Public education is in trouble and change is coming. Whether teachers' union likes it or not.

Here's an interesting article in Newsweek, that bastion of conservatism by the outgoing chancellor of public schools in DC, Michelle Rhee, who was known for trying to reform public education and lost her job because the teacher's union defeated her boss, the mayor, in his bid for re-election.

She points out what she did and the battles she faced improving the quality of education in the district.

When I started as chancellor in 2007, I never had any illusions about how tough it would be to turn around a failing system like D.C.’s; the city had gone through seven chancellors in the 10 years before me. While I had to make many structural changes—overhauling the system for
evaluating teachers and principals, adopting new reading and math programs, making sure textbooks got delivered on time—I believed the hardest thing would be changing the culture. We had to raise the expectations that people had about what was possible for our kids.

I quickly announced a plan to close almost two dozen schools, which provoked community outrage. We cut the central office administration in half. And I also proposed a new contract for teachers that would increase their salaries dramatically if they abandoned the tenure system and agreed to be paid based on their effectiveness.

Though all of these actions caused turmoil in the district, they were long overdue and reaped benefits quickly. In my first two years in office, the D.C. schools went from being the worst performing on the National Assessment of Educational Progress examination, the national test, to leading the nation in gains at both the fourth and eighth grade in reading as well as math. By this school year we reversed a trend of declining enrollment and increased the number of families choosing District schools for the first time in 41 years.

She talks about the state of public education in America, which isn't very good compared to the rest of the world.

After stepping down, I had a chance to reflect on the challenges facing our schools today and the possible solutions. The truth is that despite a handful of successful reforms, the state of American education is pitiful, and getting worse. Spending on schools has more than doubled in the last three decades, but the increased resources haven’t produced better results. The U.S. is currently 21st, 23rd, and 25th among 30 developed nations in science, reading, and math, respectively. The children in our schools today will be the first generation of Americans who will be less educated than the previous generation.

And finally she says the major impediment to reform is the teacher's union which believes it has a vested interest in the status quo.

Education is no different. We have textbook manufacturers, teachers’ unions, and even food vendors that work hard to dictate and determine policy. The public-employee unions in D.C., including the teachers’ union, spent huge sums of money to defeat Fenty. In fact, the new chapter president has said his No. 1 priority is job security for teachers, but there is no big organized interest group that defends and promotes the interests of children.

You can see the impact of this dynamic playing out every day. Policymakers, school-district administrators, and school boards who are beholden to special interests have created a bureaucracy that is focused on the adults instead of the students. Go to any public-school-board meeting in the country and you’ll rarely hear the words “children,” “students,” or “kids” uttered.

Instead, the focus remains on what jobs, contracts, and departments are getting which cuts, additions, or changes. The rationale for the decisions mostly rests on which grown-ups will be affected, instead of what will benefit or harm children.

The teachers’ unions get the blame for much of this. Elected officials, parents, and administrators implore them to “embrace change” and “accept reform.” But I don’t think the unions can or should change. The purpose of the teachers’ union is to protect the privileges, priorities, and pay of their members. And they’re doing a great job of that.

What that means is that the reform community has to exert influence as well. That’s why I’ve decided to start StudentsFirst, a national movement to transform public education in our country. We need a new voice to change the balance of power in public education. Our mission is to defend and promote the interests of children so that America has the best education system
in the world.

I think change is in the air. For one, we, as society, don't have the money to keep throwing at public education. In Minnesota, K-12 education constitutes roughly 40% of our state budget. When facing a $6 billion deficit, changes will be demanded in public education. I also think technological changes will force to public schools to change. The online revolution is and will continue to dramatically change how education is done.

I compare it to the state controlled economy of the Soviet Union. On the surface, it seemed to be doing fine. But inside the system was rotten and ready to collapse. Same is true with our current public education model. It's unsustainable as it currently stands.

Should religion be taught in public schools? Yes and it already is.

I came across an interesting opinion piece on the religion and education which asks the question, should religion be taught in the public schools.

Charles Haynes discusses the thesis of a book by Warren Nord entitled, "Does God Make a Difference." In the book, Nord says "American education proceeds on the assumptiion that God is either dead or irrelevant." Strong language yet I would say accurate.

Haynes goes on to describe Nord's argument:

Conventional wisdom in public schools and universities, Nord claims, is that students “can learn everything they need to know about any subject (other than history and literature) without learning anything about religion.” Students are uncritically taught to make sense of the world in
“exclusively secular categories.” And that makes public education “superficial, illiberal, and unconstitutional.”

Haynes asks:

Is Nord right? On the charges of “superficial and illiberal,” I would agree. Ignoring the role of religion in history and society — and, more deeply, ignoring religious ways of understanding the world — deprives students of what used to be called a broad or liberal education.

Education, Nord rightly argues, should address the “big questions” about meaning and morality — questions that cannot be properly considered without giving religion a place at the curriculum table.

A religion-free education may be wrongheaded, but is it unconstitutional? Here Nord goes beyond where most legal scholars are willing to go by boldly asserting that public schools and universities violate the First Amendment’s establishment clause by failing to be religiously neutral.

