Labor Union Membership, Right to Work, and Education

Labor unions have been having a tough time competing in the private sector for a long time and now are even shrinking as a percentage of government workers.  In 2015, union workers were 11.1% of the work force.  This fell to 10.7% in 2016 with a loss of 240,000 union members.  Only 6.4% of private sector workers are now union members.  The mainstay of the unions is in the government sector with 29.6% of state government employees being union members and 40.3% of local government employees being members.  The local government union membership is much inflated by the many teachers who pretend to manage 25 or 30 people in the classroom, but are really blue-collar workers unable to negotiate their own work compensation as individuals.  The high percentage of government workers in unions has more recently been falling so that the percentages above are 15-year lows.

Within the last year, West Virginia and Kentucky have become Right to Work states, increasing the number of Right to Work states to 27.  There is a good chance that Missouri will soon become a Right to Work state.  In the 2016 election, a Republican who championed Right to Work hard won the governorship in Missouri despite the unions supplying the Democrat who opposed Right to Work with more than $10 million of campaign funds and other support.  Missouri voters returned every one of the state legislators to office who supported Right to Work.  Missouri, like other states with forced union dues collection, has been losing jobs to states with Right to Work laws.  The bordering states of Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky all have Right to Work laws.  Only the basket case state of Illinois still maintains forced unionization on its borders.

You would not know it based on the recent campaign rhetoric, but manufacturing jobs increased by 236,000 in 2016.  Despite that overall growth in manufacturing jobs, union membership decreased by 74,000.  The growth in manufacturing jobs has been in Right to Work states.  In 2016, union membership in the 25 states that were Right to Work states for the full year decreased by 290,000, falling from 7.1% to 6.5%.  Membership in forced unionization states increased by 50,000, making it clear how dependent labor unions are on forced unionization.  Union membership increased in only one-quarter of the states with Right to Work laws, while increasing in 60% of those with forced unionization.  The percentage of Michigan workers in labor unions has fallen by 2.2% since Michigan became a Right to Work state in 2013.  Government worker unions lost their privileged powers in Wisconsin in 2011 and since then union membership has fallen by 136,000 workers or by 40%!

The loss of union power over the school systems in Wisconsin since 2011 and the freeing of school systems to pay teachers on their individual merit, is improving education in those school systems that have moved to the individual merit evaluation and compensation of teachers.  A Stanford University researcher, Barbara Biasi, has found that the school systems that have chosen to stick with union-favored seniority compensation programs rather than individual merit programs are falling behind the individual merit school systems.  Governor Scott Walker's Act 10 collective bargaining reform has allowed the thinking school systems to improve.  Who would think that evaluating and rewarding individual teaching ability would improve education?  Clearly the Democrats who claimed this would undermine the government-run school system would not allow this possibility.  How surprising it is that there is a correlation between being a capable teacher and classroom manager and being capable of negotiating your own working conditions and compensation!

An 1840 Massachusetts Legislature Committee Prediction on a Government-Controlled Education System

In 1840, Horace Mann was pushing the state of Massachusetts to establish a government-run education system after the model of the state-run schools of Prussia and France.  A legislative committee upon evaluating this proposal made three predictions:

• It would destroy America's republican principles.
• It would be a tool to increase government power.
• It would spread propaganda and diminish the influence of parents on their children.

All of these predictions have come true.  The committee appears to have failed to anticipate how broadly incompetent a government-controlled education system would be, however.

Bad Teachers are the Main Cause of Bad American Educations

The most important factor in student education is the quality of the teacher.  Unfortunately, the average teacher in America is neither bright nor well-educated.  This has long been my evaluation and that viewpoint is much confirmed in a report by Joy Pullman, Education Research Fellow at The Heartland Institute.

Her report notes:

• Students planning to major in education have below average SAT scores.  Students with below average SAT scores are also below proficient on state grade by grade tests.
• The education major curriculum is about the easiest of all college curricula.  Teaching majors need more college remedial work than humanities and social science majors.  Yet, teaching majors are rewarded with the highest college grades.
• Teachers with content-specific majors or who have had an earlier career are better teachers than those who majored in education and took courses emphasizing progressive teaching methods and ideology.
• Teachers with teaching certificates are not any better than those without the certificates.
• Despite low achievement, teachers commonly get early retirement and pay and benefits that are 50% higher than what others of similar ability get in the marketplace.

Of course, there is the occasional really phenomenal teacher, such as my daughter Kate who teaches biology courses in a charter school in a very poor neighborhood in New York City.  She had a dual major at Rochester Institute of Technology in both Biotechnology and Biomedical Sciences.  She had one-third more credit hours than needed to graduate as well with an amazing 4.00 GPA.   Her students consistently have about a 90% pass rate on the New York Regency Tests for Biology and she has just completed teaching the first Biology AP course offered in the school.  Kate was one of the best teachers of her school prior to getting her required teachers certificate, which she found very onerous because the education courses she had to take at Fordham University while in her first two years of teaching were incredibly boring and useless.

