One talking point from teachers unions against school vouchers is that vouchers would take away money from public schools, while vouchers proponents contend that the unions are against them to protect their jobs.
So what happens when a philanthropist offers $200 million to Detroit to open up 15 charter schools that would compete with the public schools? Unfortunately, the
vouchers proponents are right that the teachers unions care more about protecting their turf than improving education (Via
Andrew Sullivan):
Thanks to the poisonous atmosphere created by a hostile Detroit public school establishment, philanthropist Robert Thompson has decided, with deep regret, that it is impossible for him to donate a $200 million gift to the city's schoolchildren.
The gift would have come in the form of 15 new charter high schools that would have guaranteed a graduation rate of 90 percent. The city's current graduation rate is 67.2 percent, according to the School Evaluation Services Web site created by the financial ratings firm Standard & Poor's.
After seeking legislative authorization for his schools for almost a year, Thompson threw in the towel after the Detroit teachers union threw what can only be described as a tantrum at the prospect of having to compete with charter schools.
On hearing that Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm had made a deal with the Republican Legislature on a comprehensive charter school expansion package that would have included the Thompson academies, Detroit teachers shut down the schools with a one-day walkout Sept. 25. Instead of teaching on that school day, 3,000 of these primary beneficiaries of the government school status quo held a mass demonstration at the state Capitol.
In response to this pressure from the public school establishment, both the governor and Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick walked away from the Thompson gift and from the broader charter deal, which also withdrew governance of the city's school district from the state-imposed reform board and returned it to a locally elected school board with strong mayoral input. (Emphasis added)
And here I thought the special interests control the
Republican Party. Silly me.
BONUS teachers unions bashing: this is from the
Atlantic Monthly four years ago. The writer asks both sides of the debate whether they would approve of a plan that would both introduce a pilot vouchers program in a city and significantly increase public school spending. Talking to Lamar Alexander, a vouchers proponent:
At length he said yes. Higher per-pupil spending wouldn't be his preferred solution, of course, but if that's what it took to get a bold voucher plan into failing cities, he'd live with it. "I would go high because the stakes are high," he explained, "and to expose the hypocrisy of the unions. If I told the National Education Association that we'd double it in the five largest cities, they wouldn't take it."
Was he right? I met with Bob Chase, the president of the National Education Association, in the union's headquarters in Washington. He made the familiar case for why vouchers are ineffectual today and would be a threatening distraction for public schools if tried more broadly. Only 25 percent of the adult population has children in the schools, he explained. We need to help the other 75 percent understand why financial support of schools is important. In this regard I sketched the deal: a handful of cities, higher spending, but only through vouchers. My tape recorder captured the staccato response.
"Is there any circumstance under which that would be something that ... "
"No."
" ... you guys could live with? Why?"
"No."
"Double school spending ... "
"No."
" ... in inner cities?"
"No."
"Triple it ... "
"No."
" ... but give them a voucher?"
"'Cause, one, that's not going to happen. I'm not going to answer a hypothetical [question] when nothing like that is ever possible."
"But teachers use hypotheticals every day."
"Not in arguments like this we don't.... It's pure and simply not going to happen. I'm not even going to use the intellectual processes to see if in fact that could work or not work, because it's not going to happen. That's a fact."
