Diary Of A Mad Voter: Jessica Peck Corry
Obama, Education Reform And Teachers’ Unions.
By Jessica Peck Corry, 5-29-08
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Barack Obama wants Western voters to believe he visited an innovative school north of Denver yesterday to highlight his commitment to educational progress. His real purpose: Winning the support of affluent unions seeking to stifle real educational reforms.
At Mapleton Expeditionary School of the Arts in Thornton, Obama was introduced by a giddy former Colorado Gov. Roy Romer, who referred to Obama as the next U.S. president. Excited students eagerly greeted Obama with a chant of “Yes, we can!”
Mapleton, an option school run by a union-controlled collective bargaining agreement, saw all 44 of its high school seniors this year accepted into four-year college programs. This is, indeed, a reason to celebrate. But only momentarily.
With Obama at the helm, it’s difficult to know what he is even trying to achieve. He talks about innovation but only introduces ideas that are anything but innovative, with his response to America’s education crisis predictably empty. More money. Better resources. And a renewed commitment to special education.
Bursting with emotion, Obama told a packed house, “I think it’s time to lead a new era of mutual responsibility in education, where we all come together for our students’ success.”
In his remarks, Obama offered few specifics of his reform plans, except to attack the politically unpopular No Child Left Behind Act, federal legislation criticized by conservatives and liberals alike for pushing unfunded mandates onto local school districts.
And then there is what Obama failed to mention. As he works toward sewing up the Democratic presidential nomination, he is actively courting the nod of the nation’s powerful teachers’ unions—bodies that all too frequently stand united in their fight against real reform.
Recently, the National Education Association political action committee council approved a conditional recommendation of Obama. The political endorsement—if you can even call it that—is contingent upon two things happening before the committee meets again next month. Either Obama’s primary opponent, Hillary Clinton, will need to withdraw from the race or Obama will need to garner the support of enough delegates to win his party’s nomination outright.
So basically, the union will only support Obama if he becomes unopposed or if he wins before the NEA is forced to take a position. Under ordinary circumstances, such a benign backing would be meaningless. But in 2008, no one is taking anything for granted. Especially not Obama. In October, he lost out to Clinton in garnering the critical endorsement by the American Federation of Teachers, a 1.4 million member organization.
As recent political history in the West has demonstrated, union support is essential to winning elections. Gov. Bill Ritter had millions of dollars and thousands of ground soldiers in union support when he beat out former GOP Congressman Bob Beauprez in their 2006 gubernatorial contest. Democrat Mark Udall will bank on union support this November as he takes on GOP opponent Bob Schaffer to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Loveland. In a state where less than 10 percent of all workers are unionized, unions are heavy players in politics.
Obama’s conundrum: He cannot take the White House in November without union money, but real education reform cannot happen with unions in control of our schools. For every Mapleton, there are a dozen innovative alternative programs, including charter schools and parent-driven alternative programs, that are stifled by union mandates and control.
Such mandates drive up administrative costs, taking valuable dollars away from teacher salaries. They prohibit competitive hiring of qualified teaching applicants. They make firing bad teachers cost prohibitive. In many cases, they fight efforts to open charter schools with a passion that should only be reserved for teaching. And in Obama’s campaign, union leaders will likely focus more on being precinct coordinators than on actually teaching kids.
If Obama really believed in educational reform, he would have cut the platitudes and made one simple pledge. “Yes, we can,” he would have said. “We can free our kids from union-controlled schools.” But Obama has no intention of taking on unions.
Editor’s note: Jessica Peck Corry’s weekly blogs are part of NewWest.Net/Politics’ “Diary of a Mad Voter” feature, a group blog, published in partnership with the Denver Post’s Politics West intended give a glimpse into the hearts and minds of several independent-minded voters and thinkers in the Rocky Mountain West in the ‘08 election cycle. For more columns check in with www.newwest.net/madvoter. And for more information on each of the bloggers, click here.
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Comments
Let me be more specific. You start with "Barack Obama wants Western voters to believe he visited an innovative school north of Denver yesterday." Well, then even you admit that it is a school that "saw all 44 of its high school seniors this year accepted into four-year college programs" and you even fess up to that record being "a reason to celebrate." You then contend that it is a reason to celebrate "only momentarily," but offer no correlating reason or reasoning behind your sour comment. From your article, there is no evidence that this school will not be around for a long time and have an equally stellar success rate every year and that would certainly not be only a momentary success.
You express clear contempt for Obama's desire to win "the support of affluent unions;" but, seeking favor with voters and potentially active supporters is what every politician does and I sure haven't noticed affluence being condemned much by the current administration. Even you contend that "union support is essential to winning elections" in the West. Do you not want Obama to have a fair shot at winning elections?