Kate says she has some 10th grade students who have third grade reading skills and who cannot write a coherent sentence, let alone a coherent paragraph.  Many more good, or even just decent, teachers are desperately needed.  It is difficult to conceive how bad a teacher is who allows students to go on to the next grade when they have never learned to read or write.  American schools are full to the brim with such teachers, while teachers such as Kate are exceedingly rare.

Government-Run School Fraud in Camden, NJ

New Jersey government-run schools spend an average of $18,045 a student in K-12 education.  For that amount of money, a student should receive a very high quality education.  Generally, they do not get that high quality education.  In Camden, NJ the school district of 13,700 students spends even more per student, namely $24,709.  For such a princely sum, a student should get the equivalent of a very good private school education.  But in Camden one gets a 49.3% graduation rate in 2011-2012, down from a 56.9% graduation rate in 2010-2011.  There is a consolation.  Trenton, NJ has an even lower graduation rate, though that may only be because Trenton has a higher expectation of graduates.

Camden has the 3 worst schools in the entire state.  90% of its schools are among the worst 5% of all schools in the state.  Only 28% of 11th graders are proficient in math.  Fewer than 20% of 4th graders are literate in the language arts.  Governor Chris Christie has announced that the state of New Jersey is taking over the control of the extremely dysfunctional government-run Camden School District.

There is no lack of examples to illustrate the fact that the problem with the American government-run education system is not one to be solved by spending more money on it.  Many dysfunctional government-run school districts are spending $24,000 per student.  The problem is the purpose and the value choices of these government-run school systems, not their finances.

These problems are generally going to  be solved by setting up a free market of school choices in the education marketplace.  Voucher programs are essential in the transformation to a privately run education system in which competition and innovation in education will come to be more rewarded than thorough paperwork and a rigid, slow-minded bureaucracy with the interests of its union blue collar workers taking precedence over the education of students.  Almost every government-run school district would actually save money over time simply by issuing vouchers for an amount somewhat less than they spend per student.  Private schools will quickly spring up to provide a better education for that smaller cost per student.

Corpus Christi, TX School Provides a Dubious Education

Kara Sands, a Texas mother recently became upset that her son, who attends Flour Bluff Intermediate School in the 5th grade, was receiving a sub-standard education.  She especially seems to think that the Corpus Christi area school puts the United States of America in a bad light and that it does an injustice to Christianity as well.

I attended 2nd grade at Flour Bluff Elementary School in 1954 when my Dad was flying out of the Corpus Christi Naval Air Station.  When we moved to Brigantine, NJ in 1955, my 3rd grade teacher, Mrs. Leeds, spent a good part of the year threatening to make me repeat 3rd grade.  In due time, my mother figured out that few of my math problems were copied correctly from the board, but as copied the math was always correct.  I got my first pair of eyeglasses and everything changed in math.  However, I had no reading skills.  None.  Dick and Jane running after Spot was of no interest to me at all.  Learning the rudiments of reading was very painful, but my mother survived the crash course of making me read.  In the early 4th grade, I discovered books about John Paul Jones, Chief Black Hawk of the Sauk-Fox Indian wars, and Kit Carson.  There was no stopping me from reading after that.

So, while I have fond memories of living as something of a wildcat on Rod Field, an old abandoned naval air station of WWII, Flour Bluff Elementary School is a bad memory.  I really hated the sauerkraut they seemed to feed us every day at lunch.  So, hearing about the present-day Flour Bluff Intermediate School was of special interest to me.  Let us look at some test fragments that Kara Sands has made available from that school.

Kara Sands was right to be concerned about the offered answers to Question 3 and the fact that the "right" answer was considered to be B.  Well, yes some decisions made in the US have had negative effects upon someone outside the US, but many of the actions of Americans have helped to make the world more peaceful and to allow widespread trade that has raised the standard of living of billions of people around the world.  Our scientific and medical advances have improved lives widely and our production methods have made many fantastic products available at an affordable cost.  The "correct" answer B displays a huge failure to convey context.  Of course, this context-dropping is all too common among the Progressive Elitists and the unskilled laborers of the teachers unions who follow their directions.

I have another problem with this.  Look at Question 1.  These are kids who probably do not know who Nathaniel Greene, George Mason, Robert Morris, and Gouvenor Morris are.  But they sure are taught the name of a rescue dog.  This is as bad as the now commonly known victim of the Boston Massacre, Crispus Attucks.  Mind you, I do not actually mind kids knowing who Attucks or Nero were, provided they know who Greene, Mason, R. and G. Morris were.

Kara Sands has also provided us with a vocabulary test:

Kara was unhappy with the description of the swastika.  The description is a natural one, but it is also true that many Christians are sick of slights directed at Christianity by the Progressive Elitists who dominate the government-run education systems.  Tolerance is taught toward other religions, but not so much for Christianity.  I will not judge this one without more context on how the school generally treats religious issues and sensitivities.  Governments have many conflicts of interest when it comes to their controlling education and one really sticky area is how can they address religion without violating freedom of conscience, or that sub-field of freedom of religion.

