I have yet to review the recently-released movie of the quintessential conservative tome, Atlas Shrugged (Part One).
Let me get my thumbs up/down read on the film out of the way. Don't bother to see it.
Personally, I'll be surprised if Part Two is ever produced.
As I said several times to the friend with whom I saw the movie, the failure of the screenwriter to provide better dialogue than Rand's stilted, simplistic lines, doomed the movie.
The acting isn't terrific, either. All of the major roles- Dagney Taggart, her brother and Hank Reardon, are played by unknown actors. A few familiar character actors appear as Wesley Mouche and Wyatt, the oil baron. And Michael O'Keefe makes a 10 second appearance outside the famous diner in the hills of the American west.
If better talent had played some of the roles, the characters may have been a bit more interesting to those who haven't read the book. Jeremy Irons or Alan Rickman would have made a better Wesley Mouche. But the lack of a better script would limit any actor.
As I reminded my friend, who hadn't read the book since she was in high school some 30 years ago, Rand's dialogue, especially in what passed for romantic scenes, was dull and stilted. I vividly recall skimming over those parts, concentrating instead on the message in the prose describing the financial actions, as well as the occasional important free market capitalism speech by a character.
My friend was disappointed that the novel, originally set in what appeared to be the 1930s or '40s, was updated to the present, featuring smartphones and laptops. I opined that it was a pity they didn't update the dialogue to something worth listening to.
I was heartened that half of the movie theater was full for the afternoon showing. On the other hand, there were only four theaters within 30 miles of us showing the film. We had to drive about 45 minutes to see it.
My advice is to simply reread the book. That way, you can skip over the bad writing and focus on the more meaty philosophical parts of the book.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Joel Klein's New York Schools Stories
Joel Klein, former chancellor of New York City public schools from 2002 through 2010, wrote a provocative editorial recently in the Wall Street Journal entitled Scenes From the New York Education Wars.
His observations in the passages below reinforce how obstructive the teachers' union was to his efforts to improve the city's education system.
Teachers are extremely effective messengers to parents, community groups, faith-based groups and elected officials—and their unions know how to deploy them well. Happy unions can give a politician massive clout, and unhappy unions—well, just ask Eva Moskowitz, a Democrat who headed the New York City Council Education Committee when I became schools chancellor in 2002.
Smart, savvy, ambitious, often a pain in my neck and atypically fearless for a politician, Ms. Moskowitz was widely expected to be elected Manhattan borough president in 2005. Until, that is, she held hearings on the city teachers-union contract, an extraordinary document, running for hundreds of pages, governing who can teach what and when, who can be assigned to hall-monitor or lunchroom duty and who can't, who has to be given time off to do union work during the school day, and so on.
The contract defied parody. So when Ms. Moskowitz exposed its ridiculousness, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), then headed by Randi Weingarten, made sure that Ms. Moskowitz's run for borough president came up short. After that, other elected officials would say to me, "I agree with you, but I ain't gonna get Eva'd."
I found that story to be very chilling. As I noted in my recent post concerning Randi Weingarten, union officials attempt to identify themselves with children's education, but they are really just concerned with their own poewr and money. In Weingarten's case, she savagely retaliated against an elected official who merely wanted voters to understand what the teachers' union contract was doing to education in their schools.
Consider Klein's story about Albert Shanker.
Politicians—especially Democratic politicians—generally do what the unions want. The unions, in turn, are very clear about what that is: They want happy members, so that those who run the unions get re-elected, and they want more members, so their power, money and influence grow. The effect of all this? As Albert Shanker, the late, iconic head of the UFT, once pointedly said, "When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of schoolchildren."
When I told my NJ public school teacher friend that story, he flatly refused to believe it. His own union officials have so brainwashed him that he simply can't believe that they don't care about his students. Sometimes denial is hard to accept and acknowledge. To me, Shanker's quote is one of the most telling of any I've heard by a public sector union boss.
Consider the common refrain that "We'll never fix education until we fix poverty." This lets school systems off the hook. Of course money, a stable family and strong values typically make it easier to educate a child. But we now know that, keeping those things constant, certain schools can get dramatically different outcomes with the same kids.
I loved that passage. It's so typical of the liberal mindset to blame society while continuing to pocket taxpayer dollars for poor results. And use an external cause to evade responsibility for their own actions.
At individual schools, differences can be breathtaking. One charter in New York City, Harlem Success Academy 1 (founded by Ms. Moskowitz after she left politics), has students who are demographically almost identical to those in nearby schools, yet it gets entirely different results.
Parents celebrate as they hear that their 4-year-old daughter was awarded a coveted slot at the Harlem Success Academy charter school.
Eighty-eight percent of Harlem Success students are proficient in reading and 95% are proficient in math. Six nearby schools have an average of 31% and 39% proficiency in those subjects, respectively. More than 90% of Harlem Success fourth-graders scored at the highest level on New York State's most recent science tests, while only 43% of fourth-graders citywide did so. Harlem Success's black students outperformed white students at more than 700 schools across the state. Overall, the charter now performs at the same level as the gifted-and-talented schools in New York City, all of which have demanding admissions requirements. Harlem Success, by contrast, selects its students, mostly poor and minority, by random lottery.
Critics try to discredit these differences. Writing last year in the New York Review of Books, the historian Diane Ravitch argued that schools like Harlem Success aren't the answer because, as a group, charter schools don't outperform traditional public schools. Yet even Ms. Ravitch had to acknowledge that some charter schools get "amazing results." If that's the case, shouldn't we be asking why they get much better results—and focusing on how to replicate them?
