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© 2011 The Union Label Blog & Grassfire Nation
-By Larry Sand
To a large extent, the progressives have taken over American education, are transforming it and are doing it in plain sight
Indoctrination: How ‘Useful Idiots’ Are Using Our Schools to Subvert American Exceptionalism is an invaluable book written by Kyle Olson, founder and CEO of the Education Action Group, an organization that is on the frontline of education reform and a champion of school choice.
In this brief and very readable book, Olson describes the ways that the progressives in our society have taken over K-12 education. They have been running most of our elite colleges and schools of education for years now and this step is in keeping with their plan to transform America.
As a public school teacher whose career spanned four decades, I have seen the long march first hand. Perverting the traditional purpose of American education (which has been to make better and more educated citizens), progressives have been inspired by the theories of Paolo Freire, a Brazilian socialist who saw everything through a Marxist class warfare lens.
Carrying Freire’s mantle, current gurus like revolutionary terrorist Bill Ayers and the recently deceased Communist Howard Zinn have been behind the effort to destroy America as we know it. They claim that basically the U.S. and its capitalist system are the root of all evil. Unfortunately, their love-the-world/hate-America attitude has gained an incredible amount of currency in our public schools in a relatively short time. Ayers, Zinn and their ilk have essentially managed to convince much of the education establishment to abandon every teaching technique and curriculum that benefited prior generations. For example, “drill and kill†has been thrown on the refuse heap; we are now supposed to let our students “discover†learning. The “sage on the stage†has been replaced by the “guide on the side.†The only problem with these techniques is that they haven’t worked, but they do sound good (at least to the progressives.) As such, we are now raising a nation of dunces. Continue reading »
-By Larry Sand
With the state and various cities on the brink of insolvency, it’s imperative that the electorate become more informed and demand that school districts and teachers unions do their negotiating in public.
This past Sunday’s Los Angeles Times above-the-fold headline screamed “Voters back tax hikes for schools.†It was déja-vu all over again. As I wrote in September,
“… a poll which is biased and does not take into account the knowledge of the people being polled is misleading and dangerous. The public is led to believe that the responders are perceptive and knowledgeable, when in reality so many are not.â€
(And I could have added that a poll that misleads or misinforms its respondents is the most dangerous of all; I’ll address that shortly.)
The Times article reported that a USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences/Los Angeles Times Frequency Questionnaire released last week showed that 61 percent of those surveyed said they would pay higher taxes to boost school funding.
As I read those words, I wondered, Continue reading »
-By Larry Sand
A new study claims that public school teachers are overpaid. Are they? Depends.
An ongoing whine from teachers unions and their fellow travelers is that public school teachers don’t earn enough money. But according to Andrew Biggs, a researcher at the American Enterprise Institute scholar and Jason Richwine, a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, it is just not true. In fact, in a recently released study, they find that teachers are overpaid. Typically teachers have many perks like excellent healthcare and pension packages which aren’t counted as “income.†Armed with facts, charts and a bevy of footnotes, the authors make a very good case for their thesis. For example, they claim,
“Workers who switch from non-teaching jobs to teaching jobs receive a wage increase of roughly 9 percent, while teachers who change to non-teaching jobs see their wages decrease by approximately 3 percent.
“When retiree health coverage for teachers is included, it is worth roughly an additional 10 percent of wages, whereas private sector employees often do not receive this benefit at all.
“Teachers benefit strongly from job security benefits, which are worth about an extra 1 percent of wages, rising to 8.6 percent when considering that extra job security protects a premium paid in terms of salaries and benefits.
“Taking all of this into account, teachers actually receive salary and benefits that are 52 percent greater than fair market levels.â€
Needless to say, the usual suspects are none too pleased with the report. A teacher-blogger going by New York City Educator calls his piece, “‘That’s Just Mean’: Bullies at the Heritage Foundation.†Okay, whatever. Continue reading »
-By Larry Sand
Parents sue the LA school board and teachers union, forcing them to obey a law that they have ignored for 40 years.
