"The most significant threat to our national security is our debt," Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, August 27, 2010


Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Dump the NEA and the AFT

When will one politician, with a greater concern for his/her country and our children, take a position that simply says – get rid of teacher unions.  Open up competition in education – at all levels.

America is a representative democracy – the people don’t get to vote on things like – dumping the NEA and the AFT.
Instead we elect representatives and senators and even a president and tell them to do what is best for all of us.  They don’t do it.  They buy votes and they cater to special interests and they do everything to stay in office even if it means – the heck with the people; the heck with our children.
The National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) claim to care about student performance.  But the evidence suggest strongly that they exist for two other more significant priorities:
·         The financial well being of their union organizers and officers and employees, and
·         The financial well being and work load of their membership
Why would any educational organization emphasize these priorities above and beyond the progress of the children they are entrusted to educate?  Well we can’t answer that simple question.
The performance of the leadership and membership of NEA and AFT is deplorable.  It just plain stinks.
Here are the recent results of what our kids are scoring in major areas of education (think the three R’s – reading, writing and arithmetic)
·         Shanghai China scored tops in mathematics.  The others in the top ten were:  Singapore, Hong Kong-China, Chinese Taipei, Korea, Macao-China, Japan, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and the Netherlands

·         Reading – here are the top five:  Shanghai-China, Hong Kong-China, Singapore, Japan and Korea

·         Science – the top five are:  Shanghai-China, Hong Kong-China, Singapore, Japan and Finland

·         The US of A?  We are not even going to present the results – they are so unsatisfactory as to not warrant display on these pages.  American performance is disgusting.  We are not in the top 20 in any category.  You can see for yourself, and draw your own conclusions by clicking on:  http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-results-overview.pdf 

The Obama administration has pathetic results on most key financial and economic metrics but nowhere do they deserve the shame and disgust of any caring citizen than in the area of education results.  Why would anyone vote for any representative/senator/president who supports the NEA and the AFT unless they are a member of the AFT or the NEA?  Why would the membership, teachers who truly care,  even support these horrible unions?  Unless they just don’t care?
The NEA and AFT must go – they must be dissolved – shut down – eliminated – outlawed.  They are destroying America; they are not educating our kids;  they are the reason we are slipping behind disciplined and advanced education programs elsewhere.  Education has to compete to improve – parents need to direct education funds to the schools of their choosing – the obstacles to these fundamentals need to be eliminated.

1 comment:

Pat Flynn said...

It all began when prayer was prohibited from public schools. As secularization spread,performance by students plummeted, to the point that our children have no idea what their culture was founded upon, what our values as Americans used to be, and are so pathetic at basic language and math skills it is shameful.
The left, besides murdering over 50,000,000 of our children in the womb, has zombied the survivors and left the country in peril.
Private schools and home education offer some hope, but, until school choice is as available as abortion, we as a people are doomed.