A full-scale transition from a government-run monopoly to a competitive marketplace won't happen quickly, but that's no reason not to begin introducing more competition. In the lower grades, we should make sure that every student has at least one alternative—and preferably several—to her neighborhood school.
That story and Klein's reasoning about making small steps is a valuable example regarding charter schools. Call them what you will, charter schools are simply affordable private schools. Why wouldn't choice be important? Why wouldn't it make sense to focus on, celebrate and try to replicate even a few charter school successes?
Instead, the union bosses pick on the worst examples of private schools to argue that none should exist. Under that logic, we'd scrap the public school systems and their teachers, too, by focusing on the worst public schools.
As Shanker put it in a surprisingly candid speech in 1993: "We are at the point that the auto industry was at a few years ago. They could see they were losing market share every year and still not believe that it really had anything to do with the quality of the product. . . . I think we will get—and deserve—the end of public education through some sort of privatization scheme if we don't behave differently. Unfortunately, very few people really believe that yet. They talk about it, and they don't like it, but they're not ready to change and stop doing the things that brought us to this point."
I found this, too, to be a chilling quote from Shanker. He must have been quite a capable union boss. He understood reality, but was able to temporarily halt its onset from affecting his union members. Never mind what that did to millions of American children in the process.
My teacher friend expressed at least one reason for the behavior Shanker noted in that passage. My friend notes that he's closer to retirement than he is to commencing his career. So, like the old pilots who favored newer, younger pilots being given a lower starting salary and fewer benefits, he, too, cares little for le deluge after his tenured career is over.
In short, so long as he gets his, he could care less about the fate of his replacements. Trouble is, all of the discussion is in regard to his pension, pay and benefits- not children's education.
Klein's instructive selected quotes from Shanker reveal the simple truth. So long as unions serve their members, unionized teachers won't really care about children's educational success as much as they care about their own economic success.
At least a private school can remedy this flaw by aligning the two for each individual teacher, rather than maximizing average welfare of a group of teachers, regardless of pupil performance
His observations in the passages below reinforce how obstructive the teachers' union was to his efforts to improve the city's education system.
Teachers are extremely effective messengers to parents, community groups, faith-based groups and elected officials—and their unions know how to deploy them well. Happy unions can give a politician massive clout, and unhappy unions—well, just ask Eva Moskowitz, a Democrat who headed the New York City Council Education Committee when I became schools chancellor in 2002.
Smart, savvy, ambitious, often a pain in my neck and atypically fearless for a politician, Ms. Moskowitz was widely expected to be elected Manhattan borough president in 2005. Until, that is, she held hearings on the city teachers-union contract, an extraordinary document, running for hundreds of pages, governing who can teach what and when, who can be assigned to hall-monitor or lunchroom duty and who can't, who has to be given time off to do union work during the school day, and so on.
The contract defied parody. So when Ms. Moskowitz exposed its ridiculousness, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), then headed by Randi Weingarten, made sure that Ms. Moskowitz's run for borough president came up short. After that, other elected officials would say to me, "I agree with you, but I ain't gonna get Eva'd."
I found that story to be very chilling. As I noted in my recent post concerning Randi Weingarten, union officials attempt to identify themselves with children's education, but they are really just concerned with their own poewr and money. In Weingarten's case, she savagely retaliated against an elected official who merely wanted voters to understand what the teachers' union contract was doing to education in their schools.
Consider Klein's story about Albert Shanker.
Politicians—especially Democratic politicians—generally do what the unions want. The unions, in turn, are very clear about what that is: They want happy members, so that those who run the unions get re-elected, and they want more members, so their power, money and influence grow. The effect of all this? As Albert Shanker, the late, iconic head of the UFT, once pointedly said, "When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of schoolchildren."
When I told my NJ public school teacher friend that story, he flatly refused to believe it. His own union officials have so brainwashed him that he simply can't believe that they don't care about his students. Sometimes denial is hard to accept and acknowledge. To me, Shanker's quote is one of the most telling of any I've heard by a public sector union boss.
Consider the common refrain that "We'll never fix education until we fix poverty." This lets school systems off the hook. Of course money, a stable family and strong values typically make it easier to educate a child. But we now know that, keeping those things constant, certain schools can get dramatically different outcomes with the same kids.
I loved that passage. It's so typical of the liberal mindset to blame society while continuing to pocket taxpayer dollars for poor results. And use an external cause to evade responsibility for their own actions.
At individual schools, differences can be breathtaking. One charter in New York City, Harlem Success Academy 1 (founded by Ms. Moskowitz after she left politics), has students who are demographically almost identical to those in nearby schools, yet it gets entirely different results.
Parents celebrate as they hear that their 4-year-old daughter was awarded a coveted slot at the Harlem Success Academy charter school.
Eighty-eight percent of Harlem Success students are proficient in reading and 95% are proficient in math. Six nearby schools have an average of 31% and 39% proficiency in those subjects, respectively. More than 90% of Harlem Success fourth-graders scored at the highest level on New York State's most recent science tests, while only 43% of fourth-graders citywide did so. Harlem Success's black students outperformed white students at more than 700 schools across the state. Overall, the charter now performs at the same level as the gifted-and-talented schools in New York City, all of which have demanding admissions requirements. Harlem Success, by contrast, selects its students, mostly poor and minority, by random lottery.
Critics try to discredit these differences. Writing last year in the New York Review of Books, the historian Diane Ravitch argued that schools like Harlem Success aren't the answer because, as a group, charter schools don't outperform traditional public schools. Yet even Ms. Ravitch had to acknowledge that some charter schools get "amazing results." If that's the case, shouldn't we be asking why they get much better results—and focusing on how to replicate them?
