Public Schools Must Be De-unionized

It's time to sink the union monopolies in school districts across the nation.

As the saying goes, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. No one embraces that aphorism more wholeheartedly than the nation’s education unions and their Democrat Party enablers.

As the latest test results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reveal, the unionized school model is an ongoing failure. “The average performance of the nation’s fourth and eighth graders mostly declined in math and reading from 2017 to 2019, following a decade of stagnation in educational progress, according to the results of a test released on Oct. 30, 2019,” columnist Jill Barshay reveals. “The one exception was fourth-grade math, with the average score rising by one point between 2017 and 2019.”

These results are not anomalous. Scores also declined between 2013 and 2015. But this particular drop was described as “substantial,” because reading scores for fourth-graders and eighth-graders declined in 14 states and 31 states, respectively.

Peggy G. Carr, associate commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) sounded the alarm. “Over the past decade, there has been no progress in either mathematics or reading performance, and the lowest performing students are doing worse,” she said in a prepared statement. “In fact, over the long term in reading, the lowest performing students — those readers who struggle the most — have made no progress from the first NAEP administration almost 30 years ago.”

How is it that three decades of stagnation are even remotely acceptable? OpenSecrets.org, a website that tracks political contributions, reveals half of the equation.

“Democrats haven’t received under 70 percent of education industry donations in a cycle since 2002,” the site explains. “In 2018, individuals from the education industry gave more than $64.5 million to Democrats and just $7.8 million to Republicans. The industry’s peak giving year thus far, 2016, saw more than $75 million go to Democrats and $12 million to Republicans.”

The two largest teachers unions, National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), lean even further left. “Even more than most labor unions, they have little use for Republicans, giving Democrats at least 94 percent of the funds they contributed to candidates and parties since as far back as 1990, where our data begins,” Open Secrets adds.

The other half of the equation? Quite simply, unionism itself. By definition, a union exists to promote and protect the interests of its members. Thus, under the best of circumstances, the concerns of students and parents are secondary.

This dynamic is nothing new. “Bosses, have I got an idea for you: Don’t pay your best employees more, don’t ease out your least productive workers, and for crying out loud, never fire anyone, not even for the most blatant misconduct on the job,” wrote columnist John Stossel — 13 years ago.

Stossel further explained that since unions are government monopolies, “they don’t care” and yet “never go out of business.” He asserts, “They just keep doing what they’re doing, year after year, churning out class after class of students handicapped by a poor education.”

Being monopolies, unions oppose school choice and charter schools, especially when those charter schools outperform union models — and even when the public favors them by a two-to-one margin — which becomes a three-to-one margin among black Americans.

It’s no secret why black Americans are far more supportive of charter schools than any other demographic. “The achievement gap between white students and black students has barely narrowed over the last 50 years, despite nearly a half century of supposed progress in race relations and an increased emphasis on closing such academic discrepancies between groups of students,” columnist Lauren Camera explained in 2016.

Isn’t 30 years of overall stagnation and 50 years of a black-white achievement gap enough evidence to suggest the status quo is broken beyond repair?

Unfortunately the unionized-schools monopoly is so powerful that unless one has the wherewithal to put one’s child in a private/parochial school (like school-choice opponent Elizabeth Warren did and then lied about), that child’s future — or complete lack thereof — can literally be determined by one’s zip code.

It’s truly remarkable how sanguine most Americans are regarding that kind of coercive power. If one were shopping for a car, and government confined that shopping to a particular neighborhood, most Americans would be appalled by such an assault on their Liberty. Yet every year, millions of children, mostly in cities controlled by Democrat Party machines, are forcibly assigned to transparently failing schools.

Even more abusive? The fraud of increasingly higher “graduation” rates. The national average public-school graduation rate for 2019-2020 is approximately 84%, yet 40 to 60% of first-year college students require remedial courses in math, English, or both according to a 2016 report by the left-leaning Center for American Progress.

Those two stats are irreconcilable. Yet they are never seriously challenged, any more than the contemptible cornucopia of bogus educational theories that engender the discrepancy. Such theories — from “whole reading” instruction, “reform” math and “cooperative” learning, to an obsession with self-esteem, forced-fed multiculturalism and hostility to testing — have produced legions of weak-thinking younger Americans.

Younger Americans nonetheless taught to view their own nation’s customs culture, traditions, and economic system with contempt. “Our children are being intentionally brainwashed,” asserts columnist Ziva Dahl. “Postmodern academics, disdainful of America and the West, know that the best way to bring down our political and economic system is to refashion our history for future generations.” What to do? First, Americans must recognize that the union monopoly and the demands it imposes on students, parents, and a lot of capable and well-meaning teachers is a complete bust — at best.

At worst? Given the animus toward America union-monopolized schools disseminate to children on a daily basis, they are arguably a threat to national security.

Second, nationally televised Senate hearings should be convened, aimed at exposing the damage these monopolies have done. While most Americans are somewhat aware of the problems, seeing those who represent the status quo of ongoing educational failure defending their agenda — one after another, after another — might precipitate the collective outrage necessary to engender the paradigm shift in public education this nation desperately needs.

One critical to our ability to survive as a constitutional republic.

Every serious problem afflicting this nation can directly or indirectly traced back to the corruption of our education system. Right now, a least two generations of Americans believe American exceptionalism should be supplanted by a nihilistic stew of identity politics, economic collectivism, and intellectual bankruptcy epitomized by the words “my truth.”

Genuine truth? It’s time to start all over from scratch. After half a century of consistent decline, buying into yet another round of union promises to “reform” the system must be seen as the Titanic deck-chair rearrangement it truly is. It’s time to sink the union monopolies in school districts across the nation.

We’ve countenanced their insanity long enough.

