Why Johnny's teacher can't read

YOU NEED TO KNOW the "education" industry is a socialist racket. A fraud. A waste. A charade. And every time teachers' union leaders open their mouths, they are lying.

THE CURRENT FABLE being promoted is that California schools are underfunded and overcrowded. Asinine news articles like these portray California's Prop 13 as responsible for our current fiscal dilemma. Yet historical data show that tax revenues under Prop 13 have FAR OUTPACED INFLATION. Clearly, it is SPENDING that is out of control.

California schools are awash in money. Over 50 BILLION dollars are spent "educating" Californians (and untold millions of non-Americans) each year. FIFTY-SIX PERCENT OF CALIFORNIA STATE EXPENDITURES now go to unionized teachers, cafeteria workers, custodians, bus drivers, groundskeepers, and secretaries, as well as administrators and hired "consultants" (who frequently get paid thousands of dollars per day!). Are all these "essential" services? No. Virtually anybody could do these jobs with little (or no) training.

MOST of the money spent on California's "education" doesn't even make it into the classroom. (Only about a third goes to teachers or textbooks.)

In the midst of our economic "crisis", my district purportedly managed to pay a retired administrator $400,000 last year to show veteran teachers (who are already "certificated" and supposedly "well trained") how to write their own lesson plans!

Imagine that!

Now imagine that kind of "fraud" replicated in thousands of school districts across this country.

Our state is going bankrupt paying union (above-market) salaries to cafeteria workers serving mostly taxpayer-subsidized breakfasts, lunches and (sometimes) dinners to millions of California children dropped off by parents often driving Navigators and Escalades. What's up with that?! Why can't they bring their own lunches to school? Or eat at home?

Because you're willing to pay for it.

Our state is going bankrupt paying above-market salaries to grass cutters, floor sweepers, bus drivers and secretaries.

These salaries are almost always non-competitive and virtually non-negotiable. (And they usually go up every year, NEVER down.) The unions hold school districts and taxpayers hostage, threatening to shut down the whole process so that some (often non-English-speaking, hardly legal) union-dues-paying worker can keep a job that could be filled at significantly lower cost by hiring Americans at entry-level positions (perhaps recent high school graduates, for starters?).

Why do these low-skilled jobs have to be "career" jobs anyway? I swept floors and cleaned toilets...when I was 16! Should people still be doing that when they are 25? Or 50? Must we pay maximum-skill wages for minimum-skill labor?

TENS OF BILLIONS MORE go to housing, feeding, clothing, supervising, medicating, and entertaining millions of California youths and their families in the name of "education".

What do we get for our "education" dollars?

It appears, mostly mis-education. In many urban school districts, half the students don't even graduate. Many who do, sadly, remain functionally illiterate. Grade inflation, social promotion and academic fraud are not just common. Too often, they're the rule.

Our tax dollars are being thrown down a rat hole. So why are we still paying?

I won't be making friends by telling you that teachers are among the dumbest people I know -- my circle of teaching friends excluded (of course!). The data prove it. College-bound students majoring in education consistently rank in the bottom third (compared to other majors) on their SATs. Every prospective California teacher has to pass a basic academic proficiency test called CBEST. The CBEST is an 8th-grade math and 10th-grade reading/writing test. According to the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, the pass rates among college graduates who take this test are 80% for whites, 59% for Asian Americans, 49% for Latinos, and 35% for Blacks. To put it another way, one in three COLLEGE GRADUATES who try to become teachers in California CAN'T FUNCTION AT THE HIGH SCHOOL SOPHOMORE LEVEL.

Is it any wonder we're in trouble?

In a world where every (other) aspect of society is made cheaper and smarter and faster by technology, public education just gets dumber, more dangerous, moribund and costly. It remains almost immune to innovation or improvement.

Why? Because public school isn't about teaching students. It's about employing teachers. The sooner you understand that, the sooner you'll understand EVERYTHING about "public" education.

Private schools, on the other hand -- and even "unlicensed" home schools -- routinely outperform public schools in virtually every category...except drug use, delinquency, teenage pregnancy, suicide, failures and drop-out rates.

Will the current economic melt-down break the strangle-hold socialist unions have upon California's public education system? I don't know.

But one can always hope!