A full-scale transition from a government-run monopoly to a competitive marketplace won't happen quickly, but that's no reason not to begin introducing more competition. In the lower grades, we should make sure that every student has at least one alternative—and preferably several—to her neighborhood school.
That story and Klein's reasoning about making small steps is a valuable example regarding charter schools. Call them what you will, charter schools are simply affordable private schools. Why wouldn't choice be important? Why wouldn't it make sense to focus on, celebrate and try to replicate even a few charter school successes?
Instead, the union bosses pick on the worst examples of private schools to argue that none should exist. Under that logic, we'd scrap the public school systems and their teachers, too, by focusing on the worst public schools.
As Shanker put it in a surprisingly candid speech in 1993: "We are at the point that the auto industry was at a few years ago. They could see they were losing market share every year and still not believe that it really had anything to do with the quality of the product. . . . I think we will get—and deserve—the end of public education through some sort of privatization scheme if we don't behave differently. Unfortunately, very few people really believe that yet. They talk about it, and they don't like it, but they're not ready to change and stop doing the things that brought us to this point."
I found this, too, to be a chilling quote from Shanker. He must have been quite a capable union boss. He understood reality, but was able to temporarily halt its onset from affecting his union members. Never mind what that did to millions of American children in the process.
My teacher friend expressed at least one reason for the behavior Shanker noted in that passage. My friend notes that he's closer to retirement than he is to commencing his career. So, like the old pilots who favored newer, younger pilots being given a lower starting salary and fewer benefits, he, too, cares little for le deluge after his tenured career is over.
In short, so long as he gets his, he could care less about the fate of his replacements. Trouble is, all of the discussion is in regard to his pension, pay and benefits- not children's education.
Klein's instructive selected quotes from Shanker reveal the simple truth. So long as unions serve their members, unionized teachers won't really care about children's educational success as much as they care about their own economic success.
At least a private school can remedy this flaw by aligning the two for each individual teacher, rather than maximizing average welfare of a group of teachers, regardless of pupil performance
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Michelle Bachman for President?
I admit to not really understanding Michelle Bachman's toying with a run for president.
It's rare, in this age, for a House member to run. Ron Paul and Richard Gephardt come to mind, but that's about it.
You'd have to reach back well into the nineteenth century to find a House member who won election.
Bachman's being a darling of the Tea Party movement is clear. Perhaps she feels that, alone, will be a sufficient base from which to take the GOP nomination. Or, perhaps she's trying to make her case as a viable VP choice.
However, I don't recall Bachman having executive experience. And a quick check of her bio confirms this- she has J.D. and LLM degrees. In short, an attorney who went into state politics, then the US House.
I probably share many of her values, but haven't we just (re)learned why our presidents need some managerial and leadership experience?
It would seem that Bachman is vulnerable to the same legitimate charges of inexperience that rightly bedevil Wonderboy.
Or is Bachman simply playing a much longer game, taking advantage of her national profile as an outspoken Tea Party House member? Making sure, as has Sarah Palin, to get publicity while it's free and available?
Because I just don't see Bachman as having the depth of experience, either managerial or in areas such as foreign policy, to justify being a credible presidential candidate at this time.
It's rare, in this age, for a House member to run. Ron Paul and Richard Gephardt come to mind, but that's about it.
You'd have to reach back well into the nineteenth century to find a House member who won election.
Bachman's being a darling of the Tea Party movement is clear. Perhaps she feels that, alone, will be a sufficient base from which to take the GOP nomination. Or, perhaps she's trying to make her case as a viable VP choice.
However, I don't recall Bachman having executive experience. And a quick check of her bio confirms this- she has J.D. and LLM degrees. In short, an attorney who went into state politics, then the US House.
I probably share many of her values, but haven't we just (re)learned why our presidents need some managerial and leadership experience?
It would seem that Bachman is vulnerable to the same legitimate charges of inexperience that rightly bedevil Wonderboy.
Or is Bachman simply playing a much longer game, taking advantage of her national profile as an outspoken Tea Party House member? Making sure, as has Sarah Palin, to get publicity while it's free and available?
Because I just don't see Bachman as having the depth of experience, either managerial or in areas such as foreign policy, to justify being a credible presidential candidate at this time.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Is Glenn Beck A Real Howard Beale?
Some time ago, Glenn Beck related a meeting he had with a key aide to George Soros. I don't recall all of the details, but I do remember that, as a parting gift, Soros' guy gave Beck a DVD of Andy Griffith's breakthrough movie, A Face In The Crowd. Soros, Beck noted, was suggesting that Beck was simply a recovering alcoholic who was shallow, manipulative, and destined to be out of the spotlight very soon.
Recently, I believe about a month or so, perhaps a little longer, Beck announced that he'll end his daily 5PM program on Fox News Channel. The article which I read alluded to Beck having lost advertisers due to some of his positions and topics. If so, it's not noticeable. Perhaps Beck is simply tiring of the format, and moving on, on his own schedule, to other ventures.
Never the less, I happened to see an old movie a few weeks ago that brought Beck to mind. It was Network, the 1976 hit movie starring Faye Dunaway, Peter Finch, Robert Duval and William Holden.
I'd never actually seen the entire picture at once. But I was familiar with the iconic trademark phrase uttered by Finch's character, Howard Beale,
"I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!"
But, after Beale is reincarnated as a somewhat crazed evening program host of what is no longer a news show, he more routinely proclaims that he's going to tell the truth about various forces in society arrayed against his viewers.
That's the part that made me think of Glenn Beck. I doubt Beck will be shot on air as an end to his program's run. He also doesn't claim to have received a spiritual vision.
