A while back, I wrote a piece on education and I asked some teachers with blogs for comments.
While most agreed with me that bureaucracy was the problem, the comments all had one theme:
Quality teachers are the answer to education, period.
Frankly, I was somewhat thunderstruck. This ran completely counter to everything I expected. The teachers talked about how some teachers were burned out, they advocated merit pay, etc.
Basically, everything the NEA (the teachers union) has fought against the last two decades the teachers were for, and everything the NEA fought for, the teachers were against.
Now, in retrospect, that shouldn’t be too surprising. My mother, despite being the shop steward for her union, hated the union. The only thing worse then the idiots in the union were the nincompoops in the district office.
Now, today, I find out that that NEA is suing the government over NCLB. Hat Tip: Eduwonk.
The core of the lawsuit boils down to the contention that No Child Left Behind is forcing school districts (and by extension states) to spend too much on education. This is, to put it mildly, a novel argument from the NEA.
Or as ScrappleFace put it, the NEA wants “No Bureaucrat Left Behind”.
Now I’ve never been a big fan of the NEA. This is an organization that rates schools not by whether or not the kids are learning, but on how much the school spends. We wonder why education keeps getting more expensive while kids seem to be learning less and less? Because the NEA is measuring the wrong thing.
As the son of a shop steward for the NEA, the grandson of a man who spent time in Leavenworth for running a labor union, I never thought I’d say this but:
It’s time to bust the Teachers Union.
Save our kids, kill the NEA!
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