Remote Learning By Ethnic Classification

The New York Times reports that: 

In March, half of Black and Hispanic children, and two-thirds of Asian-American children, were enrolled in remote school, compared with 20 percent of white students, according to the latest federal data.

There are numerous factors behind this.  Among them are: 

• The Black and Hispanic populations are often large in major cities and such cities due to Democrat Party control and high density populations have been more likely to have schools closed or to require greater social distancing.  The increased social distancing necessitates having fewer students in school classrooms.
• Black, Hispanic, and Asian American parents appear to be more fearful of the Covid-19 disease.  They do have higher morbidity rates.
• Black and Hispanic households tend to have lower incomes than white families do.  This encourages their older children to take on jobs to help their families out, since they are out of school anyway.  In other cases, the older children are impressed into babysitting duties for younger children as the parent(s) work.
• Black and Hispanic parents are more likely to have lost jobs or to have down-graded jobs due to business closures and reduced business operating hours during the pandemic.  This has put more pressure on older children to take on jobs to help support their families.
• When older children take on jobs to help support their families, it is harder to get them to graduate from high school.
• Fewer Black and Hispanic children have high-grade computer capabilities at home for remote learning purposes.  Their parents are less likely to be able to help them with computer issues.
• A child on remote learning has greater needs for parental educational support.
• Fewer Black and Hispanic children are in private schools.  A higher percentage are in government-run schools, which are run by a coalition of Democrat Socialist politicians and the socialist teachers unions.  Such government schools are more likely to be shutdown or operating in very reduced modes, thanks to fear of Covid-19.

Most American children have suffered horribly in their educations as a result of an inadequate primarily government-run education system in the first place.  The Covid-19 pandemic and the over-reaction to it has caused massive further harm to our children across the board.  We already had an education system in which our so-called Black and Hispanic children were operating at lower skill levels than our so-called White and Asian children.  The pandemic-induced harm has further exacerbated the differential lag of our Black and Hispanic children.

A substantial portion of the pandemic harm was the result of bad political and bad educational choices.  Fewer bad choices would have been made had the media, academia, and government health organizations encouraged, rather than discouraged, an honest and scientific discussion of Covid-19.  The suppression of that discussion suppressed the formation of non-vaccine weapons against the disease.  It fostered a suspicion among many that the Covid-19 government policies were often based on lies and cared little for their welfare.  Realizing this was the case, many developed unreasonable fears that their children were in much greater danger from Covid-19 than they were being told they were.  Even Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor believed that 100,000 American children had been made seriously ill by the disease.  What can we expect that many Black and Hispanic parents believed about the danger to their children?

Some of the short-comings of our mostly government-run school education system have been bared by the Covid-19 pandemic.  More Americans will address those short-comings by opting for more school choice, with tax money following children into private schools.  There has been an increase in home-schooling and that will remain a more popular option than it had been prior to the pandemic.  We have also been exposed to the naked lust for teacher union power pushing for excessive school closings, mask mandates, and excess distancing requirements.  We have seen how feckless Democrat politicians have been in counteracting the teachers unions excessive power, because those same Democrats are highly dependent upon teacher union support for their election to office.

I will write in the future about government employee unions and why they should be outlawed.  Until they are outlawed, they should at least not be allowed to participate in elections for political offices.

Public School Monopoly Favored by Obama over Education

I have long opposed the government monopoly on our school system and education.  There is only a path to less and less freedom so long as this monopoly control continues.  It is the greatest of all impediments to the protection of individual rights in the USA.  The government will always use the schools as a propaganda tool to gain more and more power for itself at the expense of our liberties.  Children are rarely capable of teaching themselves how to think critically and independently enough to overcome the onslaught of highly biased Progressivist attacks on the private sector as the government is held up as the cure to all problems.

Not only are they devoured as individuals by a biased view of history, economics, and of society, but they are all too often left even more defenseless by schools that deliver them into adulthood unable to read, write, and perform basic math skills.  These government-run and controlled schools are making adult dependents, which really means they are producing people who will always be children.

Daniel Mitchell has written a very good article on the Obama administration backing of public teachers unions at the clear expense of the education of mostly black and totally poor students in the Louisiana voucher program.  Louisiana is a state particularly cursed with a long tradition of awful public schools.  Obama wants to prevent the reform of these terrible schools simply to keep the backing of the powerful public teachers unions.

Dan also gives some interesting links to articles by the always great Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams, as well as to articles on how Chile, Sweden, and the Netherlands are using vouchers to reform their school systems.

Daniel Mitchell is an economist and commentator well-worth the read.  He is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and a very good man.

Responding to a Progressive Elitist University Request for Donations

A Brown University student of the Class of 2015 sent me an e-mail request for a donation to the university from which I earned my Sc.B. in Physics degree in 1969.  Because of the magnitude of the tragedy that Brown has so failed to provide young and bright students with an adequate education, I took the time to write the following response:

It is precisely because far too many faculty, staff, and students at Brown University view themselves as "partners and agents for collective social change" that I am deprived of the pleasure of supporting a real education at Brown.  They share the image of themselves as Progressive Elitists justified fully in the use of governmental force to impose values on a largely immoral or amoral people.  They wish to micromanage the lives of millions of people they do not know, yet consider incompetent to manage their own lives.  They ignore the essential fact that people are complex and highly differentiated in character, life circumstance, and values.  They seek an easily acquired sense of intellectual and moral superiority, while abrogating to themselves power and money taken by force.

