Monadnock School Taxpayers Association News

While politicians have opposed the right to strike, public-sector labor leaders have focused on pay increases and constitutional guarantees.

This weekend we celebrate Labor Day in a country divided between two kinds of workers. The first is the private-sector worker, the vulnerable one who rides the business cycle without shock absorbers. The second worker, who works for the government, lives a cushioned existence in which terminations take years, pension amounts are often guaranteed, and recessions are only thunder in the distance. Yet worse than this division is the knowledge that the private-sector worker will pay for public-sector comfort with ever higher taxes.

How did we get here? Over the course of the past century, officials and politicians of both parties have sought to shut unions out of government or, when that failed, constrain their power within government. Early 20th-century strikes by police and other public employees were effective but proved politically damaging. Over time, the unions opted for a more quiet form of coercion—what might be called compensation coercion. Their success in this area brought them to the privileged ground they hold today.

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Benches that talk, a Cocoanut Grove auditorium, and a marble slab engraved with quotes from Ted Kennedy.

At $578 million—or about $140,000 per student—the 24-acre Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools complex in mid-Wilshire is the most expensive school ever constructed in U.S. history. To put the price in context, this city’s Staples sports and entertainment center cost $375 million. To put it in a more important context, the school district is currently running a $640 million deficit and has had to lay off 3,000 teachers in the last two years. It also has one of the lowest graduation rates in the country and some of the worst test scores.

The K-12 complex isn’t merely an overwrought paean to the nation’s most celebrated liberal political family. It’s a jarring reminder that money doesn’t guarantee success—though it certainly beautifies failure.

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Back in March, voters nixed a new teacher contract for the Sanborn Regional School District, and among the voter complaints was the inclusion of an evergreen clause. If the contract were to expire, teachers would continue to get their step raises until a new contract was reached.

“No one should get a perpetual raise because of their job performance,” voter Charlton Swasey said.

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New data show that fewer than 25% of 2010 graduates who took the ACT college-entrance exam possessed the academic skills necessary to pass entry-level courses, despite modest gains in college-readiness among U.S high-school students in the last few years.

The results raise questions about how well the nation’s high schools are preparing students for college, and show the challenge facing the Obama administration in its effort to raise educational standards. The administration won bipartisan support for its education policies early on, but faces a tough fight in the fall over the rewrite and reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind program.

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Why so many colleges are education-free zones

If you have a child in college, or are planning to send one there soon, Craig Brandon has a message for you: Be afraid. Be very afraid.

“The Five-Year Party” provides the most vivid portrait of college life since Tom Wolfe’s 2004 novel, “I Am Charlotte Simmons.” The difference is that it isn’t fiction. The alcohol-soaked, sex-saturated, drug-infested campuses that Mr. Brandon writes about are real. His book is a roadmap for parents on how to steer clear of the worst of them.

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Civil rights groups choose the teachers unions over black kids.

For the second time in recent weeks, the Obama Administration has been forced to defend its school reform agenda from its political left. The White House has been up to the task, but the episodes underscore liberalism’s vested interest in the tattered education status quo.

House Democrats last month passed a spending bill that gutted funding for the President’s $4.3 billion Race to the Top competition, which rewards reform-minded states with education grants. Lawmakers removed the provisions only after a veto threat from the White House.

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New survey data show black support on the rise. So why is the NAACP opposed?

This past week the NAACP, the National Urban League and other civil-rights groups collectively condemned charter schools. Claiming to speak for minority Americans, the organizations expressed “reservations” about the Obama administration’s “extensive reliance on charter schools.” They specifically voiced concern about “the overrepresentation of charter schools in low-income and predominantly minority communities.”

Someone should remind these leaders who they represent. The truth is that support for charters among ordinary African-Americans and Hispanics is strong and has only increased dramatically in the past two years. Opposition along the lines expressed by the NAACP and the Urban League is articulated by a small minority.

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Michelle Rhee does the once unthinkable in Washington.

Donald Trump is not the only one who knows how to get attention with the words, “You’re fired.” Michelle Rhee, chancellor for the District of Columbia schools, has just done a pretty nifty job of it herself.

On Friday, Ms. Rhee fired 241 teachers—roughly 6% of the total—mostly for scoring too low on a teacher evaluation that measures their performance against student achievement. Another 737 teachers and other school-based staff were put on notice that they had been rated “minimally effective.” Unless these people improve, they too face the boot.

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Due to a legal quirk, the death tax is scheduled to come back to life in 2011. The renewed death tax would once again inflict serious harm on family businesses, workers, and the economy. Congress should act before the end of the year to repeal this economically harmful tax permanently, says Curtis S. Dubay, a senior analyst in tax policy at the Heritage Foundation.

The death tax slows economic growth, destroys jobs and suppresses wages because it is a tax on capital and on entrepreneurship. In fact, there is a general consensus among economists that there should be no taxes on capital, says Dubay.

The death tax discourages savings and investment:

* The tax sends a signal that it is better to consume today than invest and make more money in the future.

* Instead of putting their money in the hands of entrepreneurs or investing more in their own economic endeavors, Americans are encouraged to consume it now rather than pay taxes on it later.

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What’s happening in Washington gives investors, entrepreneurs and other job creators little reason to feel optimistic, says Daniel J. Mitchell, a senior fellow with the Cato Institute…

President Obama has failed spectacularly on his promise to deliver jobs. What were his biggest mistakes?

Let’s start with two commonsense observations:

* Businesses are not charities; they only create jobs when they think that the total revenue generated by new workers will exceed the total cost of employing those workers.

* Also, it takes money to create jobs; more specifically, labor isn’t very useful or productive unless investors are providing capital.

Businesses have plenty of extra cash — the key issue is whether companies have a reason to invest. In other words, if they start spending money and hiring workers, will they make money?

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