Save Our Schools (SOS) Marchers are Pied Pipers of Mediocrity

This is the first in a series by Anthony Krinsky about July 28th’s ‘Save Our Schools’ march. [Part 2, Part 3]

On July 28th America’s teacher unions will stage their most cynical event yet, a march on Washington DC called the “Save Our Schools March & National Call to Action.” The organizers seek to convince America that these lies are true:

• Public schools must be “saved” from rewards and punishments outlined in NCLB and Race to the Top.
• Test outcomes have no role in student, teacher and school evaluation.
• Failing schools should not be closed and performance should have no factor in pay.
• Federal officials should fully cede responsibility for education policy to teachers and “community members” materially benefiting from and holding power in states and localities.
• Curricula should focus on un-measurable outcomes like developing “every student’s intellectual, creative, and physical potential.”
• We must spend more money on public education.

The so-called “guiding principles” defy any test of common sense and are transparently aligned with the teacher union campaign to gut the No Child Left Behind ESEA reauthorization. For decades, teacher unions have enjoyed the roles of jury, judge, and executioner in education policy making. But by authorizing wholesale restructuring of persistently failing schools, NCLB threatens to remove their veto and thus, must be stopped.

While student learning has stagnated for five decades, along any metric of teacher union success, performance has been off-the-charts. Laws and rules limiting what administrators can do in schools cover thousands of pages. Spending is up 400% in real dollars. Teacher pay is up but more importantly, the pace of hiring dues payers has been dizzying. Teacher unions now collect more than $2.5 billion annually and dues have nominally doubled during the past 20 years. Over this time period, charter schools have come, barely. 98% of schools are still paid whether they they’re wanted, or not. More significantly, years of propaganda has done its magic. As demonstrated by Wisconsin protests this year, teacher activists are angry, willing, and more capable than ever to take action.

The organizers of the SOS March would like the American public, pundits and policy-makers to think that ideas such as ending “pay per test performance for teachers and administrators” have broad-based support and appeal. Thank god they don’t. Yet. Not only do 70% of Americans think that merit pay is a good idea, but I know of not a single government school in America where more than 5% of teacher pay relates to individual teacher evaluations and test score growth. While all districts pay considerably more for masters degrees and seniority (NEA guidelines specify that teacher pay should double within 10 years), only a handful of districts pay more for better teaching at all. It ordinary Americans, rather than teacher unions, made education policy in America, there certainly would be advanced merit pay programs to stop. The SOS’ers want to prevent such programs from ever getting off the ground.

For good measure the organizers are also reviving the funding inequality bogeyman as a means to force districts to spend more. Invariably, some wealthy districts continue to figure out how to spend more than their neighbors. For the teacher unions every inequality is an opportunity level up. The game goes by various names: whipsawing, high-water budgeting, and equalization. The net result is more spending for the same product. It’s coming back faster than you can say “Newark outspends Princeton.”

[Continue with Part 2 of the series]

Anthony Krinsky writes at StopUTLA.com and at EdObserver.