Joel Klein, the Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, sets the record straight as he was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal's Alan Murray. Mr. Klein compares our recruitment of science and math teachers with some of the other developed countries. The other countries recruit from the top third of college graduates, we in the United States recruit generally from the bottom third. And Mr. Klein goes on, "we pay teachers on length of service and a few courses they take." By paying teachers based on the economic value of subjects they teach is prohibited by union contracts. Mr. Klein goes on, "if you fell asleep 50 years ago and woke up today, you wouldn't recognize what's going on. In education, if you fell asleep 50 years ago, you still have the same discussions." In other words, education lags behind technology. The question has to be asked, why? There is only one answer, the Teachers Union is not for change. They are for the continuation of the same old failed system of educating our your. 

Parents, your kids are being short changed. You must demand change! Courses that have marginal economic value need to be given less resources. Subjects such as math and science need more resources in order to recruit the best teachers. Christopher Edley Jr. the dean of the law school at the University of California weights in. He said, "I think what is needed now is some fundamental reworking of our institutions of government and the political culture around issues of education, both at the K-12 level and higher-ed level."  "If this really is a national priority, both with respect to opportunity and with competitiveness, you have to ask yourself whether a 19th century model for financing and governing K-12 is going to work in this century, and I profoundly believe the answer is no."  And added Amy Guttman, president of the University of Pennsylvania, "we have to compete against the Chinese and Indians who are graduating tens of thousands more very talented science, math and engineering graduates from their colleges. We have to compete at quality. The way that's going to happen is if we have leadership at the top and a real fear through this society that if we don't  compete better by educating our best students-which means getting better teachers, which means rewarding them for results-we're going to fall behind."

What does this have to do with Tea Parties? American citizens are being taxed to death. They are not getting a bang for the buck. And why? The common denominator is competition. In a free enterprise system only the strong survive. In a union run school system, only the weak survive. With no competition (charter schools, vouchers) our best students are being dumbed down and taxpayers are being short changed. Socialism is not the answer, free enterprise in a competitive environment is the only road to success.  That is why the Tea Party Patriots are out protesting. WAKE UP AMERICA BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE. 

Joel Klein has a personal story to tell to those parents who have not completed their public education but do have children of school age. "My parents taught me early that in the absence of education, I could end up living in the same public housing that I was living in as a child. My father never made it out of high school. Nobody in my family had ever been to college. This was an important message. I didn't like living where I lived when I was a kid. But it was my teachers, time and time again, who would challenge me. My high school physics teacher, Sidney Harris basically convinced me that I could go to Columbia college."  Fortunately for Mr. Klein, he had a motivating teacher.

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