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4401-A
Connecticut Avenue, Box 294, Washington, DC
20008
Tel: (202) 244-7535, Fax: (202) 244-7584
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Education Exchange
Volume 2, Issue 1 -- January
1998
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Focusing on
Education Reforms at Your School, in Your State
Legislature, and in Congress
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Good
Housekeeping Publicizes Problems of Teacher Tenure
In the January 1998 issue of Good Housekeeping, Lynnell
Hancock points out the tenure perks that belong to college
professors and public school teachers to the exclusion of
virtually all other professions. She writes, "After getting
tenure, a teacher's job is a difficult thing to lose."
A primary obstacle to removing incompetent or
inadequately prepared teachers is the extraordinary legal
costs often reigned down upon the school district.
Bob Chase, President of the National Education
Association, remarked, "Tenure isn't a job guarantee. It's a
democratic process that needs to be followed."
Due in part to the difficulties of removing bad teachers,
"at least four states -- Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Colorado,
and New Mexico -- have enacted laws eliminating tenure...New
Jersey, New York, and Florida are seeking ways to replace
tenure with renewable contracts for teachers," writes
Hancock.
While the teacher unions argue that they don't hire,
train, evaluate, promote, or grant tenure to teachers, this
is a false premise. NEA and AFT affiliates regularly
negotiate terms and language into collective bargaining
agreements which place severe restrictions on the
administrators who do provide these functions in school
districts.
Additionally, both teacher unions publicly support peer
review, which places union members at the forefront of
evaluating and recommending dismissal of unsatisfactory
teachers.
School
Choice, Bilingual Education, Increased Funding
All On 1998 Federal Education Radar Screen
Since 1996 when Republican presidential candidate Bob
Dole brought up the subject of improving public education by
changing the way teacher unions do business, politicians
have eased onto the bandwagon.
In 1998, how to improve failing public education has
moved to the top of the agenda for other high profile
politicians as well. Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato (R-NY) said
recently "It's time to admit the obvious: Our public
education system needs fixing." As part of his formula, he
called for competency testing for all teachers, an end to
'lifetime' tenure for teachers, and merit raises for
outstanding teachers. D'Amato also has proposed changes
which would allow principals to quickly remove disruptive
and violent students from classrooms.
President Clinton will outline his changes for improving
America's failing public schools in his State of the Union
speech January 27. In the past, Clinton promoted using
thousands of volunteers to help teach children to read -- an
indictment of the present system. He's also urging increased
funding for the National Board of Professional Teaching
Standards, a certification group controlled by the teacher
unions, rather than subject matter authorities.
House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) implied he and members
of Congress would also focus on improving education during
the upcoming session. In remarks to the Cobb County,
Georgia, Chamber of Commerce, Gingrich urged local and state
school boards to set new requirements that school children
learn English by the fourth grade. "When we allow children
to stay trapped in bilingual programs where they do not
learn English, we are destroying their economic future," he
said.
John Fleischman, campaign coordinator for English for the
Children, a California campaign to eliminate bilingual
education in that state, agrees. He hopes that Gingrich's
statement will open a national debate on the issue.
Fleischman calls bilingual education "a social experiment
that has failed over the last 30 years," and does not
prepare students for an English-speaking workplace.
Others, including Delia Pompa, director of the office of
bilingual education at the U.S. Department of Education, say
that bilingual education has a proven record of educating
non-English children.
Unrestricted educational choice, promoted mostly by
Republicans in the past, is now gaining support among
Democrats as well. Supporters point out that by having a
choice among education providers -- traditional public
schools, private independent or faith based schools, and
for-profit schools -- each competing to provide superior
educational services, America's diverse, 52 million public
school children would all benefit.
EPI
Reviews Public Policy Reading You Shouldn't Miss
Financing Education, The Struggle between
Govern-mental Monopoly and Parental Control
by Quentin L. Quade
1996, Transaction Publishers
166 pages
In his 1996 book, Quentin Quade asks: "Knowing the
generally destructive features of monopoly unfailingly
provides us the right question to ask of any monopoly,
including educational finance monopoly. Why would anyone
begin with the assumption that monopoly in school funding
would enhance education?"
