Read Online Blue Collar Conservatives: Recommitting to an America That Works by Rick Santorum - Free Book Online
Authors: Rick Santorum
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focused on the best learning environment for your child. Not that there aren’t well-meaning, wonderful people in the system; it’s just not their job. Like everyone else in government, they are overwhelmed with process—filling out forms to show they are complying with federal and state mandates.
If the first step to reform is encouraging parents to take command of their kids’ education and not delegate it to the government, the second step is to break the stranglehold of the teachers’ unions on public education. Unions were once an important part of the industrial economy, and they protected workers from unreasonable conditions and demandsand ensured basic safety in factories. My coal miner grandfather was the treasurer of his mine workers’ local and a union man through and through. In those days, there were few laws to protect workers, and the conditions he had to endure in the mines because immigrant labor was cheap and expendable were really tough. Thankfully, those days are gone, but I still support the right of private sector workers to organize and negotiate wages and working conditions.
But teachers’ unions, in the name of protecting their members, are often the biggest obstacles to reforming our schools for the benefit of both teachers and students. Part of the problem is collective bargaining. Federal employee unions are barred from collective bargaining and using union dues for political purposes. Many teachers’ unions have no such restrictions. They use the power of collective bargaining to richly fund the union’s political operation. They use that machine to elect school board members who pay back the unions with pay raises while blocking efforts to remove incompetent teachers, to institute merit-based pay, and to expand school choice.
The link is pretty clear. Our schools as a whole are doing poorly, but school systems with collective bargaining tend to do far worse. For example, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, in 2011 only 40 percent of fourth-grade students performed at or above their grade level in math, and a mere 32 percent performed at or above their grade level in reading. 4 But consider this: in Chicago, whichpermits collective bargaining by teachers’ unions, students are barely halfway to the national average, with only 20 percent of students at grade level in math and only 18 percent at grade level in reading. Meanwhile, Charlotte, North Carolina, a large urban school district, prohibits collective bargaining. Charlotte’s students are beating the national average, with 48 percent proficiency in math and 36 percent in reading, besting the Chicago students by 28 and 18 points, respectively. You’ll find similar disparities between New York City, where there is collective bargaining, and Austin, Texas, where there isn’t. 5 Most of us take the commonsense view that schools should be focused on student and teacher performance. But the teachers’ unions are often opposed to that commonsense goal.
It is easy to lay the blame on an antiquated education model, but that model worked much better when I was in grade school. It is failing now in part because it is being called on to do so much more. I have yet to meet a teacher that didn’t tell me that family is the most important determinant of success in the classroom. Too many children arrive at school unprepared to learn or with serious behavioral issues or both. Of course, the president’s idea is taking kids out of the home and putting them into a government-structured day care program instead of trying to address the root cause, broken families.
It’s extremely important that our children’s education at home and in school equip them with the basic skills they willneed in their career. Parents are right to be concerned about the kind of character being formed in our public schools, but the foundation of character, like the foundation for learning, is built at home. Karen and I thought this was
If the first step to reform is encouraging parents to take command of their kids’ education and not delegate it to the government, the second step is to break the stranglehold of the teachers’ unions on public education. Unions were once an important part of the industrial economy, and they protected workers from unreasonable conditions and demandsand ensured basic safety in factories. My coal miner grandfather was the treasurer of his mine workers’ local and a union man through and through. In those days, there were few laws to protect workers, and the conditions he had to endure in the mines because immigrant labor was cheap and expendable were really tough. Thankfully, those days are gone, but I still support the right of private sector workers to organize and negotiate wages and working conditions.
But teachers’ unions, in the name of protecting their members, are often the biggest obstacles to reforming our schools for the benefit of both teachers and students. Part of the problem is collective bargaining. Federal employee unions are barred from collective bargaining and using union dues for political purposes. Many teachers’ unions have no such restrictions. They use the power of collective bargaining to richly fund the union’s political operation. They use that machine to elect school board members who pay back the unions with pay raises while blocking efforts to remove incompetent teachers, to institute merit-based pay, and to expand school choice.
The link is pretty clear. Our schools as a whole are doing poorly, but school systems with collective bargaining tend to do far worse. For example, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, in 2011 only 40 percent of fourth-grade students performed at or above their grade level in math, and a mere 32 percent performed at or above their grade level in reading. 4 But consider this: in Chicago, whichpermits collective bargaining by teachers’ unions, students are barely halfway to the national average, with only 20 percent of students at grade level in math and only 18 percent at grade level in reading. Meanwhile, Charlotte, North Carolina, a large urban school district, prohibits collective bargaining. Charlotte’s students are beating the national average, with 48 percent proficiency in math and 36 percent in reading, besting the Chicago students by 28 and 18 points, respectively. You’ll find similar disparities between New York City, where there is collective bargaining, and Austin, Texas, where there isn’t. 5 Most of us take the commonsense view that schools should be focused on student and teacher performance. But the teachers’ unions are often opposed to that commonsense goal.
It is easy to lay the blame on an antiquated education model, but that model worked much better when I was in grade school. It is failing now in part because it is being called on to do so much more. I have yet to meet a teacher that didn’t tell me that family is the most important determinant of success in the classroom. Too many children arrive at school unprepared to learn or with serious behavioral issues or both. Of course, the president’s idea is taking kids out of the home and putting them into a government-structured day care program instead of trying to address the root cause, broken families.
It’s extremely important that our children’s education at home and in school equip them with the basic skills they willneed in their career. Parents are right to be concerned about the kind of character being formed in our public schools, but the foundation of character, like the foundation for learning, is built at home. Karen and I thought this was
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