A Suggestion to the City of Chicago on its Recent Teacher Troubles

Those paying attention to national news have doubtless heard that teachers in the Chicago Public Schools, the nation's third-largest school district, have gone on strike after months of failed negotiations with the city. Why? Well, they weren't satisfied with a proposed 16% increase to their salaries, the nation's highest, over the next four years. They also objected to a proposed performance evaluation which incorporated test scores, for the tiresomely predictable reason that it might cost thousands of teachers their jobs. But really, don't these teachers deserve to be angry at their treatment, when they're the diligent public servants who:

-Have only taught 20% of their charges how to adequately read.

-Work nearly an hour less per day at the elementary level compared to the national average, without a commensurately longer school year.

-Only get 56% of high school students to graduate.

-Insist upon shrinking class sizes (and hiring more teachers to do it) despite a massive budget deficit and almost no evidence that this incredibly expensive reform adequately improves educational outcomes.

Based on this, it's clear that the teachers are being horribly mistrea...wait, that didn't come out right. That sort of evidence seems to indicate that Chicago's teachers are horrible and wholly undeserving of the enormous public trust invested in them. Well, then.

So far, the city and its "educators" seem to be at an impasse, but I think a simple solution exists for Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Fire them. All of them.

Okay, not all of them. Emmanuel could give them until Wednesday morning to report back to work and then pink-slip all who fail to report. Destroy the Chicago Teachers Union, root and branch. God knows they deserve it. The media may say that these teachers are striking against the government, but as civic employees, the teachers are a part of the government, and they are striking against the taxpayers who employ them. A government which goes on strike against its own citizens is striking against civilization itself. In striking, the teachers have attacked the wellbeing of parents, many of whom must miss work despite having jobs they actually have to show up for, or else risk leaving their children unsupervised. In addition, the teachers have exposed all other citizens, including the children they apparently do not care about, to a potential increase in crime from the sheer volume of bored youth being turned out into the streets. They have utterly vacated their duty as public servants, and like all public servants who abuse the people's trust, they ought to be fired and barred from holding public employment ever again. 

Of course, after such a drastic step the city would have to hire a very large number of new teachers very quickly, but this could probably be done. With Illinois's unemployment rate an unenviable 8.9%, there are thousands of college graduates who would jump at the chance to make over $70,000 a year with spectacular benefits without even working year-round. 

But wait, this anarchic process would doubtless cause chaos and endanger the education of hundreds of thousands of children? Right you are, invisible reader person. However, with the teachers' union out of the way, Chicago could afford to exercise some actual quality control. Tenure would obviously be out the window, and new principals (perhaps hired from the city's charter schools, which of course are still fully operational) could be given wide authority to fire unsuitable teachers. There would be a period of very rapid change, where new hires would flame out and require replacement, and it could make for a difficult year. However, lessons would be learned, and without the shackles of tenure and a dominant union, adaptations could be made rapidly, like in any well-functioning work environment as opposed to the Cloud Cuckooland that is public administration. 

Even if the situation did turn into a fiasco, it couldn't really get much worse than the status quo, which is rivalled only by D.C., Los Angeles, and Chicago's own even worse educational past (that 20% figure for reading proficiency is nearly double that of a decade ago).

So man up, Rahm Emanuel. Somebody needs to think of the children, for once.

--Blake Neff

Buyer's Remorse for Boeing

Political outrage swept through South Carolina in the aftermath of the NLRB's decision to demand that Boeing to close its new factory in South Carolina and open one in Washington state. Taking scattered quotes from Boeing executives out of context and weaving them together into a corporate-greed-fantasy narrative, Obama-appointed General Counsel of the NLRB, Lafe Solomon, filed the complaint against Boeing, claiming that opening a factory in South Carolina was an “retaliation” against labor unions, ignoring that the Boeing plant was an expansion (as opposed to a relocation of any Washington plants), and the one thousand workers already employed there.

It follows that the same ideological crowd who would characterize not purchasing health insurance as an act of interstate commerce, would also characterize not awarding a job to a politically loyal constituency as a retaliation, but this does not alleviate the sting. Most alarming is the precedent set by a federal agency that attempts to exercise the power to reallocate job creation on the basis of shady legal logic supplemented by lies (read: politics). An America where even private employment is a political commodity to be bargained with and redistributed towards the politically well-connected is more nightmarishly plutocratic than any America the radical left could accuse the GOP of striving towards. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) bluntly voiced the suspicions of many when he quipped, “Is this decision based on the fact that South Carolina appears to be a Republican state...a right-to-work state?” Of course, Washington is not a right-to-work state.

