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Heritage.org…
Back
to School: Some Surprising Education
Numbers
By Lindsey
Burke
August
27, 2012
As
children head back to the classrooms, let’s
look at two important figures to consider this school year: 308,000 and
$11,400.
308,000:
Number of members lost by the National
Education Association.
Education
special interest groups, such as the
teachers unions, are experiencing a decline in membership. As Stephen
Sawchuck
reports in Education
Week, “by
the end of its 2013–14 budget, NEA [the National Education Association]
expects
it will have lost 308,000 members and experienced a decline in revenue
projected at some $65 million in all since 2010. (The figures are
expressed in
full-time equivalents, which means that the actual number of people
affected is
probably higher.)”
While
the decline in membership appears to have
shocked the NEA, the remarks of
one of the union’s top officials,
treasurer Becky Pringle, are even more shocking:
We’re
living with a recession that just won’t
end, political attacks that have turned brutal, and societal changes
that are
impacting us—from stupid education “reform” to an explosion of
technology—all
coming together to impact us in ways that we had never anticipated.
Pringle
is likely referring to the reforms that
Governor Scott Walker (R–WI) put into place in his state last year,
giving
teachers the choice to join the union or not. And
it’s no surprise
that the unions fear the “stupid” reforms that are underway, namely,
online
learning and school choice. As former New York City Schools chancellor
Joel
Klein wrote
in The Atlantic last week:
Today’s
entrepreneurs know they can harness
emerging technologies to reimagine teaching and learning. It’s a story
as old
as change itself. The candlemaker’s union wasn’t cheering Edison on.
Those
reforms are even more crucial considering
the amount of taxpayer dollars that will be poured into the public
system this
year.
$11,400:
Average per-pupil, per year spending
in public schools…
Read
the rest of the article at Heritage
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