The Washington Education Association claims to have gathered enough signatures to put its anti-charter school referendum on the November ballot. This may well only be F.U.D. to stymie efforts underway to start charter schools for next fall. The WEA might not be a "terrorist organization", but they're not exactly honest either. Either way, the union's greed is reprehensible. As charter school advocate Jim Spady reacted to the union's announcement:
"For the WEA, it's about union dues. They're the ones that are skimming the taxpayer dollars that are meant to help kids."In fact, the state union skims about $56 million in dues each year, right off the top of tax-funded teacher salaries. The union's opposition to charter schools is based on the belief that
they would divert precious education money from regular public schools ... The voters want investments made in our public schools, not money siphoned off to some experimentLook at it this way. The charter school law permits only 5 new charter schools to be started in each of the first 3 years. Each charter school would get $5,500 per student in state funds. A national survey indicates that the average number of students per charter school is 233. This all means that in the first year of operation, about $6.5 million would be shifted from existing public schools to charter schools (while also relieving the public schools of a corresponding burden). On the other hand, the union sucks $56 million right out of the school budget and at best does nothing for the children. Pictorially the difference looks like this (drawn to scale):
Of course I wouldn't expect the union to give up any of its $56 million. But I would hope that the good citizens who want every last dollar of education funds to go to the public school classroom would start not by banning school choice, but by taking back a fair portion of the $56 million that is now diverted to the union.
UPDATE: In today's Seattle Times the anti-charter school initiative campaign manager is quoted as saying that
charter schools would divert $1 million from [existing] public schools by the end of 2009So my comparison of $56 million to $6.5 million was wrong. It should actually be more like $280 million to $1 million. My apologies to the teachers' union and its supporters. Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at June 09, 2004 07:00 AM
The raison d'etre of teachers unions is not to promote education but to promote the well-being of the teachers, and the students be damned.
Posted by: Jed on June 9, 2004 07:29 AMJed, I think you're soft-pedaling what you want to say.
The teachers' union has morphed into just another powerful liberal special interest group using taxpayer funds to lobby for liberal causes. Why else does a teachers' union have political positions on abortion or the war in Iraq?
Posted by: Bob Reynolds on June 9, 2004 03:45 PMThe WEA is misrepresenting the facts. (Stop the presses!, right?) Almost all the projected costs of the charter schools law enacted this year stems from an assumption that enrollment in Washington public schools will increase over what it would have been without the law, because the parents of some number of children who would otherwise be private-schooled or home-schooled will choose to enroll those children in public charter schools. This assumption is based on the experience of other states that have adopted charter school laws. Most people I know think it's a good thing if more children and parents are attracted to public schools. WEA appears to think it's a bad thing. See the fiscal note to SHB 2295, accessible online on the Washington Legislature's home page, which details these cost assumptions. The notion that the charter schools authorized by SHB 2295 will drain money away from public schools is simply false. But when did the WEA ever let truth get in the way, and why would they start now? There is also the obvious fact that public charter schools ARE public schools. Simply of a different kind. How public schools can divert money away from public schools, I don't know, but maybe Mr. Hasse and his minions can explain. I fear, however, that it will be difficult to get these and other pertinent facts in front of the public this fall, given the bottomless resources the WEA can coerce from its members. That's why people like you, Shark, are so important.
Posted by: John Archer on June 9, 2004 09:55 PMI don't like pulblic schools, but neither do I like private schools. The fact of the matter is that the standard of education in america is too low. However, you can't put out the fire by shoveling more money into it. All this will do is give the teachers huge raises, and pay for more computers and school supplies for the students to abuse and destroy. To fix the problem, there needs to be a law passed, and enforced, that puts all teachers through a rigorous battery of tests to make absolutely sure they are competent, because it is possible to be incompetent at teaching elementary school. For example, I have met a grown man, who was so bad at spelling, that he could not spell at a third grade level. It is that bad. This will not improve for a long time, under any administration, democrat or republican, unless people understand that the problem is not funding, it's standards.
I believe students should read by age 5-6.
They should add, subtract, and be learning to multiply by at least age 7.
And the union teachers who are teaching them should also be able to READ BETTER THAN THEIR STUDENTS, DO ARITHMETIC BETTER THAN THEIR STUDENTS, AND BE ABLE TO DISCIPLINE THEIR STUDENTS.
Posted by: Ezekiel on September 6, 2004 06:30 PMThe teachers union should be broken up, and everybody should forget that it ever existed
Posted by: Dude on September 6, 2004 06:33 PM