The Anti-Education, Teacher's Union Goons

I was wrong. I used to believe that the teachers’ union didn’t give a darn about the children they educated and that their sole priority was money. I now know better. Money isn’t number one with the teachers’ union. Doctrine is.


Back in September, the state of Washington was awarded a $13.2 million grant from the National Math and Science Initiative. The NMSI is the creation of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Dell Computers’ Michael Dell and others who are concerned at how poorly prepared American students are to participate in the high tech sector of our economy. Currently, only 18 percent of high school seniors qualify as adequately proficient in science. With a decreasing number of American students graduating with the minimal math and engineering competence necessary to fill the high tech labor pool, these businesses have a vested interest in promoting education in these fields.

More and more, computer and software firms are forced to look abroad for the talent needed to satisfy their labor requirements. Microsoft already outsources a considerable proportion of its software engineering to Communist China. The same United States Congress that has tried every underhanded trick to grant amnesty to illegal aliens has been reluctant to increase the number of work visas for high tech workers. This has created so severe a shortage of competent engineers that it has become an impediment to growth. Unable to find or import the labor they need, our high tech firms have been forced to outsource an ever-greater share of their engineering work, with economic and national security ramifications. For example, computer chips, hard drives and other peripherals imported from China have been found to be infected with trojans and trapdoors that would give Chinese intelligence access to our networks.

Understanding that the current political and educational environment will not solve the problem, the NMSI has endeavored to develop more home grown talent, by encouraging and rewarding education in the needed specialties.

For those who do not practice willful ignorance, the problem stands out in vivid relief. Our teachers know not of what they teach or how to teach what they do know. Two-thirds of all American physical science courses are being taught by teachers who did not major in the subject that they teach. One third of all pupils enrolled in math classes are being taught by non-majors. And, considering that, as a major in college and as a profession, education generally collects those who struggle to keep their heads above water in the shallow end of the aptitude pool, even these woeful numbers overestimate the condition of our math and science education.

Math and science education is so substandard in Washington that the state has repeatedly postponed full implementation of the Washington Assessment of Student Learning graduation requirements. It will now be at least 2013 before the math and science WASL is enforced. And teachers know that all they have to do to force further postponements is to continue doing a lousy job. That’s known as a perverse incentive.
If you want a second opinion, the Scholastic Aptitude Test scores for last year’s graduating class were the lowest in six years.

When the grant was announced, Governor Christine Gregoire crowed, “This award will help us provide significant additional support to teachers and students and, ultimately, will move us closer to a world-class, learner-focused education system.”
But then, her most loyal political benefactors, the Washington Education Association, got involved. The WEA decreed that certain clauses in the grant conflicted with the union’s collective bargaining agreement with the state. Specifically, the offending passages would reward teachers whose classrooms yield the best results. To the WEA, this qualifies as merit pay, and the WEA does not tolerate merit pay.

And so, because the WEA would not permit the state to fulfill its end of the bargain, the state had to give the money back. The Washington Education Association would rather see Washington’s children founder in perpetual mediocrity than allow the infection of merit pay to gain a toehold in the state.

It’s pitiful that while even Red China has permitted market incentives to inject vigor into its economy, American teachers’ unions elect to pursue the same sort of model that has made North Korea and Cuba the cesspools they are. If not for the parasitic passive absorption of vitality from the culture and economy it rejects, the WEA’s prohibitions would yield a similar squalor in our schools.

It’s doctrine first, money second and students last.

"What Is Going Wrong In Washington?"

To be competitive in a modern economy, Washington needs 21st century transportation and education systems. We have neither.

Why? Simple.

The one-party Democratic dictatorship in Olympia is completely beholden to environmentalists and the Washington Education Association to remain in power.

Look at some of the transportation solutions proposed by our "leaders:" Hundreds of millions of dollars pissed away on a Disneyland ride in Seattle (i.e. a monorail) and a proposal to tear down a bridge that carries tens of thousands of commuters every day and replace it with..........nothing.