A real education would encourage students to see how honoring the equal, sovereign rights of the individual to life, liberty, property, the ownership of one's own body, mind, and labor, and the pursuit of personal happiness is the real path to achieving the general welfare.  This education would illustrate the need for a legitimate government whose only purpose was the support of these individual rights and which would never seek to harm some while claiming it was helping the majority or some favored minority.  A real education would make it clear that a government that forces some or many to serve the interests of others is tyranny and disruptive of the real benefits of life in a society.  It would show how those benefits flow from the incredible richness of choices and freedom of action when all of our relationships are freely chosen for our mutual benefit.  It would honor freedom of conscience and of association, rather than crippling these freedoms as the big government approved by most at Brown University does.  These freedoms are critical to man who must live by the use of his mind.  An education is supposed to aid man in developing the rationality and analytical capability of that mind.

Unfortunately, any money I give to Brown is used mostly to deprive me and those I love of our individual rights.  It is used to increase the level of already exorbitant tyranny in the Land of the Free.  It is used to diminish the many wonderful advantages of living among others willing to engage in a free trade of ideas, goods, and services.  It creates a government so complex that the vast majority of citizens cannot understand what it is doing and how to control it.  They become pawns due to their limited time, money, and intellect to those few Progressive Elitists who actually do control government to some degree.  But just as the slave master was enslaved by his slaves, so are the Elitists enslaved by the ignorant or insufficiently informed people they think they control.

Soon, as is the case now, control of government is really in the hands of haphazard and conflicting special interest groups (factions in the terms of the founders), who step in and take what they want at the expense of everyone else.  A few of these special interests or factions:

• Crony mercantilists such as green energy companies,
• GE, GM, Chrysler, Boeing with its Export Bank subsidies,
• farmers with crop supports,
• students taking government student loans,
• faculty taking government funded research grants,
• labor unions forcing workers to pay them dues and buying politicians' votes, while systematically underfunding worker pension plans,
• radical environmentalists claiming that economic development is the enemy even as developed countries do most to clean their environments,
• global warming alarmists falsely accusing user's of fossil fuels of overheating the planet,
• people faking disabilities by the millions,
• millions on unemployment benefits for years,
• big bankers and stock investors happy to see the Federal Reserve flood the economy with devaluing printed money,
• home buyers buying homes they cannot afford with government encouragement,
• insurers happy to see people forced to buy health insurance they cannot afford for coverage they do not need as the government asserts its ownership of our very bodies,
• millions happy to use food stamps and other welfare rather than take a job,
• those who use government licensing to keep others out of their profession, 
• a huge government-run education establishment dominated by pro-big government propaganda, teachers unions, and mediocrity,
• large companies that seek to cripple smaller companies with a myriad unintelligible regulations, and of course
• the many power-hungry and corrupt politicians who populate both major parties, though especially the one most favoring the accelerating growth of government.

I had the independence of mind and the knowledge of history, economics, civics, business, and science to withstand the many pressures at Brown to conform to the Progressive Elitist viewpoint that the brutal use of force to accomplish their goals was justified by the claimed purity of those goals.  Of course, kings and aristocrats of old, slave owners, fascists, and communists all made very similar claims.  The end result for any society that deprives its individual citizens of their rights is all too well-known and can be ignored only by the ignorant or the malevolent.

Being a small business owner who has repeatedly converted his limited retirement funds into capital to keep his independent laboratory going through this government caused and government maintained recession of five years duration, my charity activity has to be carefully directed to those fighting the critical battle of our time, indeed of all time.  I am supporting the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, the Atlas Society, the Institute for Justice, the Club for Growth, the Tea Party movement, the NFIB, and the Right to Work Committee.

Brown University is not very competitive given its concerted deception and propaganda exercised on young minds, too many of which are weak.  It gives me no pleasure to say this, since it is a huge tragedy that Brown is not performing the great service it should be and could be doing.

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.

Government-Run-Down Education in California

The Progressive Elitists love to wax eloquent about how much they care for children, especially for their education.  California is a state well-controlled by the Progressive Elitists.  True to their stated values, they spend mightily on K-12 government-run education.  Falsely, their children have become nearly the worst educated in the nation.

Conn Carroll in the Washington Examiner wrote an excellent piece on the lessons of government-run education in California.  In 1975, when Gov. Brown was first governor, he pushed the Rodda Act that allowed government worker unions to directly withhold union dues from organized worker paychecks.  The California Teachers Association used the massive sums collected to mount political campaigns to get more money for the government-run schools and for teacher pay and benefits.  In 1988, they helped pass Proposition 98 that required the state to spend at least 39% of the state budget on K-12 education.  The results:

• An average teacher salary of $69,434 a year.  This is third highest in the nation.
• A doubling of unionized teachers.
• Union contracts requiring teacher pay be based on longevity, not teaching quality.
• In 1992, California ranked next to last in reading proficiency for fourth-graders.
• In 2011, California 8th graders were 48th in reading and 48th in math.  They did outperform Mississippi in both!
• California has one of the highest student to teacher ratios in the nation, despite the huge spending.  The national average ratio is 15.5 and California is 20.9.
• California once had among the highest percentages of college-educated people and still is #6 in college degrees for those over 65 years old!  But, its 25 - 34 age group is 1% below the 31.5% national average in college degrees.  It is sinking fast.
• The exodus of companies out of California will have to continue not just due to high taxes and over-regulation, but because they will not be able to find enough college graduates to hire.  There is a projected shortfall of 1 million jobs requiring a college education by 2025.  [College feedstock from the 48th worst elementary schools in the nation must almost certainly lead to a particularly dire grade inflation in college, making many college degrees from California colleges quite bogus.  This is not to mention that high school graduates who cannot read and do simple math proficiently are not suitable for many jobs one might think a high school graduate could handle.]

