Hey Teacher Leave Us Kids Alone

This blog is designed primarily to focus on the very broad discipline of politics. Of course most of us only have expertise in a very limited field. As a result I suppose I should have more valuable insights to add about education policy as opposed to financial or health care reform. I mean does ANYONE know what they are talking about when it comes to financial reform?

With that in mind I stumbled upon this article from boston.com about a new documentary called "The Cartel" that takes teacher unions to task for the poor state of our public schools.

Here's an excerpt:

“The Cartel,’’ however, is more than a treatment. It’s a full-frontal assault, almost three years in the making, on the teacher unions and administrators whom Bowdon sees as stubborn stranglers of innovation. In his view, tenure often trumps learning, and the amalgamation of power can be a union’s top priority.

“I simply couldn’t believe how in modern America someone would, by the age of 25, be guaranteed a job for life unless they killed someone,’’ Bowdon said in a recent interview with the Globe.

Teacher unions have been targeted by many, most predictably on the right side of the political spectrum, as one of the primary problems in education. Many possible solutions have been proposed to improve our nation's schools. Some of the most popular being:

• charter school
• voucher programs
• merit pay for teachers
• elimination of teacher tenure
• standardized testing

Charter schools appear to be one of the most popular education reform proposals and champions of this strategy no doubt believe that the absence of teacher unions from charter schools free these institutions up to tap all of the pent up innovative thinking that teacher union's have supposedly been stifling. The best and most recent research however reveals that over 80 percent of charter schools to be the same or worse than comparable public schools.

Moneyquote:

But for all their support and cultural cachet, the majority of the 5,000 or so charter schools nationwide appear to be no better, and in many cases worse, than local public schools when measured by achievement on standardized tests, according to experts citing years of research. Last year one of the most comprehensive studies, by researchers from Stanford University, found that fewer than one-fifth of charter schools nationally offered a better education than comparable local schools, almost half offered an equivalent education and more than a third, 37 percent, were “significantly worse.”

Although “charter schools have become a rallying cry for education reformers,” the report, by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes, warned, “this study reveals in unmistakable terms that, in the aggregate, charter students are not faring as well” as students in traditional schools.

What about voucher programs? Matthew Yglesias links to a study of the most ambitious voucher program in the country in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. What conclusion can we draw from the Milwaukee voucher program?

Moneyquote:

The choice program does seem to lead to a lot of consumer satisfaction, but not actual improvements in performance. It’s sort of like when people switch to a “low fat” version of a product, find it’s surprisingly delicious, and don’t pay attention to the fact that it actually has just as many calories as the old variety.

I think my feelings on these topics were best summed up by a commenter on the boston.com article about the documentary "The Cartel." ( I think comments sections on the internet are Dante's one thousandth circle of hell but sometimes you uncover a diamond in the rough.)

malfador wrote:

OK everyone let's try a simple logic exercise (Part I).

Here is the simple hypothesis -- teacher unions are responsible for bad education. Or to put it another way:

If teacher unions are responsible for the the awfulness of public education, then districts with strong unions will have terrible education systems.

Now let's take a few examples and see if this holds-up:

• Boston - teachers are unionized - poor schools
• Springfield - teachers are unionized - poor schools
• Fall River - teachers are unionized - poor schools
• Worcester - teachers are unionized - poor schools

Wow - this is fantastic. Look at the correlation. Now let's look at some strong districts and see if they have strong teacher unions.

• Wellesley -teachers are unionized - schools are strong
• Lexington - teachers are unionized - schools are strong
• Weston - teachers are unionized - schools are strong
• Wayland - teachers are unionized - schools are strong.

What the heck. This makes no sense. Teacher unions are responsible for the destruction of high quality of public education. How can these district possibly be providing high quality instruction and unionized teachers?

Could there be other factors that more strongly correlate with school performance like well I don't know - personal income perhaps.

4/25/2010 12:53 PM EDT

Yes I would say, perhaps.

I will save commentary on the topics of merit pay, tenure and standardized testing for another day. But a pattern seems to be emerging that some of the education reform movement's most touted policy initiatives are failing miserably.

Yet they are still being pushed aggressively.

One has to wonder if this is because the primary goal of many is not necessarily the betterment of American students' education but instead the advancement of a right wing anti-union political agenda?