The Worst Labor Union Of Them All

Jaime Escalante died last week at the age of 79. He was not memorialized on network television, and very few Americans know who he was or what he accomplished. But in the 1980's, in the wasteland known as the Los Angeles School District, he broke through the gnawing inertia of mediocrity to teach kids at Garfield High School how to do math. At its peak, more students passed Advanced Placement calculus at Garfield than those at Beverly Hills High School. By the end of the decade, Escalante reached both his pinnacle and his nadir. In 1988, he was immortalized in the film "Stand And Deliver" for which Edward James Olmos received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. But in 1990, Escalante was stripped of his chairmanship of the math department he'd so painstakingly--and successfully--built over the previous decade. Disgusted and discouraged, he left Garfield in 1991 and eventually returned to his native Bolivia.

What happened? How could a wildly successful and impassioned teacher become so disheartened that he would not only leave his school, but the country where his success had been achieved? In a word, Escalante could not overcome the union. Escalante's success was making other teachers look bad. He was coming into work early, leaving late, admitting far more students into his classroom than the union's 35-student limit would allow. In the private sector, such performance would be recognized and rewarded. In the private sector, a teacher like Escalante would be given rapid promotion, increasing responsibility to spread and duplicate his success, and rising levels of compensation to encourage him to continue. But not as a teacher in the public schools. Not with the disapproving union looking over his shoulder.

The National Education Association--otherwise known as the public teachers' union--is a scourge on our public schools, our children, and our country. It's incredibly powerful, with over 3 million members--one of the largest and best-funded unions in America. But the NEA is a cesspool for mediocrity, and it manifests that mediocrity in several ways:

• If you're a good teacher, you can't get promoted faster than a bad teacher. The NEA would balk at the notion that there is such a thing as 'bad teachers'. But we've all been there: we all know a bad teacher when we see one--first as students, later as parents. Some bad teachers were once good teachers with high hopes and passion who got worn down by the grinding mediocrity of the system. Other bad teachers were bad teachers from the beginning. What constitutes a bad teacher? Someone who shows up because they have to, not because they're excited about teaching and inspiring young minds. Someone who does nothing but teach out of the textbook, who is not interested in providing anecdotes or application or enlightenment that can help students connect what they're learning to how they can use that knowledge in the real world. Someone who teaches only to squire away the rich perks and retirement benefits the union has negotiated, but cares little for their students. And then there are the good teachers. And like the bad teachers, we all know who they are. They're the ones who make learning exciting. They're the ones who, like Escalante, show up early and will stay late to help a student who has questions or is struggling. They're the ones who recent alumni come back to see--the students who are now in college or are recent graduates, and who come back to thank the great teachers for giving them the foundation for the rest of their education. And thanks to the NEA, those great teachers get paid on the same scale--based solely on seniority and not merit--as the bad teachers. There's no distinction, other than NEA-sponsored award recognition, which often is given to teachers who are most active in the union, not necessarily in improving young minds.

• Bad teachers, if they have achieved tenure, can't get fired. Imagine that you're a small business owner and you have an employee who sits at his desk on his computer instead of doing the work he's been assigned to do. Imagine that you talk to this employee and, in his annual review, you admonish him to stop being lazy and to put his energy into his job. Imagine that you write the employee up for unsatisfactory performance. And imagine that, if he does nothing to improve, there's not a darn thing you can do about it. That's the beauty of the tenure system in most of our public school systems. The NEA has created this system, ostensibly, to "protect" teachers from unhappy parents who might want them fired because of a perceived slight to their children. But the net effect of tenure is, once again, simply to perpetuate mediocrity. Unless you're convicted of a felony, you can't get fired.

• The NEA hates competition. It's no secret that our public school system is failing. Of course, there are exceptions--certain school districts that still fulfill their mission to educate our young people and send them out prepared to negotiate the challenges of college and higher learning. But those are the exceptions. For the most part, public schools are failing because of the NEA, not in spite of it. As a result, more and more parents embrace alternatives--private schools, home schooling, and other options where they can be found. But there are drawbacks: private schools aren't cheap, and home schooling requires that a parent not only stay home, but have the skills and patience and cooperation of their children to make it work. There is another alternative which is despised by the NEA: school vouchers. Essentially, the voucher system allows  parents to take the tax money they've paid into the public school system and apply it toward tuition in a competing private school. The NEA--and the school districts--hate this idea. They claim that voucher systems rob them of needed funds for their own programs, facility maintenance, teacher salaries, and the like. And they're right. But here's the rub: if those schools were doing the kind of job they should be doing, no parent would have any desire to send their kids to private schools in the first place. The NEA, like all unions, hates competition, which really means they disdain the free enterprise system upon which our country was built. And voucher systems mean competition. They're great for kids and their parents. They're bad for the union.

• The NEA has a political agenda. Officially, the NEA purports to be non-partisan and therefore plays an insignificant role in national politics. But that's like saying the Yankees play a little baseball. Since 1976, the NEA has endorsed every Democratic presidential candidate from Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama. It has never endorsed either a Republican or a third-party candidate. And if the national organization is so decidedly left-leaning, can there be any doubt that its members predominantly lean in that direction as well? And if that's true, why is it important? The answer is patently obvious: those union members are the same people who are with our kids five days a week during the school year. To be fair, most of them stick to the knitting, preferring to teach rather than pontificate. But too many teachers choose to espouse their political views on issues of the day with their students. And since they have a bully pulpit--unchallenged by an opposing point of view--their views can have a powerful influence.

At the peak of his achievements at Garfield High School, Jaime Escalante received visits from other teachers, school administrators, and even then-President Reagan. He told them the same thing: "The key to my success with youngsters is a very simple and time-honored tradition: hard work for teacher and student alike". As long as the NEA has its way, teachers like Escalante will never be allowed to succeed--and our children are suffering because of it.