The Progressive Elitist program for government-run education is not only failing the children of California, but it is also resulting in many young adults losing earning power relative to the past in California.  Indeed, it is causing the entire middle class that Progressive Elitists also pretend to champion to fall behind in income equality, another goal supposedly dear to the Progressive Elitist's heart.  The middle-earning 20% is faring much more poorly against the upper 20% of earners in California to the point that it is now the ranked 49th among the states by this criteria.  The Progressive Elitist control of education in California is a clear object lesson that they cannot, will not, and do not want to accomplish what they say their goals are.  They are con artists, pure and simple.

Over and over, I have made the point that quality education, for many reasons, must be private education, not government-run education.  California is a great object lesson in the failure of government-managed education.  One of the reasons it cannot fix itself is because its government-run schools are excellent at one thing -- indoctrinating the young with a belief in big government and a fear of the private sector.

Obama Calls for More Spending on Education, But Does More Spending Improve Education?

In the last debate, Obama said that a cornerstone to recovery from the never-ending Great Socialist Recession was an increase in federal spending on education.  This he says is critical to improving the economy.

Now, we can all agree that an American population of thinking individuals with a broad and accurate knowledge base and excellent problem-solving skills would be a major economic factor.  One can even imagine an education system based on sound principles which might do a better job of educating the People if it had more money.  However, the present American education system gives no evidence that spending more money on education has any beneficial effect upon the knowledge base of Americans and on their development of critical thinking skills.  Let us examine the recent history of total spending on education:

Since 1981 there has been an almost 6-fold increase in education spending in the U.S.  To be sure, if we believe that education spending should be proportional to the GDP, then this is only a 23% increase in spending as a proportion of GDP.  In 1981, education spending was about 6.4% of GDP and in 2010 it was 7.9% of GDP.  However, the student population has not grown at anything like the rate of the growth in GDP, so one should be able to expect an equal level of educational results with a decreasing fraction of the GDP being devoted to education.  The trend is clearly in the wrong direction.

There are very fundamental reasons why the massively increased spending on education and on a per pupil basis has not resulted in any significant increase in student knowledge and thinking skills.  In almost every community, the local school labor unions assemble a slate of Board of Education members who appear to have good education credentials and their election is backed by lots of union money.  This slate wins almost every position on the school boards.  Because of this and the power of the teachers unions in also greatly influencing the election of city and county officials, the schools are managed for the benefit of the teachers labor unions, not for the education of the children.  Increasing the pay and  benefits of teachers who are blue-collar union members unable to even negotiate their own pay and benefits with their employer, guarantees that few of them will have the teaching skills, knowledge, self-confidence, and managerial skills needed by a professional educator.  Union members are not picked and not rewarded for their teaching professionalism.  Of course, as so often happens when a con is being performed, teachers present bogus certifications proclaiming them experts in teaching.

We have government-run schools specifically because Progressives saw them as a means to indoctrinate children to believe that big and socialist government was needed and moral.  Of course a government-run school could be counted upon to advance the never-ending quest of governments for power.  Such government schools could be counted upon to subvert the American Principle that government should be highly limited and only act to protect the equal, sovereign rights of the individual to life, liberty, property, the ownership of one's own mind, body, and labor, and to the pursuit of personal happiness.  Thus, government-run schools have become increasingly anti-American even as they became the dominant force in the education of American children.  The general viewpoint of American government-run school teachers is well-aligned with the socialist and extreme environmentalist viewpoints of Obama.  It is opposed to a healthy and robust private sector in which Americans should be free to exercise their freedom of association to cooperate with others to achieve their self-chosen goals.  The government-run schools are generally bastions of Progressivism and opponents of Capitalism.

Despite the large increases in education spending, we have not seen an increased ability of American young people to perceive reality and understand it.  In fact, they are more and more removed from reality and less and less capable of performing real productive work in the private sector without more and more massive training efforts by private businesses.  Few students graduate with a proper respect for those with the skills and motivation to produce in our society.  Few are able to communicate well and solve problems well.  Despite our spending more and more and spending far more of our GDP on education than does almost any other country, we keep losing ground to other countries in rankings of educational attainment.  It could not be more clear that we are throwing our education dollars into a black hole.

Marcos Cordero in an article called The Link Between Unemployment Rates and the Lack of Qualified Professionals in America notes that

The Defense Department found that 75 percent of Americans age 17 to 24 are not qualified to serve in the armed forces. In fact, 30 percent of the high school graduates who take the Armed Forces Qualification Test, a test of basic reading and math skills, fail it.

