RON HART: Disunion: Somebody, please Teach for America

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Sometimes things must be allowed to go woefully wrong before they can go right, as is the case with many of our public schools today.

As with every important endeavor that we embark upon, it is our philosophy that is paramount. The idea of government-run schools began with the notion of educating the masses just enough for employment, but not enough that they would question the ruling class. Mission accomplished.

Today, kids are not disciplined; the inmates are running the prison, and politicians stand by wringing their collective hands. Teachers are even sleeping with their male students in alarming numbers. Not as alarming to the boys, but you get the idea. Heck, when I was in school my teachers did not even let me bang the erasers.

Let me be clear; there are many wonderful teachers out there who work hard every day to make a difference in their students’ lives. Many of them voice similar concerns about the direction our public schools are taking and roll their eyes at the bureaucracy and waste.

Certainly, teaching our kids can be a complicated process, yet at its core, it is really quite simple. The entrenched bureaucracy, led by our spineless politicians, is overreaching and expensive. We really need to get back to basics.

I could teach basic math with a stick and some dirt.

The horrifying fact is that the worst public schools in America cost more per student than the good schools. Inefficient, unionized teachers and administrators are more focused on their salaries and rights than teaching the kids, and operate under a system that is not run like a business that’s held accountable by its stakeholders.

Here is an example.

One of my best employees wanted to teach in an inner-city school awhile back. As dangerous as teaching is there, she reckoned that it was better than working for me. She was well educated, with a bachelor’s degree, motivated, energetic and yet could not penetrate the large city’s school system bureaucracy to be a teacher.

She then found Teach For America (TFA), a program where failing public schools begrudgingly allow bright young college graduates to teach the worst of their schools where they cannot convince enough government-minded teachers to teach in rough areas. This year, 9 percent of Harvard and Yale’s graduating class served in Teach for America. Kids that want to do this should be viewed as an asset, yet the teacher unions see it differently.

The telling part, which I hope is not lost on liberals bent on “fixing” education: Only 3,700 of the 25,000 graduates who applied got TFA jobs. Each year, these fine young applicants are met with anger by most school systems, more concerned with their own power and well being.

The American Federation of Teachers (the Politburo-like AFL-CIO of teaching) snipes that Teach for America is only a “Band-Aid.”

They do not like these young kids in their profession, which they guard like Cerberus with a forbidding bureaucracy mandating years of “education courses” to be certified by them. And by “certified” they mean willing to be like them, a “go-along-to-get-along” group of grumpy slackers who are bent on their own perpetuation rather than their kids learning in public — better described: government — schools.

The reality is this, according to truly independent studies done by the Urban Institute. “On average, high school students taught by the Teach for America corps members performed significantly better on state-required end-of-course exams, especially in math and science, than peers taught by far more experienced instructors. The TFA teachers’ effect on student achievement in core classroom subjects was nearly three times the effect of teachers with three or more years of experience.”

So what does the unionized education establishment do when confronted with such good news? They only hire 3,700 of the 25,000 applicants who want to truly help kids. They badmouth the TFA program, and with their friends in the Democratic Party, who fear an educated electorate, put up barriers to such competition for their entrenched jobs.

Applying private sector common sense to education is foreign to most school systems. In fact, they rail against capitalism in their attempt to indoctrinate, not teach, their students. I would not be surprised if they are not spending their time trying to unionize the shop classes.

They fight school choice vouchers, and they make us throw more money at failing schools, which goes disproportionately to administration. In very bad schools they even stopped the “after school programs.” And, if there is a group of kids that we need to know where they are after school, it would be these kids.

With all the great teachers out there, and the civic-minded kids that want to teach, I find it incredible that they are kept from it by an entrenched teaching establishment that is not held accountable. We have to be sensible about educating our youth.

Ron Hart is a Southern libertarian columnist who writes a weekly column about politics and life. He worked for Goldman Sachs and was appointed to The Tennessee Board of Regents by Lamar Alexander. His E-mail: RevRon10@aol.com