“What about the children?” they cried as tens of thousands filled the Wisconsin Capitol Square this spring.

The huge rallies filled with school-skipping teachers have come and gone and now a just-released MacIver Institute analysis of newly negotiated school contracts from this year shows that the leverage provided by Wisconsin Act 10 and the the new law’s ultimate passage has indeed given school districts the ability to find significant savings without firing teachers and without impacting class sizes or course offerings.

Requiring teachers to make modest contributions to health and pension benefits can cut the cost of education by $500 per student in Wisconsin.

Our analysis shows that the recent changes to state law has empowered school districts to secure better deals for their taxpayers. Without impacting class size or course offerings, and without massive layoffs, school districts have already saved $155 million here. thanks to modest concessions from the labor force.

A preliminary estimate based on an analysis of local reports conducted by the MacIver Institute suggests that, if adopted uniformly by every district in Wisconsin, local schools would stand to save $434,232,693.66 through new staff contracts that required the additional contributions to health and retirement benefits.

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Thursday:

Wow, you can really feel the energy here in Minneapolis at Netroots Nation 2011 – the vibe is so much better than at Starbucks where that fascist Mr. Rodriguez keeps oppressing me by insisting that I get to work on time!  Because of the capitalist system under whose yoke we all groan, I had to get the money to come from my parents, which is only fair since they have money and because of George Bush I don’t.  I heard Dad joking about how he was “delighted to have that 30-year old bum out of my basement for a weekend.”  Mom gave me a ride to the airport in the Explorer and on the 747 I had time to write up a Daily Kos post about the need to ration carbon credits to control global warming – I mean “climate change.”

I went to check into my hotel room and the guy at the front desk complimented me on my clothes.  “Nice Che tee,” he said.  “Funny coincidence – my family is from Cuba.  So, will you be wearing your Mao t-shirt tomorrow?”  How did he know?  Anyway, I was a little unhappy with my room – it was on the top floor between the elevators and a guy who turned out to be the drummer for Anthrax.  He sure had a lot of loud parties.

Off to the convention center for to help build a socialist future – oh wait, I’m not supposed to say “socialist.”  Andrew Breitbert’s operatives are in the area and according to Markos, “We’re still keeping our real goal on the down low until after the reelection.”   Shhh – mum’s the word, fellow “progressives!”

By the way, I thought I saw Markos himself, but it turned out to be a guy dressed as an elf from the Dungeons & Dragons convention down the street.  My mistake!

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No, this is not a Weinergate post.

Public school teachers in Milwaukee want taxpayers to pay for their erections.

The latest:

In March, it was announced with much fanfare that the Milwaukee teachers’ union was dropping it’s controversial Viagra lawsuit against MPS.

However, the MacIver News Service has learned that the effort to force MPS to provide coverage for erectile dysfunction treatments has arisen again, albeit in a different venue.

The Milwaukee Teachers Education Association’s (MTEA) decision earlier this year came just eight months after filing their August of 2010 suit in Milwaukee County Circuit Court wherein they argued  that the board’s policy of excluding erectile dysfunction drugs from their health plan coverage was discriminatory against men.

In December of last year MPS employee Henry Sampson filed a complaint with the Equal Rights Division of the State of Wisconsin’s Department of Workforce Development, arguing that excluding coverage for the gender-specific diagnosis of erectile dysfunction violated the Wisconsin Fair Employment Act (WFEA). At this time it is unknown whether union officials were aware of Sampson’s pending complaint with the State when they dropped their lawsuit in Milwaukee County Circuit Court.

On May 4th, the Equal Rights Division found that there was probable cause to believe the Milwaukee Board of School Directors violated the WFEA and discriminated against Sampson on the basis of his sex.

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Consider the following statement:

“The National Education Association’s decision on Friday to begin the formal process of endorsing President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign may be the most vivid demonstration to date of the political benefits of the stimulus package passed by the president.”

That statement came from a reporter at the very left-leaning Huffington Post. Even Arianna Huffington’s people recognize the stimulus package, which provided billions to America’s public schools, which in turn provided millions in dues to the national teachers unions, as “simple politics.”

So we have to ask ourselves: What did we get for the money?  Tens of thousands of teachers remain employed, the unions reaped tens of millions in dues, but what was the return on the investment for taxpayers and students.

The answer is very little. As we’ve seen over and over again, government education dollars are for the teachers and their unions, not the kids who are supposed to be learning.

In Feb. 2009, Vice President Biden back told Delaware union leaders they had all the tools – ie. more money – necessary to fix the system.  Using gun imagery before it was uncool, Biden told his audience:

“We’ve been given all the ammunition.  If we shoot and miss, if we squander the opportunity, tell me how long you think it’s going to take for another American president to go and ask for more dollars to correct the education system.”

