L.A. Teachers Union Fires Its Best Instead of Attempting Budget Reform
4th July 2012
California will devote $48.3 billion to education in its next fiscal year, and yet Gov. Jerry Brown still wants citizens to increase their tax payments to the state. This, despite the fact that the state ranks 47th in the nation in education. Meanwhile, the City of Los Angeles spends $6 billion. How on earth can this much money be spent and yet result in such terrible schools?
The problem is obviously systemic, yet nobody ever has the courage to dive deep into the system, tear out all the problems, and reform it. Instead, we get another year in which LAUSD bellows that it cannot handle the budget cuts coming its way, so it cuts school days and fires good teachers and – of course – implores voters to approve more taxes.
Look for … the Union label …. (Not that the kids can read it.)
July 5th, 2012 at 08:56
“I’m supposed to believe that THIS is a good use of taxpayer money — spending huge amounts of money today to save money over the long term? The Left keeps talking about “investing in our future”. Is this what it means?” Why, yes, this is what it means. But it’s not a new concept. The Right has been advocating for years for up-front investment that saves money in the long run. So why is this a bad thing?
It’s funny how whenever right-wingers talk about education they always bring up the Super Dedicated Teachers they all had in their youth. But they never discuss whether such devotion ever resulted in better pay for said Super Teachers. I guess the ‘spiritual’ rewards of being dedicated are supposed to compensation enough.
The fact is that if people were paid according to the importance of their impact on the nation’s future, teachers would be among the highest-paying jobs around. But people only value ‘quality education’ up to a point; teaching is seen as one of those ‘commodity’ jobs that ‘anyone can do’, and therefore teachers–even the good ones–aren’t paid enough to attract the best and brightest.
No, we’d rather give our money to paper-shufflers on Wall Street.