Tag Archives: Teacher Union

Videos

George Will explains Obama’s dependency agenda at CPAC 2010

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From Muddling Towards Maturity: George Will’s speech at the 2010 CPAC convention. He is a moderate conservative.

Part 1:

Topics: the conflict of freedom and equality, equal outcomes vs equal opportunities, wealth redistribution vs liberty, dependency on government, public sector vs private sector, cash for clunkers, state capitalism, credit, crony capitalism, subsidizing failure, TARP, profit and loss, risk, incentives, freedom to succeed or fail, cradle to grave welfare, SCHIP, socialized medicing, single payer health care, social security, medicare, vouchers, school choice, public education, public option, choice and competition, inter-state commerce.

Part 2:

Topics: health savings accounts, private property, stewardship and ownership, drug companies, health insurance, dependency agenda, entitlement mentality, lawsuits, trial lawyer lobby, tort reform, personal responsibility, stimulus, public and private sector wages and benefits, union payoffs, income tax, moral hazard, death tax, envy, farm subsidies, bureaucracy, schools vs families.

Here’s the graph he mentions of who pays for taxespays for taxes. High earners pay for everything and the low earners pay for nothing. High earners don’t depend on government but low earners do depend on government.

Part 3:

Topics: crisis as a means to enlarge government, manufacturing a crisis using massive deficits, environmentalism as a manufactured crisis, how bigger government means small individuals with less freedom, structure of american government, the founding fathers, free will, personal responsibility, small government.

By the way, many people are saying that Glenn Beck’s speech was the best of the conference. And you can watch it here at Caffeinated Thoughts. The best part starts at 25:25 minutes in where he explains being broke and turning his life around, and talking about the freedom to fail and personal responsibility.

UPDATE: ECM sent me this article about George Will’s appearance on ABC’s This Week.

Video:

Excerpt:

TERRY MORAN, HOST: There’s a sense that something is broken in Washington summed up this week by Senator Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) who announced his retirement. I think it’s fair to say he’s leaving in disgust. Here’s what he had to say.

SENATOR EVAN BAYH, (D-IND.): I have had a growing conviction that Congress is not operating as it should. There is much too much partisanship, and not enough progress. Too much narrow ideology, and not enough practical problem solving. Even at a time of enormous national challenge, the people’s business is not getting done.

MORAN: Is he right, George?
GEORGE WILL: Well, it’s hard to take a lecture on bipartisanship from a man who voted against the confirmation of Chief Justice Roberts, the confirmation of Justice Alito, the confirmation of Attorney General Ashcroft, the confirmation of Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State. Far from being a rebel against his Party’s lockstep movement, Mr. Bayh voted for the Detroit bailout, for the stimulus, for the public option in the healthcare bill. I don’t know quite what his complaint is, but, Terry, with metronomic regularity, we go through these moments in Washington where we complain about the government being broken. These moments have one thing in common: The Left is having trouble enacting its agenda. No one when George W. Bush had trouble reforming Social Security said, “Oh, that’s terrible – the government’s broken.”

Commentary

What helps kids to learn? Parents, teacher unions or education bureaucrats?

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Christine Kim
Christine Kim

What’s the best way to help children do well in school?

On the one hand, social conservatives on the right favor the traditional family structure, complete with a father who lives in the home and is an involved parent. Parents have an incentive to help children do well in school because they are biologically linked to the children and they are paying all the bills at home. They are making sacrifices and they want to see some results.

On the other other hand, social liberals on the left favor raising taxes on working families, and funneling the proceeds to unionized public school teachers. Do teachers get paid more for improving the quality of education for students? Or do they get paid more for contributing to Democrats who will increase their salaries? Do they have an incentive to make children learn?

Parents vs teacher unions: Who does the best job?

Consider this research paper from Christine C. Kim of the Heritage Foundation, my favorite think tank.

Excerpt:

American taxpayers invest heavily in education. Last year, spending on public K–12 education totaled $553 billion, about 4 percent of gross domestic prod­uct (GDP) in 2006. For each child enrolled in a pub­lic elementary or secondary school, expenditures averaged $9,266 that year—an increase of 128 per­cent, adjusted for inflation, since 1970.

Despite this increase in public spending, student achievement and educational attainment over the last four decades has remained relatively flat. In 2007, a significant portion of students, disproportionately from disadvantaged backgrounds, scored “below basic” in reading and math on the National Assess­ment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Sadly, in many of the nation’s largest cities, fewer than half of high school students graduate.

While academic research has consistently shown that increased spending does not correlate with edu­cational gains, the research does show a strong rela­tionship between parental influences and children’s educational outcomes, from school readiness to college completion. Two compelling parental factors emerge:

  1. family structure, i.e., the number of parents living in the student’s home and their relationships to the child, and
  2. parents’ involvement in their children’s schoolwork.

Consequently, the solution to improving educa­tional outcomes begins at home, by strengthening marriage and promoting stable family formation and parental involvement.

The PDF is here. In the rest of the paper, Christine supports her conclusions using evidence.

News

UK bill imposes restrictions on homechooling families

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Story at LifeSiteNews. (H/T Andrew)

Excerpt:

The British government announced last week their acceptance of the Badman Review of home education and introduced the new Children, Schools and Families Bill that will require home educated children to be registered with the local authorities.

[…]Homeschooling families were furious at the review’s results and say the new bill will mean the effective end of the rights of the family in education. The bill will follow recommendations that homeschooling families be subjected to spot-checks by local authorities, and that authorities can interview homeschooled children without the presence of their parents.

[…]In its announcement of the impending review in January, the government used language that linked homeschooling with child abuse. Children’s minister, Baroness Delyth Morgan, said it was necessary to investigate “claims that home education could be used as a ‘cover’ for child abuse such as neglect, forced marriage, sexual exploitation or domestic servitude.”

I sometimes think about marrying and having children. But when I hear stories like this one and the New Hampshire homeschooler who was forced to attend public school, I just think that it would be a bad idea.Why should I get involved in marriage and parenting when these things are tightly regulated by secular leftist bureaucrats? Why try to raise children when people seem to want to outsource their education and development to unionized, government-run day cares and schools?