I love this.  I didn’t get to it yesterday on the program, so hopefully I will have the chance today.  An article in the Wall Street Journal: America Has Too Many Teachers. 

I’m sure this has twisted the thongs of every teacher’s union leader in the country:  Too many teachers?  The audacity!  Even the president himself, our Dear Ruler, says that we need more teachers .. after all, remember that his solution to stimulate private sector growth is to … hire more government school teachers!

But just remember folks that teachers unions exist for two main reasons: To further their own benefits and preserve their jobs.  Sure, some education may occur along the way, but they will do so only to the point where it doesn’t interfere with the previous stated reasons for their existence.

OK .. so now to the point about too many teachers.  Andrew Coulson in the Wall Street Journal writes:

Since 1970, the public school workforce has roughly doubled—to 6.4 million from 3.3 million—and two-thirds of those new hires are teachers or teachers' aides. Over the same period, enrollment rose by a tepid 8.5%. Employment has thus grown 11 times faster than enrollment. If we returned to the student-to-staff ratio of 1970, American taxpayers would save about $210 billion annually in personnel costs.

What did this mean in terms of student achievement?  Bupkis.  So if student achievement isn’t improving, then why do we continue to hire more and more teachers?  Because teachers unions have power and the more power these teachers unions wield, the more say they have with Democrats and then the Democrats can turn around and vote for more funding to … hire more teachers!  They can feed off of each other in a perpetual cycle of vote buying and government spending, meanwhile the children and their education are of no concern to anyone.  Coulson’s conclusion is this:

The implication of these facts is clear: America's public schools have warehoused three million people in jobs that do little to improve student achievement—people who would be working productively in the private sector if that extra $210 billion were not taxed out of the economy each year.

Our government education system is a sham, and no amount of teachers or money is going to fix that.