America’s public schools are–and have been for some time–failing. Children are not being educated, in many places they are in danger when they go to school, and the situation is getting worse, not better. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie recently called out the teacher’s unions on the role they have played in this failure:
In an age of new media and wider access to information and the ability to disseminate that information we are finally seeing people take on the education bureaucracy and unions that are directly responsible for the systemic failure of our public education system. Just ask Bob Bowdon who directed “The Cartel” a movie that ruthlessly exposes the corruption inherent and ever-present in our public school monopoly system.
The Wall Street Journal’s Bari Weiss has a fascinating article today based on an interview with Madeleine Sackler about her new film “The Lottery”:
In the spring of 2008, Ms. Sackler, then a freelance film editor, caught a segment on the local news about New York’s biggest lottery. It wasn’t the Powerball. It was a chance for 475 lucky kids to get into one of the city’s best charter schools (publicly funded schools that aren’t subject to union rules).
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In the spring of 2008, Ms. Sackler, then a freelance film editor, caught a segment on the local news about New York’s biggest lottery. It wasn’t the Powerball. It was a chance for 475 lucky kids to get into one of the city’s best charter schools (publicly funded schools that aren’t subject to union rules) . . . she discovered that the majority of those protesting the proliferation of charter schools were not even from the neighborhood. . . . Finding out that the teachers union had hired a rent-a-mob to protest on its behalf was “the turn for us in the process.” That story—of self-interested adults trying to deny poor parents choice for their children—provided an answer to Ms. Sackler’s fundamental question: “If there are these high-performing schools that are closing the achievement gap, why aren’t there more of them?”
The reason is what Eva Moskowitz, founder of the Harlem Success Academy network and a key character in the film, calls the “union-political-educational complex.” That’s a fancy term for the web of unions and politicians who defend the status quo in order to protect their jobs.
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In the film, Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker says he can’t go to lotteries anymore because they break his heart. “A child’s destiny should not be determined on the pull of a draw.” Nothing drives home this point more than seeing the parents and kids, perched at the edge of their chairs, hoping their names flash on the big screen.
The full article is available here (subscriber-only; you may be able to access it by Googling “Storming the School Barricades”).
In 2006 John Stossel produced a report for 20/20 he called “Stupid in America” in which he explored the reasons for the vast public school system failures. Among the more powerful images in the 40 minute segment are those scenes filmed inside union meetings and rallies. He described his experience creating the piece in an op/ed:
“Stupid in America” is a nasty title for a program about public education, but some nasty things are going on in America’s public schools and it’s about time we face up to it.
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[M]any people say, “We need to spend more money on our schools,” there actually isn’t a link between spending and student achievement. . . National graduation rates and achievement scores are flat, while spending on education has increased more than 100 percent since 1971. More money hasn’t helped American kids.
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American schools don’t teach as well as schools in other countries because they are government monopolies, and monopolies don’t have much incentive to compete. In Belgium, by contrast, the money is attached to the kids — it’s a kind of voucher system. Government funds education — at many different kinds of schools — but if a school can’t attract students, it goes out of business.
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The longer kids stay in American schools, the worse they do in international competition. They do worse than kids from poorer countries that spend much less money on education, ranking behind not only Belgium but also Poland, the Czech Republic and South Korea.
This should come as no surprise if you remember that public education in the United States is a government monopoly. Don’t like your public school? Tough. The school is terrible? Tough. Your taxes fund that school regardless of whether it’s good or bad. That’s why government monopolies routinely fail their customers. Union-dominated monopolies are even worse.
Only the foolish, the brainwashed, or the members of the cartel can seriously suggest our public school system is not a massive failure. And only the uninformer or, again, members of the cartel can seriously argue the solution is more money. It’s about time for a little hope and change in our education system or we will reap what we sow when today’s children, failed by the system, are forced into tomorrow’s leaders.
Christie may be the new Reagan–the man to save America in 2012. In the past it seemed suicidal to take on teachers unions but Christie does it extremely well and he knows that this battle must be won or nothing else matters.
I have thought for some time the way to deal with the “public education problem” is not to attack teachers but to show how much better the teaching environment would be for teachers (and students) by using all private schools. Christie catches this idea perfectly when he says, “teachers are not the problem.”