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Abolish the Ivy League Already

BY ROGER L. SIMON

I attended two Ivy League schools (Dartmouth and Yale) some time ago, roughly the Early Paleolithic Age, and, best as I can remember, sort of liked them. But lately I'm beginning to think the whole elite school thing has turned into one big shuck, maybe it even was then —and not just because of the revelations of all the cheating surrounding admissions or that the institutions apparently discriminate against Asians as they did against Jews back in the day.

No, it's more basic than that. These formerly august institutions have morphed into kindergartens for jejune, virtue-signaling wannabe Trotskys and Rosa Luxemburgs (a.k.a. social justice warriors) who can't even let us watch a farshtunkene [very smelly] football game in peace.

In the middle of this year's Harvard-Yale game, the great activistes spewed out onto the field to demand, what else, action on climate change—delaying the game for over an hour.

But all these Ivy League smarty-pants couldn't come up with a slogan more original than "Hey hey, ho ho, fossil fuels have got to go.”

Who'd they learn that from, their grandparents?  Decades ago, during Vietnam, it was "Hey hey, ho ho, LBJ has got to go."

And he did. Of course, if fossil fuels went, we'd all freeze to death, but never mind. It's the thought that counts—assuming there really is some thought involved in these climate protests, which I doubt, even and especially those held by Harvard and Yale students and alumni at sporting events.

It's all rote, a pseudo-religion—and maybe a good way to meet a partner of the opposite or same sex, depending on your preference. That's the way it was during Vietnam too. (Mea very culpa!)

(It would be interesting to know how much litter was left on the field by these environmentalists. The Women's March immediately after Trump's election was notorious for leaving a giant mess.)

Of course that this was Harvard versus Yale—THE game as it is referred to, along with Army-Navy—meant it got plenty of national attention, as was no doubt intended.

But the larger question is: why is there still an Ivy League? What's so special about these particular colleges? Texas A&M certainly has a better football team and you can learn how to farm.

We live in an era when many of us are getting fed up with elites (unless, of course, they are former ambassadors to Ukraine, in which case they are sacrosanct). Nevertheless, we still live in a country where people are supposed to be impressed if you went to Harvard or Yale, as did so many of our most distinguished leaders... like Hunter Biden. It should be remembered that Harvard's most famous and successful graduate of recent times—Bill Gates—quit. Possibly the greatest American writer of the Twentieth Century—F. Scott Fitzgerald—was thrown out of Princeton. (If you prefer Hemingway, he never went to college.)

Maybe the Ivy League isn't all that it's cracked up to be. Maybe it's an elitist habit we should all kick. Think of the benefits. You won't feel bad if you didn't get in and you won't have to abide self-important eco-blowhards interrupting a football game. You'd still have to deal with Colin Kaepernick, but at least it's an improvement.

But the man who really understood the Harvard-Yale game, when it was just a contest and not a lecture, was, needless to say, the great Harvard mathematician/songwriter Tom Lehrer. Take it away...



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Australia fails on early childhood education

We read below: "The report shows children who attend early learning services are as much as 33 per cent less likely to be developmentally vulnerable when they start school "

But why?  Does it mean that mothers who do all the caring are harming their kids?  Is the contrast with care-by-mother?  Probably not.  The report below admits that Aborigines and the poor tend not to send their kids to kindergarten.  So the comparision is between the poor and the rest. 

The results below are NOT a comparison between mothers of equal status, some of whom use kindergartens and others who do not.  There is no evidence that going to kindergarten is of itself better for the child


The percentage of Australian families with two parents in the workforce is increasing, as new data shows the number of couples with both adults employed full time doubling.

Data from the latest snapshot of early learning in Australia shows in 2013 the number of couple families in which both parents worked full time was 16 per cent. By 2017, the number was 33 per cent.

The Early Childhood Australia report, to be released on Monday, shows women remain more likely to be the primary carer for children, and  the proportion of families with a single earning father, whose partner is not in the labour force, decreased from 36 per cent in 2013 to 31 per cent in 2017.

Australia's upward trajectory in rates of female workforce participation — up by 1.5 percentage points in the past decade — aligns with trends in OCED countries, and brings the economy closer to Sweden, often viewed as an international leader in gender equity in the workforce.

The report shows children who attend early learning services are as much as 33 per cent less likely to be developmentally vulnerable when they start school than those who do not attend early learning services.

Disparities in access to early learning persist, however.

While nearly 45 per cent of children used early learning services in 2018, those living in remote areas, children from Indigenous and non-English speaking backgrounds and those with a disability are under-represented in early learning services.

For preschool programs in the year before full time schooling, enrolment levels are over 90 per cent. But actual attendance at preschool varies widely across the states and territories and economically disadvantaged and Indigenous children are less likely to attend.

Indigenous children are more likely to be developmentally vulnerable when they start school than non-Indigenous children. States where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are provided free or near-free access to preschool from age three tend to achieve the national Closing the Gap target of 95 per cent enrolment in the year before school.

Low-income families  spend a higher proportion of their income on early learning services, despite subsidies from government.

The report shows those on the lowest incomes pay almost double the proportion of their income after subsidies, at 8 per cent, compared with those on high incomes, who spend 4.7 per cent.

Australia falls below average the average investment levels for OECD countries, 0.7 per cent of GDP, and ranks 11th among the 21 member countries.

"While the headline figures indicate strong national progress in early childhood education and care provision and quality, closer examination highlights significant pockets of unmet need, and problems of affordability and workforce planning," the report said.

"The picture also differs between states and territories, where differences in the early childhood education and care landscape combine with varying policy settings to produce inconsistent results for children and families.

"The goal of fully realising the benefits of early learning for all children in Australia has not yet been reached."

The report will be released at federal Parliament. It notes a decline in investment in early learning per child occurred under the Turnbull and Morrison governments.

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