Schoolhouse Crock
On September 7, 2014, ABC television asked viewers to rank the best songs from the bygone “Schoolhouse Rock” series of educational vignettes. At first, this might sound like a fun diversion from daily realities. But for adults in the public policy arena, catchy lyrics like “I am only a bill… sitting here on Capitol Hill” remind us instead of gridlock in Congress, where a conservative House passes bills that an obstructionist Senate sits on, for fear of forcing tough votes by endangered Democratic incumbents. Meanwhile, the mention of “Conjunction Junction” is less likely to conjure up nostalgic memories of clever grammar lessons than the battle over diminished highway infrastructure funding. And the slick spiel by “Tax Man Max” is not nearly as likely to convince us of our “patriotic duty” (to pay ever higher taxes) as it might have been when it first aired some 40 years ago.
Typically, Labor Day has marked the twilight of summer and the dawn of a new academic year, and this year is no different. But television specials notwithstanding, taxpayers may be better served with an awareness of real-life back-to-school boondoggles. For instance, the newest enlistees to the ranks of schoolhouse security will be the food police, fully enforcing the USDA’s food program that took effect earlier this year, on July 1. But in a classic case of “eat as I say, not as I eat,” school teachers will be exempted from the dietary discipline. While junk food will be banned elsewhere on campuses, faculty lounges will remain the safe house for Frito-Lays and Funyuns.
But the food fights still rage, as First Lady Michelle Obama and her allies face off against the School Nutrition Association and many who wonder why the federal government is dictating standards for local school districts. Indeed, as POLITICO’s Helena Bottemiller Evich reports, Mrs. Obama’s vision involves a further crack-down on sodium content in 2017 and again in 2022, mandates that have industry concerned, given sodium’s importance to most foods, especially for its preservative qualities.
And while Cameron Diaz as the “Bad Teacher” may have been a funny concept for a fictitious comedy, incompetent educators are a frightening reality in too many school districts hamstrung by heavy-handed teachers’ unions and the contracts that they wrestle from weaker political adversaries. According to the Capital Research Center (CRC), less than two one-thousandths of one percent of California teachers are dismissed in any given year, while only 47 out of 100,000 New Jersey teachers (or .047 percent) were terminated during a ten-year period. The situation is comparably bleak in New York. In its July 2014 Labor Watch, CRC wrote the following:
In New York City, the New York Daily News reported that “just 88 out of some 80,000 city schoolteachers have lost their jobs for poor performance” over 2007-2010… Things are no better in New York as a whole. The Albany Times Union looked at what was going on statewide outside New York City and discovered some shocking data: Of 132,000 teachers, only 32 were fired for any reason between 2006 and 2011.
To echo the CRC, the vast majority of educators may excel in their profession, but does it stand to reason that more than 99 percent are the best of the best of the best? The question answers itself. This inequity persists because the costs associated with due process for the dismissal of teachers – protections negotiated by the powerful unions, and on top of those rights enjoyed by other, non-teacher laborers in the workforce – can be prohibitive. According to Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu, “It could take anywhere from two to almost ten years and cost $50,000 to $450,000 or more to bring these cases to conclusion under the Dismissal Statue, and that given these facts, grossly ineffective teachers are being left in the classroom.”
As if the “bad teacher syndrome” were not enough to make your blood boil, consider those who make it all the way to retirement. In the September 2, 2014 edition of The Washington Times, Kelly Riddell’s front-page report, “Illinois to go bust as its teachers get richer: Six-figure pensions outpace cash paid in,” points out that the Illinois Teachers Retirement Service (TRS) is about $54 billion underfunded, in a state with an annual budget of only $35 billion. According to Riddell, most Illinois teachers retire at the age of 59 or younger, collecting some $2 million in pension benefits after they leave the classroom. While proponents of the status quo remind us that these teachers do not participate in Social Security, the state’s mandatory 3 percent annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) far exceeds the Social Security COLA, which is capped at $456 per year. The TRS COLA, which is not capped, has a compounding effect that results in annual retirement income eclipsing the salary earned in most years of teaching.
But a “back-to-school special” would be incomplete without a mention about Common Core, the latest rock star in academia’s Rogues Gallery. In 2009, hoping to change the United States’ decline in performance on academic achievement tests vis-à-vis the rest of the world, the National Governors’ Association (NGA), in collaboration with the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), hired David Coleman to write curriculum standards in literacy and mathematics. The effort evolved into the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI), described by the NGA’s Center for Best Practices as, simply, “a state-led effort coordinated by the NGA Center and the [CCSSO],” deferring a more detailed description of the program to CCSSI’s website.
But the claim to being a “state-led effort” seems a little misleading, given Common Core’s national scope. Indeed, its national (vice state or local) nature is virtually implied in their description of “Common Standards:” “It should be clear to every student, parent, and teacher what the standards of success are in every school.” The problem with such an approach is that it presumes that those standards are the same for every school, regardless of geography or other circumstance. And “state-led” also seems to imply that the respective legislatures and/or state boards of education had vetted (before ratifying) the standards: to the contrary, these standards were developed, virtually internally, by the NGA and CCSSO, who jointly hold the copyright to the standards – and thus control any attempts by individual states to modify them.
Joy Pullmann, a research fellow at the Heartland Institute, penned the pamphlet, The Common Core: A Bad Choice for America. She points out that nationwide cost estimates vary from $3 billion from program supporters to $16 billion from critics. The latter includes the Pioneer Institute, which worked with AccountabilityWorks, to produce the white paper, “National Cost of Aligning States and Localities to the Common Core Standards.” Theodor Rebarber, CEO of AccountabilityWorks and lead contributor of the piece, described Common Core to me in the following way: “If you believe that nationalizing K-12 curriculum/testing is not the federal role, the whole thing is a waste.”
Others have weighed into the debate, as well. Lindsey Burke, an education fellow at the Heritage Foundation, has written extensively on Common Core. In a blog post dated July 4, 2013, she noted how costs were a key concern surrounding implementation of the curriculum. Quoting an item from the Tulsa World, Burke wrote that Janet Barresi, Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction, was withdrawing that state from the online testing consortium due, in part, to “higher anticipated costs.”
As a legislative counter to Common Core and similar efforts to nationalize school curriculum, U.S. Representative Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) introduced H.R. 2394, the Local Education Authority Returns Now (LEARN) Act, on June 17, 2013. In a letter sent to his colleagues, Rep. Garrett explained that the “LEARN Act would offer states the option to not only opt-out of [No Child Left Behind] but also to retain the dollars that would have been sent to Washington by reimbursing the taxpayers through a tax credit. By removing Federal mandates [such as Common Core] and keeping education dollars at home, the LEARN Act would empower the states to determine how to best meet the needs of their students, parents, and teachers.”
Incompetent teachers. Unsustainable pensions. Federal overreach involving food patrols and controversial curricula. When it comes to “Schoolhouse Crock,” this academic medley may win the contest hands down.
