Category: education and schooling

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education and schooling free trade & free markets

Strikes and Rumors of Strikes

The tale of how Chicago’s teachers union beat the Chicago School District, and got their way, is inspiring … if you belong to a union, if you don’t care about costs, if you don’t want to improve the quality of education.

And if you define “inspirational” as inspiring copycats.

That’s happened already, and may break out big time. Illinois’s Evergreen Park District (#124) is now on strike. Lake Forest High School District (#115) teachers recently concluded a strike, with a tentative agreement allegedly being finalized as I type. At least two other district teachers’ unions have declared strikes, and contract negotiations have stalled elsewhere. Add to that, AFSCME bigwigs wrote their 40,000 members that “direct action at the work site” might be necessary. I’m hoping that’s a work stoppage, and not sabotage. (“Direct action” sounds ominous, doesn’t it?)

Paul Kersey, writing on the Illinois Policy Institute website, opines that it “would be unfortunate if union officials chose to shut down key government services at a time when so many Illinoisans are struggling economically, but unfortunately it seems that the results of the Chicago Teachers Union strike may have encouraged many of them to do just that.”

Unions arose in the 19th century as a way to deal with poor working conditions, and, over time, the idea of a closed shop took hold with the specific program of excluding competitive workers. That made it easier to negotiate for higher wages, etc.

While private sector unions fought “evil businessmen” — that’s what I read in school — public employee unions fight … taxpayers. I always wonder how taxpayers feel, being dragooned into the role of “evil” skinflint.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling

Look in the Backyard

“Social scientists have long tried to determine why some children grow up to be successful adults and others don’t,” fatherhood blogger Kevin Hartnett wrote in the Washington Post. “The causes are hard to untangle.”

Really? I think the causes are pretty obvious. Number one being parents.

Hartnett’s opinion piece was entitled, “What matters more to my kids’ future: Their school or quality time with their parents?” Frustratingly, Hartnett’s not sure, though he “intuitively” feels his two very young sons would gain more benefit from additional time with their parents than a better school.

Harnett and his wife are beginning careers, concerned about the trade-​offs between earning higher income to afford the best schools versus providing more parental time at home.

So he turned to several researchers:

  • Susan Mayer, author of the book, What Money Can’t Buy: Family Income and Children’s Life Chances, and a professor at the University of Chicago, believes that inexpensive trips to the museum or books in the home are often more important than expensive tutoring or schools.
  • “I think it’s very reasonable for parents to choose to work less in order to have more face time with their children,” Professor Annette Lareau of the University of Pennsylvania told Hartnett, “even if that means their children attend a school where they’re not challenged as much as the parents might like.”
  • University of California at Irvine Professor Greg Duncan looked at the impact of non-​parents on children and concluded, “Schools and neighborhoods might have some effect, but I think it’s pretty clear that a lot more of the action around child development takes place at home.”

The future will be shaped at home, more than at school.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling free trade & free markets too much government

Harvard Shrugs

Wait for it: There’s another financial bubble ready to pop.

I’m not an economist, so I could be as wrong as, uh, a Keynesian strung out on (and pushing) “economic stimulus.” But the usual signs of an over-​priced market sure seem to apply to higher education, today. After all, colleges and universities are sustained and over-​fed by massive debt … in this case, government-​guaranteed student loans, now passing the trillion-​dollar mark.Harvard Shrugs

From your local community college to the Ivy League, the whole industry reeks of insider advantages, constricted supply and inflated demand. So of course prices rise.

Beyond all reason.

The latest sign on the way to the bubble’s bursting comes from Harvard. That august institution’s Faculty Advisory Council for the Library issued a memorandum last week declaring that the cost of subscribing to peer-​reviewed journals has become too great to bear. Robert T. Gonzaleaz, writing at io9, puts this news in perspective:

What does it say about the world of academic publishing, the accessibility of knowledge, and the flow of information when the richest academic institution on the planet cannot afford to continue paying for its peer-​reviewed journal subscriptions?

When I look at the prices of textbooks and journals and academic books, I wince. Were this industry marked by laissez-​faire policies and free markets, the typical leftist “anti-​greed/​anti-​business” attitude might make sense. But this is an industry riddled with government intrusion, as far-​reaching as the intrusions into housing and banking that led to 2008’s financial debacle.

