Children Take Backseat to Union Dues
By Olivia WolcottThis summer, education funding and program cuts have had parents, teachers and voters clamoring for more money to pour into Oregon’s struggling public education system. The Oregon Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, claims that school budget cuts show voters and politicians don’t understand that educational reform and innovation come at a high price. However, the OEA has steadfastly opposed the educational innovation of cost-saving virtual charter schools. In fact, the union has called the crippling regulation of these online schools its “top priority.”
Virtual public charter schools offer stable and successful education options to children who best thrive away from a traditional public school environment, or whose rural location gives them few educational options. But they also threaten union power, since their teachers are not required to become union members.
Public schools across the state, especially in rural areas, fail to provide many children with a quality education. This problem can only get worse when a failing system loses funding without reforming its education model. If the OEA truly supported the best interests of Oregon children, it would support the virtual charter schools that have the ability to improve education through cost-saving innovation.
Olivia Wolcott is a research associate at Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon’s free market public policy research organization.
Olivia Wolcott is a research associate at Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon’s free market public policy research organization.
They have no other.
To expect them not to stand in the way is sheer folly.
I am still waiting for someone to accept my challenge, although no one ever has.
Name one instance where the teachers' union helped a student. Any student. Anytime. Anywhere.
Just one.
The major innovation in Oregon's education system right now is charter schools, virtual or otherwise.
As I understand it, teachers unions forced charter schools to be run on 80% of the funding regular public schools get.
Well, once the public figures out that charter schools tend to do better at educating students than public schools do, it becomes obvious that you can immediately cut the education budget by 20%.
Of course we will get a lot of hand wringing about apple to apples comparisons, and oh gee you can't do that for a whole bunch of silly reasons. However none of that gets around the fact that the taxpayers are being ripped off. Even is the teacher costs the state $100k a year, and there are 20 students in a class at $10k a pop, it doesn't answer where in the hell the other $100k is going.
Teachers unions do exists to jack up teacher pay and benefits, that is the sole purpose of any unions, the compensation of its members.
When you see how teachers unions forced the competition to do with 20% less, it makes real clear they are about milking the system for as much as they can get away with. In a free market that's fine, if you don't like it you can buy elsewhere. In a monopoly, which is what state employee unions are, it is not.
Albert Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again yet expecting different results. This is insanity!