The decline of American public education, documented by a plethora of objective tests for decades, is so well known it requires no documentation here. What I wish to address here goes beyond the academic failure. It is about the way school regulations now are regimenting all aspects of the children’s lives, what they eat and drink—even their play during recess. Predictably, the results are less favorable for the children.
In his book Inside American Education, Thomas Sowell writes:
They have used our children as guinea pigs for experiments, targets for propaganda.
They have taken our money, betrayed our trust, failed our children.
They have proclaimed their dedication to freedom of ideas and the quest for truth, while turning educational institutions into bastions of dogma and the most intolerant institutions in American society.
Schools have become totalitarian compounds, where an autocratic administration arrogates to itself the power dictate whatever it thinks is best for the children, irrespective of the role and rights of the parents.
Remember the campaign to remove from schools vending machines dispensing soft drinks and snacks, a measure that was supposed to help combat childhood obesity? Who could be against that? Are you in favor of childhood obesity? Few people bothered to ask if the measure would be effective or if it was the schools’ role to police what children put into their mouths.
Did you think the issue would stop with banning the vending machines? If so, you should have known better. Next was banning children from bringing soft drinks and snacks from home. And school cafeterias had to be prohibited from serving french fries, pizzas, and other items the children like and substituting foods with fewer calories and less salt and sugar.
We couldn’t be prouder of our own Bruno Behrend, who recently drove up to a Tea Party Rally in Sheboygan, WI (otherwise known as “real America”) to talk about school reform — getting the crowd excited about breaking up the government education complex.
Politico has tracked the IP address of a website attacking former D.C. schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee to the American Federation of Teachers.
The site, which refers to Rhee as “the Sarah Palin of education” among other things and is the main online source of attacks on Rhee, was launched in February. An tracking tool traces the IP address back to the AFT’s offices in D.C. The site has since jumped to several other IP addresses.
Coming on the heels of an accidentally released-and-then-pulled document explaining the AFT’s strategy to quash the Parent Trigger in Connecticut, we see a clear emerging pattern of aggressive, anti-reform and anti-family empowerment actions by a teachers union that purports to show a friendly hand to education reform.
From Ann Althouse comes word the Wisconsin Teaching Assistants’ Association (TAA) voted last week against seeking state certification as a union for the purpose of collective bargaining.
TAA is the first public employee union known to have held a union certification vote and the first one known to have voted against certification.
Just a few hours after my guest appearance last week on WSAU-AM and FM radio in Wausau to talk about the Wisconsin recall elections, my phone rang.
The man calling was one of the program’s listeners, who said he tracked me down because he had a few questions. We’ll call him Sean. Sean is, it turns out, a victim of class warfare, though he wouldn’t call himself that. And, boy, was he pissed.
The Wisconsin teachers union is getting a long-overdue lesson in free-market economics.
For decades, the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC) has been in fat city. Now? Not so much. On Monday, WEAC issued layoff notices to 40 percent of its staff, blaming the state’s new limitations on collective bargaining. [click to continue…]
In 2011, until yesterday, Wisconsinites who favor limited government and responsible taxation and spending had to suffer in silence, as their voices were obliterated by union and leftist protestors.
But when Wisconsin’s silenced majority finally got its chance to speak out by voting in Tuesday’s recall elections, it positively roared.
Thanks to The Washington Examiner for publishing my piece today bout how the teachers unions in Connecticut worked behind the scenes to neuter the Parent Trigger school reform. The AFT bragged of their success on their website for days — until the cynical documents started to gather attention, at which point the union erased it from the site.
An excerpt of my op-ed:
The bill approved by Connecticut legislators allows the councils of elected community members only to advise school officials rather than empowering them to force needed reforms.
The report also touts as “karma” that “the chief legislative proponent of the original parent trigger bill lost his re-election in November 2010″ and “the House Co-Chair [who allowed the bill to move forward] lost his race for Majority Leader and has a thorny relationship with the Black and Puerto Rican Caucus on education issues.”
The report also makes clear AFT officials must be hoping Biddle’s discovery does not become more widely known because it destroys the union’s carefully erected image as reform-minded partners who love to “collaborate” with parents and communities.
Test cheating has for years provided ammunition for critics of public school accountability, and the latest out of Atlanta on the country’s apparently largest test-cooking scandal to date only amplifies their crows. As Mark mentioned earlier, that’s the quick conclusion even “objective” reporters are highlighting. A sampling from some star-studded outlets.
Washington Post: “Few who have paid attention in the education era of high-stakes testing will be surprised at this. And the stakes are only getting higher for teachers and principals, who are increasingly being evaluated and paid according to how well their students do on standardized tests, despite research showing that test-driven reform hasn’t made an impact in the last decade on student achievement.” This research is by no means a consensus and education reform has had giant barriers to progress in the past decade such as, well, teachers’ unions.
Here’s another item for our series lately about how growing federal control of education is creating a wave of discontent: A group of Obama-supporting teachers has begun to publicly request he stand down in increasing federal intrusion into education.
The maze of regulations and requirements is only increasing as the Obama administration continues to push national standards and tests tied to them, and many teachers can’t take it any more, for some despite their support for the president.
Here are some poignant excerpts (emphasis added):
I am a college professor and was able to rally legions of students in support as well. However, if the decisions of [President Obama's] nominated representatives continue to favor high-stakes testing for teacher and student accountability, I will find a new candidate to support in 2012.
(Cross-posted from American Liberty.)