A very fundamental reform of American education is desperately needed and it will not come from government.  Governments are only eager to increase their power and politicians are easily bought by the massive teachers union money accumulated as the government automatically deducts union dues from teachers paychecks.  Labor unions and government increasingly see their interests to be largely in common and the interests of students and good governance are not now able to compete with them.  Only when the People understand these problems and massively rebel will there be any real hope of fixing this problem.

But most of the American People are largely in a feel good mode on education.  Because labor union members provide children with inflated grades, most parents think their child is doing well in school and they are inclined to assume that that means that they are actually learning.  The labor union policy of easy grading and of placing few demands on students lulls the parents and students to sleep.  Until parents and students wake up to the fact that they are being poorly educated and heavily indoctrinated in socialism and extreme environmentalism, America will continue to go downhill.  Obama is happy to push us down that hill.

Decline of Labor Unions Continues

In 2010, the number of union members in the government sector outnumbered those in the private sector by 7.6 million to 7.1 million.  The union rate for the private sector employees was 6.9%, compared to the huge government sector rate of 36.2%.  Among all jobs, union members decreased from 12.3% in 2009 to 11.9% in 2010 due to a loss of 612,000 union members.  These losses should continue since union membership is highest among those workers who are 55 to 64 years old and lowest among workers who are 16 to 24 years old.  Because unions have been such a strong force for socialist programs and special interest programs in government, this decline is a very good thing.  Unfortunately, this decline has made them more desperate and as we saw in the general elections of 2008 and 2010, the unions are willing to spend huge sums to push the government in the direction of socialism and a greater play of factions.

The highest union membership was among local government employees with a rate of 42.3%.  The heavily regulated private sector industries of transportation and utilities had the highest degrees of unionization at 21.8%. and they were followed by the regulated telecommunications industry at 15.8% unionized.  Agriculture at 1.6% had the lowest rate of unionization, though financial services was also low at a 2.0% unionization rate.  Teaching had the highest degree of unionization at 37.1%.  Protective services had the second highest rate of unionization at 34.1%.

Broken down by race and ethnicity, black workers had the highest rate of unionization at 13.4%, while whites were 11.7% unionized, Asians were 10.9%, and Hispanics were 10.0% unionized.

Union membership rates rose in 17 states, but fell in 33 states and the District of Columbia.  The map below shows the distribution of unionization rates in the states:

New York has the highest unionization rate at 24.2%.  Alaska and Hawaii are next at 22.9% and 21.8%, respectively.  This is apparently because these two states have a very high ratio of government workers to private sector workers.  Washington state has a 19.4% rate, while California's rate is 17.5%, and New Jersey's rate is 17.1%.  Unionization is concentrated in the Pacific region, the Northeast, and the East North Central.  To these, Minnesota and Nevada should be added.  The high unionization rate in Nevada played a big role in the re-election of Senator Harry Reid.

It is no accident that population growth rates and state domestic product growth have generally been better in those states with low unionization rates.  The states with the fastest population growth rates from the 2000 Census to the 2010 Census are:

Nevada, 35.1%
Arizona, 24.6%
Utah, 23.8%
Idaho, 21.1%
Texas, 20.6%
North Carolina, 18.5%
Georgia, 18.3%
Florida, 17.6%
Colorado, 16.9%
South Carolina, 15.3%

Of these states only Nevada has a high unionization rate.  People generally migrate to those states which have the best job growth.  The unions are much better at destroying jobs than creating them.

The Race to the Top and Over the Cliff

The federal government Race to the Top program has just made its Phase 2 awards this last week.  This program is designed to increase state and federal control over school systems.  The states are supposed to establish changes to:

• Adopt standards and assessments to assure student success in college and employment.
• Establish data systems to measure student knowledge and to allow educators to improve instruction.
• Recruit, develop, reward, and retain good teachers and principals, especially in the worst performing schools.
• Improve the performance of the worst schools.

The new standards and testing are in reading and math.  The states to date have often set these standards so low that they are virtually meaningless.

The Phase 1 awards were to Delaware and Tennessee.  A total of 46 states and the District of Columbia have applied for the Phase 1 or Phase 2 awards.  The Phase 2 awards were just given to 9 states and the District of Columbia.  These awards totaled $4 billion at a time when many states are facing deficits due to their high spending habits adopted prior to the recession, the drop in state revenues due to high unemployment and lowered company spending, and the increased costs of expanded entitlement programs due to the same unemployment.  The time was ripe for the federal government to exercise greater control over the many needy state governments.  Many a state was in crisis and vulnerable to a further federal grab of control of education.  The pressure for states to take more control from local school districts was a key "reform" in this program, as was pressure to put more resources into the worst schools, largely in the inner cities.

Aspects of the program try to reduce the power of the stultifying teachers unions.  They are opposing education reforms in more states than not.  The Race to the Top program favors charter schools, evaluating teachers based on their student's test scores, and firing large fractions of teachers and the principals of the worst performing schools.  The teachers unions are critical allies of the Democrat Party.  They vote solidly for the Democrats, their unions contribute huge sums of money, and the teachers can always be relied upon to donate large amounts of their time to support the Democrat candidates for office.  This critical role was recognized by the House and Senate returning from their summer recess and the start of many of the congressional campaigns in order to add $26 billion of a new stimulus round expressly for teachers and schools.  This was viewed as so critical, that the Democrats even reduced the Food Stamps program to find the money for it just prior to the mid-term elections!  Now, few teachers were in danger of being fired due to the decrease in state revenues, since the schools are nearly sacrosanct in most school districts.  Cuts are usually made elsewhere in government.  But, this infusion of money will have made the teachers unions more enthusiastic about the upcoming election and was to offset their concerns about the Race to the Top program and its threats to  poor teachers.  If the teachers unions signed on to the proposed state reforms in the Race to the Top program proposals, extra points were given to the state in the competition.