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On Tuesday, across the state of Pennsylvania, unions and other Left-wing organizations will be boarding buses and heading to the state capitol in Harrisburg to engage in a mass rally to fight for economic and social justice and against budget cuts.  The rally, is being organized by the Coalition for Labor Engagement and Accountable Revenues (CLEAR) which is comprised of government unions, such as AFSCME, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), PSEA (part of the NEA), SEIU, as well as the AFL-CIO, IAFF, UFCW and others.

The economic agenda of the rally organizing group CLEAR consists of raising taxes on consumers and retailers,  internet shoppers and vendors, corporations and, of course, the wealthy. CLEAR is clear, they do not want any cuts in spending.

Also in attendance will be a diverse group of other organizations, such as:

• Just Harvest, a community-organizing group that has been “sowing the seeds of economic justice since 1986″
• Pittsburghers for Public Transit
• Disability Rights Network of Pennsylvania

In addition, there will be elementary schoolchildren bused in from all over the state.
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The militant “community organizers” who run the California Teachers Association union have been forced to pull back on some elements of their controversial plan for a Wisconsin-type takeover of the state capitol after it was exposed here on BigGovernment.com.

The Sacramento Bee reports that once the news media and the public got to see just how extreme the union’s plans are, leadership decided to pull back on some of the more “creative” (read: kooky) elements of the plan set to be implemented the week of May 9 – 13.

“Some of the union’s ideas went beyond the usual letter-writing and rallying,” the Bee reported this morning, but, “By Wednesday, the more creative ideas on the list had been removed.”

The union’s plans to provoke a major confrontation in the state capitol to force the legislature to raise taxes were exposed in this 10-page plan, which contains instructions for using public school facilities and children to which the union has direct access in the campaign culminating in a takeover of the capitol in Sacramento.

While union officials have not backed down on their plans to take over the building and yank thousands of teachers out of classrooms and put them into protests, they are awkwardly running away from plans to use the kids.

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Documents  call for takeover of Capitol, using kids and taxpayer-funded public classrooms for protest activities, controversial “secondary boycott” tactics

The California Teachers Association is preparing for Wisconsin-type activities aimed at forcing the legislature to pass tax increases on Californians in a series of actions planned for next month culminating in a takeover of the State Capitol.

Many of the steps outlined in CTA plans include the use of students, taxpayer-funded public school facilities to which the union has access, and highly controversial “secondary boycott” tactics that involve targeting businesses in the districts of legislators who refuse to accede to union demands.

The union is conducting its actions in support of taxes under the guise of a “State of Emergency.”

Our team believes the true “state of emergency” is in public education’s crushing bureaucracy, lack of choices and options offered to parents, and bizarre union-supported work rules that produce phenomena like New York City’s infamous “Rubber Room” where the city’s worst teachers go because they can’t be fired.

Union officials were clearly caught off guard today when our team circulated links to the union’s plans, which were posted on a non-descript website online.

The CTA’s plans can be found here:

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Co-authored with Bill Zettler

In the March 28, 2011 issue of the Weekly Standard, Eli Lehrer, Vice-president of the Heartland Institute, a premier think-tank based in Illinois, wrote an article entitled “Pensions Aren’t the Problem.” Lehrer puts forth the argument that defined-benefit state pensions, not only were not in trouble, but were a good way for states to recruit talent at little expense.

While Heartland does some fine work, in this case, we have to disagree with their analysis.  All too often of late the positions of NASRA (National Association of State Retirement Administrators), an organization of self-interest and self-righteousness not unlike their sister organization the NEA (National Education Association), have not received the critical examination they are due. After all, if all state employees were on Social Security and 401K programs there would be no need for state retirement administrators and their staff of thousands.

Let’s go through Mr. Lehrer’s major claims one by one:

CLAIM: “…pension benefits represent a reasonably small share of overall state spending (3.4 percent in Illinois).”

FACT: The way you come up with what appears to be a minuscule percentage of state spending is as follows: (more…)

If one bad apple spoils the bushel, what happens when the whole bushel is rotten?

In a sleepy little suburb outside of Portland, Oregon, there is a monster lurking in the classroom, teaching schoolchildren their three Rs—Reading, Radicalism & Reprisal. The monster is known as the McMinnville Education Association [MEA].

McMinnville School District is in negotiations with the MEA (hereafter to be known as MEAn) and has been since last year (with the occasional help of a mediator), with the parties having been millions apart.  However, according to local press reports, with a state school budget crisis, while some progress has been made, so far an agreement has been elusive.

Nevertheless, as negotiations have dragged on over months, the MEAn has gotten…well…MEAner.

