Point Proven

Just yesterday I posted on the greed of the teachers' labor unions and I pointed out that, while they demand that the public they serve fork over more and more money to them, they are not willing to take responsibility for the poor performance of the nations' public schools. Today comes a post from "Hot Air" (http://hotair.com/archives/2011/02/20/the-bottom-of-the-teachers-union-barrel/) that makes my case.

Last year, the school board in Central Falls, Rhode Island, fired the district's 88 teachers, and with good reason. A mere 93% of the district's students were failing, or not performing at grade level. The Rhode Island Federation of Teachers, the local arm of the American Federation of Teachers, stormed in and forced the re-hiring of all teachers and they forced the district to award each of the non-performing professionals a $3000 bonus.

CNN interviewed the leader of the disgraced labor union in Central Falls, whose name is James Parisi. The interview went as follows:

CNN: So in this town where the average income is $22,000 the average teacher is now making $76,000. What are the community members paying for?



James Parisi: The highest paid teachers are making about $76,000, which frankly I don’t think is enough for the committed professionals that are in that school district.


CNN: You had a 93% fail rate. That’s undeniable.


JP: And you think that’s caused by teacher’s actions?


CNN: Absolutely.


JP: I don’t think the teachers are responsible.

The teachers are not responsible, Parisi says, and there is absolutely nothing they can do to improve the educational situation of these students who are trapped in these disasterous schools, yet he believes that the public must fork over even more money to pay these "professionals" to do, literally, nothing. But hey, it's all about the kids.

Yes, It can Happen Here

The massive protests in Madison, Wisconsin, are not an isolated case of teacher union thugs gone wild. Despite the existence of local union organizations, such as the Colorado Springs Education Association (CSEA), the labor unions are centrally controlled by either the National Education Association (NEA) or the smaller but equally dangerous American Federation of Teachers (AFT). If or when the NEA gives the order, the CSEA members will certainly abandon their classrooms and take to the streets.

Some people disagree with me when I argue that one of the largest impediments to improved education in D11 is the teachers' labor union. It is the administration, some say, that is to blame for the ever declining educational performance and the dwindling student population. While I have never defended the over-paid yet underwhelming administrators in this school district, the labor union is every bit as responsible for the damage that is being done to D11 students as are the administrators.

In my November 17, 2006 post (located here: http://d11-factsheet.blogspot.com/2006_11_01_archive.html), I discussed the formal relationship between the AFL-CIO and the NEA. This relationship obviously had nothing to do with making the NEA more caring about students or more professional. As I have always argued, the teachers' labor unions are not "professional associations" as you would find with doctors' associations or associations of mechanical engineers. Those associations. The teachers' unions are militant public employee organizations which are appendages of the Democrat Party and whose sole purpose is to squeeze the public for more and more money. 40% of the labor union members in Madison refused to work because (gasp) the elected representatives of that state are asking them to pay a small amount towards their own benefit packages, which is about half as much as the average private citizens in Wisconsin are required to pay for their own benefits.

Let's look at what the labor unions do for our kids. While we see our students performing worse against international standards the longer they remain in public schools, what reason do the labor unions and their members provide for this declining performance? They blame the parents. It is lack of parental involvement that results in declining student learning in our schools. OK, let's look at the growing trend of homeschooling. The labor unions must support this trend since it is the ultimate in parental involvement. Well, not so fast. Homeschooling is bad for students, the union leaders say, because parents are not "professional educators" like our local labor union teachers, so the students won't receive the same quality education as they will find in their neighborhood school. See the logic? We are told that these professional educators can't be held accountable for the poor performance of the students, yet somehow only they are qualified to provide a decent education for the students in the first place. Therefore, we must continually fork over more and more money to retain a high quality teaching force which certainly can't be held responsible for the lack of learning of the students whose parents are to blame for their lack of learning but who are the same parents who have no right to teach their own kids because they are not high quality professional educators.

Like those teachers in Madison, the D11 labor union members will quit on their students the moment their labor agitator leadership directs them to do so. They will protest for their labor union without hesitation, but have no doubt, they will not quit on their labor union for the benefit of their students. When the dismal statistics come out on D11 performance year after year, do we see the teachers taking to the streets to demand that the administration adopt curriculum that will support student learning? Do we see them causing work stoppages to demand accountability for their fellow teachers who have no business in a classroom? Of course we don't, but year after year, we see these labor union teachers allowing their leadership to fund campaigns of board members who will continue to hire and retain ineffective and inept administrators who will continue to draw salaries that are 4 times the average salary of the average Colorado Springs resident, but whose productivity is nonexistent. Look at those labor union signs in Madison; it is all about the "Union" and never about your kids.

Like Wisconsin, Colorado is in a budget squeeze largely because its citizens are paying public employees to be nonproductive. The NEA (and CSEA) are militant organizations who serve no public good. They are harmful to our financial viability as states and school districts, and they are harmful to the future of students who are receiving a very sub-par education.