He writes, "In the United States, contrary to the
practice of many other modern democracies, tax dollars are
assigned by state bureaucratic structures to each state's
own schools. Such a system spawns structures and personnel
that stay in place irrespective of merit."
In discussing issues of educational choice, his analyses
crush familiar arguments such as, "Choice will siphon
resources from public schools, already short of cash." Quade
counters that this presupposes what is not known -- how much
money it takes to buy high quality education. But, he says,
"far worse, it rests on the presumption that
monopoly-protected public schools, rather than the education
of children, have a right to a certain amount of public
money."
"Choice will mean taking public money from public schools
and giving it to private, even religious schools." Quade
writes, "Not only is this false -- choice provides support
to parents, not schools, and the parents decide where to
assign it with absolutely no church-state entanglement. It
is entirely logical -- unless one begins with the
presumption that the schools protected by educational
finance monopoly have a right to all public dollars, which
again, makes them impossible to evaluate."
Quade responds to those who defend the current
educational monopoly and insist that they are constantly
seeking reform of American K-12 education. It seems obvious
that the monopoly is dedicated to perpetual, even permanent,
reform. "Reform after reform after reform come pouring out
of the word processors of the educational establishment,
each such reform constituting a witness to the failure of
those that preceded it."
In examining the major problems of American K-12
education, Quade offers school choice without financial
penalty as a powerful and obvious cure.
"Farewell to Preferences?"
by Stephen Thernstrom
The Public Interest, Winter 1998
15 pages
In this article, Stephen Thernstrom uncovers the facts
not included in prominent articles about University of
California medical-school minority admissions. It turns out
that headlines such as "Fewer Minorities Apply to UC Medical
Schools," and other similar articles were "preconceptions of
those covering -- and thus making -- the news."
With plenty of details about the use of double standards
in admissions and grading, Thernstrom also reveals another
reporting failure: not checking if the same standards and
criteria were used in reporting minority applications and
admissions. Thernstrom discovered that "Asians suddenly
vanished from the 'minority' category; all the 'color' they
had in 1996-97 has suddenly been bleached away." As a
result, some preference enrollments may be declining, but
hardly dramatically.
The University of California Regents voted in July 1995
to eliminate "race, religion, sex, color, ethnicity or
national origin" as a basis for admission, hiring, or
contracting by the university. The policy applied to
graduate admission for the 1997-98 academic year and will
extend to undergraduate admissions in 1998-99.
The Excuse Factory
by Walter Olson
1997, The Free Press
378 pages
In his 1997 book, Walter Olson exposes another aspect of
the legal system: employment law.
The Excuse Factory goes right to the heart of the
increasingly absurd American workplace, showing how
employment laws make it nearly impossible to fire even the
most incompetent and unmotivated workers. Employers have
become understandably nervous about firing someone lest it
open them up to a lawsuit, no matter how frivolous. They
would rather tolerate bad employees than remove them -- a
choice that has profound implications for the future of
business, the American economy and public school children.
Among the dozens of examples, some of the most egregious
deal with incompetent teachers. Not only is firing unlikely,
some teachers, headed for jail, managed to get buyouts,
including a professor at a state university's campus who
pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography. Her
settlement: $75,000!
Olson writes that employment law began as a branch of
domestic-relations laws, but evolved into contract law by
the end of the 19th century. According to Harvard professor
Mary Ann Glendon, over the past couple of decades America
has reversed its legal treatment of employment and
matrimony.
"Thirty years ago we used to require people to show a
judge good cause before they could get out of a marriage,
while employment was left to the continuing will of the
parties. Now we prefer a fresh start instead of an attempt
to force parties to sup at the same unhappily matched table
-- if that table is located in a home. If it is in an office
suite, they may have to stick it out forever."
