world, for that matter – that has done more damage to the fabric of America than teacher’s unions.  The problems we face in this country would be greatly reduced if the people were just informed enough and bright enough to see through political rhetoric to the truth.  That hasn’t happened because the schools were specifically designed to make sure that people don’t see through the political rhetoric, and in that sense government schools are a terrific success.  I keep on hammering in the hopes that one day, just one person will finally read something and say, “Damn it, that’s the final straw!” and take their children out of the hands of the government to be educated. 

 For those of you who DO care, here’s an article by Joel Klein to be all that warm and fuzzy: The Failure of American Schools.  Try this paragraph on for size:

Employees understandably want lifetime job security (tenure), better 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.

Not bad for the teachers … but what about your child’s education?  What incentive do these people have to actually teach your child anything?  Nothing, so long as the union has its way.

Moving right along, Joel Klein points to a quote by none other than Albert Shanker (whom we just highlighted yesterday in the Nuze) who was the long-time head of the American Federation of Teachers.  Just a few years before he died, Shanker was giving a speech to the Pew Forum on Education Reform.  He really hit at the crux of the situation:

The key is that unless there is accountability, we will never get the right system. 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 has the power.

Even he admitted that without a system of accountability, that the entire teacher union-government school charade was about nothing more than power.