But that unvarnished sense of hostility with the predominant media which won't cover or investigate obvious conflicts of interest, cronyism and lies of omission by government, academia and industry does seem to echo Howard Beale's sentiments.
I wonder where that attitude, and Beck's energy and money will next appear?
Recently, I believe about a month or so, perhaps a little longer, Beck announced that he'll end his daily 5PM program on Fox News Channel. The article which I read alluded to Beck having lost advertisers due to some of his positions and topics. If so, it's not noticeable. Perhaps Beck is simply tiring of the format, and moving on, on his own schedule, to other ventures.
Never the less, I happened to see an old movie a few weeks ago that brought Beck to mind. It was Network, the 1976 hit movie starring Faye Dunaway, Peter Finch, Robert Duval and William Holden.
I'd never actually seen the entire picture at once. But I was familiar with the iconic trademark phrase uttered by Finch's character, Howard Beale,
"I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!"
But, after Beale is reincarnated as a somewhat crazed evening program host of what is no longer a news show, he more routinely proclaims that he's going to tell the truth about various forces in society arrayed against his viewers.
That's the part that made me think of Glenn Beck. I doubt Beck will be shot on air as an end to his program's run. He also doesn't claim to have received a spiritual vision.
But that unvarnished sense of hostility with the predominant media which won't cover or investigate obvious conflicts of interest, cronyism and lies of omission by government, academia and industry does seem to echo Howard Beale's sentiments.
I wonder where that attitude, and Beck's energy and money will next appear?
Monday, May 9, 2011
Thursday's South Carolina GOP Presidential Candidates Debate
I dutifully watched some of last Thursday night's Fox News South Carolina GOP presidential candidates' debate. To be honest, those events tend to be better viewed in retrospect, or through the comments of pundits in attendance.
Most of the time, the candidates you know say pretty much what you expect, so there aren't any surprises. For me, there was some value in quickly getting a measure of some lesser-known candidates, such as Gary Johnson. I know he's a former governor. But hearing some of his views, as he packed them, off-point, into his rushed response to some question, I immediately dismissed him as too lightweight and fringe in his views.
Ron Paul was, well, Ron Paul. What more do you need to say? If you want a modern reincarnation of George Washington, well, you know who to vote for.
Of course, the major story looming over the debates was the missing potential, undeclared candidates- Gingrich, Palin and Trump. And Romney, who is declared, but evidently taking a page, of sorts, from Ronald Reagan's playbook.
Rick Santorum, from what I heard of his remarks, reinforced my pre-existing opinion. He's a nice guy who seems to be running primarily on a right-of-center "family values" agenda. I'm not particularly trusting of either party telling me what social values to espouse, outside of generally keeping government out of legislating any more of them. So while Santorum seems intelligent, earnest and honest, I just don't see what he offers that I would want, and can't find in another, more marketable candidate.
Besides, there's a strong whiff of religiosity in Santorum's remarks that always leaves me suspicious.
The guy who I actually found pretty interesting was Herman Cain. Granted, he, too, has some annoying quirks. Some of his reactions were a little stiff and out of touch. But his good attributes include business accomplishments, a lack of professional political careerism, and being black.
How incredible would it be to see Wonderboy facing a black GOP presidential candidate?
Meanwhile, I'm quickly coming to the view that, no matter who the GOP nominates, I'll vote for her/him, simply because s/he can't be worse than what we've got. Little as I think of Romney for his Massachusetts healthcare plan, I'm not an idiot. He'd at least be a firebreak for current federal spending and fiscal recklessness.
And having the presidential veto and Supreme Court nominations in GOP hands is worth a lot.
Most of the time, the candidates you know say pretty much what you expect, so there aren't any surprises. For me, there was some value in quickly getting a measure of some lesser-known candidates, such as Gary Johnson. I know he's a former governor. But hearing some of his views, as he packed them, off-point, into his rushed response to some question, I immediately dismissed him as too lightweight and fringe in his views.
Ron Paul was, well, Ron Paul. What more do you need to say? If you want a modern reincarnation of George Washington, well, you know who to vote for.
Of course, the major story looming over the debates was the missing potential, undeclared candidates- Gingrich, Palin and Trump. And Romney, who is declared, but evidently taking a page, of sorts, from Ronald Reagan's playbook.
Rick Santorum, from what I heard of his remarks, reinforced my pre-existing opinion. He's a nice guy who seems to be running primarily on a right-of-center "family values" agenda. I'm not particularly trusting of either party telling me what social values to espouse, outside of generally keeping government out of legislating any more of them. So while Santorum seems intelligent, earnest and honest, I just don't see what he offers that I would want, and can't find in another, more marketable candidate.
Besides, there's a strong whiff of religiosity in Santorum's remarks that always leaves me suspicious.
The guy who I actually found pretty interesting was Herman Cain. Granted, he, too, has some annoying quirks. Some of his reactions were a little stiff and out of touch. But his good attributes include business accomplishments, a lack of professional political careerism, and being black.
How incredible would it be to see Wonderboy facing a black GOP presidential candidate?
Meanwhile, I'm quickly coming to the view that, no matter who the GOP nominates, I'll vote for her/him, simply because s/he can't be worse than what we've got. Little as I think of Romney for his Massachusetts healthcare plan, I'm not an idiot. He'd at least be a firebreak for current federal spending and fiscal recklessness.
And having the presidential veto and Supreme Court nominations in GOP hands is worth a lot.
Friday, May 6, 2011
Regarding Randi Weingarten
It's been instructive to read Randi Weingarten's views on teaching and teachers, while attempting to ignore their unions, in recent editions of the Wall Street Journal.
