Rotten Apples

The Wall Street Journal has an excellent piece of commentary today, and I’m shamelessly ripping off their (totally appropriate) title for it: “Rotten Apples”. The core of this piece is the price that Florida’s kids — and all the future employers who would like to hire them — are paying in order that the teacher’s union keep the status quo. The setting:

From the Wall Street Journal ($):

On Monday the unions in Tallahassee bullied all but one Democrat and four Republicans in the state senate to kill a school voucher bill that has already had a sterling record of success for thousands of children in districts with failing public schools. If that decision isn’t reversed by Friday, one of the most heralded school reform measures anywhere in the country will be dismantled, and 775 school kids, 90% of whom are minorities, will be returned to the warehouses that are failed inner-city schools. A related voucher program that serves 18,000 learning disabled kids is also in jeopardy.

The program at issue is Governor Jeb Bush’s seven-year-old “Florida A+ School Accountability and Choice Program.” For the first time, schools have been graded on the reading, writing and math progress made by the children they are supposed to be teaching. (Imagine that.) Any school that received an F in two of four years is deemed a failure, and the kids then get a voucher to attend another school, public or private.

The rest of the piece is a very worthwhile read if you’re a Wall Street Journal subscriber. For those who aren’t, here is a summary of the rest of the points it makes:

— Jeb Bush’s program has produced dramatic improvements in the worst of Florida’s schools, unlike any of the past union-backed plans (smaller classes, higher teacher pay, higher funding, etc.).

— Two schools in the state have received an F, and the kids in those schools got vouchers to go elsewhere. Those kids have made dramatic academic advances.

— The Florida State Supreme Court ruled that Jeb Bush’s program violates the “uniformity clause” of the state constitution, because the voucher kids are getting a better education than the public school kids. WTF!?! The court apparently wants all the kids to have an equally bad education.

— The teacher’s union has enormous political “pull", and that was on full display during this battle. The union’s pull derives entirely from the money (from union dues) it gives to the pols. In one particularly flagrant example, the state senate’s GOP leader (who received campaign contributions from the teacher’s union) bucked his party and voted against a referendum that would have overridden the court ruling. His fellow Republicans have removed him, but the damage is done; the union wins this round.

I can’t say it better than the WSJ did:

We’re not sure whom to hold in highest contempt here: the four Republicans who buckled to union pressure, the Democrats who voted en masse against the interests of their own constituents, or the unions that pretend their political actions are in the interests of “the children” — except when that conflicts with their own economic self interest.

Ouch!