Ed-u-kai-tchun
by Thomas Sowell
Jewish World Review
jewishworldreview.com
AMONG THE MANY POLLS that come and go, none is more
depressing than the one which shows that the public
regards the Democrats as far and away better than the
Republicans on education. It is hard to know whether to
laugh or cry.
The biggest single obstacle to the improvement of American
education is the National Education Association, by far the
country's largest union. Many people have pointed out that the dumbed-down
education in our public schools is a menace to our society. But the NEA party line
is: "The Nation's students today are threatened only by the failure of
policymakers to give education the money it deserves."
It would be hard for
the NEA to tell a
bigger lie if they tried.
You would risk a
hernia if you tried to
carry all the studies
which show that
more money has
virtually no effect on
the quality of
American education.
We spend twice as
much money per
pupil as countries whose students outscore ours on international tests. States
that score at the top on national tests often have below average expenditures per
pupil, and those at the bottom are often big spenders.
There is no question that the Democrats in general and Bill Clinton in particular
line up solidly with the National Education Association and are willing to pour
ever more billions of the taxpayers' dollars down the bottomless pit of our current
failed public schools. If that is your definition of "caring" about "education" or
about "the children," then you are welcome to it.
In reality, those who follow this line are selling your children down the river to the
NEA, which sees schools as places where their union members have iron-clad
tenure in jobs where pay has no relationship whatever to how well they perform
those jobs. Of course, the NEA is happy to see 100,000 new jobs created for their
members. What union wouldn't be?
Except for the lowest grades, there is no real evidence that reducing class sizes
has any more effect on educational outcomes than throwing more money at the
schools. Class sizes were being reduced all around the country and per pupil
expenditures were going up by leaps and bounds for more than a decade, during
which test scores were lower every year than they were the year before.
Why are the Democrats so loyal to the NEA? Because the NEA spends vast
millions of dollars supporting the Democrats in both state and national election
campaigns. One hand washes the other.
What the NEA most wants is to keep their monopoly on our children's schooling.
That means no vouchers or other reforms that would allow parents to choose
where their children go to school.
When Congress passed a bill this year providing money for 2,000 low-income
children in Washington to receive vouchers to attend private schools, Bill Clinton
vetoed it. That is how much he "cares" about "the children." He cares about the
NEA and the millions of dollars in political campaign contributions they represent.
No children anywhere in America are in more desperate need of a decent
education than those in the disastrous District of Columbia public schools. Not
one dime that Congress appropriated for vouchers came out of the public school
budget, despite the NEA party line that vouchers drain money from the public
schools.
The real threat that vouchers represent to the NEA and its members is that
low-income children who go into private schools and do better there will
completely undermine all the excuses that blame everyone except the public
schools themselves for the rotten education that these youngsters get today.
To hear the NEA tell it, educational failures are the fault of parents, television,
"society." If that is so, then why does the NEA fight so desperately to prevent
these excuses from being put to the test? After all, these will be the same
children, with the same parents, the same television and the same "society"
when they take their vouchers and go elsewhere.
The NEA is bitterly opposed to any such test because they know that they do not
have the facts on their side. However, they do have the Democrats on their side.
And where are the Republicans when it comes to explaining all this to the public?
They are where they are on so many other issues -- fumbling, tongue-tied and
afraid that people will think they are meanies if they don't go along with the
Democrats.
Like the cleaning women who don't do windows, I don't try to explain
Republicans |
