McCain Supporting Teacher: McCain’s Education Policy Needs Improvement
I spoke to this McCain supporting NEA member about John McCain and why he likes him — he has his reasons, but he doesn’t seem to think much of McCain’s education policy:
It’s worth saying that while John McCain doesn’t have a very union-friendly education policy, there’s something of a union-’winger convergence around No Child Left Behind. The unions don’t want the federal government imposing any kind of system of standards and accountability on schools and their staff. And a certain strain of conservatism doesn’t want the federal government doing anything with regard to education. Meanwhile at his acceptance speech, Barack Obama said: “I’ll invest in early childhood education; I’ll recruit an army of new teachers, and pay them higher salaries and give them more support; and in exchange, I’ll ask for higher standards and more accountability.” This is basically the kind of thing the DC teacher union affiliate decided it wasn’t interested in when the Fenty administration put it on the table.
23 Responses to “McCain Supporting Teacher: McCain’s Education Policy Needs Improvement”
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September 1st, 2008 at 4:52 pm
A teacher who doesn’t think McCain’s education policy is good, but supports him anyway. Sounds like a smart guy. Wish he were teaching my children.
September 1st, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Totally explains why DC public schools are the way they are. I understand why we have unions but sometimes, they can be a little counterproductive.
September 1st, 2008 at 5:09 pm
The Constitution doesn’t mention education, not once. If my memory serves me right, federal involvement in the public schools began with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act which was passed shortly after Sputnik to support science and math education (a real laugher after the present adminstration) and federal influence has burgeoned since under equal opportunity mandates. In truth, education is too important to remain a local matter and much to subtle to ever be as uniform as a national curriculum would make it. Teaching is difficult under the best of circumstances, and parents’ endless protectiveness in recent times has made it a real trial. All this to say that a real discussion of the nature of teaching and learning has yet to be undertaken, and it isn’t going to be easy. – Ted Lehmann
September 1st, 2008 at 5:22 pm
What? They weren’t interested in investing in early childhood education, recruiting an army of new teachers, and paying them higher salaries and giving them more support?
Or was it just the higher standards and more accountability part that they weren’t interested in?
September 1st, 2008 at 6:56 pm
So this guy really likes McCain’s personality and record and what he stands for, but on the one policy point that is mentioned he’s not a fan.
September 1st, 2008 at 7:14 pm
Hey, the government has a vested interest in making sure that the idiotic concept of “education” used in this country remains firmly in control to produce another generation of morons willing to be taxed and spent to make rich people richer and themselves poorer and under stricter control.
And since the morons calling themselves “teachers” in this country are the product of that system, it’s no surprise that they support keeping American education the disaster that it is.
And then there’s Matt, the product of Harvard…who can’t spell, doesn’t know grammar – or much of anything else – but who has a “degree in philosophy”.
September 1st, 2008 at 7:53 pm
I don’t think this is a fair statement:
For example, this, signed by the NEA and AFT: http://www.edaccountability.org/Joint_Statement.html
Also, how is DC going to pay for those raises again?
September 1st, 2008 at 8:26 pm
McCain’s truly preferred education policy is to put all African Americans into very large ditches and then murder them with machine gun fire, but he can’t say it very loud.
September 1st, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Swan,
That’s neither funny nor helpful.
But, MattY, the problem is that No Child Left Behind doesn’t work. I teach now College age students you’ve come up through the version we have in Texas. The program is a disaster. They can’t write essays, etc…Further, and equally id not more important, NCLB has lead to a whole series of not so subtle corruptions of education–limits on the numbers of students who can be flunked in a number of high school districts, or the lowest possible grade being 50% even if the student turned in no work for the first half of the semester in the Dallas ISD.
The problem, however, does not lie primarily with the teachers; its the administrators. The sorts of things the “standards” people have proposed generally don’t work, then the admin types, who neither teach nor understand much about teaching when it comes down to it, start blaming the teachers again and again.
This doesn’t make me an Ed School fan (where does admin come from?) or a fan of the teachers unions; to the extent the unions protect people whose only credential is a degree in Ed without some solid basis in a dsicipline, they aren’t helping, not in the least.
Concomitently, I can introduce you to folks who are very good teachers (at College level) and well grounded in disciplines who would tell you t o your face that going on about standards, as if we didn’t care about them, is just rude–because thoughtless and ill-informed. Care to come talk with us and see what we do??
This is just corruption my young friend.
September 2nd, 2008 at 12:45 am
unions are there to protect wages and rights of the members. It isn’t there to negotiate about education policy. Don’t confuse the two. Teacher’s rights and wants are sometimes against what is best for the students. For every dollar spent on a teacher, there is less material for the student. I think McCains policy is idiotic and Obama’s isn’t a whole lot better except in some parts. I am so waiting to see how they are going to measure the accountablility.
September 2nd, 2008 at 4:58 am
The problem, however, does not lie primarily with the teachers; its the administrators. The sorts of things the “standards” people have proposed generally don’t work, then the admin types, who neither teach nor understand much about teaching when it comes down to it, start blaming the teachers again and again.
September 2nd, 2008 at 9:31 am
The unions don’t want the federal government imposing any kind of system of standards and accountability on schools and their staff.
It has been said already in comments, but it is worth repeating that this statement is nonsense.
And Richard Steven Hack is an appropriate name if that is what he thinks of teachers.
September 2nd, 2008 at 11:36 am
Speaking only the alleged refusal by the union to accept an offer of higher pay in exchange for “higher standards and more accountability”, I have a few observations.
First, I wouldn’t believe the news accounts of what the proposal was. Unless your at the bargaining table you really have no idea what the proposal contained, or what the union may have counter-proposed before leaving the idea on the table. I can tell you from personal experience that news reports on collective bargaining are always (a) entirely wrong on almost every point and (b) heavily skewed in favor of the employer, who usually has the article planted in the first place to influence either the bargaining process or a union election.
Second, these sorts of merit pay proposals are usually not what they are hyped up as. I don’t know anything about the particular proposal at issue. But generally, an employer will offer a merit pay or specialty pay proposal that leaves the employer with the discretion to choose who is eligible. Therefore by accepting you have agreed to split your bargaining unit into two classes that are chosen by the employer. Matt says that the benefit here is an option, but again there is really not enough information, and what are couched as “options” are often severely limited by eligibility requirements.
Third, how do we know how generous the corresponding benefit was? Job security is one of the rarest and greatest union benefits. Which is to say its worth quite a bit. It could be that the union thought that the benefit was not great enough for the surrender of benefit or the splintering of the bargaining unit. These are real considerations.
I guess what I’m saying is that you should not overly criticize the union and assume that the employer is offering this unprecedented benefit out of kindness and that the union is refusing out of pure self-interest at the expense of its members. There are countless details and considerations that we are completely ignorant of, so its probably better not to take the employer’s side and say that the union is being entirely unreasonable and violating its fiduciary obligations.
As for Obama’s statement, I don’t really get it. Labor negotiations are almost universally a local matter so I think this statement is purely poltical and is not a serious policy proposal. As a practical matter, we should consider that work rule changes and job security measures, to the extent that they don’t create any real dollar value, are in some jurisdictions not considered “productivity” that creates value that you can convert into general wage increases or other benefit costs. So this sort of trade-off would not even be available in many localities absent a major change in the way that collective bargaining is conducted in practice.
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