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6Mar/1137

Vouchers, Merit Pay, and Teachers’ Union Howling

As teachers agitate, let's recall what their unions did when confronted with a couple of new ideas for improving children's education: school vouchers and merit pay. In response to these ideas, did they say, "Your children's education is very important to us, you pay the salaries of our members, we know that there are critical problems in public education and we're willing to try whatever we have to to improve things"? Like fun they did.

Teachers' unions have insisted for decades that the troubles in public education come about because we haven't thrown enough money at it. Now I'll give you a minute to go look at your property tax bill. (You may also have a school district tax referendum you might want to look at.) Now look at the news. On a nearly daily basis we're being told that American students are stupid and lazy and perform worse than Japanese students, or European students, or [insert the country du jour which isn't the United States] students. Go back to that tax bill once again. Something's not adding up.

I'm not opposed to throwing money at public education and I think decades of taxes paid by Americans proves that my position is not unusual. We've thrown gobs of money at public education; the return on that investment has been marginal at best. When we tell public educators what we want done to improve that return and fix achievement gaps, they fight us tooth-and-nail and condescendingly explaining to us that we don't know what we're talking about.

Maybe we don't know what we're talking about. Maybe school vouchers and merit pay are bad ideas. Then again, we are the ones footing the bill. And maybe if teachers' unions had given those ideas more than a grudging, limp-wristed try instead of reflexively crapping on any idea which puts some control back into the hands of taxpayers, I might feel some sympathy for protesters in Wisconsin and the teachers there who will be laid off.

P.S. If you were planning to go to Madison any time soon, keep in mind that since Michael Moore's visit, don't count on finding a bratwurst within a fifteen mile radius.