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Jewish World Review Oct. 23, 1998 / 3 Mar-Cheshvan, 5759
Thomas Sowell
Ed-u-kai-tchun
AMONG THE MANY POLLS that come and go, none is more depressing than the one which
shows that the public regards the Democrats as far and away better than the
Republicans on education. It is hard to know whether to laugh or cry.
The biggest single obstacle to the improvement of American education is the National
Education Association, by far the country's largest union. Many people have pointed out
that the dumbed-down education in our public schools is a menace to our society. But
the NEA party line is: "The Nation's students today are threatened only by the failure of
policymakers to give education the money it deserves."
It would be hard for the NEA to tell a bigger lie if they tried. You would risk a hernia if
you tried to carry all the studies which show that more money has virtually no effect on
the quality of American education.
We spend twice as much money per pupil as countries whose students outscore ours
on international tests. States that score at the top on national tests often have below
average expenditures per pupil, and those at the bottom are often big spenders.
There is no question that the Democrats in general and Bill Clinton in particular line up
solidly with the National Education Association and are willing to pour ever more
billions of the taxpayers' dollars down the bottomless pit of our current failed public
schools. If that is your definition of "caring" about "education" or about "the children,"
then you are welcome to it.
In reality, those who follow this line are selling your children down the river to the NEA,
which sees schools as places where their union members have iron-clad tenure in jobs
where pay has no relationship whatever to how well they perform those jobs. Of
course, the NEA is happy to see 100,000 new jobs created for their members. What
union wouldn't be?
Except for the lowest grades, there is no real evidence that reducing class sizes has any
more effect on educational outcomes than throwing more money at the schools. Class
sizes were being reduced all around the country and per pupil expenditures were going
up by leaps and bounds for more than a decade, during which test scores were lower
every year than they were the year before.
Why are the Democrats so loyal to the NEA? Because the NEA spends vast millions of
dollars supporting the Democrats in both state and national election campaigns. One
hand washes the other.
What the NEA most wants is to keep their monopoly on our children's schooling. That
means no vouchers or other reforms that would allow parents to choose where their
children go to school.
When Congress passed a bill this year providing money for 2,000 low-income children
in Washington to receive vouchers to attend private schools, Bill Clinton vetoed it. That
is how much he "cares" about "the children." He cares about the NEA and the millions of
dollars in political campaign contributions they represent.
No children anywhere in America are in more desperate need of a decent education
than those in the disastrous District of Columbia public schools. Not one dime that
Congress appropriated for vouchers came out of the public school budget, despite the
NEA party line that vouchers drain money from the public schools.
The real threat that vouchers represent to the NEA and its members is that low-income
children who go into private schools and do better there will completely undermine all
the excuses that blame everyone except the public schools themselves for the rotten
education that these youngsters get today.
To hear the NEA tell it, educational failures are the fault of parents, television, "society."
If that is so, then why does the NEA fight so desperately to prevent these excuses from
being put to the test? After all, these will be the same children, with the same parents,
the same television and the same "society" when they take their vouchers and go
elsewhere.
The NEA is bitterly opposed to any such test because they know that they do not have
the facts on their side. However, they do have the Democrats on their side.
And where are the Republicans when it comes to explaining all this to the public? They
are where they are on so many other issues -- fumbling, tongue-tied and afraid that
people will think they are meanies if they don't go along with the Democrats.
Like the cleaning women who don't do windows, I don't try to explain
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