Drudge has an interesting link to a study that indicates that many of America’s public school teachers send their children to private schools.

In some districts the figure is as high as 40% of the teachers have children in private schools.

So, I wonder just exactly who is funding this “opposition group”. Neither the NEA nor the AFT would comment on the findings of this study.

What this says is pretty clear: sauce for the goose is NOT sauce for the gander. It’s fine for the teachers to abandon their own system, but it’s not ok for mere parents or tax payers.

Don’t be surprised if the teachers unions are behind all this. The liberal left is more than capable of that kind of double standard.

Posted by: skip at September 22, 2004 01:22 PM

For an interesting perspective, read “Hard America, Soft America” by Michael Barone.

Many “professional educators” choose to become teachers and administrators because they do not want to live and work in the “hard” world of objective performance measurement, competition and clear accountability. NCLB conflicts with their most dearly held personal and professional values.

However, the product of their efforts—our kids—go on to live and work in this hard world of competition, measurement and accountability: sales quotas, productivity measurement, six sigma quality scores customer feedback, MBOs, budgets and P+Ls. As the world gets smaller and global flows of trade, capital and know-how increase, our economic success depends on our individual and collective ability to compete in the “hard” world.

The most striking issue to me is the abysmal academic performance of students in our poor neighborhoods, and the schools that pretend to educate them. This is a result of the “soft discrimination’ of modest expectations. The parents of these kids should be screaming for better schools—in a knowledge-based global economy, poor schools are a sure guarantee of second class status and real society of “two Americas”.

However, as long as the teachers unions are huge contributors to the Democratic party, and are able to dodge measurement and accountability, poor, minority kids will continue to have their futures sold out from under them without even seeing what is going on.

School choice is possibly the most revolutionary issue in US politics, with the potential to pry away urban and minority voters from the Dems. Every parent wants their kids to have a better, more successful life. Virtually all parents know that a good education is key to success in a global, knowledge-based economy.

The objective measures and accountability contained in NCLB are extremely threatening to many teachers and their unions, because the comfortable, soft nest of mediocre non-performance they have built cannot survive direct, open objective performance evaluation and accountability.

Measurement, choice and accountability are the future, but the old order will die fighting.

Posted by: Colorado at September 22, 2004 11:01 PM