LA Teachers’ Union Muscle Doesn’t Add Up

Letter to Philippians: How can teachers be given a double-digit pay raise when the math shows many & sometimes most of their students can’t read or write let alone add & subtract. Yet, that’s exactly what happened in LA aka LA LA LAND.

Consider the WSJ’s editorial titled, “Los Angeles Schools Can’t Do Math,” which bemoans how the city’s teachers recently forged “a rich new union contract despite awful student results.” As the editors opined: “When government rewards failure, the result is usually more failure. That’s been the story in Los Angeles, where the teachers’ unions … secured a rich new contract, notwithstanding lousy student performance …” How rich was that latest deal? It increases teachers’ salary scales by 11.65% over two years aka double the rate of inflation. And, oh, toss in FOUR weeks of paid parental leave & expanded student support services, whatever that means, but surely means more hiring.

Not to forget the city’s “new” teachers, they’ll get $77K just to start their careers. Hopefully, they’ll do a better job of teaching than their “experienced” elders. Latest numbing figures show that “only 18% of LA’s 8^th graders scored proficient in math on the National Assessment of Education Progress” compared to the nothing to brag about 27% nationwide. Not that I don’t love the profession for what great things it did for me throughout my life and can do for our kids in the future. I also can see how hard & passionately my brother & daughter work(ed) at being grammar school teachers, having made it their life’s work to help make a difference in others’ lives. An army of other do-gooders is out there, I’m sure. But common sense tells as well as teaches us that public contracts like this gold dig in LA need to be tied to merit & results not just (union) muscle.

Davd Soul