During the Great Depression, FDR was very efficient in giving money and programs to those states which were important in his re-election plans.  He drained money from the South, since he was assured of the votes of the South.  He poured money into a number of western states he thought he could win with their higher ratios of electoral votes to their populations.  Bearing in mind that virtually every state applied for the Race to the Top program educational money, examine the table below for a balance of Democrat and Republican governors, legislatures, and the 2008 presidential election vote:

D = Democrat, R = Republican, I = Independent, S = Split, Y = yes.

The most evenly divided category is the governor's party.  Three are Republicans, six are Democrats, and one, Charlie Crist of Florida, was elected as a Republican, but is now serving the Democrats.  Seven of the legislatures are Democrat, 2 are Republican, and one is split.  All but two of the states voted for Obama in 2008.  Apparently, Democrat dominated states are much better managers of statewide education reform, according to these results.  One of the consequences of more federal control over our education system will be a continued such politicization of our schools, already heavily Democrat influenced via the control of the socialist teachers unions!

Aspects of the Race to the Top program seem to actually address some educational problems, specifically that of low expectations for principals, teachers, and students.  This makes the program for more federal control seem to be less objectionable.  However, this is really a Trojan Horse and that may be why at least 4 of  the states were able to persuade the teachers unions to back their reform plan.  Actually, in the case of Hawaii that was easy since their plan was very light on reform anyway.  In the longer run, this plan will enable more federal control and that will be used to increase the power of the unions and will also be used to push the unions to give even more support to the Democrats in order to influence that power to favor the unions.

If the Race to the Top program really were very serious about improving education reform, it would have encouraged the states to produce voucher programs to replace poor performing public schools with private schools.  It would have allowed schools to experiment with the curriculum, rather than standardizing just on reading and writing and that on what is likely to be low standards.  It is unlikely any teachers union would sign on to support a true reform of our education system.  Of course, a decentralization of power over the schools and the increased exercise of smaller local school boards would be a most critical part of any real reform plan.  It is necessary to produce schools that are responsive to the parents and that emphasize the role of the professional, not the blue-collar, educator.

You cannot interest students in reading unless you give them interesting things to read.  To do that, you must emphasize literature, history, economics, and science.  Math is a great tool, but it is a tool.  Its study is commonly best motivated by teaching its applications to science, economics, engineering, and business.  Finally, programs teaching that some people are victims by virtue of their race simply provide the people of those races with excuses and encourage lower expectations.  They need to be told that they will individually be judged on the basis of their character and that many people will judge that in good part on what they know and on their commitment to knowing more throughout their lives.  The Democrats are not willing to deliver this essential message.  Without it, their so-called reform cannot be taken seriously.  Unfortunately, their grab for national control of our complete public school system should be taken very seriously.

The Startling Inconsistency of Americans in Believing that Democrats are More Ethical in Government

Chuck Roger at Clear Thinking notes the weird inconsistency of Americans in believing that Republicans would perform a host of governmental policy tasks better than Democrats, except that Democrats would be more ethical.  It is mighty strange that the Democrats' linkages with Labor, Trial Lawyers, Teachers Unions, horrible inner city schools or holding pens, an affinity for unkept promises, an equal affinity for baldfaced lies ("You can keep your doctor and your medical insurance, if you want to."), the unethical spending of our children's and grandchildren's income forever, the call for 2 years of slavery, the medical bureaucratic death panels, the advocacy of Ginny Mae and Freddy Mac, Congressional leadership tax evasion, some highly political Wall Street firms, and a host of heavily subsidized alternative energy companies have not resulted in more ethical condemnation.

The process of waking up can take a remarkable long time for the People.  But, they have made big strides toward understanding compared to the sad lack of it in recent history.  Perhaps, given time, they will come around on government ethics as well.  I hope the Republicans will show they can refrain from small-minded mark-ups as their strength in Congress is increased by the 2010 election.  For those of them who talk up "family values", perhaps they could try hard to live up to their own professed values.  I would prefer they concentrate on limiting the power of government and allow individual families to enjoy their own idea of "family values," but they should at least not be hypocrites.

Revival of the Labor Unions

In 1983, 20.1% of the workforce was unionized, which was already way down from the almost 36% of the workforce unionized in 1945. After steady decreases, by 2006 union membership fell to a minimum of 12%, but the first increase since WWII occurred in 2007 to 12.1% and then again in 2008 to 12.4%. The union membership increases have mostly been in the service industry and government workers areas, while the membership in manufacturing has been in decline. This increased membership has also been disproportionately in the West Coast states. In California, 16.7% of the workforce is unionized. Unions added 428,000 new members in 2008.