According to Nord, teaching about religion in public schools is not only permissible under
the First Amendment (a point the U.S. Supreme Court has made many times); but it is also required by the Court’s past rulings about the constitutional necessity of government neutrality between religion and non-religion. There is nothing “neutral,” he argues, about teaching all subjects through a secular lens without exposing students to religious alternatives.

I don't know that I'd agree that the courts should mandate particular religions be taught in the schools but it would do well to require "truth in advertising" about what what is currently being taught in the schools under the guise of neutrality. The courts could make the public aware that the reigning orthodoxy in many of public schools is secularism which is a faith just as much as Christianity or Judaism.

Haynes concludes by restating a critical problem with our current education system.

As Nord reminds us: “An educational system that ignores the great existential questions — political, moral, spiritual, religious — is not worthy of respect, indeed, it shouldn’t count as educational at all.”

"Teachers' unions give only "lip service to caring for kids"

A union's primary purpose for existing is to promote job security and higher pay and benefits for its members. That is certainly true of the teachers' unions even though they give a lot of lip service to caring for kids. In fact, there is evidence which suggests to me that they could care less about kids.

A case in point was the recently defeated school voucher proposal passed by the Utah legislature. It passed the Utah legislature but was placed on the ballot in the recent November election. It would have given low income students a voucher worth between $500 to $3,000 dollars to attend a private school of their choice, much less than the $7,500 it costs Utah taxpayers to educate a public school child. George Will reported prior to the vote that millions of dollars was being spent by teachers' unions across the country to defeat the Utah referendum. He noted reports that the NEA approved expenditures of up to $3 million to defeat the proposal and state teachers' unions in Maine, Colorado, Arizona and Wyoming were also contributing to the campaign to defeat the new law.

While I prefer the use of tax credits and tax incentives for private scholarship funds rather than vouchers, the unions certainly didn't argue that they preferred other ways of empowering parents. Their fear is if low income parents have a choice they will leave their public schools. That's reminiscent of the Berlin Wall mentality. The wall was built to keep people from leaving the communist regime not keep people out. In the same way, the unions oppose anything which threatens their monopoly of power over public education. The result is the education of kids, the primary goal of public education, is lost in their drive for power and money.

I believe truth and right ultimately prevail in life though it often times takes much longer than I would prefer. I think the same will be true with meeting the education needs of parents and kids rather than the power and money desires of the teachers' unions.

Our schools are creating a generation of dysfunctional religiophobes

Last holiday season my wife and I shared a pair of recordings with our children; circa 1972 when we were members of the Highland Park Sr. High Choir. Although we had a great time reminiscing and comparing intergenerational musical abilities, we were struck with a sadness that went beyond the wistful melancholia of days gone by. We realized that these albums were a testament to an era when tolerance could be accomplished by sharing expressions of faith via the medium of music — all in a public school.

One album was a traditional collection of works performed by the high school choir. However, it contained secular and religious works sung in Latin, English, and Hebrew. The tracks flowed innocently from "Chichester Psalms" sung in Hebrew, to "Mass in G" sung in Latin. The second was a Hebrew Service containing the original works of a Highland graduate and sung by our choir. The composer, a Jewish woman, recorded the album as “a new experience in worship that emphasizes through song the importance of community involvement in worship. It enables those who are willing to join together as a community in contemporary songs of prayer.” (Emphasis in the original.)

As we listened to the scratchy recordings, we realized the lasting effect of these experiences. I recall being taught to speak Hebrew (some of which I still remember) by one of my Jewish classmates and performing the service in Temple on a Friday evening. Later, these public school experiences enabled me to be open to attending a Seder. I have heard the Shofar and tasted bitter herbs. As an Evangelical Christian, I have had numerous opportunities to share these experiences with my children and members of my congregation. I once played a track called “Sh’ Ma” (sung in Hebrew) to an Evangelical pastor and watched him weep. “Hear O Israel, the Lord thy God is One.”

On the back of the album is a picture of our choir in the recording studio. As I looked at our faces I saw black and white; man and women. But the photo, not unlike our contemporary classrooms, could only reflect race and gender. It failed to convey the rich diversity of our thought life and core beliefs. Only when I listened to the religious music was I able to realize the complexity of Christian, Jew, and atheist – all singing in an atmosphere of tolerance. It’s shameful to admit that this experience would be questionable in today’s hyper-sensitive environment.

We are living in denial. It’s doubtful we can learn to embrace diversity when we prohibit any exposure to our most fundamental differences. In fact, banning all reference to our religious heritage creates even greater ignorance and fear. Our schools are creating a generation of dysfunctional “religiophobes.” What ever happened to “critical thinking”?
There is a vast difference between learning about faith and teaching faith. Learning about the diversity of faith in the public square is no more an endorsement of religion than learning about Hitler’s “Final Solution” is an endorsement of the Holocaust. It is a dubious argument that postulates that the reading of "Mien Kampf" is not a state endorsement, yet the reading of the book of "Exodus" or the "Gospel of St. John" is.

I encourage people of all faiths — who take their faith seriously — to reclaim the lost ground of the last 50 years of secularism. The purging of diverse expressions of faith in our public schools and institutions gags our attempts to reach tolerance, and forces us to communicate with photographs depicting little more than sex, gender, and race.

Was there really a time when the arts, faith, and government coexisted in a peaceful environment? Were we too ignorant to know we were doing something “unconstitutional” — or were we simply too tolerant to care?