How could the over-​sold, over-​subsidized, over-​controlled college-​university industry remain immune to a similar catastrophic deflation?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling folly

When Dinosaurs Roamed the Schools

Sticks and stones break bones, but words hurt more subtly. Old-​school advice was that, growing up, one had to grin and bear it, let a few of our psychological wounds scab over, and get on with life.

But that is not “new school” wisdom. Nowadays, moved by a perhaps overweening sense of kindness (or politicized fear) educators tend to prohibit certain words, the better to protect some folks from taking offense.

The New York Post reports that, in a “bizarre case of political correctness run wild,” the people in charge of public schools have

banned references to “dinosaurs,” “birthdays,” “Halloween” and dozens of other topics on city-​issued tests.

That’s because they fear such topics “could evoke unpleasant emotions in the students.”

Dinosaurs, for example, call to mind evolution, which might upset fundamentalists; birthdays aren’t celebrated by Jehovah’s Witnesses; and Halloween suggests paganism.

Even “dancing’’ is taboo, because some sects object. But the city did make an exception for ballet.

The “educrats” say such exclusions are nothing new, and I believe them. They’re inevitable when you have a government-​run school system that “services” a wide diversity of “clients.” The only real solution is to stop having the government run the schools. If you must support education with tax money, give vouchers to poor people. That would let a diversity of tutors and schools compete for parents’ and students’ attention … perhaps sometimes by catering to fears of dinosaurs, Halloween and dancing.

Odd, though, in one sense: If you really want not to “evoke unpleasant emotions in the students,” you could stop making them take tests. For most kids, tests are the most unsettling, truly horrifying aspect of schooling.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling free trade & free markets

Will They Ever Learn?

In which industries do prices and costs rise fastest? Those in which government is most involved.

The process is no mystery. Regulate supply by limiting entry into the business — to “increase quality,” of course — will raise prices, as producers behave oligopolistically. Government does this with health care providers, and have done so increasingly for the last century. If, at the same time, you subsidize the consumption, that amounts to increasing demand, which also puts upward pressure on prices. This has been accelerated in America since the beginning of Medicare, and with each additional healthcare program.

Typical government intervention double whammy.

Higher education is also not exempt from the play of supply and demand. One policy advocate’s explanation of this, which you can read excerpted, online, at National Review’s site, is worth considering. He explains what happens as vendors rake in profits under a regulated-​and-​subsidized system: they

sponsor crowd-​pleasing sports events on weekends, building public goodwill. Other profits are used to hire professional lobbyists to plead for both more subsidies and more freedom to set prices. You also convince the government to allow you and other incumbent … sellers to form a private organization with the authority to decide whether new sellers can become “approved … vendors” for the purposes of receiving public subsidies. Unsurprisingly, few new sellers are approved.

Predictably, the analysis is followed by halfway measures that don’t lead to a free market in education at all. That’s just too radical.

Education policy wonks, like educators themselves, seem never to learn … economics.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling

Earning Public School Privileges

For the last 22 years, I’ve had school-​age kids. None of them went to a public school; instead, we homeschooled.

Though my children certainly didn’t cost Virginia’s state and local governments the more than $10,000 a year they spend on each public school student, I sure never got a letter from the government apologizing for not “earning” my tax payments or a reimbursement check for taxes paid.

PTAWhich went through my mind when I read an email from the Virginia PTA — the Parent Teacher Association. The group’s Janet Ciaravino urged its cadre to: “Let [legislators] know that public school is your choice and team sports are a privilege you earned and expect them to protect.”

The Virginia PTA has come unglued at the thought that House Bill 947, known as the “Tebow Bill,” may pass and allow homeschool children to try out for public school sports. To avoid that unthinkable prospect, the PTA pushes politicians to “protect” their privileges at the expense of homeschool kids who simply want a try-out.

Then come horror stories, unimaginable hypothetical situations designed to overwhelm our emotions. For instance, the PTA email posed a harrowing question, “What’s next? Drama, debate, electives?”

If we’re not careful, public education could break out.

The PTA’s orthographically deviant slogan is “every child. one voice.” Why not allow every one of those children his or her own voice? And an equal chance to win a spot on the team.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.