The unions have also been pushing their political agenda very strongly. According to the 7 September 2009 Washington Times, the AFL-CIO says it made 70 million phone calls, mailed 57 million election alerts, distributed 27 million fliers in the workplace, and knocked on 10 million doors to help Obama and the Democrats in the 2008 elections. Labor unions ran 11 of the 20 biggest non-party political action committees (PACs) during the 2007-2008 election cycle. These 11 labor union PACs spent $225 million, almost entirely for Obama and Democrats. The unions accounted for 18 of the top 20 Democrat candidate-supporting PACs

Union members massively voted for Obama also. 60% voted for Obama and only 37% voted for McCain. McCain carried the vote of white men by a 16% margin, but Obama had a margin of 18% among white male union members. McCain had a 9% lead among veterans overall, but Obama had a 25% lead among union member veterans. Among gun-owners, McCain led by a 25% margin, but gun-owning union members supported Obama with a 12% margin. Among white males not having a four-year college degree, Obama won only 43% of the non-union household vote, but in union households he won 60% of the votes. So, clearly, the unions were able to deliver the votes of their members.

Card check is the union #1 priority from the hugely indebted Obama administration and the Democrat Congress. Their #2 priority is health insurance reform with a strong public option. They have made it very clear that they will not tolerate a health reform plan without the public option. So far, the Democrats have not been able to gather the 60 votes they would need in the Senate to get either bill passed. The unions are very frustrated.

But, the unions have been given some goodies since Obama usurped the presidency. Obama made Wilma Liebman chairman of the National Labor Relations Board. She was once a lawyer for the Teamster's Union. He appointed the very socialist Hilda L. Solis, a California Congresswoman and the daughter of two union members, to be Secretary of the Labor Department. She is hiring 700 investigators to enforce labor regulations.

The first bill Obama signed was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which makes it easier for workers to sue employers for wage discrimination. The unions backed this. He issued an executive order requiring federal contractors to display notices telling workers they have the right to unionize. The United Auto Workers Union retiree health trust was given 17.5% of GM and 55% of Chrysler after Obama shafted the creditors who by law take precedence in bankruptcies. The unions also wanted the $33 billion expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program that Obama signed.

The stimulus bill increased and extended unemployment benefits. It put $600 million into job training for those who lost jobs due to foreign trade. [How will they ever figure out who that is?] The $7.2 billion to expand broadband was a boon to the Communications Workers of America. The unions liked the 'Buy American' provision in the stimulus bill. The teachers and their unions were happy with the $40 billion in new spending on education in the stimulus bill.

Obama has given the unions as much as he can, except on one issue. His $4.35 billion Race to the Top initiative out of the Department of Education has displeased the National Education Association, the largest teachers union that gave $11.5 million to the Democrats in the last election cycle. They do not like this competitive grant program which they think favors charter schools. The Democrats owe more to the smaller American Federation of Teachers, which contributed $21 million, making them the #3 contributing union.

The Service Employees International Union, which has many health services workers in it, is by far the biggest donor to the Democrats at $71.0 million and has been turning out its members to pack stacked town hall meetings on health care reform. The #2 donor union was the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees at $33.0 million. The top three unions with government employee members gave a total of $65.5 million. It is hardly surprising that the unions dependent upon government workers would strongly support the party more committed to growing the public sector, while eviscerating the private sector.

Story of the Baltimore Teachers Union Fighting Education

Marta Mossburg has written another good and interesting column in the Washington Examiner. First, it is a story of remarkable improvement in the testing outcomes for Baltimore students. Unfortunately, it is also a story about how the Baltimore Teachers Union believes its function is to treat teachers like semi-skilled laborers, rather than as professional educators. This opposition of the teachers union to teaching professionalism is paralleled by that in Washington, D.C. which I wrote about in an earlier post on 24 November 2008.

But please take a moment and read her column called Must Unions Always Block Innovation in Public Schools?

Slavery in the Free State

Maryland was once called the Free State, mostly due to its long ago history of relative religious tolerance. Maryland also had the distinction of providing some of the best units of Washington's Continental Army. These units fought bravely under General Washington and then fought equally well under Major General Greene in the very important Southern Campaign that ended at Yorktown. Of course, one then had to turn a blind eye to Maryland also being a Slave State, so even then Maryland should have been ashamed to call itself the Free State. Maryland practices a different form of slavery now.

What is the situation now in Maryland? Marta Mossburg writing in the Washington Examiner has given us an update. State and local government employees grew by 20% from 1997 to 2007. I have looked up the overall population growth of the state in that time for comparison and find it to be only 10.3%. Now the amount of mischief that government's can do is likely to go up as the fraction of the population working for government goes up. We would be very lucky if it only went up in strict proportion, but these government workers are actually very "productive" in two tasks: increasing their power through spending and their own benefits!

Unfortunately, Mossburg only gives us the state budget for 2010, when what we need to find is the growth in the sum of the state and local government expenditures in Maryland to compare to the population growth rate and to the government employee growth rates. After some searching (Do the governments want these figures to be hard to find?), the sum of the state and local government expenditures in FY 2000 was $27,446,000 and it is $57,600,000 in FY 2009. This is a growth in government expenditures in Maryland of 210%. Seems the burden of government is getting worse in Maryland at about a rate of 20.4 times faster than the population to bear the expense is growing! Thus, Marylanders are working ever longer hours to pay this burden, which is the equivalent of spending many more hours as slaves to the state and local governments.