Back in late March, Weingarten was the subject of the Journal's feature weekend edition interview. Jason Riley's piece on the interview allowed Weingarten to damn herself in her own words. Here's an example,
"Ms. Weingarten insists that teachers unions are agents of change, not defenders of the status quo. But in the next breath she shoots down suggestions for changes- vouchers, charter schools, differential teacher pay and so on- that have become important parts of the reform conversation."
Here's another example of Weingarten's blindness to reality in education,
" "We've started some charter schools, but there are studies out there that say 80% of charter schools are no better [than traditional public schools] and 37% are worse." she says. "We've tried merit pay in a few places [but] there's a new study from Vanderbilt University that says it doesn't work." And school vouchers "have never been shown to be successful," she insists, ignoring the results of a study last year by Patrick Wolf of the University of Arkansas, who found that "students in Washington, D.C., who used a federally funded voucher to attend a private school were more likely to graduate from high school." "
Weingarten dismisses Michelle Rhee's work in Washington, and when reminded that George Meany and FDR were against public sector unions, she replied,
"If Meany and FDR were alive today, they'd have a very different view."
How humble of Weingarten to so radically alter the views of the dead, when their live comments are so inconvenient.
Riley ends his article by reminding readers that teachers unions excel at obstructing progress which can help students learn and perform better. They
"agitate for laws and regulations that ban means-tested voucher programs or cap the number of charter schools that can open in a state. To protect jobs for their members, they fight to keep the worst instructors from being fired and the worst schools from closing. All the while, they insist that their interests are aligned with those of the kids.
It is this skill set that has made Ms. Weingarten a documentary film star."
One gets the clear sense from the interview that Weingarten tries very hard to erase the distinction between real classroom teachers and their unions.
This is not a trivial point. I have been discussing the New Jersey teaching and teachers' union situation with a friend ever since Chris Christie was elected. From my many conversations with him, I have come to learn several things.
First, he really is motivated to do his job well. And I believe most of his colleagues are, as well.
Second, he is exasperated with his own union. He describes the situation thus,
"I don't have a choice. If I want this job, I must belong to the union. We just vote the way they tell us. I can't do anything about my union or its management."
When I first sent him the Journal interview article mentioned above, he was extremely disappointed in Weingarten's views. He saw how out of touch and provincial her comments are. The conversation turned to her pay, and I sent him this Wall Street Journal article from January of this year concerning her recent compensation,
"Randi Weingarten, the former head of the New York City teachers' union, received $194,188 last year from the United Federation of Teachers for unused sick days and vacation time accrued before she left to become president of the American Federation of Teachers, boosting her total compensation to more than $600,000 for 2010."
Elsewhere, I found that she now earns $350,000 annually as head of the AFT, and passed that information along to my friend. He was outraged.
Perhaps the best evidence of how corrupt and blind Weingarten is was her recent editorial in the April 25, 2011 edition of the Journal entitled Markets Aren't the Education Solution.
In it, Weingarten blasts those who criticize teachers, claiming,
"These countries emphasize teacher preparation, mentoring and collaboration. They revere and respect their teachers; they don't demonize them. Virtually all of them are unionized. In fact, school leaders in these countries work very closely with their unions, and most said they would never introduce changes or legislation without union collaboration."
The countries to which Weingarten referred were Finland, Singapore and South Korea. But we have no idea, from her article, just what the nature of their unions are. Or how much sway those unions have, relative to state-based US teachers' unions, over work rules, pensions, etc.
Weingarten closes her impassioned beat-down of market-oriented school reforms by wrapping herself in the flag and calling for the US to not fail to "prepare our children for the new world they will inherit."
However, having read Riley's article first, one discounts the so-called evidence against charter schools, reforms, etc., that Weingarten includes in her own editorial. Not to mention that she goes even further to virtually co-identify teachers and Weingarten's union.
But, thanks to comments by my teacher friend, I know that's not how Weingarten's union members actually see the world. In fact, when I asked my friend about the Wisconsin legislation which would end the state's collection of teachers' union dues directly from their paychecks, he confirmed that, if those dues were not involuntarily deducted from his pay, he'd never bother contributing them voluntarily to his union.
Weingarten preys on a presumed ignorance by other parties of the realities of teaching and schooling in America. Teachers aren't unions- they are forced to belong to them. Unions don't teach- they extort taxpayers, pay their own executives lavishly, and obstruct reforms, like all unions do, in order to protect current members. Taxpayers know the difference between teachers they respect, and unions which they despise for blocking changes to allow better education for their children.
Just consider how different our education system would be if this single change were made. Suppose your local town/city no longer ran a school system but, rather, vouchered a fixed tuition amount to each family for each child, allowing that family to send each child to any privately-owned and run school which had been certified by some appropriate authority. This wouldn't prevent teachers from belonging to a union, but it would mean that, at least in right-to-work states, teachers would not be forced to belong to a union. Some schools might even pursue a strategy of charging higher tuition, hiring only the best teachers, and paying them far more than union scale wages.
Now that would be innovation! And it could still provide for teachers' unions to exist. But the market would determine which schools prospered, and which did not. But that's a future Weingarten could never accept or tolerate. The potential for failure of the worst unionized teachers would be too high.
As if reading my mind, Donald Boudreaux wrote a tongue-in-cheek editorial in yesterday's Wall Street Journal entitled If Supermarkets Were Like Public Schools, obviously with people like AFT union boss Weingarten in mind. Here are some of the humorous passages,
"Teachers unions and their political allies argue that market forces can't supply quality education. According to them, only our existing system—politicized and monopolistic—will do the trick. Yet Americans would find that approach ludicrous if applied to other vital goods or services.