You then allege that these "affluent unions" are "seeking to stifle real educational reforms" and that "real education reform cannot happen with unions in control of our schools," but then offer no substantive evidence to support your assertions. In fact, the only evidence in your article is this school "run by a union-controlled collective bargaining agreement" that "saw all 44 of its high school seniors this year accepted into four-year college programs." You allege that, for every Mapleton, "there are a dozen innovative alternative programs that are stifled by union mandates and control, ...taking valuable dollars away from teacher salaries," ...obstructing the "competitive hiring of qualified teaching applicants," making "firing bad teachers cost prohibitive," and being "bodies that all too frequently stand united in their fight against real reform;" but, you offer no examples or evidence to back up such libelous hyperbole. The only example you offer here is the example of a school "run by a union-controlled collective bargaining agreement" that "saw all 44 of its high school seniors this year accepted into four-year college programs." I guess that I'm just supposed to take your word for it. Maybe I'm just supposed to take your word for some other discriminatory stereotypes. Maybe you could give us all some examples of those.
You assert, very vigorously, that if "Obama really believed in educational reform, he would have... made one simple pledge..." to "free our kids from union-controlled schools." Yet, your article documents the story of a "union-controlled" school that "saw all 44 of its high school seniors this year accepted into four-year college programs." If this is not success, then what kind of success do you envision for schools that have no union involvement?
I have my own opinions about unions and how they need to embrace reform; but, your dithering here obstructs, rather than illuminates, any productive debate on that topic, which is why it irritates me so. You really don't make your case very well. In fact, I don't believe that I want anyone of your intelligence level, at least as indicated by your writing here, to be involved in any decisions or discussions involving the education of my family.
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To give you an idea of how competitive American schools are and how U.S. students performed compared with their European counterparts, we gave parts of an international test to some high school students in Belgium and in New Jersey.
Belgian kids cleaned the American kids' clocks, and called them "stupid."
We didn't pick smart kids to test in Europe and dumb kids in the United States. The American students attend an above-average school in New Jersey, and New Jersey's kids have test scores that are above average for America.
Lov Patel, the boy who got the highest score among the American students, told me, "I'm shocked, because it just shows how advanced they are compared to us."
The Belgian students didn't perform better because they're smarter than American students. They performed better because their schools are better. At age 10, American students take an international test and score well above the international average. But by age 15, when students from 40 countries are tested, the Americans place 25th.
American schools don't teach as well as schools in other countries because they are government monopolies, and monopolies don't have much incentive to compete. In Belgium, by contrast, the money is attached to the kids -- it's a kind of voucher system. Government funds education -- at many different kinds of schools -- but if a school can't attract students, it goes out of business.
Belgian school principal Kaat Vandensavel told us she works hard to impress parents.
She told us, "If we don't offer them what they want for their child, they won't come to our school." She constantly improves the teaching, saying, "You can't afford 10 teachers out of 160 that don't do their work, because the clients will know, and won't come to you again."
"That's normal in Western Europe," Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby told me. "If schools don't perform well, a parent would never be trapped in that school in the same way you could be trapped in the U.S."
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Perhaps Obama would be willing to bring competition to our schools and really CHANGE the status quo.
I taught briefly. The union-backed retention of incompetent, out-of-steam teachers irked me, as someone who wants only the best for students and parents. Administrators are in a position of natural enemies of both parents and teachers - their focus is on getting the most funds for the least hassle and keeping their much higher salaries than teachers'.
For-profit schools in the U.S. are mostly corporate and have only one ally - share holders, who base their investment on profitability, not student performance. All charter schools have not been superior; some have failed as dismally or worse than some public schools. They lose their charters eventually, but it's a lot of wasted years for those kids and wasted dollars to corporations for taxpayers. Everyone knows failed students cost us a fortune in the long-run.
I admit one phrase would raise my regard for any politician on the issue of education: Funding Parity for every school in every district, regardless of property values, with equal high performance standards tied to raises for teachers in every classroom, based on proven assessment tools in every subject.
To me, the most interesting/informative part of the Op Ed: Our public education works until they're 10, then goes right down the tubes. It's interesting to note that female teacher levels drop as the student body ages, until college raises women's teaching levels again.
I recall that in middle school, teachers in my rough neighborhood seemed to be hired for their physical strength - to break up fights and deal with gang members. I noticed lots of turnover in middle school teachers and administrators too. Not a lot of women teachers, and not a very winning formula for raising the nation's future leaders. If you can't instill good habits in middle school, you're likelier to lose them in high school.
Ms. Jessica Peck Cory, you'd do your readers, especially parents, students and dedicated, concerned teachers and even administrators (yes, there are some!) a greater service if you'd look at this issue and Sen. Obama's proposals more objectively.