Mossburg points out that the state budget for the health insurance of state government employees is going up 17.4% from 2009 to 2010. The 2010 budget includes a 22.1% increase in money for teacher retirement benefits. This represents a 207% increase since 2001! Of course, Democrats are in control of the governorship and the state assembly in Maryland, so they have to pay off the teacher's unions for their critical political support and for indoctrinating Maryland children in the thesis that every problem has its solution in an additional government program.

Overall entitlement spending in Maryland is increasing rapidly also. In 2001 it was 16.2% of the budget, but in 2010 it is 20.8%. At this rate of growth, entitlements will be 40% of the budget by 2050. State retirees just received a 3.8% cost-of-living increase. Meanwhile, unemployment in Maryland is the highest it has been in 17 years.

What effect is this tax and government burden having on Maryland's population? For five years running, Maryland has suffered a net domestic out-migration. Marylanders are seeing other states as better places to live. Its overall population growth in each of the last two years was 0.3%, pretty similar to that of most of the states of the Northeast which also have oppressive government burdens. From 1 July 2007 to 30 June 2008, its growth rate was 44th lowest of the 50 states. In the earlier part of the last 10-year period, Maryland did somewhat better. Its growth rate since 1 April 2000 has been 6.4% compared to the U.S. growth rate of 8.0% in that time. This ranks it 24th among the states. Its position has worsened since a comparatively good Republican governor, Robert Erhlich, was replaced by the present governor, Martin O'Folley. The Democrat legislature is no longer somewhat frustrated and is instead being encouraged to cause mischief and harm. As we have seen, it and the local governments are very effective in this effort.

Democrats Imprison 1,700 Students

The Democrat Congress just threw 1,700 District of Columbia students back into penal holding pens pretending to be public schools. To be especially cruel, these students had been given a brief experience with a real education in private schools under a voucher program.

The D.C. public school system is a total failure. It is clear that it makes no serious effort at providing D.C. students with an education. It does provide many very poor teachers with cushy union jobs and does not make half of them even enter a classroom. It is also a generous source of money for many suppliers of goods and services. The one thing it is unbelievably good at is spending money. The D.C. school system spends about $24,600 per student (see my post of 20 Apr 08). This is not what they say they spend. They claim amounts in the range of $7,000 to $12,000 per student, usually claiming $8,322 per student. The best private schools in D.C., where Obama's children go for instance, charge about $25,000 per year. Anyone would be offended given the quality of a D.C. public school education if they understood how much D.C. spends on its schools. Especially when the school system is always claiming that if it only had a reasonable amount of money, it would educate the students. They always want more.

Given this fact alone, the voucher program which provides $7500 per year to a D.C. student from a poor family to attend a private school is a huge money-saver for the D.C. taxpayer and the Federal government which gives the D.C. school system so much aid. It also allows a poor D.C. student to actually get an education and to have the options in life that come with an education. But, our Democrat Congress, which so poses as the champion of the poor, has most cruelly sent the formerly lucky 1,700 students back to jail. Let them see the light briefly, then throw them back into the blackest pit.

Why do they do such horrible things? Because the public school teacher's union wants them to and the Democrats owe them hugely for their election support. The students are unimportant. Being elected and put in power is all that is important. These are the Democrat champions of the underdog. Well, in order to be that, they must turn human beings into dogs and they must bury them six feet under in ignorance. The Democrats want to sustain the union teachers who do not teach and to create the underdogs they can pretend to champion!

Washington Teachers Union Opposes School Reform

Of course, it is news to no one that the Washington Teachers Union (WTU) opposes the reform of the nation's lowest performing school district. The WTU is the principal reason why this school system which is spending as much or more money per student as any school district in the nation is so miserable in performing the only function that matters: educating students.

New Orleans put most of its 78 public schools into a special Recovery School District after Hurricane Katrina. Now, about half of its schools are charter schools and the district has no union contract. The American Federation of Teachers, which strongly backed Obama, has vigorously opposed the reform efforts in New Orleans. Mayor Adrian Fenty and Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee of Washington, D.C., have become thoroughly fed-up with the WTU opposing school reforms and the elimination of awful teachers. They are considering restoring the school district's power to create nonunionized charter schools. They may declare the school system in a state of emergency in order to end the need to bargain with the WTU.

Obama has praised their efforts, but will be in the middle between them and the teacher's unions to whom he owes his election. It will be very interesting to see if he helps Fenty and Rhee or if he opposes their efforts behind closed doors. Union leaders regard the chances of the district getting a state of emergency ruling from the federal government to be very remote, given what Obama owes them. They do have some concern that the district might be able to regain its power to charter schools, however.

Rhee has proposed that teachers be more directly accountable for student performance and will offer them much higher salaries in exchange for weaker tenure rules. The 4,000 member WTU has refused to bring her contract offer to a vote. Rhee thinks the teachers will vote for it if they are allow to do so. Apparently the WTU also thinks the teachers might vote for the higher salary and more accountability contract also! It is delicious to see these Democrats fighting so much among themselves.

Fenty is the second D.C. mayor to seriously wrestle with school reform. It is good that D.C. voters have come to care about school reform. The District of Columbia is more heavily Democrat than any state. So this sets up conflict between Democrat politicians and the teachers unions. If the reform ever occurs and if D.C. students ever gain enough self-confidence to believe that they are capable of managing their own lives, it will be interesting to see if many of them start to fall away from the dependency offered them by the Democrats.

