Kerry On NEA’s Leash
By Dwight Baker (08/03/04)
The National Education Association is one of the most powerful labor unions in the country. How else do you explain their power over the Democratic Party and their poster boy, John Kerry?
You probably didn’t hear about this unless you’re subscribed to ump-teen political newsletters like I am (I need help) but back on May 6th of this year John Kerry made a stump speech on education at a California high school. He did the usual bashing of the No Child Left Behind Act and blamed Bush for all its shortcomings. That was to be expected.
Let’s not forget who Bush let write the bill in a wasted show of bi-partisanship—Ted Kennedy. That’s right, Kennedy wrote the bill (I’m sure with the NEA looking over his shoulder), and Bush signed it into law. Now Kennedy goes around the country blasting the President on lack of funding for education…………but more on that later.
What wasn’t expected at Kerry’s California education speech was that he sounded a lot like President Bush on many education issues. Senator Kerry expressed support for higher pay for math and science teachers and for those who work in hard-to-staff schools. He then stated the need “to find ways to reward teachers for excellence, and to reward the students’ teachers who obviously show tremendous success.” Kerry said greater achievement “ought to be able to command greater pay just the way it does in every other sector of professional employment in the United States of America.”
Afterwards, his campaign released a press statement declaring Kerry “will establish new systems that reward teachers for excellence in the classroom, including pay based on improvement in student achievement.” GASP!!!
Of course, now the NEA was in a tizzy because the blasphemous words “performance” and “pay” were used in the same sentence. They released a statement afterwards saying, “We look forward to discussing ways to help strengthen Senator Kerry’s proposals in ways that will meet the needs of America’s public school students.”
Translation: We need to reel in John Kerry and remind him who controls public education in this country.
In a memo dated May 21 and delivered to high-ranking NEA officials nationwide, Weaver described the intervention----er, uh, I mean meeting with Kerry. “We had a very positive meeting in which the Senator expressed strong interest in working closely with the NEA and outlined his support for a number of NEA priorities.” In other words, don’t worry, it’ll never happen again.
Weaver further reported, “We raised our concerns that the Kerry campaign used the language ‘pay-for-performance’ in his press release, although the Senator himself did not use those words in his remarks and the formal policy document did not use it. The Senator clarified that the campaign did not intend to use that language and would not do so in the future. He asked that I convey this point to NEA leaders.”
I wonder if Kerry had to serve a detention and write “I will never again say pay-for-performance” a hundred times on the chalkboard.
Now back to Kennedy. As I said earlier, Kennedy was allowed to write the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) the largest spending bill on public education in the history of planet Earth. Now he, along with the NEA go around the country predictably saying it STILL isn’t enough.
Let’s check the score here. Federal spending on education has increased 51 percent since Bush took office. Title I spending (for low-income schools) has increased from $8.8 billion under Clinton to $13.3 billion under Bush. Those are undisputable facts. Yet what do we hear from the Democrats and the teacher unions? It’s not enough, despite the fact that for three decades federal funding of public education has NEVER decreased or even held steady for two consecutive years. It has ONLY gone up, without exception. We're now spending more than three times as much per pupil in constant, inflation-adjusted dollars than we did in 1960.
Has student performance gone up in a measurable way to justify all the additional money? Nope. There is no relationship between the amount of money spent on education and student achievement (and a new study released on July 7 by the Cato Institute proves it). That’s my problem with teachers unions. Less than 50 cents of every dollar spent on education every makes it to the classroom or much needed raises for teachers.
Yes, I said it and I’m proud. I think teachers need to be paid more. I think their starting salary should be at least 50% more than it is across the board. Nobody values what teachers do more than I do. My problem is not with them, it’s with the unions. After all, my wife is a public school teacher of special education.
My problem, and for the most part, conservative Republicans’ problem is that the massive school district bureaucracies eat up the majority of that money. Can anyone explain to me why any school district administrator needs to make more than $200,000 a year? Someone please explain to me why there are so many non-teacher staff in public schools and administrations? In my area the Houston ISD top administrator makes more than Vice President Cheney. And I’m sure the VP deals with much tougher issues.
I’ll give you a great example of what I’m talking about just from the area where I live. In February 2003, the Houston Independent School District (HISD) reported to the Houston Federation of Teachers that 44 administrators and professionals make more than $100,000 a year. When they cut 360 jobs that year, none of those folks got the ax. It was the little people at the bottom: receptionists, school police, painters, etc.
Here’s a thought: how about cutting some of the top-heavy administration and letting some of those dollars trickle down to the teachers? How about stopping the under-the-table dealings between the unions and the district administrators? If the NEA’s goals are truly “all about the children”, shouldn’t more of those dollars make it through the bureaucratic gauntlet to the classrooms?
If raindrops were public education dollars and the public school system was the umbrella, the canopy would be the top-heavy administration, the supporting struts would be the teacher unions, and the teachers and students get the shaft.
http://cf.townhall.com/linkurl.cfm?http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-518es.html
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-518es.html
(Printer friendly version) Email: Dwight Baker