Suppose that groceries were supplied in the same way as K-12 education. Residents of each county would pay taxes on their properties. Nearly half of those tax revenues would then be spent by government officials to build and operate supermarkets. Each family would be assigned to a particular supermarket according to its home address. And each family would get its weekly allotment of groceries—"for free"—from its neighborhood public supermarket.
No family would be permitted to get groceries from a public supermarket outside of its district. Fortunately, though, thanks to a Supreme Court decision, families would be free to shop at private supermarkets that charge directly for the groceries they offer. Private-supermarket families, however, would receive no reductions in their property taxes.
Being largely protected from consumer choice, almost all public supermarkets would be worse than private ones. In poor counties the quality of public supermarkets would be downright abysmal. Poor people—entitled in principle to excellent supermarkets—would in fact suffer unusually poor supermarket quality.
How could it be otherwise? Public supermarkets would have captive customers and revenues supplied not by customers but by the government. Of course they wouldn't organize themselves efficiently to meet customers' demands.
Responding to these failures, thoughtful souls would call for "supermarket choice" fueled by vouchers or tax credits. Those calls would be vigorously opposed by public-supermarket administrators and workers.
Opponents of supermarket choice would accuse its proponents of demonizing supermarket workers (who, after all, have no control over their customers' poor eating habits at home). Advocates of choice would also be accused of trying to deny ordinary families the food needed for survival. Such choice, it would be alleged, would drain precious resources from public supermarkets whose poor performance testifies to their overwhelming need for more public funds.
In the face of calls for supermarket choice, supermarket-workers unions would use their significant resources for lobbying—in favor of public-supermarkets' monopoly power and against any suggestion that market forces are appropriate for delivering something as essential as groceries. Some indignant public-supermarket defenders would even rail against the insensitivity of referring to grocery shoppers as "customers," on the grounds that the relationship between the public servants who supply life-giving groceries and the citizens who need those groceries is not so crass as to be discussed in terms of commerce.
Recognizing that the erosion of their monopoly would stop the gravy train that pays their members handsome salaries without requiring them to satisfy paying customers, unions would ensure that any grass-roots effort to introduce supermarket choice meets fierce political opposition.
In reality, of course, groceries and many other staples of daily life are distributed with extraordinary effectiveness by competitive markets responding to consumer choice. The same could be true of education—the unions' self-serving protestations notwithstanding."
It's not hard to recognize Weingarten and her union in Boudreaux's parody. The sad thing is, it's so easy to see he's right and she's wrong. But, as the second to the last paragraph explains, this is Weingarten's and her union management colleagues' rice bowl. They simply can't afford to let their members experiment with any other approach that might decrease union dues and Weingarten's national power over education.
The more Weingarten speaks and writes, the easier it will be for taxpayers, parents, and, yes, even teachers to realize how misaligned teachers' unions and their union bosses are with better education for children in America.
Back in late March, Weingarten was the subject of the Journal's feature weekend edition interview. Jason Riley's piece on the interview allowed Weingarten to damn herself in her own words. Here's an example,
"Ms. Weingarten insists that teachers unions are agents of change, not defenders of the status quo. But in the next breath she shoots down suggestions for changes- vouchers, charter schools, differential teacher pay and so on- that have become important parts of the reform conversation."
Here's another example of Weingarten's blindness to reality in education,
" "We've started some charter schools, but there are studies out there that say 80% of charter schools are no better [than traditional public schools] and 37% are worse." she says. "We've tried merit pay in a few places [but] there's a new study from Vanderbilt University that says it doesn't work." And school vouchers "have never been shown to be successful," she insists, ignoring the results of a study last year by Patrick Wolf of the University of Arkansas, who found that "students in Washington, D.C., who used a federally funded voucher to attend a private school were more likely to graduate from high school." "
Weingarten dismisses Michelle Rhee's work in Washington, and when reminded that George Meany and FDR were against public sector unions, she replied,
"If Meany and FDR were alive today, they'd have a very different view."
How humble of Weingarten to so radically alter the views of the dead, when their live comments are so inconvenient.
Riley ends his article by reminding readers that teachers unions excel at obstructing progress which can help students learn and perform better. They
"agitate for laws and regulations that ban means-tested voucher programs or cap the number of charter schools that can open in a state. To protect jobs for their members, they fight to keep the worst instructors from being fired and the worst schools from closing. All the while, they insist that their interests are aligned with those of the kids.
It is this skill set that has made Ms. Weingarten a documentary film star."
One gets the clear sense from the interview that Weingarten tries very hard to erase the distinction between real classroom teachers and their unions.
This is not a trivial point. I have been discussing the New Jersey teaching and teachers' union situation with a friend ever since Chris Christie was elected. From my many conversations with him, I have come to learn several things.
First, he really is motivated to do his job well. And I believe most of his colleagues are, as well.
Second, he is exasperated with his own union. He describes the situation thus,
"I don't have a choice. If I want this job, I must belong to the union. We just vote the way they tell us. I can't do anything about my union or its management."
When I first sent him the Journal interview article mentioned above, he was extremely disappointed in Weingarten's views. He saw how out of touch and provincial her comments are. The conversation turned to her pay, and I sent him this Wall Street Journal article from January of this year concerning her recent compensation,
"Randi Weingarten, the former head of the New York City teachers' union, received $194,188 last year from the United Federation of Teachers for unused sick days and vacation time accrued before she left to become president of the American Federation of Teachers, boosting her total compensation to more than $600,000 for 2010."
Elsewhere, I found that she now earns $350,000 annually as head of the AFT, and passed that information along to my friend. He was outraged.
Perhaps the best evidence of how corrupt and blind Weingarten is was her recent editorial in the April 25, 2011 edition of the Journal entitled Markets Aren't the Education Solution.