If you want documentation, Walter Olson provides plenty
in The Excuse Factory.
EPI Web
Site Adds State Education Agencies Page
The Education Policy Institute web site now includes a
page (http://www.schoolreport.com/epi/StateAgencies.htm)
dedicated to linking visitors into all 50 state education
agencies. In addition to hotlinks, this page provides
addresses, phone and fax numbers, e-mail addresses where
known, and for visual appeal, corresponding state flags.
While the web sites vary in content and design, they
often include information about:
academic programs
accreditation requirements
bilingual education
charter schools
curriculum
demographic data
dropout rates
E-rate
education legislation
education technology
funding and financial data
governmental relations
home instruction
parental involvement
publications
school laws
school to work/career
special education
standards development
state boards of education
state educational resources
state teacher certification
student performance
vocational education
New web initiatives for 1998 will be undertaken by some
states. South Dakota will add statistical information and
upcoming events. Kentucky's new efforts will focus on
electronic "academic villages". Its villages are Elementary
Education, Diversity Heights, Geoville, Library Media
Specialists, Language Arts, Math/Science Education, Middle
Level Education, Principals, School Based Decision Making,
School to Work, and SSAVY (Student Services Academic
Village, Y'all).
EPI's Education Reform Briefs page
(http://www.schoolreport.com/epi/refrmnws.htm) continues to
be a popular site for visitors as well. Updated twice
monthly, it provides summary news briefs from around the web
with site locations for those wishing to visit the original
source.
NEA Poll
Says Hands Off On Firing Bad Teachers
The NEA asked its web site visitors, "Should NEA
affiliates help get rid of bad teachers?" The final
results...28 percent said yes, 72 percent said no.
A follow-up letter to the editor in NEA Today's January
issue, from Howard Jayne of Muskogee, Oklahoma, states, "I
was shocked that NEA is involved in helping to fire
teachers. I expect our organization to defend and help
protect its members and not get involved with attempting to
fire them."
For over a year, NEA President Bob Chase has successfully
engaged the media in his "new unionism" campaign, which
includes implementing a process known as peer review and
assistance. Under peer review, teachers and their unions
(AFT and NEA) exercise more responsibility, ostensibly for
terminating the services of first-year teachers who do not
perform adequately after receiving assistance, and for
identifying tenured teachers who are not performing
adequately.
EPI's
Education Quick Facts
- A June 1998 vote is planned for the California
initiative requiring labor unions and employers to obtain
annual written and signed consent forms from union
employees before deducting any money from their salaries
to support political purposes. (Source: Dec. 1997
Educational Freedom Report)
- More than 200 civilian instructors at the Great Lakes
Naval Training Center in North Chicago, IL, voted to join
Lake County Federation of Teachers Local 504 last month.
The instructors are employees of two contractors that
slashed pay and benefits when they assumed the
educational operations at the base in October. (Source:
Jan. 5, 1998, Work in Progress)
- African-American men have the highest unionization
rate in the U.S.: 21.6 percent of employed black men
belonged to unions in 1996. But the overall rate (union
membership as a percentage of total wage and salary
employment) dropped to 14.5 percent last year. (Source:
July/August 1997 Working USA)
- The cost savings from some children moving from 100
percent taxpayer financed schools into alternative
schools more than outweighs the reduction in state
revenue. Michigan taxpayers would save over $550 million
each year when the Universal Tuition Tax Credit is fully
implemented. (Source: Nov. 1997, "The Universal Tuition
Tax Credit: A Proposal to Advance Parental Choice in
Education" -- Mackinac Center Report)
- Thirteen states currently have high school completion
rates of 90 percent or better. Connecticut showed the
greatest increase during the 1990s, from 90.9 percent to
96.1 percent. (Source: Dropout Rates in the United
States: 1996 -- National Center for Education Statistics)
Copyright 1998
Education Policy Institute, PMB 294, 4401-A Connecticut
Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20008-2322 202/244-7535, Fax
202/244-7584 http://www.educationpolicy.org
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