ONE UNION'S WAR AGAINST CHOICE
And this in spite of the fact, says Ken Khachigian, chief strategist for the "Yes on 174" campaign, that "our verbal SAT scores are the lowest in California history. Our dropout rate is worse than 43 other states. Half of all California school systems are operating in the red. They can't even balance their budgets."Fifty years ago the biggest problems in Los Angeles schools were talking in class, chewing gum, and running in the halls, writes Laura Locke in the California Journal. Today the biggest problems, students say, are suicide, assault, pregnancy, rape, and murder. In fact, in many public schools, points out former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett, kids are far more likely to "get impregnated if girls or shot if boys" than graduate with a good education. Sixty-three percent of applicants for entry level positions at Pacific Bell can't pass a seventh grade knowledge level test in reading, writing, and math, says Khachigian. "We are turning out rivers of people who can't do anything at all," despairs John Gatto, an award-winning New York City teacher turned lecturer and author. Although defenders of public education routinely blame their poor showing on inadequate funding, as critics have often pointed out, many of the problems of public school have little to do with money. Parochial schools, for instance, routinely get by on barely half as much money and do a better job. One reason is that they have a commitment to discipline in the schools. "They don't allow children to rule the classroom like an educational version of Lord of the Flies," says the Claremont Institute's Lance Izumi.
The public schools in contrast have lost the conviction that they have even the right to tell students what to do. "The kids own the schools," one discouraged LAUSD teacher told LA Times reporter John Johnson in a recent major report on schools in LA. Unlike previous generations, there's no fear of teachers and precious little respect. On some campuses male teachers hesitate to give female students homework or low grades on tests for fear they will report them for sexual abuse. There are some corners of the playground where it isn't safe to walk.
Howard Wang, founder of the San Fernando Valley's elite Sierra Canyon School, says that when he visits some high schools in South-Central Los Angeles as part of an accreditation team, he is appalled at their physical condition. "Prisons are better kept than these schools," says Wang. "At one school on the second floor, all the windows had been knocked out. I asked them, 'Why don't you fix the windows?' 'We can't,' they said. 'People throw things through the windows at night.'"
JOHN PEREZ, a secondary vice president with United Teachers Los Angeles (a daughter union of the CTA), complains that his union would dearly like to get rid of violent or disruptive students. Unfortunately, he says, it's "illegal." The state constitution says that every kid is entitled to a free public education. There's due process. The parents would sue. "We don't make the rules but we have to live by them."
The notion that teachers unions are constrained by arbitrary rules made by a distant and unresponsive state Legislature strains credulity for people who have ever seen the CTA lobby work its will in Sacramento. "The CTA is an adjunct of the Democratic caucus," says San Jose Assemblyman Charles Quackenbush. "They run the Legislature." If state law prevents the expulsion of discipline problems in public schools, it's because the teachers unions prefer it that way. And they prefer it for the same reason they oppose letting parents have vouchers to go to private schools: it would cause enrollment to drop and thereby cost their members jobs.
