SCHOOL'S OUT
However, keep those tax dollars coming to the cultural crusade that is public/union education
BY KEN WARD

Ken Ward is opinion page editor of the Press Journal in Vero Beach, Fla. A Las Vegas resident from 1990-2002, he was a freelance columnist with the R-J and assistant managing editor at the Sun. E-mail him at kenricward@juno.com  Other stories by Ken Ward

So, how did you spend National Teacher Day? Chances are, you paid your taxes and got on with business. The National Education Association (a.k.a. the teachers' union) accepted your contribution and went about ensuring that public schools continue to flounder.

On May 9, the NEA reported on the state of teaching in America. On the positive side, it lauded the "most experienced and educated" faculty ever. On the downside, the union bemoaned the number of instructors leaving the field.

The taxpaying public should view these findings skeptically because the NEA report used 8-year-old data. In fact, today's teachers are neither as scarce nor as educated/experienced as the union claims.

Mike Antonucci of the Education Intelligence Agency gathered more current statistics and learned that the average age of a K-12 teacher is 38 - not 43. He also found that 48 percent of instructors hold master's degrees - not 57 percent. Niggling differences, but there's more.

While the NEA is still massaging teacher retention numbers, the National Center for Education Statistics reports that the average number of instructors dismissed or non-renewed by U.S. public school districts in 2003-2004 was 3.1.

"That's not a percentage,'' Antonucci notes. Doing the math, he calculates that at 1.36 percent.

As Ken Feneley, a 35-year teaching veteran and member of the Michigan Education Association affiliate, wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal: "Morals were the only reason any tenured teacher was ever released at my school."

This is pathetic - even under the ultra-lenient and ever-shifting standards set by No Child Left Behind. And it demonstrates the stranglehold the NEA has on public education.

Accountability? Union brass fight all meaningful performance standards and salary-incentive programs for rewarding top teachers.

Reform? The NEA battles charter schools (except those it runs) and vouchers. Most recently, the union sued to scuttle Florida's highly successful voucher system (90 percent of whose participants were minorities).

As a protection racket, the nation's largest labor union has few equals. State legislatures and even the courts (see Florida above) behave as wholly owned subsidiaries of the association.

Leveraging its wealth and political clout, the NEA's agenda goes far beyond the kids in the classroom. Last year, the Washington-based group gave more than $65 million to Jesse Jackson's Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, Amnesty International, AIDS Walk Washington and scores of other left-leaning "advocacy" organizations.

The 2.7 million teachers who fork over dues that pay six-figure salaries to state and national union operatives and bankroll the NEA's high-octane lobbying campaigns are useful tools, dupes or just plain idiots.

What do card-carrying members get for their monthly investment? Obviously, the benefits aren't trickling down, because the taxpaying public is constantly made to feel guilty about low-paid teachers and insufferable working conditions.

Indeed, meager, across-the-board pay increases eked out by collective bargaining are intentionally designed to demoralize the best and brightest while impoverishing everyone associated with classroom instruction.

This is the essence of unionism - a one-size-fits-all scheme that refuses to distinguish between stars and slackers. Such faux egalitarianism might be tolerated in low-skill trades, but we're told - and want to believe - that teachers are professionals. Too bad the teachers' union doesn't treat them that way.

"I will eternally remember an admonition from a regional NEA leader to 'take coil wires, put sugar in gas tanks and let air out of tires of scabs' during a bitter contract negotiation,'' Feneley recalls. So much for "morals."

Like Karl Marx's dictatorship of the proletariat, the NEA pays copious lip service to honoring and serving labor. That gives cover to craven politicians and keeps PTAs in line, but make no mistake: This isn't about kids. It's not about teachers. It's not even about schools, per se.

Rather, like Marx, this is about power, and teachers are the shock troops in a political and cultural crusade. As shown by its annual outlays, the NEA relentlessly promotes an extracurricular agenda that has very little to do with the core business of "education." It does, however, have everything to do with control.

So keep those tax dollars coming, have a great summer and look forward to another National Teacher Day next spring, comrade. LW