Do not think about, write about or deal with human behavior until determining the effects of incentives.
from a column by Star Parker, found here.
“Speaking a couple years ago about technology and education, Apple CEO and founder Steve Jobs said that technology wouldn’t matter as long as you can’t fire teachers….Jobs likened schools to running a small business that he said could never succeed if you can’t hire and fire. “
Unions are employment insurance for the incompetent, indifferent and entrepreneurially implausible.
”The percentage of the nation’s private sector work force that belongs to a union has dropped precipitously. In the 1950′s, over 30 percent belonged to unions. Today it’s a little over seven percent.”
I wonder how many companies were killed by unions.
“In an article in the latest edition of Cato Journal, Andrew Coulson notes that, on average, compensation of public school teachers is about 42 percent higher than their counterparts teaching in non-unionized private schools. Yet, according to Coulson, research shows that private schools consistently outperform public schools.” Andrew Coulson is no relation to me but, if he keeps coming up with sensible stuff, maybe I’ll adopt him.
“A recent Wall Street Journal op-ed reported on the glowing success of charter schools in Harlem. "Nationwide the average black 12th grader reads at the level of a white eighth grader. Yet, Harlem charter students ….are outperforming their white peers in wealthy suburbs."
Yet, in 2009 the New York teachers union successfully lobbied the state legislature to freeze charter school spending and now is pushing to limit penetration of charters in school districts.”
Unions are much more important than education.
The success of non-union schools, where teachers can be fired without years of posturing and pretending, are perfect advertisements for the power of incentives.
“Kids in Los Angeles’ public schools are overwhelming Hispanic and black. According to the Los Angeles Times, "just 39 percent of L.A.’s fourth-graders are even basically literate." Yet, the Times attributed union lobbying to undermining a recent attempt by the L.A. school board to open failing schools to non-unionized charters.”
Union benefits always were more important–always will be.
“Similarly, unions played a major role in recently killing the successful private school scholarship program in Washington, DC.”
Washington, D.C., run by Congress, has the worst schools in the country. Best politicians–worst outcomes–see the causal chain. On the plus side, Washington, D.C. schools are the most expensive.
“Over 95 percent of the political contributions of the two national teachers’ unions — the NEA and AFT — go to Democrats or to the Democrat Party. Their $56 million in political contributions since 1989 equals that of "Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Lockheed Martin, and the National Rifle Association combined." “
Is there a connection? You be the judge.
Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies
