Education
Talking Points
CONventional
wisdom:
“Teachers’ unions are the reason schools are failing! The
unions block educational progress and are only looking out for
themselves, not the students.”
Actually, students in states where there are strong teachers’ unions
have higher rates of achievement on the ACT and the SAT than
students in states with weak or no unions, according to a study
published in the Harvard Educational Review (2000).
How do strong unions help boost achievement? Researchers found
that strong unions push for better working conditions which result
in better learning conditions, that there is lower turn-over among
unionized teachers, and that union contracts provide for better
professional development.
Researchers for the Institute for
Talking Points
CONventional
wisdom:
“No Child Left Behind keeps schools and teachers accountable to the
public.”
Certainly, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) attempts to hold
schools and teachers accountable. Not everyone associated with
NCLB is held to such high standards, however. There is little
oversight of companies that provide supplemental educational
services to schools deemed to be failing. “Millions of dollars are
being spent,” says Jack Jennings, director of the nonpartisan Center
on Education Policy, “and nobody knows what’s happening.”
That lack of oversight was deliberate,
according to a report from Project Censored
(www.projectcensored.org). The report cites a statement made
by Michael Petrilli, a former member of the Department of Education:
“We want as little regulation as possible” to encourage the market.
While little may be known about how the money
is being spent, there is information about where the money is going.
According to Project Censored, the NCLB Act has resulted in
“billions of dollars in profits to corporate clients,” many of whom
have ties to the Bush family.
Those who have benefited include President
Bush’s brother Neil and William Bennett, Education Secretary during
the Reagan administration. Neil Bush’s Ignite! Learning
company sells educational software while Bennett’s K12 Inc. provides
online services for virtual schools, such as the
Another who profited was Sandy Kress,
education advisor to President Bush. Kress wrote the NCLB
legislation and worked to insure its passage. Kress then left
the administration and began working as a lobbyist. By 2005,
Kress had made $4 million securing government contracts for
educational testing and supplemental services clients.
Currently, Kress is lobbying for reauthorization of the Act.
[Project Censored is a nonprofit media
research program sponsored by
Talking Points
CONventional
wisdom:
“Teach for America proves that
you don’t need certified teachers to get results. You just
need smart, dedicated people who believe kids can learn.”
No doubt many of those who join Teach for
America (TFA) are sincere in their efforts to teach students.
Whether their endeavors are effective, however, is questionable.
TFA Founder Wendy Kopp is convinced that TFA
recruits are effective teachers. During a 2008 interview with
Charlie Rose, Kopp stated that “many have obtained incredible
results with kids.”
One of the studies that TFA proponents often
cite is the 2004 study conducted by Mathematica Policy Research
(MPR). This study did find that TFA teachers were somewhat more
effective at teaching mathematics than a control group of teachers;
there was no difference in student reading achievement between the
two groups.
However, the MPR researchers did not compare
the effectiveness of TFA teachers and traditionally-certified
teachers. In fact, nearly half the control group was made up
of teachers who had gotten their licenses through emergency or
alternative certification processes. Further, TFA teachers
reported more problems with classroom management and had more
discipline referrals. The final conclusion of the MPR
researchers was merely that “there is little risk that hiring TFA
teachers will reduce achievement.”
Other studies are even less favorable.
For instance, Arizona State University researchers Lackzo-Kerr and
Berliner (2002) found that students of certified teachers
out-performed students of TFA teachers on all three subtests of the
SAT 9—reading, mathematics and language arts. They concluded
that “our results contradict claims made by TFA advocates that
enthusiasm and subject-matter knowledge, as well as a general
education in a prestigious university, prepare these recruits to
teach adequately in
Talking Points
CONventional
wisdom:
“Unions? They’re a thing of the
past! American workers don’t want some union telling them what
to do.”
Actually, a majority of Americans would join a
union if they could. Results from the Worker Representation
and Participation Survey document that the desire for union
representation has grown sharply among American workers since the
1990s (Freeman & Rogers, 2006).
So why don’t workers unionize? There are
a number of reasons, according to
- · Union
organizers face a 1-in-5 chance that they will be illegally
fired during a union campaign.
- · 51% of
employers threaten to close the plant or office if the union
wins certification.
- · 78% of
employers force employees to attend one-on-one meetings with
supervisors against the union.
- · 92% of
employers force employees to attend frequent group meetings
against the union.
Employers are aided in their efforts against
unions by union-busting consultants, which include lawyers from
Further, The Progressive (September
2008) reported that the Bush administration spent 100 times more on
regulating union activities than it did in ensuring employer
compliance with labor laws.
On occasion, however, the National Labor
Relations Board does act on illegal employer actions. On
December 23, 2008, the NLRB ruled that Starbucks had unlawfully
fired three
Starbucks—which has worked hard to create a
reputation as a socially responsible company—actually has a long
history of anti-union activity. In the last few years alone,
Starbucks has made settlements in NLRB suits in