On Valentine’s Day, prior to the McMinnville School Board meeting, the McMinnville Area of Commerce’s Governmental Affairs Committee had sent out a statement (via e-mail) to hundreds of local businesses and residents. That evening, at the school board meeting, Leslie “LV” VanBlaricom (a member of the chamber’s board of directors) read the statement (text below the fold). Apparently, her reading of the letter did not sit well with MEAn, who then allegedly had her fired from her job: (more…)

One of the hurdles to improving our nation’s public education system is that it is generally designed for the benefit of adults in the system, i.e. unionized teachers and administrators, rather the children. Negotiations between school boards and teachers’ unions focus on pay, benefits and specific work rules, rather than deciding the best or most innovative ways to educate the next generation.

But, don’t take our word for it; listen to a union official admitting as much. In a new ad from the Economic Freedom Alliance, former Counsel to the National Education Association rallies a union audience describing the secret to the union’s success: Power

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After seeing the tactics of the left-wing and their Siamese twin union leaders in Wisconsin on full display over the prospect of still getting a better retirement deal than we taxpayers do, I call for a National Strike Day for every single non-public sector union member. They seem to think we can’t live without them, and they refuse to work without getting more of our money, so let’s deny them our labor for a day or two and see who can’t really live without whom. (NOTE: Every negative reference here to public sector unions does not include police, firefighters and emergency personnel who do some of the most important jobs around, jobs most of us couldn’t do.)

Just think of it, every shop, restaurant, office, factory, gas station, EVERYTHING closed for a day or more. If the government won’t listen to us, won’t instill a minimum amount of fiscal sanity, let’s shut it down.

Government acts as though they own us and the fruits of our labor, more than that, they’ve spending the wealth of generations yet to be born in a never ending quest to…well, who knows? It’s almost as though they’re trying to plug a black hole with money. Well, a black hole can’t be plugged, it will just consume mass for eternity, much like the government, which, urged on by public sector parasites, is incapable of getting enough of our money, so let’s deny it to them.

This is, of course, impossible to make happen. Not only is it impractical, but those of us without the protection of tenure face real world consequences for our actions and would be fired for refusing to work, even for a day, without a valid excuse. We can’t all have doctors standing by to write us “get out of violating your contract free” notes. Non-liberals simply don’t act that way.

But think of the concept.

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Former American Federation of Teachers President Albert Shanker made teachers’ unions what they are today.  He was hard-nosed defender of teachers’ rights, but he also came clean about public school performance.

In the making of “Kids Aren’t Cars,” I unearthed a 25-year old PBS interview with Shanker. His indictment of the public education system was stunning.

“You could do things that are absolutely wrong, you can have huge dropout rates, you can have kids who are leaving without knowing how to read, write, count or anything else and what do you do next year?  Do the same as you did this year and the following year and the following year…”

And when Shanker – again, 25 years ago – rattled off achievement statistics, the host challenged him:

Shanker: When it comes to the highest levels of reading, writing, mathematics or science – that just means being able to read editorials in the New York Times…or write an essay of a few pages…or do a mathematical equation, not calculus…the number of kids who are about to graduate who are able to function at that level, depending on whether you’re talking about reading, writing, math science – 3 percent, 4 percent…

Host: Oh, come on!

Shanker: No! 5 percent. That’s it.

Does anyone honestly believe our education system – which has had billions of dollars more each year dumped into – is better now than it was in 1986?

Anyone??

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American Federation of Teachers’ President Randi Weingarten has been doing her best to make sure Big Labor has a say in education reform.  She wants to drive the train.  The National Education Association, on the other hand, is taking the tact of putting dynamite under the tracks.

While Weingarten says all the right things and uses all the necessary poll-tested phrases, she really wants to maintain the status quo.  No tenure reform.  No need to judge teachers by any measure other than seniority.

But in an interview with Newsweek, she made this curious statement, in response to Bill Gates saying, “We need to measure what they do, and then have incentives for the other teachers to learn those things:”

“Football teams do this all the time,” Weingarten responded. “They look at the tape after every game. Sometimes they do it during the game. They’re constantly deconstructing what is working and what isn’t working. And they’re jettisoning what isn’t working and building up on what is working, and doing it in a team-like approach.”

That’s correct – they do. It’s too bad that public education does not operate more like the NFL.

Here’s an idea. Let’s have the NEA and AFT become the owners of a new NFL franchise. For a lack of a better name, we’ll call the new team the Thugs.

Players on the Thugs’ roster would receive tenure after two years, like they do in New York City Public Schools.

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Americans are beginning to understand that the government-run assembly-line education system is not working.  As I point out in the upcoming “Kids Aren’t Cars” film series, thousands, of not millions of kids are being failed by a system that is geared more towards satisfying adults than educating children.

How else can a recent Detroit Public Schools graduate be unable to read her own diploma? How else can tenure – the job security law for unfit teachers – be explained?  How else can budget busting pension systems be explained?

