Category Archives: education

Teachers Unions

Posted on by
Reply

…and their strikes’ impacts.  Look at the Arizona teachers union strikes, for instance.

Arizona parents scrambled to find alternative arrangements for their children as the state braced for a third day of teacher walkouts.

It’s estimated that at least 800,000 Arizona students have been affected by the strike that started Thursday, with some school districts in the state closed until further notice.

It isn’t only the children that these strikers are holding hostage for their demands.  It’s the parents, too, who must take time off from work to take care of their children with those kids denied access to schools and education.

The teachers unions complain about low pay.  They’re ignoring, though, the even lower pay of many of those parents who are being harmed by these teachers union strikes.  Jennifer Goehring, a nurse, a former teacher, and a union supporter but not of the strikes:

It’s holding the parents hostage because they are having to scramble to find people to watch their kids.  It’s placing an undue hardship on families just trying to stay afloat. I don’t like the kids being used as pawns.

Goehring, by the way, alternates with her husband to watch their children and several others whose families couldn’t take off work during the walkout.  Others, plainly, are trying to fill in to ameliorate, at least a little, the damage the teachers unions are causing.

And this:

Churches, community centers, youth clubs, food banks, and community organizations are offering free and discounted services to help take care of students.

Who’s paying for all of this support for those parents and their children?  It isn’t the teachers unions, who are causing the expenses.  Bet on it: they won’t reimburse these facilities after the fact, either.

A Lesson About Discrimination

Posted on by
Reply

A few days ago, The Wall Street Journal ran a piece about a teacher and a principal who taught a 1968 lesson about racial tolerance, using the equally arbritrary blue eyes-brown eyes discriminant as the teaching prop.

A Letter to the Editor response decried both the lesson and the pride in it that was conveyed in that article.

…one of the most disturbing and emotional things I had ever experienced. Teachers whom I once looked up to were subjecting me to irrational and arbitrary treatment based on my eye color. … My father … called my school’s leadership and received a complete apology.

How sad, that letter writer and his father missed the point of the lesson and missed precisely that “disturbing and emotional thing” that real victims of irrational and arbitrary treatment experience.

On the other hand, a commenter in the Letters thread asked this:

Does this same reasoning that this was child abuse apply to the teachers lecturing about “white privilege” and setting up situations to guilt trip children based on their skin color?

How sad, too, that that discrimination is actively practiced today.

Somebody Else

Posted on by
Reply

Blue Mountain School District Superintendent David Helsel, who had originally intended to arm his students with river rocks so they could throw them at intruders and thereby resist a mass shooting, has altered the plan.  He’s decided to add armed—that is, with firearms—security to his district’s protection technique.  Helsel claimed that the publicity driven by social media and the resultant NLMSM’s attention drove him to the change.

This unfortunate circumstance has increased our concern regarding the possibility that something may happen because of the media attention.

Because, like Flip Wilson’s Geraldine, it’s always somebody else’s fault.  I don’t like the NLMSM, as the half-dozen of you who read this blog know.  But it’s not the NLMSM’s fault.  It’s not social media’s fault.  Any fault is that of the ones who actually do the deeds, contributed to by those who should have known better but chose to take no preventive action.

It’s personal responsibility, not that of “others,” and Helsel seems not to get that.  This is what we have teaching our children.

An Example

Posted on by
Reply

This is part of what’s wrong with today’s American higher education.  The numbers appear in a Wall Street Journal article about the possibility of ex-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson becoming chancellor of the University of Texas system.

The system has an enrollment of more than 230,000 students, an $18 billion annual budget, and more than 100,000 employees.

That’s ridiculous.  There’s no reason for having an employee for every two students.  How much better would the students’ education be were some of those $18 billion redirected toward books and lab equipment and classroom facilities and away from excess payroll?  How much more opportunity would there be were some of those $18 billion redirected toward lower tuition and housing fees and away from excess payroll?

The 529 Plan Expansion

Posted on by
Reply

Recall that the tax reform enacted last December expanded the usability of 529 Plans to include expenses for K-12 education.  Now some are worried that this will harm State tax collections.  It’s a bogus beef on a number of fronts.

In December, as part of a broad tax overhaul, Congress expanded the accounts to cover up to $10,000 a year in expenses for kindergarten through 12th grade.

State budget officials are now concerned that a large number of parents will use 529 accounts to pay private-school tuition, giving them a new write-off for their state taxes.

School choice—the horror.  How terrible it is that parents have a way to help their children escape failing public schools or simply to transfer them to schools of their choice rather than be faced with the often poor choice of public school or home school.

There’s this bit of disingenuosity, too:

That could result in potentially millions of dollars in lost tax revenue at a time when most states are struggling to close budget deficits.

“I’m worried that families could use these accounts to avoid paying state taxes,” said Illinois state treasurer Mike Frerichs, a Democrat. “This is only going to put a deeper hole in the budget.”

This is especially rich coming from nearly bankrupt Illinois and that State’s Treasurer.  What’s actually blowing a hole in Illinois’ budget is its profligate spending, in Illinois’ case wastrel spending on public union pensions and teachers union pensions in Chicago.  Beyond that, using 529s to defray the costs of educating a child in Illinois isn’t tax avoidance, it’s parents seeing to the welfare of their children.

Then there’s this bit.

The Cruz provision [the amendment that inserted the 529 expansion into the tax reform bill] is projected to cost the federal government $500 million over nearly a decade, but it could cost the states much more, research suggests.

This is nonsense. Aside from the fact that it doesn’t cost the Federal government anything to not get what doesn’t belong to it, it’s also not costing the States anything for the same reason: the money isn’t the States’; the money belongs to the citizens of the States.

Furthermore, instead of worrying about deficits caused by not getting revenue that isn’t theirs, the States should worry about deficits caused by their profligate spending—and that’s not just Illinois.

This misunderstanding by American Enterprise Institute‘s Deputy Director of Education Policy, Nat Malkus, is surprising.

It’s not federalist at all.  I don’t think that the federal government should be cavalierly making problems for states by messing with state taxes.

Federalism isn’t touched by the 529 expansion.  That expansion doesn’t impact State taxes in the slightest; those remain the sole decision of the State governments.  All that’s “messed with” is tax collections, collections of OPM.