Also significant is that Boeing is one of the most important corporate supporters of the Democratic Party. Businessweek pointed out that in the 2010 elections, Boeing was the third largest corporate donor to Democratic campaigners, only behind notoriously politically well-connected Honeywell and AT&T (excited by Obama's net neutrality stance). Boeing was one of many corporations that rushed hundreds of thousands of dollars to vulnerable Democrats (most who still lost). Boeing's top recipient was the number three Democrat in the Senate, Patty Murray, who scrapped out a narrow victory against Republican challenger Dino Rossi. Although hardly an entirely blameless player in the controversy, the position of Boeing and their likely profound buyer's remorse is sympathetic at the least.

Although much of the outrage among Republican politicians is based on the horrifying implications of a decision that should terrify all Americans, the political significance and possible gains certainly didn't escape anyone. Even Boeing CEO James NcNerney, recently appointed by President Obama as Chairman of the President's Export Council, voiced his outrage. American businesses, especially those like Boeing with strong ties to the Democratic Party, are approaching a time for choosing, for political realignment. Democrats and big labor ('and' is optional) may slap themselves on the back for their vindicative and petty victory, but an important lesson is reverberating across America.

If the Boeing incident teaches American businesses and entrepreneurs anything, it is that the age of the pro-business, let alone the business-friendly or business-tolerant Democrat, is gone, replaced by a ravenous beast bought and paid for by big labor. And that the beast can no longer be reasoned with, can no longer be compromised with, and can no longer be mollified - only put down.

-- Kirk Jing

Looking Under Dartmouth's Hood

Just yesterday, Valley News published a delightful little piece on the Dartmouth budget titled “Engine Repair: Dartmouth’s Budget Turnaround.” While Valley News doesn’t want the College to implode (especially given that we are such a large part of the Upper Valley’s economy), they do complain vociferously about the dearth of information on the budget and the steps taken by Kim & Co. to close the budget gap.

While I also want more information about the inner workings of the somewhat mysterious and Goldberg-esque machine that is the College, I believe the article is somewhat misleading. Specifically, I am slightly troubled by their numbers. They describe the precipitous decline and modest recovery both in percentage terms – forgetting to note that a loss of 24% is far worse than a 10% gain. In fact, the endowment is still down about 23% from before the financial crisis. That’s far from rosy.

Although I may disagree with their presentation, I absolutely agree with them that more information is always good. Those of us who care about the College would like to understand the situation – and thus be better prepared to help or to offer advice. They also note that during the crisis, Kim shared much more information about the College, which inspired confidence in the Upper Valley and helpd the College through the difficult times. Why hasn't he continued this policy of openness?

They close the article on a rather sombre note, discussing the inherent difficulties in running an institution where expenditures per student are two times tuition. Something is going to have to change...this recent article by the Most Hated Man on Campus (Roger Lott) correctly points out the excesses of financial aid. It does seem somewhat unsustainable to be handing out educations worth over a million dollars for free. But I'm just a freshman, what do I know?

--J.P. Harrington

THEM!

Like hundreds of giant ants, campus progressives are swarming amongst us yet again. The following leaflet has started to appear on a wall near you:

Okay, okay, that's not really it. The reality is much more horrifying:

 

Among other things, the pamphlet declares if New Hampshire's recently introduced anti-union law passes, it "would grant employers the unprecedented power to slash salaries and benefits at will." To avoid taking too much of everybody's time analyzing everything wrong with this flier, I'll instead focus on just this sentence, which is so wrong on every level it could only be produced by overzealous college students.

-First of all, New Hampshire's proposed measure applies only to state employees, so using the plural "employers" is by itself rather inaccurate.

-Second, the ability to slash salaries and benefits is not "unprecedented." Among other things, the state had this power before public sector unions became widespread, which only happened about 50 years ago.

-As anybody who paid attention in ECON 1 could tell you, employers never have the ability to cut pay "at will." Labor exists in a market and employers must pay enough to get the worker quality that they desire. One would hope that Dartmouth students would realize that their much-sought-after jobs as doctors, bankers, and lawyers are not unionized and yet somehow pay more than minimum wage.

-Even if workers do have their benefits cut, it's not like this is something that is automatically terrible. Money doesn't fall out of the sky; it has to come from somewhere. If public employees use collective bargaining to obtain higher pay, they're essentially just taking more money from taxpayers which if spent in the private sector could have created more jobs. 

Of course, there's plenty of other nonsense in the flier, such as complaints about the College's effort to reduce administrative bloat and avoid shedding millions from the endowment while hiking tuition 5% annually, or calling collective bargaining a "fundamental right" as though meddling with the labor market is as important as freedom of speech.

But, if all that is not enough for you, you can stop by their rally at 4 PM next Tuesday to get plenty more. Or, if you have better things to worry about, you can let us do it for you. Stay tuned next week for Review coverage of the event, either here or in the dead tree edition.

--Blake Neff