This study helps to explain why measured school inputs appear to have little effect on student outcomes, particularly for cohorts educated since 1960. Teachers' unionization can explain how public schools simultaneously can have more generous inputs and worse student performance. Using panel data on United States school districts, I identify the effect of teachers' unionization through differences in the timing of collective bargaining, especially timing determined by the passage of state laws that facilitate teachers' unionization. I find that teachers' unions increase school inputs but reduce productivity sufficiently to have a negative overall effect on student performance. Union effects are magnified where schools have market power.
My guess is not many. Compare and contrast the educational outcome. Home schooled kids have a reputation for being very smart. I bet they aren't out walking a picket line.
They defend teachers who are bad just because they are Union members.
They worry about teachers, not the students. And what may be better for the student may not always be better for the teacher...
The country that gets the highest scores in public education in the world is Finland. Yes, Finland. Guess what? They have 100% teacher unionization. Guess what else? American public schools in low poverty districts score better than in Finland.
I wouldn't even call a workers' organization with 100% mandatory membership a union.
There are probably a number of other factors that go into the quality of education, one of the most important being education philosophy and technique. Europe adopted the Montessori Method early on, and has developed pedagogic technique from there. America's greatest fault in education was adopting the "progressivist" philosophy of John Dewey.
The best school I know of, however, is the VanDamme Acedemy (no, nothing to do with the actor), where they have adopted a hierarchical approach to knowledge.
From an interview of the founder, Lisa VanDamme:
L: All knowledge is hierarchical--it is gained in incremental steps, building from simple observations and progressing to knowledge at a greater and greater level of abstraction. Before a student learns calculus, he must know algebra; before he learns algebra, he must know arithmetic; before arithmetic, he must know his numbers; and so on. This principle, though generally understood as applied to math, has important pedagogical implications for the teaching of all subjects. Politics, for example, is a highly abstract subject that should follow extensive study of history; yet many social studies classes today begin with hot-button political issues, evading the fact that the students do not have the prerequisite knowledge to judge them. Science classes dive in with such advanced, technical knowledge as the structure of the atom, or such abstract principles as Newton’s laws of motion, without first laying down the observations and principles that made these advanced discoveries possible. If a teacher’s goal is to ensure that his students have real, independent knowledge, he must teach hierarchically, beginning with principles at a simple level and building up as the student is prepared for the next level of abstraction.
TNI: What are the consequences of learning things in the wrong hierarchical order?
L: If they are not learned in hierarchical order they are not really learned. Any child can be taught to recite the principle that “an object in motion remains in motion unless a force acts upon it,” but this only reflects knowledge if he himself understands the proof. In this case, that means he must know the series of steps by which scientists came to understand this far-from-obvious principle. Unthinking repetition is not knowledge. If a teacher wishes his students to have real understanding, he must teach his subject hierarchically, guiding the students incrementally through the steps necessary for a thorough grasp of the material.
And, of course, you accuse "libertarian cultism" of supposedly causing problems where no libertarianism exists. In which public schools are libertarian principles implemented?
...there is a move to strip public schools of a billion dollars, in order to give rich kids money to go to private schools.
You are quite right that the American education system does not work well. A one size fits all method of teaching when different people learn differently is a model that's not going to work well. But we've hardly adopted the John Dewey approach. Rather we seem obsessed with rote memorization.