I couldn't agree more. My Mom and wife are both teachers and I am constantly hearing horror stories of waste and inefficiencies in their schools. Sadly, most of it is mandated from Sacramento or Washington.

I'm convinced the system is so broken that only school vouchers will ever save it. The recent trend of NCLB pushing more and more of these failing schools to charter schools may be the chance school choice advocates need to get the ball rolling. I think it will lead to a more innovative education system and result in higher pay for the large majority of the talented dedicated teachers we have.

What would be lost are the low performing teachers and a huge chunk of the worse-than-useless administration staff that provide union jobs but don't improve education. The union janitor, maintenance crew and gardener would probably be lost as well to a private company for much less.

But the CTA is not the organization to look to for education excellence. Their job is to create and protect CTA union dues paying members. You can't do that with a smaller budget, so it only makes sense that they are out pitching for another tax increase.

Dave:

This just in, from a disgruntled voter:

Hello All: The “revenue increases” advocated by the California teacher unions are tax increases when California already has among the highest taxes in the country spending far more on public education than most countries and achieving very poor results in many school districts. When I was a very young school teacher in Los Angeles , the teacher union requested that I dumb down my performance evaluation so as to make it meaningless. I refused to do that because I knew I was a better teacher than the performance standards pushed by the union. Somehow, I got tenure anyway because it was the administration making the decision not the teacher union. Teacher unions have destroyed public education and they control the Democrat Party. We pulled our kids out of public schools because what I saw in the Capo district under Fleming and Draper; who we see now were both crooks was pathetic. I called for these characters to be fired and/or removed from office 20 years ago; but no one listened. We now know the end of that story; don’t we?

But I have an even sadder story. The last three years I spent in public education I was the Coordinator for Reading and Language Development Program in an inner city junior high in LA with 2,600 kids. The average reading level in the ninth grade was around third grade. We adopted a school wide phonetic reading program that later was abandoned when the “whole language” approach was adopted that actually resulted in huge gains in the three years that I put the program in place using pre and post testing to measure results. The union would not allow me to share those results with the principal except in cumulative data only because I could see which teachers were really lousy. In a few cases, we actually had some kids go backwards meaning their scores were lower at the end of the year than at the beginning.

In general, however, phonics and focused teaching with using performance metrics worked (like it always has to teach reading) so I walked into the Vice Principals office with great reading scores the last year I spent in public education only to be told that I needed to be careful because if we did too well which meant getting to the 50th percentile (we were at the 35th) on state wide tests that we would lose our federal money and that meant the loss of many jobs for the school. This 40 year old white woman Vice Principal was telling me at 28 years old in essence that the jobs that came with federal money were more important than actually teaching these poor Mexican kids to read. “I needed to see the big picture” she said. It was right after that meeting that I decided to leave teaching because as a quasi-administrator at 28 years old with a Masters Degree in Education Administration, I would have become that mediocre, stupid Vice Principal at 40. I knew I could do more with my life and the rest is history. Actually that idiot woman did me the biggest favor of my life. My liberal idealism was shattered and it allowed me to move on and never look back. JM

P.S. By the way that November in 1979, I was working at Merrill Lynch and voted for Ronald Reagan, the first Republican and a conservative that I ever voted for to get rid of Jimmy Carter, the buffoon that we see today. Of course, I have never voted for a Democrat since then. I have many more public school stories; but I might be called “disgruntled” if I tell them all.

"...I needed to be careful because if we did too well which meant getting to the 50th percentile (we were at the 35th) on state wide tests that we would lose our federal money and that meant the loss of many jobs for the school..."

Couldn't have said it better. The union is out to save jobs, not improve education.

Great post CotoBlogzz.

Dave:

I have asked the dsigruntled voter to expand on his experience.

This is what he had to say:

I spent six years in public education in LA teaching junior, senior and adult school. I went in as a left wing liberal right out of university and after seeing all the waste and incompetence I came out as a Ronald Reagan Conservative. Inner city schools get plenty of money so it is a myth that these schools do not have the supplies, equipment etc. that rich districts have; though it is true that many facilities are inferior. The money is going into bloated bureaucracies instead. Public school funding is equalized; though it is true that rich districts in Orange County have foundations that donate a lot of money to local schools, however, those very same schools do not get the federal money going to inner city schools so in the end it is probably a wash. In fact, every May as a program coordinator, I used to call teachers into the library to spend any federal money we had left because it was use it or lose it. Those monies could not be rolled over into the next year. So we ordered all kinds of materials and equipment to get rid of our remaining monies. It was just pork, pork, pork. And, specific to teacher performance, there were many who were completely incompetent and should have been fired. I suspect some of them have retired by now with full pensions which are far better than social security. Teachers get state pensions not social security which is some times equal to 80 – 90% of their last salary if they have taught for 30 or more years. Good teachers and bad teachers get the same salary and benefits which is a real crime. The ability to actually teach kids has nothing to do with compensation. In fact, teacher unions are against merit pay. So public school teachers are measured by the lowest common denominator not the highest. It really is sad. JM

P.S. I saw all of this with my own eyes so this is not fiction.

United States of California Teachers

Christian P. Milord in the Red County’s National Blog has an interesting thread he titled: "E Pluribus Unum" Turned Upside Down.

The premise and his conclusion are copied below:

“Each time I open a copy of "California Educator," (magazine published by the California Teachers Association), I get a momentary feeling that I'm in Latin America. Since September, 2007, CTA President David A. Sanchez has titled his monthly column in Spanish, and then he pens the monthly article in English. I wrote to the CTA about this matter several months ago, but never got a response.

Instead of trying to reverse, "Out Of Many, One," Sanchez should encourage school communities to unite under American civic virtues. He could be less divisive if he titled his message in English, which is the language that immigrants yearn to learn:

For the complete text, go to http://www.redcounty.com/national/2008/07/e-pluribus-unum-turned-upside/