In it, Weingarten blasts those who criticize teachers, claiming,
"These countries emphasize teacher preparation, mentoring and collaboration. They revere and respect their teachers; they don't demonize them. Virtually all of them are unionized. In fact, school leaders in these countries work very closely with their unions, and most said they would never introduce changes or legislation without union collaboration."
The countries to which Weingarten referred were Finland, Singapore and South Korea. But we have no idea, from her article, just what the nature of their unions are. Or how much sway those unions have, relative to state-based US teachers' unions, over work rules, pensions, etc.
Weingarten closes her impassioned beat-down of market-oriented school reforms by wrapping herself in the flag and calling for the US to not fail to "prepare our children for the new world they will inherit."
However, having read Riley's article first, one discounts the so-called evidence against charter schools, reforms, etc., that Weingarten includes in her own editorial. Not to mention that she goes even further to virtually co-identify teachers and Weingarten's union.
But, thanks to comments by my teacher friend, I know that's not how Weingarten's union members actually see the world. In fact, when I asked my friend about the Wisconsin legislation which would end the state's collection of teachers' union dues directly from their paychecks, he confirmed that, if those dues were not involuntarily deducted from his pay, he'd never bother contributing them voluntarily to his union.
Weingarten preys on a presumed ignorance by other parties of the realities of teaching and schooling in America. Teachers aren't unions- they are forced to belong to them. Unions don't teach- they extort taxpayers, pay their own executives lavishly, and obstruct reforms, like all unions do, in order to protect current members. Taxpayers know the difference between teachers they respect, and unions which they despise for blocking changes to allow better education for their children.
Just consider how different our education system would be if this single change were made. Suppose your local town/city no longer ran a school system but, rather, vouchered a fixed tuition amount to each family for each child, allowing that family to send each child to any privately-owned and run school which had been certified by some appropriate authority. This wouldn't prevent teachers from belonging to a union, but it would mean that, at least in right-to-work states, teachers would not be forced to belong to a union. Some schools might even pursue a strategy of charging higher tuition, hiring only the best teachers, and paying them far more than union scale wages.
Now that would be innovation! And it could still provide for teachers' unions to exist. But the market would determine which schools prospered, and which did not. But that's a future Weingarten could never accept or tolerate. The potential for failure of the worst unionized teachers would be too high.
As if reading my mind, Donald Boudreaux wrote a tongue-in-cheek editorial in yesterday's Wall Street Journal entitled If Supermarkets Were Like Public Schools, obviously with people like AFT union boss Weingarten in mind. Here are some of the humorous passages,
"Teachers unions and their political allies argue that market forces can't supply quality education. According to them, only our existing system—politicized and monopolistic—will do the trick. Yet Americans would find that approach ludicrous if applied to other vital goods or services.
Suppose that groceries were supplied in the same way as K-12 education. Residents of each county would pay taxes on their properties. Nearly half of those tax revenues would then be spent by government officials to build and operate supermarkets. Each family would be assigned to a particular supermarket according to its home address. And each family would get its weekly allotment of groceries—"for free"—from its neighborhood public supermarket.
No family would be permitted to get groceries from a public supermarket outside of its district. Fortunately, though, thanks to a Supreme Court decision, families would be free to shop at private supermarkets that charge directly for the groceries they offer. Private-supermarket families, however, would receive no reductions in their property taxes.
Being largely protected from consumer choice, almost all public supermarkets would be worse than private ones. In poor counties the quality of public supermarkets would be downright abysmal. Poor people—entitled in principle to excellent supermarkets—would in fact suffer unusually poor supermarket quality.
How could it be otherwise? Public supermarkets would have captive customers and revenues supplied not by customers but by the government. Of course they wouldn't organize themselves efficiently to meet customers' demands.
Responding to these failures, thoughtful souls would call for "supermarket choice" fueled by vouchers or tax credits. Those calls would be vigorously opposed by public-supermarket administrators and workers.
Opponents of supermarket choice would accuse its proponents of demonizing supermarket workers (who, after all, have no control over their customers' poor eating habits at home). Advocates of choice would also be accused of trying to deny ordinary families the food needed for survival. Such choice, it would be alleged, would drain precious resources from public supermarkets whose poor performance testifies to their overwhelming need for more public funds.
In the face of calls for supermarket choice, supermarket-workers unions would use their significant resources for lobbying—in favor of public-supermarkets' monopoly power and against any suggestion that market forces are appropriate for delivering something as essential as groceries. Some indignant public-supermarket defenders would even rail against the insensitivity of referring to grocery shoppers as "customers," on the grounds that the relationship between the public servants who supply life-giving groceries and the citizens who need those groceries is not so crass as to be discussed in terms of commerce.
Recognizing that the erosion of their monopoly would stop the gravy train that pays their members handsome salaries without requiring them to satisfy paying customers, unions would ensure that any grass-roots effort to introduce supermarket choice meets fierce political opposition.
In reality, of course, groceries and many other staples of daily life are distributed with extraordinary effectiveness by competitive markets responding to consumer choice. The same could be true of education—the unions' self-serving protestations notwithstanding."
It's not hard to recognize Weingarten and her union in Boudreaux's parody. The sad thing is, it's so easy to see he's right and she's wrong. But, as the second to the last paragraph explains, this is Weingarten's and her union management colleagues' rice bowl. They simply can't afford to let their members experiment with any other approach that might decrease union dues and Weingarten's national power over education.