Just recently, Washington turned down a $13.2 million education grant from the federal government. The WEA nixed the deal because *GASP* it included merit pay for teachers. God knows we don't want our teachers showing any merit or getting paid to do so.

Don Brunell, president of the Association of Washington Business is perplexed by this decision, as well he should be. Washington's businesses depend on a well-educated workforce to compete and surive, not the self-lubricating palms of a greedy and corrupt teachers union.

In his latest column, Brunell wrote:

In the wake of an earlier column about our state rejecting a $13.2 million education grant, people are asking, “What is going wrong in Washington?” Why was Washington the only state of seven to reject funding to improve math and science learning for public school students in advanced placement programs?

Our state’s teachers union, the Washington Education Association (WEA), killed the grant because it included merit pay for teachers. But other heavily unionized states accepted the grant. What went wrong in Washington?

The students who would have benefited from this money are those who will fill the engineering, technology and advanced science jobs in the United States to help us compete with the rest of the world. It is so important that Bill and Melinda Gates and Michael and Susan Dell each donated $15 million to the program, and Exxon-Mobil contributed a whopping $100 million.

But our state missed a golden opportunity by rejecting the money. Our elected officials want to grow the aerospace, software, biotech and technology industries in Washington, but companies like Boeing, Microsoft, Amgen and Schweitzer Engineering Labs can’t find skilled people to fill positions.

It also was a big setback for emerging technology leaders like Scott Keeney, CEO of Vancouver’s nLight Photonics, when the National Math & Science Initiative (NMSI), announced that it ended Washington's grant because the WEA refused to budge on the issue of merit pay for teachers. The NMSI program pays teachers directly, but the WEA insisted that all the money be collectively bargained. Keeney spearheaded the Clark County MAP (Mentoring Advanced Placement) program and the NMSI grant would have been a logical extension for high tech professionals who volunteer to tutor students in advanced math and science.

Heavily unionized states like Massachusetts and Connecticut embraced the six-year grants. But Washington’s teachers union wouldn’t budge. How did Connecticut get the teachers union to go along with the NMSI grant?

First, a strong coalition of business, teachers, government and education leaders pulled together to secure and implement the grant under a program called Project Opening Doors.

Second, they hired Dr. J. A. Camille Vautour, a long-time school superintendent, to ramrod the project. Vautour approached ten school districts in Connecticut and got nine of them to embrace the program.

Vautour bypassed state teachers union officials and put it to local teachers and school districts this way: “We have an opportunity to help our students, and the NMSI grant is non-negotiable. They set the terms, not us, and if we are going to improve our math and science programs, we need to embrace the grant.”

The savvy superintendent took the issue of merit pay off the table. He pointed out that only 22 percent of the money would go to teachers in pay for performance while the other 78 percent went to teacher training and tutoring.

Finally, he sold them on the idea that if students were successful on advanced placement tests in math and science, it would attract additional money from NMSI and the state.

The rest is history, and on Sept. 6, 2007, Governor M. Jodi Rell (R) accepted a $13.2 million NMSI grant.

So, why all the fuss over a $13.2 million grant? Isn’t that pocket change when it comes to education spending in our state?

True, but it is the signal it sends. Consider a couple of key facts:

• About a third of high school math students and two-thirds of those enrolled in physical science have teachers who did not major in the subject in college or are not certified to teach it.
• Only 29 percent of American 4th grade students, a third of 8th grade students, and barely 18 percent of 12th grade students perform at or above the proficient level in science.
• In China, virtually all high school students study calculus; in the United States, 13 percent study calculus.

So, when you look at the facts, you really have to wonder: What is going wrong in Washington?

Rossi Response to WEA Smear Campaign

Dino Rossi Must Scare the Living Hell Out of the Democrats

Because they have started to drag the teachers and kids into the race, and its only February. Listen to the WEA radio ad here.