Why do teachers unions fight tooth and nail to stop school choice?

Question

School choice creates competition. Competition made this country great and would revoulutionize our terrible government school system. What's so scary?

Answer 1

Too many union people are traditionalist and do not want any change to happen in their lives. They do not want to modernize their teaching methods. They have too much at stake if they lose students to other types of schools. Also it's a power problem, if you go to another type of school, they lose face and lose money and prestige. Its all about status. Like who is in the in crowd and who is not!

Answer 2

You're absolutley right, school choice would foster competition.

But with competition comes elitism, superior branding, companies that fail.

That's all well and good for soda and real estate, but education is very very different.

First of all: Attempting to send children all over an area to schools that were personally choosen would be a logistical nightmare. The public bussing system is complex enough already.

Secondly: In a competition, somebody loses. When you instate educational competition, you are setting up thousands of children to lose. Parents who can afford it will flock to the better schools, which will then receive the most money. The schools with children who need education the most will be all but abandoned.

I admit that competition will seperate the "wheat from the chaff" as it were, but just remember that we're talking about innoncent children here.

Answer 3

It sounds good in theory - but how it would play out would be very different.

The kids that would be able to leave are the kids whose parents are involved enough to make the effort and would leave behind a school that is worse off than it was with an even bigger hole to climb out of. The kids that would leave are not the kids that are considered "at-risk".

It would create a situation where the good schools get better and the poor schools get worse.

If parents have time to choose their schools, then they ought to have time to volunteer to make their home school better.

Our Government School system is so terrible because parents have gotten too lazy to be involved in their children's lives.

Answer 4

Because American unions do not feel that employees have any personal responsibility for the work they produce.

Bad teachers are coddled and protected, while our children suffer. Bad government workers are entitled to pay for life and better benefits than the average citizen will ever have.

If you doubt me, go to your local department of motor vehicles and see the condescending attitude of those employees. Every one of them will become multi-millionaires on the taxpayers backs, yet they treat their "customers" like they are a pain and a problem to get through (and be rude to).

So when are Americans going to wake up are stop paying these people for life while our standard of living falls and any hope of retirement flies away with the increase in our tax rates.

Answer 5

The Blueberry Story

“If I ran my business the way you people operate your schools, I wouldn’t be in business very long!”
I stood before an auditorium filled with outraged teachers becoming angrier by the minute. My speech had entirely consumed their precious 90 minutes
of in-service. Their initial, icy glares had turned to restless agitation. You could cut the hostility with a knife.
I represented a group of business people dedicated to improving public
schools. I was an executive at an ice cream company that became famous in he middle 1980s when People Magazine chose our blueberry flavour as the “Best Ice Cream in America.”
I was convinced of two things. First, that public schools needed to change, they were archaic, selecting and sorting mechanisms designed for the industrial age and out of step with the needs of our emerging “knowledge society.”
Second, I was convinced that educators were a major part of the problem; they resisted change hunkered down in their feathered nests, protected by
tenure and shielded by a bureaucratic monopoly. They needed to look to business. We knew how to produce quality. Zero defects! Continuous improvement! In retrospect, the speech was perfectly balanced: equal parts ignorance and arrogance.
As soon as I had finished, a woman’s hand shot up. She appeared to be polite and pleasant – but in fact, she was a razor-edged, veteran, high school English teacher who had been waiting to unload. She began quietly, “We are told, sir, that you manage a company that makes good ice cream.”
I smugly replied, “Best ice cream in America, ma’am”.
“How nice,” she replied. Is it rich and smooth?”
“Sixteen per cent butter fat,” I crowed. “Premium ingredients?” she inquired.
“Super premium. Nothing but triple A”. I was on a roll. I never saw the next line coming.
“Mr. Vollmer”, she said, leaning forward with a wicked eyebrow raised to
the sky, “when you are standing on your receiving dock and you see an inferior shipment of blueberries arrive, what do you do?”
In the silence of that room, I could hear the trap snap. I was dead meat, but I wasn’t going to lie. “I send them back.”
“That’s right!” she barked, “and we can never send back our blueberries. We take them big, small, rich, poor, gifted, exceptional, abused, frightened,
confident, homeless, rude and brilliant. We take then with ADHS, junior rheumatoid arthritis and English as their second language. We take them
all! Every one! And that, Mr Vollmer, is why it’s not business. It’s a school!”
In an explosion, all 290 teachers, principals, bus drivers, aides, custodians and secretaries jumped to their feet and yelled, “Yeah! Blueberries!
Blueberries!”
And so began my long transformation. Since then, I have visited hundreds of schools. I have learned that a school is not a business. Schools are unable to control the quality of their raw material, they are dependent upon
the vagaries of politics for they are a liable revenue stream and they are constantly mauled by a howling horde of disparate competing groups that would send the best CEO screaming into the night.
None of this negates the need for change. We must change what, when and how we teach to give all children a maximum opportunity to thrive in post- industrial society. But educators cannot do this alone, these changes can
occur only with the understanding, trust, permission and active support of the surrounding community.
The most important thing I have learned is that schools reflect the attitudes, beliefs and health of the communities they serve. Therefore to improve public
education means more than changing our schools, it means changing our society.
(To which we can only add that public schools also take all the “apples” and “raspberries” and “peaches” that arrive, and in each case, produce something to be proud of.)

Education is not a competitive business!