There is nothing new about unions bullying weak-kneed school districts, but this may be the mother of all abuses– for forty years, school districts and unions have collaborated to break the law in California. According to the Stull Act (Section 44660 of the state’s education code), part of a teacher’s evaluation is required to include a student achievement component, but this has not happened anywhere in the state. Last week, after consulting with EdVoice, a reform advocacy group in Sacramento, parents of some students in Los Angeles Unified School District sued the school district and teachers union for what amounts to a dereliction of duty. While the lawsuit is aimed at LA, it will have state-wide ramifications.
Originally enacted in 1971, the Stull Act, named after State Senator John Stull, was amended in 1999 to include,
“The governing board of each school district shall evaluate and assess certificated employee performance as it reasonably relates to:
The progress of pupils toward the standards established pursuant to subdivision (a) and, if applicable, the state adopted academic content standards as measured by state adopted criterion referenced assessments….â€
Continue reading »
(Ed note: and guess where much of this wasted money goes? Yep, unions.)
By Steve Maggi
Nearly $100 billion. That’s what High Speed Rail is now going to cost California taxpayers – more than double the costs initially promised by the proponents of Prop 1A, which contained the initial taxpayer financing for the project.
2033. That’s when the HSR project is now expected to be completed – 13 years after it was initially supposed to be completed.
So, in the three short years since voters were sold this bill of goods, the costs have gone up $50+ billion and the time to complete the project has doubled. How could that be? Maybe the cost of labor has skyrocketed, despite unemployment being in double digits? Or maybe the cost of purchasing land for the tracks has dramatically increased, despite the real estate market being down? Or – just maybe – the special interests that pushed High Speed Rail didn’t give voters all the facts when they sold this program in 2008.
Over and over again, California voters have been sold the benefits of a new program that ended up costing taxpayers more money, that lacked sufficient oversight or accountability, or that failed to deliver on the promised benefits. High Speed Rail, stem cell research, the First 5 programs … all of these programs have faced at least some of these problems.
But that hasn’t stopped special interests, who keep coming to California voters with more ballot measures to get more of our hard earned tax dollars for new programs. The latest ballot box boondoggle is being pushed by a former career politician, who wants to create a huge new taxpayer-funded bureaucracy with six political appointees. The so-called California Cancer Research Act – on the ballot next June – would raise taxes on tobacco by $1 a pack for this big new spending program.
California can’t even pay for the current programs on the books, and a former politician wants to start a new program. How long before this program has cost overruns, and Sacramento comes calling asking for more from California taxpayers?
Steve Maggi Is Host & Executive Producer of Free America Radio.
-By Stephen Kruiser
Voter-Approved First 5 LA Program Spends $200 Million of Taxpayers Money without Oversight
As the Los Angeles Times reports, a recent independent audit of the First 5 LA Commission revealed massive problems with the agency, including lack of accountability, spending oversight or competitive bidding. First 5 LA is part of a statewide program created in 1998 by Prop 10, a measure which was supposed to use funds from a tobacco tax to promote health and education of young children. According to the audit, it’s not exactly fulfilling its mission. From the Times:
An audit by Harvey M. Rose of San Francisco found First 5 LA’s commission was unable to monitor money that was being spent “since monthly programmatic expenditures are not presented relative to a budget.” Auditors also concluded the agency was overstaffed while under-spending on programs for children.
So, First 5 LA is spending too much on public employees and not enough on kids. Not to mention doling out $200 million without a competitive bidding process and operating with such a lack of oversight that there’s no way to determine if the agency has signed agreements “for inappropriate purposes or with unqualified vendors or granteesâ€. Sounds like standard operating procedure in California, which has seen similar accountability and oversight problems with other initiative-created agencies as well.
And yet, former pro Tem and career politician Don Perata is pushing another measure – the so-called California Cancer Research Act – to create yet another unaccountable bureaucracy with six political appointees that can spend nearly a billion each year, including millions on staff salaries and pensions and overhead. With huge budget problems and public pension costs spiraling out of control, the last thing California needs is another big-spending bureaucracy with no oversight or accountability.
The measure is slated for the June 2012 ballot in California.
