Teachers Unions Are Evil
(00:00.494)
Teachers unions are evil. I’m sorry, that’s how I feel. And my dad, my late dad, who I love very much was a member of a teachers union, didn’t have a choice. He was a school teacher and he would have told you the same damn thing, along with the countless educators that I have as clients all over the country. They tell you the same damn thing.
And I’m gonna give you another case in point here today. There was a great op-ed today in the Wall Street Journal explaining what’s taking place in the state of Pennsylvania. Now, we’re seeing this happen all around the country. We’re seeing this great movement towards school choice. And this is something that I have been pushing. I’ve been a fan of for a long period of time. I’ve always believed that competition, it’s true, competition.
breeds excellence. And my idea has always been to let money follow the child. I’ve talked about schools and school rankings and whatnot. And again, I’m gonna lay it out here. The public schools that my two kids that are in college attended, and my son’s a senior now, are top ranked where I live. And the reason why they’re top ranked, it’s not because we have
the greatest educators in the world working there and PhDs. It’s because the school district we live in, people care. They’re involved in their kids’ education. I’m saying the school teachers are bad, there’s some good that there’s some bad, but if the parents aren’t gonna care, guess what? The kids aren’t gonna care. Now, there are situations, it’s the reality of life here in this country, where we have certain people
that are locked in because of their economic situation, they are locked into certain zip codes that are sending them to schools where the overwhelming majority of the parents don’t care. Meaning the kids are being disruptive in the classroom, the teacher’s gotta spend a ridiculous amount of time with kids that are being disruptive, and the parents want nothing more than to get their kids out of that school and to a high performing school, which I have no problem with whatsoever.
(02:26.51)
None. I’ll give you an example. Okay, again, my neighborhood, I’ve got friends that are in the home building business that they’ve actually gone to court trying to make sure some of the homes that they’re building are basically aligned with the school district that I’m in right now because they can sell the house, I mean, same street, just across the street for six figures plus more just for being in this school district.
That’s a reality, people. A great movie, if you ever get a chance to see it. It was a true story. It was about the Jericho school district out on Long Island. Hugh Jackman was in it. It was called Bad Education. It’s all sorts of financial fraud and whatnot going on. But all of the real estate agents, whatnot, bringing baskets to the schools and the administrators there because they made the values of the properties go up. Now, what about these kids that can’t afford to live in these areas? They…
Again, it acts almost like a gated community to some degree. Well, they’re out of luck. They’re out of luck and quite frankly, I don’t think that’s right. Parents care about their kids’ education, okay? I want that kid. I don’t care what their demographics, I want them in the school because that kid’s gonna be an asset to that school. So in the state of Pennsylvania, state of Pennsylvania, this is another case in point, this thing called Lifeline Scholarships.
funded with state dollars. The awards range from $5,000 to $10,000 per student. Now again, I’m speaking where I am right now. Catholic school, private school where we live here, a little excellent Catholic schools. I know about them, so my kids are thinking about going for sports reasons. But anyway, I’m gonna run around $10,000, $12,000. But these scholarships are gonna be available in Pennsylvania.
to low income families who send their children to the worst schools because they are trapped by their zip codes. Now, at first, at first you had the Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, endorse these scholarships. He also got in bed with the Republican Senate. And again, this, what is the budget for this? We got a $45 billion state budget in Pennsylvania, 100 million allotted for this life line.
(04:51.15)
program and guess what? It’s additional educational funding. However, it’s not gonna take away any money from these schools where the kids are leaving, okay? That’s one of the things that’s, oh, you gotta tick the teachers unions off. To me, it’s, you know, kids leave, money follows the kid and we put bad schools out of business slowly but surely. But anyway,
Again, hundreds of millions of dollars, new spending for Democrats preferred programs, including new aid to the same public school districts that lifeline scholarships that the people that were the recipients wanted to leave. Now, Pennsylvania’s worst schools have been failing for decades. And it’s not just Pennsylvania, we all know, it’s all over the country. Now, in the real world, normally, normally a bad business, a failing business,
your customers revenue from those lost customers. Now under this compromise okay this is a compromise I don’t like it but it’s a compromise and if it can help kids out I’ll go along with it. Under this compromise these failing schools are going to lose their customers their students to another school but they still get to keep the customers money and even get more funding from the state. Now you would say, geez why
Teachers unions, wow, they’re gonna have more money. They’re gonna like that. No, no, no. They got upset. They started thinking about it a little bit. The teachers unions and Democrats, well, they don’t wanna see their monopoly busted up. Yeah, they understand, this is in the column today. They understand that Lifeline Scholarships will create competition for their sacred cow.
the urban public school monopoly. They further understand that monopolies can’t allow competition because monopolies know that their product is inferior and that their customers will flee to a better product at the first chance. Competition kills monopolies. Teachers unions and Democrats fight competition at all costs, even declining additional educational spending to preserve a governmental monopoly.
(07:14.274)
that disenfranchises low-income, predominantly minority urban children. The harder they fight, the worse the schools they protect become. Teachers unions need to kill these lifeline scholarships right away. Gotta kill it right now. Kill it while it’s in the crib. Yeah, you gotta kill it. Kill the baby hair. Kill it while it’s in the crib because they know it’s gonna work.
They know it’s going to work and it’s going to allow their students to leave their schools. Students attending dangerous, failing public schools are generally low-income. Providing resources to these students will create a stampede out of deficient public schools, as evidenced by the long waiting lists for charter school seats and tax credit scholarships. Yep. So the teachers unions, they know, uh-oh, this is bad.
can’t allow this to happen, can’t allow parents this type of freedom to get out. It’s going to screw up their system. And this is why teachers unions have squashed support for this. You know what the funny thing is? This is how disingenuous many of these donkeys are. Elizabeth Warren used to, she used to be in support of school vouchers. Cory Booker was a former board member for the Alliance for School Choice.
But now, of course, because their bread is buttered by the teachers unions and of their big time donkeys, they’ve got to go along with the crowd. These are the type of people that you put in office. This is why this country is on a downward spiral. Evil teachers unions, big part of that. Watch Dog on wallstreet.com.