The Cost of Public Schools

Today I mean the cost in tax dollars to support public schools, not the cost in ethical relativism, ignorance, group think, and propaganda devoured. Andrew Coulson of The Cato Institute did some looking into the numbers for the Washington, D.C. public school system. Through the last couple of years I have seen the cost per student given commonly in the range of $9,000 to $12,000 something. He states that the most commonly cited figure is $8,322 per student now. Why do these numbers vary so much? Well, it turns out that it is because it all depends on how much the school system decides to hide from the public.

Coulson found that for K through 12 in 2007-2008, the local operating budget is $831 million, the capital budget is $218 million, federal funding is $85.5 million, and the D.C. Council kicks in an additional $81 million. There are 49,422 students, some of whom, on a given day, actually come to school. Divide this number into the sum of the annual funding and the cost per student is found to be about $24,600, which is rather a bit more than $8,322.

I have heard many discussions about how it is difficult for private schools to take on the education of a child for about $8,322 per year, so they could not take over the public school burden of education. But.......the story is clearly very different when you realize that the public schooling cost for a virtual non-education is on par cost-wise with the very elite private school, Sidwell Friends, that Chelsea Clinton attended. Would any sane person actually send their child to the dangerous and dilapidated D.C. public schools rather than an elite private school? No!

It clearly makes much more sense just to provide parents with a scholarship voucher to use on the school of their choice. Sure, the amount on the voucher may be less than $24,600 per year per student, allowing one to save considerable money for the poor beleaguered taxpayers. Florida's McKay Scholarship program provides money for special-needs children and the average scholarship for 2006-2007 was only $7,206. Sure, the cost of living is lower in Florida, but special-needs education is more expensive to deliver than general education. It is clear that private schools are now available to do a better educating job even at a cost of $12,000 to $15,000 per year per student in even the D.C. area. Many new schools would soon arise to meet the need if parents were given such scholarships.

The quality of the education in D.C. schools is indecently poor. This school system is awash in bureaucracy, inefficiency, and out-right corruption. Parents should be allowed to put it out of business or force it to meet the competition. The fantasy that this public education is free and that it even is education, must be challenged. The forces enforcing its monopoly on the education of our young are truly evil. Those forces include egalitarian socialists and the teacher's unions.

Neither is interested in the individual student learning to think for himself.

School Choice Popularity in Maryland

A bill has been approved by the Maryland Senate to allow Maryland businesses to take a tax credit of up to 75% for a donation to an educational organization that provides scholarships to students. The bill has 78 sponsors in the Maryland House, which is more than enough to pass it, if Sheila Hixson, chairwoman of the House Ways and Means Committee, will allow it to be presented to the full House for a vote. Whether she does or not, this development is very significant because it shows how strongly disappointed many citizens are with the public schools and how desperate they are to maintain and promote private schools.

This is happening in a generally solid Democratic state. The governor is a Democrat and both the House and the Senate of the Maryland General Assembly are controlled readily by the Democrats. The Democratic party here, as everywhere else, is very beholdened to the public school teachers unions. This bill is opposed by the Maryland State Teachers Association. This group claims that the state cannot afford to give out handouts to private schools when public schools are cash strapped. Actually, Marylanders are very generous with their public schools, but no matter how generous they may be, it is never enough to make the teachers unions grateful.

Baltimore City schools are horrendous. The schools of Prince George's County, one of the two counties abutting Washington, D. C., are also very bad. Prince George's County School System is the second largest school system in the state, while Baltimore City is about tied with Baltimore County as the 3rd largest school system in the state. Many families in Prince George's County fled Washington, D. C. in large part because its schools are terrible. Now, there is pressure from many families because they wish to send their children to better schools. This pressure is particularly keen in areas with particularly poor schools, which turn out to be some of the most intensely Democrat strongholds in the state. Democrat politicians are now getting the message, partially.

Let us examine the opposition of the Maryland State Teachers Association. A business volunteers to give $100 to educate children. The corporation tax rate in Maryland is 7%. So, the corporation would usually pay $7 to the state out of $100. If the corporation gives this $100 to educate children, then it reduces its taxes by $75 - $7 = $68. Thus, education gets $100 and public education loses some fraction of the $68 less collected by the state. With this program, more students are educated privately, so public education has fewer students to educate, allowing them to spend a lot less money. More net money is going to the education of students and because private schools are better than public schools and many spend less money per student than our troubled public school systems, the total cost of education may actually drop. Our youth are net beneficiaries.

Ah, but the Maryland State Teachers Association does not like this. Is this not clear proof that the teachers represented by the Maryland State Teachers Association are not true professional teachers, who would, of course, put the interests of the students first? Yes it is. They are simply semi-skilled blue collar union workers. No more. It is clear that their priorities lie with having their hands in the government cookie jar and feasting at great expense upon the cookies put there by many hardworking citizens of the state of Maryland. It is time that Maryland citizens put the education of their children ahead of the interests of the public school teacher unions.

What is especially important here is that even Democrat parents are beginning to realize that their children are being poorly served by many of the school systems, especially those controlled most completely by the Democrats and the teachers unions, and they are rebelling. In fact, with enough vigor to get Democrat legislators to act despite the protests of the Maryland State Teachers Association.

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.