Tag Archives: Teachers

My parents say I’ve still got a lot to learn about civics and government, but it seems to me that the people running for President like to talk a lot more about education than they can actually do to help fix education. A major reason Presidential candidates talk about education as much as they do is all the money and political clout of the National Education Association (NEA) teachers union. As NEA has done every time, the union recently endorsed the Democratic candidate for President. Last week, Barack Obama gave an official acceptance speech to NEA’s big annual meeting via satellite. Obama said a lot of things the union delegates wanted to hear, but at one point he was loudly booed: Why? He suggested changing the way most teachers are paid, including more money given out based on performance. He also spoke highly of charter schools. Not too surprising, NEA officials edited out Barack Obama’s comments about merit pay and charter schools. Wow, this union really goes out of its way to block sensible reforms that benefit students, parents, and professional teachers! When you think about it, maybe it would be better if the Presidential candidates didn’t talk so much […]

Over at Jay Greene’s blog, Greg Forster takes on the issue (via the extraordinary education investigator Mike Antonucci) of states with growing teacher workforces and flat – or even shrinking – student populations: Maryland, for example, expanded its teacher workforce 10 percent from 2001 to 2006, while enrollment grew less than 1 percent. California, which is still carrying around an extremely bloated teacher workforce from its apparently failed experiment in class size reduction, has just announced that it’s cancelling the large majority of its planned teacher layoffs. Greg goes on to point out that growing teacher-to-student ratios largely have not resulted in smaller class sizes – in part because teachers have their classroom time limited or some are working in non-classroom positions. So who gets the best of this arrangement? Well, the teachers’ unions make out like bandits. More teachers means bigger budgets without the hassle of selling the membership on dues hikes, and more political clout because the public school gravy train is larger. Jay Greene himself has made the point that to an extent more teachers in the system pushes down the overall quality of the teaching workforce, because there is a limited pool of talent. It’s just […]