However, she also pointed out that Nazi was improperly said to be simply "member of the German Party."  Of course, other German parties co-existed with the Nazis, preceded them, and followed them.  One suspects that the proper choice of member of the National Socialist Workers Party was not offered because it really rankles the Progressive Elitist Socialists that the Nazis were a socialist party.

Note also that Halt is spelled Halte.  No, that is not the German word for halt either.  Nor the Danish, since the Kroner is mentioned.  Halte does appear in French.  But it appears simply to be a misspelling of the English halt.

Then there is the carelessness of not actually having provided the correct answer for Occupation.

It seems that education in the government-run schools of Flour Bluff still leaves a lot to be desired!

Failed Federal Education Ideas

I just read Edward Hudgins article Obama offers more of the same failed education ideas.  It is an easy read and a good review of the futility of federal spending on education going back to George H. W. Bush.  He points out that despite all of the federal spending on education, there is only evidence that student knowledge has not increased.

The level of student knowledge and thinking skills was poor when local and state governments were the only governments controlling the K-12 schools and there has been no change with federal controls and spending.  Government spending on education is generally popular because almost everyone agrees that education of children is very important.

But eating is also very important and most of us agree that it would be nuts to have government-controlled farms, food processing plants, food distribution, and kitchens.  It would be even more appalling if we were all required to take our meals at the government-operated and controlled kitchens, because eating is so important.  In fact, because eating is so important, we would be very unlikely to entrust it to the government.  So why do we entrust the education of our children to governments?

Americans are said to be pragmatic more than principled.  A real pragmatist is actually the most principled of people, but it takes a great deal of high level thinking to understand that, so most people see no inconsistency in the idea of being an unprincipled pragmatist.  Many would claim that there is an optimal degree of commitment to principle that each pragmatist seeks within the context of his society.  But with respect to the education of children, it appears clear that Americans are not even in that respect principled or pragmatic.

They have been conned.  The con is not very sophisticated.  The failures of government-controlled education are really, really obvious.  The damage to American children is horrific.  The lingering damage into their adulthood is all too clear.  The resulting retardation of our economy is also very obvious.  Strangely, the very fact that everyone recognizes these facts is actually used by every President to justify spending still more unproductive money on education.  The same is true at the state and local levels of government.  Hope springs eternal that more money spent on government-controlled education will improve its quality.  It will not.

What is more, government controlled education has a critical conflict of interest.  Throughout history, most men have been the servants of their rulers.  The Norse god Loki recognized this and claimed that freedom for man was an illusion.  America has historically managed to be the home of an unusually free people.  We proclaimed famously that the only legitimate purpose of government was to protect the rights of the individual and we rebelled against the most powerful military nation in the world at the time in the name of that principle.  Now we pretty much forced to send our children to government-run schools that claim that principle to be false.  If we do pay for both the public schools and a private school for our children, the curriculum is still substantially controlled by governments.

What else would one expect of government but that it would revert to the historical tyrannical ruler known so well to Loki?  We are not even ruled by a government equivalent to the government we rebelled against in 1776.  Ours is a more tyrannical government despite being a democracy.  That government is actually very happy if most of the people are dumbed-down servants willing to be ruled by the political class of Progressive Aristocrats, most of whom have never escaped government indoctrination themselves.

As I have many times, Hudgins calls for more school choice and for private education.  Only private education will ever be capable of providing the knowledge and critical thinking skills needed by a people to be free and to stay free.  With greater knowledge and better thinking skills, we will flourish as self-managing individuals and the standard of living will rise rapidly in our society.  The stagnation of the Big Government era in freedom, knowledge, and our standard of living will be ended.  The rule of a tyrant such as Obama would no longer be tolerated.

CA Attacks the Right to Teach Your Children

In California an appellate court has decided that parents do not have a right to teach their children. The case was brought against a home-school family by the teachers union. In California, the ruling has been that private school teachers do not have to be state certified teachers. Many home-schooling families have declared their homes to be private schools. The teachers union brought the case to try to force any home-schooling parents to have state teachers certification. John Stossel, of ABC News, has written a commentary on this here.

Home-schooled children do better in academic tests and in many cases seem to do even better in terms of analytical thinking skills than do the children educated by our teachers union extensions called the public schools. These teachers unions do not like home schooling for several reasons.

• It removes funding from the schools due to the missing child.
• It removes a child from the reach of their propaganda programs, which preach the superiority of socialism over limited government and group identity politics over the rights of the individual.
• The fact that home-schooled children do better in tests than do those schooled by the teaching professionals in public schools is an embarrassment. This embarrassment can be used to further limit the monopoly powers of public schools and to open the doors to more voucher and school-choice programs. It points a finger at the failure of the public schools.