"When schoolchildren are allowed to vote, then I'll begin looking after the interests of schoolchildren. Until then, I'm representing the interests of my membership." Albert Shanker, President, American Federation of Teachers
You couldn't listen to Chicago radio last week without hearing Annice Brave. She is the small-town schoolmarmish sounding woman who was shilling for the powerful IEA teachers' union. She was everywhere up and down the dial, every fifteen minutes or so on some stations.
She was propounding the IEA's line that they're only about improving the quality of education for the children. The IEA, according to informed industry sources, dropped $81k in radio buys for this message last week in the Chicago market alone.
This, of course, was timed by the media sharpies in the IEA's propaganda bureau to precede the state legislature's vote to massively increase personal and corporate taxes.
Listen to a recording of the ad here.
The wide dispersal of that feel good message was undoubtedly prompted, in no small part, by a recent Rasmussen poll which showed that taxpayers are getting fed up with the bloated salaries and pensions of government employees, including teachers.
According to Jack Roeser, the founder of the Family Taxpayers Foundation, a full 80% of all educational funds are channeled directly into teachers' salaries and pensions. The kids get the crumbs that fall to the floor from the Big-Education smorgasboard.
But that doesn't stop the Big Teachers Unions from playing on the heartstrings of an unwary public with the lament that "it's all about the kiddies."
And these salaries and pensions, for which school-marm Annice Brave was huckstering are not insubstantial. An astounding number of Illinois public school teachers and administrators are pulling down $200k + and $100k + per year for their 9 month jobs.
Get an eyeful of the top paid IL unionized teachers by clicking on the tab "Top 200 teachers salaries" here.
Astoundingly, the top 2 moneymakers in the government education establishment are pulling down in excess of $600k a year!
And the IEA is calling on the taxpayers to pony up even more cash. At a time of near depression-levels of unemployment this strikes many as unconscionable.
Take, for instance, the school-marmish sounding shill, Ms. Brave.
Annice Brave, a high school English teacher, pulls down $70k a year for her 9 month job. That is some pretty heavy cash in a downstate backwash like Alton, where the median income of the families who pay Brave's salary is $36k a year and the median home sells for a paltry $81k.
In fact Ms. Brave's union salary puts her in the veritable economic elite in economically depressed Alton, which has seen 5.6% of its jobs disappear over the past 8 years and where a full 13% of those who remain are unemployed. (Stats are from Zoomprospector Business analytics.)
Yet, the Big Labor honchos of the IEA (and AFT) agitate to squeeze more and more cash from an already wildly overburdened Illinois public.
Reminds me a lot of the old Dennis Moore bit from Monty Python's Flying Circus.
In it, Dennis Moore was a reverse Robin Hood who ended up stealing from the poor to give to the rich.
The last strains of the stirring Dennis Moore anthem went:
Dennis Moore,
Dennis Moore,
Dumb, Dumb, Dumb.
The quote at the top says it all, doesn't it? It's all about them and their interests and has NOTHING to do with the kids OR education. They fight everything that would cause them to do their jobs effectively. They won't even take tests to prove their competence. If teachers were as good at their jobs as they like to claim, our nation wouldn't be so far behind other nations. We now score near the bottom of the whole world when it comes to education, yet we pay the most toward it. They refuse to be accountable to anyone, especially the parents of their students.
ReplyDeleteI got some positively infantile comments posted here and on another spot where this went up from unionized government school teachers who refused to deal with any of the arguments but instead called me names like so many schoolyard children and cast aspersions on my former teachers.
ReplyDeleteWhat is interesting is that most of them, having degrees from schools of education, would not be allowed to teach Obama's children. The Obama girls go to exclusive Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C.
That elite school won't hire ANY education majors, deeming that a useless degree worthy of only mediocrties. Yet most of these high-priced union types who teach in the public schools have silly degrees from schools of ed.
Anyone who has ever been to a serious university knows that the schools of Education are the impoverished ghettos of higher education that attract the least capable students and have the highest grade inflation.
And these people want more money?
Government needs to Roll back their Salaries in bad times like these. It's the right thing to do. Instead, they'll just hike the taxes up and destroy whatever economy we have left.
ReplyDelete