That’s The Answer. More Teachers.

What is the best thing to do during a weak economy? Hire more public employees. Or so Barack Obama thinks. But he isn’t just talking about those illiterate file clerks or surly bureaucrats who are there to make sure you don’t try to slip anything past the government. He is talking about those molders of our youth—public school teachers. This week, the president called on the nation’s governors to stop cutting education and hire more public school teachers.

And he was willing to sweeten the pot with $25 billion in federal gifts. His litany was heart-rending. “We’ve just got to get more teachers into our classrooms. Over the past four years, school districts across America have lost over 250,000 teachers, educators have been lost. A quarter million educators responsible for millions of our students, all laid off when America has never needed them more.”

Of course anyone who has actually followed the news about public schools over the past few decades knows that what Obama is saying is a combination of wishful thinking, purposeful deception, and pandering to one of his largest campaign contribution groups. Public school teachers are a huge constituency for liberal politicians, and unionized public school teachers are even stronger for the left. But if they were really teaching our kids the things they need to know, there would be little room for complaint.

The school cutbacks have indeed been numerous, but hardly draconian. “Educators” seem to think the proper student-teacher ration is 1:1. For decades before the unions and self-serving educators got into power, student-teacher ratios of 1:15 and even 1:20 were common and somehow students got fine educations. Today, a classroom with 15 students, one teacher and two teacher’s assistants is considered barebones. 250,000 teachers laid off nationwide isn’t even a very significant number.

But Obama would like the public to think that by balancing budgets, laying off teachers and putting teacher-administrators back in the classroom and out of the bloated offices American students will fall into education deficiency disorder. I hate to tell The One, but even before the cuts, American public schools had become a laughingstock in the western world. Overall, our public school students are among the worst educated in the industrialized West (and yes, I know there are exceptions).

Now before anyone jumps on me for being down on teachers, I want to make it clear that I am not. A good teacher is one of civilization’s most valuable assets. And even in our miserable public schools (particularly the urban and near-urban suburban schools), there are teachers struggling against a system which has stacked the deck against them. But when the money runs out, belts have to be tightened and some people have to go. If the system provided for getting rid of the worst teachers based on objective standards, reduction in the number of teachers would actually be a boon.

But it doesn’t. Given unionization, tenure, and an overabundance of labor lawyers, the system is designed to retain the teachers with the longest history of employment at a particular school or school district. Many of them should not have been allowed to teach from day one, but are now nearly untouchable. Obama figures that a good teacher “can increase the income of a classroom by $250,000.” Where he got that figure I haven’t a clue, particularly since it depends in large part on how populous each classroom is. But rather than quibble, I’ll just say he has the right idea, but the wrong facts. The operative word is “good,” and far too many are barely able to attain minimal teaching efficiency.


Last hired, first fired has its merits. But it should be far from the only criterion. A bad teacher with twenty-five years on the job should not be retained over a good teacher with proven objective results who has only been on the job for a year or two. For a frighteningly large number of retained teachers, this includes teachers who are so bad both academically and morally that they are serving out their tenure in “rubber rooms.” Unions and civil rights/labor lawyers have managed to retain the jobs of sexual predators, but can’t see why we should retain good teachers who don’t molest their students.

Says Obama, “other countries are doubling down on education and increasing their investment in teachers.” But the failing American pubic schools already spend more per pupil/per teacher than most of those “other countries” anyway. And that’s before you start counting the crippling burden of teacher pensions. Good teachers are indeed underpaid, but far more bad teachers are overpaid and destructive of true education.

Unlike the federal government, the states cannot balance their budgets and retain expensive deadwood by printing money. Obama knows this, and he keeps holding out those magic wads of cash he’ll give to the states if they’ll just rehire laid-off losers while recruiting new ones. The idea of attaching strings, like teacher competency, termination of bad teachers and reduction of benefits to general public levels before rehiring or newly employing teachers is simply not part of the Obama equation.

And here’s at least part of the reason why: The National Education Association gave $1.2 million to Democratic candidates in 2010, though that was down from the $1.8 million it contributed to Democrats in 2008. In 2012, very early in the election cycle, the NEA has already contributed nearly $250,000 to Democratic candidates (that magic number keeps reappearing, doesn’t it?). Not to be outdone, the American Federation of Teachers has already contributed $637,000 for Democrats in 2012. In 2010, it was $2.3 million, outdoing its 2008 contributions of $2.2 million. Any questions? I’m sure there’s a union public school teacher available to answer them.