Pseudo School Reform
Lieberman, Myron
Pseudo School Reform by Myron Lieberman On March 25-27, most of the governors, along with a business leader designated by each, will convene in an education summit co-sponsored by the National...
...Nevertheless, the reality is that some of the companies represented at the summit are not going to risk antagonizing their union clients, even though giving teachers veto power over essential change is certain to entrench the status quo...
...The NEA and AFT have resorted to boycotts to intimidate corporations and business leaders from advocating any weakening of the public school monopoly...
...increases in their productivity play no role whatsoever in their compensation and will not as long as the NEA and AFT have anything to say about it...
...Education summits are based upon a reality that cannot be acknowledged openly, to wit: The appearance of reform is much more important to political and education leaders than the substance of it...
...For instance, one of the major topics on the agenda is the inadequate use of educational technology...
...Pseudo School Reform by Myron Lieberman On March 25-27, most of the governors, along with a business leader designated by each, will convene in an education summit co-sponsored by the National Governors' Association at the IBM facility in Palisades, New York...
...The other topics at the summit likewise avoid the education issues that business leaders should be facing...
...The summit is being convened as a result of the slow progress, if you can call it that, of education reform...
...On the contrary, if labor costs preempted most of its budget, efforts to reduce those costs would receive top priority...
...Needless to say, the corporate executives attending the summit would not accept this nonsense in their own companies...
...One reason for the enormous increase in agricultural productivity is that our farmers are owners, hence they stand to gain from increasing productivity...
...A typical example of how NEA publications characterize for profit enterprise (from an NEA "resource book" on corporate takeovers, dated September 1995) reads as follows : Those who believe the corporate sales pitch that deregulation and skilled private industry management techniques will solve the problems of public education should contemplate the savings and loan debacle, the airline company bankruptcies over the past decade, and the difficulties of airline travel today-all products of deregulation and private industry management techniques...
...It could hardly be otherwise...
...actual improvement, or laying a genuine foundation for it, is desirable but not essential...
...Schools don't use technology because teachers have no incentives to use it and teachers' unions have abundant incentives not to use it, at least when it reduces labor costs...
...This is NEA/AFT-speak for reforms that won't happen unless teachers (that is, their unions) agree to them...
...also on schools' use of educational technology...
...The answer may explain why Gerstner is an appropriate choice to lead the parade of futilitarians at Palisades...
...Technology is acceptable if it makes the teacher's job easier, but not otherwise...
...In most states, its affiliate is among the two or three most powerful interest groups lobbying the legislature...
...In contrast, teachers are paid solely on the basis of their academic credits and years of teaching experience...
...Meanwhile, it boggles the mind to see Jobs's counterpart at Microsoft, Bill Gates, give $3 million to the NEA, perhaps the most anti-entrepreneurial organization in the United States...
...Regrettably, the business leadership of the summit offers little hope for a more realistic approach to real problems...
...It will be interesting to see whether the business leaders at the summit agree with the fashionable clich...
...When you factor in the also influential AFT, you get formidable resistance to any labor-saving innovation...
...Inasmuch as accountability is another item on the summit agenda, participants might also ask Gerstner what there is to show for the millions of dollars RJR and its foundation have spent on education reform...
...As matters stand, they have a lot to say about it...
...Business leaders at the summit might at least consider telling the NEA/AFT that they will respond promptly and collectively to teachers'-union efforts to intimidate business leaders critical of the public school monopoly...
...The NEA and AFT are spending millions every year to demonize "privatization...
...The NEA alone will send more delegates to the Democratic convention than any state...
...Bear in mind that unions of school-district employees-especially the major teachers' unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT)-are applying tremendous pressure on school boards to spend their revenues on salaries and fringe benefits...
...Myron Lieberman is senior research scholar, Social Philosophy & Policy Center, Bowling Green State University...
...One who does is Apple Computers founder Steven Jobs...
...The list of companies boycotted or threatened with boycotts by the NEA and AFT is too long to be recited here, but the unions' efforts to intimidate business leaders do not end there...
...The latest episode, in October 1995, was an appalling attack on Pepsi-Cola for offering private school scholarships to students in Jersey City...
...Education is by far our most labor intensive industry, but apparently not intensive enough for the teachers' unions...
...Their election or reappointment depends on the public perception that they are "doing something" to remedy our education deficits...
...Another such problem is the anti-entrepreneurial, anti-market culture of public education...
...Many districts do not spend enough on maintenance and would face strong opposition to expenditures for technology and related training...
...An advocate of private-school choice, he explicitly argues that the teachers' unions are the main obstacle to education reform...
...The projects were limited to public schools...
...Specifically, the summit is supposed to focus on the development of academic standards and ways to assess them...
...in fact, since its agenda is consciously devoted to "bipartisan"-that is, secondary-issues, it will divert resources from the underlying problems of American education...
...in public school systems, the practice is characterized as a right-wing extremist plot to undermine public education...
...Inasmuch as the teachers' unions are a core constituency of the Democratic party, it is impossible to achieve a bipartisan solution to any education problem resulting from or requiring a change in teachers'-union policy or practice...
...The major targets of the NEA/AFT effort are the companies that sell services to schools...
...vending machines carrying Pepsi-Cola were sabotaged and boycotted by teachers supposedly entrusted with teaching democratic values to young people...
...Other notable examples of the genius of the marketplace are the soaring costs of health care in America and the millions of poor people whose primary medical care is in understaffed, overused hospital emergency rooms...
...This perception is their primary need...
...that effective school reform must be "bottom up," not "top down...
...In California, the unions brought about passage of a law requiring that a certain percentage of school district budgets be allocated to teacher salaries...
...Sometimes the unions have boycotted or threatened to boycott companies merely because a corporate officer, acting as a private citizen, has said or done something to challenge the public school monopoly...
...No private company would require itself to allocate a large part of its budget to the most expensive factor of production...
...The co-hosts are Louis Gerstner, chairman and chief executive officer of IBM, and Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson...
...Four hundred years ago, Machiavelli pointed out that whenever you change the status quo, you arouse antagonism from the interests that will be hurt by the change...
...This is why "education reform" is a growth industry: Education summits meet the political needs of the parties, even though they ignore the basic problems...
...And there is nothing unusual about large corporations and business leaders' subsidizing the teachers' unions...
...Never mind that the NEA spends about 20 percent of its budget for contracted services...
...since the companies and services vary, the attacks degenerate into attacks on "for profit" companies generally...
...In education, however, there isn't any point to investing in labor-saving technology if states mandate high spending on labor...
...surely, they would not say that their companies would never downsize their operations or eliminate ineffective practices without the employees' approval because doing so would be "top down...
...Co-chairman Louis Gerstner, while CEO of RJR Nabisco, was instrumental in that company's sponsorship of experimental and demonstration projects in education...
...The summit cannot address this problem effectively because the summit is "bipartisan," whereas the solution to the ineffective use of technology is anything but bipartisan...
...Oddly, it is the rare entrepreneur who recognizes the NEA as an enemy of business and of school improvement...
...Unfortunately, it is already clear that this summit, like the 1989 one in Charlottesville, Virginia, will be unproductive...
Vol. 1 • March 1996 • No. 27