When collective bargaining was brought into American schools in the 1960s, it was a revenue stream and power base for Big Labor.  Suddenly, union bosses became more interested in building political muscle than educating children.

At that point the battle between unions and school boards became more focusing on salary, benefits,  pensions and working conditions for adults, and less about students.

Kids are only pawns in the self-serving union game.

As we point out in “Kids Aren’t Cars,” this has poisoned the education environment.  We witness ugly fights in communities during union contract negotiations.  Unions lead recall campaigns against school board members who don’t vote the union way. Teachers throw up their hands because the union will take their money by hook or by crook, while showing no interest in their input.

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The folks who brought us the “Defend Public Education” actions last March in California, Wisconsin, New York and Michigan are planning a new round this year and will be drawing on the “energy” created by the violent, destructive riots in Europe.

The Huffington Post reported last year about college students shutting down major freeways in California.  In Wisconsin, protesters threw “punches and ice chunks” at police after the students were refused entry into an administration building in Madison.

Now, plans are being made for a month of similar actions this year, kicking off March 2^nd.

Some activists have complained that unions are not currently leading the charge because they’ve become too “corporatist.”  But they believe once they make their move, unions will move to “co-opt” the movement.

“Student strikes” will occur in March to fight budget cuts and increased fees for students.  What’s happening in Europe is about to be emulated in America, friends.

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The disturbing protests that are spreading across Europe are setting the table for similar showdowns across America in the coming months and years.  Public employee unions and their socialist allies will take to the streets of Washington, D.C. and state capitals as the federal and state governments finally deal with out of control spending.

It’s largely because, for the longest time, our elected leaders were more interested in courting unions for money and votes than keeping government spending in check.

And some are still putting the problem off – and actually making it worse – by continuing to negotiate multi-year contracts with unions with no real way to pay for them. That’s particularly true in our nation’s public schools.

In Anderson, Indiana, the union-controlled school board recently tried to pull a fast one and actully negotiated an unheard-of 10-year contract with the teachers union.  Community outrage led to court action and the length of the contract was cut to 5 years – still way too long in this economic climate.

More recently, news surfaced that the state could be taking over that district because it could be insolvent within two years.  But who cares?  The union now has a signed contract that carries the weight of law.  The children may not be learning, but at least the adults know somebody has to come up with their pay and benefits!

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There’s a weird thing happening in public education.  Hardcore unions are attempting to rebrand themselves as “professional organizations.”  In fact, the American Federation of Teachers bills itself as “A union of professionals.”

Both the AFT and the larger National Education Association attempt to portray themselves as associations yet negotiate collective bargaining agreements and oftentimes act like their brethren in the industrial unions – hardly white-collar professionals.

So with the increasing call for more professionalism in the teaching ranks – and less of a collectivist mindset – conflict arises.

Consider these two recent statements by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis.

Conventional wisdom would tell us that Lewis would be demanding that teachers be treated like professionals.  Think again.

It’s clear that Gov. Christie supports the professionalism of teachers more than the teachers’ elected leader does.  That doesn’t speak well for those wishing to increase the professionalism of the career.

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As “Waiting for ‘Superman’” so eloquently points out, the industrial assembly-line model of America’s public schools, created decades ago, isn’t working.  In fact, it’s setting us further and further behind our global competitors.

Today, it is essential that our children graduate high school and college prepared for the fierce competition they will face in the global marketplace.  Their economic survival will be determined by their ability to compete with countries like China, India, and other emerging economies.

This requires that our public schools be innovative and effective.  Instead, our schools are using a failed, one-size-fits-all approach to education that may actually end up hurting our children.

It’s interesting that our slide began in the 1970s.  Just ten years earlier, collective bargaining, the crowning glory of labor unions, took root in our public schools. Coincidence?

Collective bargaining agreements, which carry the weight of law, enshrine such policies as seniority (last hired, first fired), tenure (lifetime job protection in as little as two years) and due process (an extra-legal process outside the court system).  Oh, and automatic yearly raises– not for performance, but simply for logging another year in the system.  In other words, we give teachers raises simply for not dying over the summer.

This is a beautiful system – if you’re a public school employee.  But if you’re a student in the public school system, well, it’s like being drafted by the Detroit Lions.

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From the New Jersey Star-Ledger:

It’s like a jungle, some students say. Barringer High School in Newark is out of control.

Inside the three-story building of about 1,300 students, rats and roaches roam the hallways. So do random trespassers, students complain: about 29 different doors lead inside the school, which anyone can enter. At least a dozen different gangs recruit students. Last month, authorities said a 17-year-old boy sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl inside a classroom after school.

Students say Barringer is not only dangerous, it’s disorganized. Several weeks into the school year, almost none of them had correct class schedules.

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