Protecting teachers’ unions over children, the US Secretary of Education rationalizes the Obama administration’s opposition to a successful school-vouchers program in our nation’s capital:
Secretary Arne Duncan said in an email through a Department of Education spokesman that while “this Administration is devoting more resources and supports more ambitious reform of our public school systems than any Administration in history,” he believes that “vouchers are not the solution to America’s educational challenges. Taking a tiny percentage of the kids out of the public school system and putting them in private schools is not the answer. We need to be more ambitious. We need to fix all of our schools.”
The disgracefully poor quality of our government-run system of primary education is the worst problem in our society. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of children from low-income families have their intellectual and productive potential stunted. Millions of other children receive crummy educations that scant basic skills while indulging politically-correct educationist fads.
Here’s an idea. Let’s take a chunk of the “stimulus” billions we’re pissing away on bailouts and make-work schemes and use it instead to buy out the teachers’ unions. Offer every teacher and union official a generous lump-sum early-retirement package, conditional on the disbandment of the unions and on a federal legislative prohibition against employee unionization in education through Grade 12. All of this would cost the taxpayers an enormous amount, but wouldn’t it be a much better use of public funds as compared to most of what we’re currently spending the money on?