The more Weingarten speaks and writes, the easier it will be for taxpayers, parents, and, yes, even teachers to realize how misaligned teachers' unions and their union bosses are with better education for children in America.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Union Busting In A Blue State
I like Michael Connolly's fictional novels. He currently has one of his works, The Lincoln Lawyer, out as a movie. It's very good and, as I explained to the friend with whom I saw it, is a typical Connolly story. I lent this friend my copy of his recent book, The Brass Verdict, in which I believe the very first line is,
"Everyone lies."
It's one of the most prominent theme in Connolly's novels. As a former Los Angeles newspaper crime beat reporter, he ought to know. It surely seems to have informed his murder mysteries with healthy doses of lying characters.
Thus it should come as no surprise that there are lies of commission and omission swirling around a recent, thinly-reported story on public sector union busting in, of all places, that bluest of blue states, Massachusetts.
The Wall Street Journal and Fox News, two of my major news sources and both more objective than the usual liberal 'major media sources,' e.g., the New York Times and NBC, both covered the story with gusto.
The Journal ran one editorial entitled Wisconsin of the East. Kim Strassel wrote another, Union Busting, Massachusetts Style.
Essentially, the Massachusetts House voted to pass, as Strassel described,
"a bill divesting policemen, firefighters, teachers and other municipal employees of the power to collectively bargain most health-care benefits. The 111-42 vote took place at 11:30 at night, so as to avoid a mass of protesting union workers set to descend on the State House the next day."
That's a pretty comprehensive union-busting bill, isn't it? Yet the state's governor, Deval Patrick, lied when he claimed,
"This is not Wisconsin. That's not what the House did."
No, it's even more. Not only teachers, but police and fire employees were included.
Strassel wrote in answer to Patrick's contention,
"Wrong. Wisconsin moved to rein in collective bargaining powers that are crushing the state. Massachusetts moved to rein in collective bargaining powers that are crushing the state. The only difference is that Democrats have chosen to portray Mr. Walker's legislation as "union-busting" while presenting their own as necessary reform."
Of course, Patrick could wiggle out of declaring whether or not he'd sign the bill, because everyone knows the Massachusetts State Senate won't pass it.
Meanwhile, we haven't seen Rich Trumka and his union bullies descend upon the Massachusetts State House with out-of-state protesters, have we? No calling out of the governor for applauding the bill's "very important vote," nor the House for passing it.
For what it's worth, Massachusetts AFL-CIO President Robert Haynes said of the bill's passage,
"These are the same Democrats that all these labor unions elected, the same Democrats who we contributed to in their campaigns. It's a done deal for our relationship with the people inside that chamber."
The Journal editorial noted that the Massachusetts bill's passage in the House shows that containing public union excesses is a non-partisan issue. It further notes that a Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education study found,
"that from 2000 to 2010 "health care consumed two thirds of the entire increase in state spending" and reform has thus become "a critical education issue." "
Come to think of it, I don't recall, as the Journal points out, hearing or seeing Wonderboy call out Patrick or his state's legislature for this bill. Hmm.....Scott Walker is white, and Patrick is black.
Is Wonderboy a racist? Or were his comments about Walker simply pure partisanship at the beginning of an election cycle?
"Everyone lies."
It's one of the most prominent theme in Connolly's novels. As a former Los Angeles newspaper crime beat reporter, he ought to know. It surely seems to have informed his murder mysteries with healthy doses of lying characters.
Thus it should come as no surprise that there are lies of commission and omission swirling around a recent, thinly-reported story on public sector union busting in, of all places, that bluest of blue states, Massachusetts.
The Wall Street Journal and Fox News, two of my major news sources and both more objective than the usual liberal 'major media sources,' e.g., the New York Times and NBC, both covered the story with gusto.
The Journal ran one editorial entitled Wisconsin of the East. Kim Strassel wrote another, Union Busting, Massachusetts Style.
Essentially, the Massachusetts House voted to pass, as Strassel described,
"a bill divesting policemen, firefighters, teachers and other municipal employees of the power to collectively bargain most health-care benefits. The 111-42 vote took place at 11:30 at night, so as to avoid a mass of protesting union workers set to descend on the State House the next day."
That's a pretty comprehensive union-busting bill, isn't it? Yet the state's governor, Deval Patrick, lied when he claimed,
"This is not Wisconsin. That's not what the House did."
No, it's even more. Not only teachers, but police and fire employees were included.
Strassel wrote in answer to Patrick's contention,
"Wrong. Wisconsin moved to rein in collective bargaining powers that are crushing the state. Massachusetts moved to rein in collective bargaining powers that are crushing the state. The only difference is that Democrats have chosen to portray Mr. Walker's legislation as "union-busting" while presenting their own as necessary reform."
Of course, Patrick could wiggle out of declaring whether or not he'd sign the bill, because everyone knows the Massachusetts State Senate won't pass it.
Meanwhile, we haven't seen Rich Trumka and his union bullies descend upon the Massachusetts State House with out-of-state protesters, have we? No calling out of the governor for applauding the bill's "very important vote," nor the House for passing it.
For what it's worth, Massachusetts AFL-CIO President Robert Haynes said of the bill's passage,
"These are the same Democrats that all these labor unions elected, the same Democrats who we contributed to in their campaigns. It's a done deal for our relationship with the people inside that chamber."
The Journal editorial noted that the Massachusetts bill's passage in the House shows that containing public union excesses is a non-partisan issue. It further notes that a Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education study found,
"that from 2000 to 2010 "health care consumed two thirds of the entire increase in state spending" and reform has thus become "a critical education issue." "
Come to think of it, I don't recall, as the Journal points out, hearing or seeing Wonderboy call out Patrick or his state's legislature for this bill. Hmm.....Scott Walker is white, and Patrick is black.
Is Wonderboy a racist? Or were his comments about Walker simply pure partisanship at the beginning of an election cycle?
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