Teachers union, it’s all about the product
I am a customer who wants my money’s worth when I pay a high price for a product, and I know a lot of Idahoans relate to me. I know a lot of Idahoans appreciate school choice.
The Idaho Education Association (IEA) has shown itself to be a union in pursuit of its own interests. In a recent Press article, IEA president Layne McInelly was given a platform to share all the reasons he wants more taxpayer funding to increase education spending. Every reason given was irrelevant to education, which is a shame. Ignoring the real interest of any customer or taxpayer funding education is not good form. Layne focused on Idaho spending less per student vs. the national stage, all the while ignoring what we taxpayers get from our investment. The return for what we pay into conventional public education is blasé at best, and our charter schools and local parochial schools have demonstrated a better education model at a lower cost per student.
In Idaho and beyond, the conventional public schools have a long history of being a horrible investment. Having spent my nearly 40 years in Kootenai County I feel I have a good local perspective. When I came up through primary and secondary schooling, my parents decided to avoid the public school system entirely. We were dirt poor, so it hurt to pay for the public school system while also paying for school that actually delivered (parochial and home school). Only the charter schools in Kootenai County have been able to replicate the kind of success I found in the private sector.
Education has to be better than a day care. As a manager in business, I have had the privilege of hiring qualified individuals to be part of my technical/business team. It is a very real struggle to fill positions, and I hear the same from almost everyone hiring in STEM, in trades, even in entry level non-skilled positions. Trying to find people that simply show up is tricky, but if the standard is raised to finding candidates wanting to work and having devotion to self-improvement, then hiring becomes downright difficult. The education standards and social expectations are not being met. The blame can be placed squarely on conventional public education since data shows that even within the same socioeconomic groups school choice in search of better education leads to lifelong benefits. I volunteer on a lot of career days in schools, and I know from experience that the younger children are eager to learn, to help and to work. It’s only after they have been broken by a broken system that they want to escape work and service.
I am a careful shopper for food, clothing, housing and entertainment. I want a dependable, successful education product for my children. That doesn’t mean the cheapest, nor does it mean the most expensive. I could care less about the national average spent per student. I want to know what value the current system gives me. I went to good schools on a shoestring budget that prepared me for a career as a biochemical engineer. Dr. Thomas Sowell, a leading economist and fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institute, just published “Charter Schools and Their Enemies” (a detailed interview and preview is available on Youtube). The book summarizes Dr. Sowell’s research demonstrating the astounding success of charter schools on education cost, grade performance and social behavior improvements such as reduced pregnancies, bullying, bigotry, drugs, etc. It is a must-read for us consumers who truly care about what kind of education our children are getting.
When we have school choice, schools and teachers that demonstrate student success are going to get the most customers and therefore revenue and raises, and this is what the IEA should focus on. The rest of us have to operate in the real world where supply/demand similarly holds true. The IEA is makings itself irrelevant by ignoring true performance metrics of education and focusing more on what it can extract for itself from its monopoly in the school system. Let the private, charter, and home schools become the new normal for primary and secondary education.
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C.J. Strain is a Post Falls resident.