Let me know if you read this whole darn post and I’ll give you a dollar when I see you.

John Stossel’s program on ABC’s 20/20 entitled ““Stupid in America” a look at the failings of the U.S. educational system” made me want to puke. It was a hard-line Republican campaign pseudo-documentary about how terrible American public schools are. He advocated school vouchers, no teacher job security, “charter schools,” and merit pay for teachers. The journalism was wickedly one sided in presenting the Republican Party platform word for word. He even had talking points that were repeated over and over. Public schools are monopolies. [false] Monopolies are bad. [not necessarily true] Therefore, public schools are bad. He indicated that teacher unions are a major reason that schools are bad. He said that bad teachers and immoral teachers cannot be fired. He characterized teachers in many negative ways, having people use all the following descriptors of them: lazy, uncaring, and sexual perverts. He indicated that they work 6 hour, 40 minute days and that they demand and receive fantastic raises (15 % he said for New York teachers this year). He said that charter school programs were very successful and that students are excelling in charter schools. He said that starting a charter school in a neighborhood helps the other public schools in the area because of the competition.

As far as I could tell, everything in this program was a lie. Without doing any research, I had reasonably good information to refute every point he tried to make. John Stossel is a puppet of the right wing. The entire program was a Republican campaign commercial. I watched the revolting thing to the end in order to see what my enemies were saying.

Let’s be clear. American schools are the envy of the world. Everyone who can come here, does so. Every rich person in other countries hopes to have their children educated in America. We do not lag behind in math and science. Technology and creativity are the province of Americans, yesterday, today, and tomorrow. You can twist numbers to say what you want and so the naysayers of public education do that. But saying doesn’t make it so. Sorry folks but we are not going to hell in a hand basket. Neither the Japanese nor the Swedes have little robots on Mars. Not today anyway and not in the foreseeable future. Not to say there aren’t schools in miserable areas of the country that are failing. There are failing schools in blighted areas and this is an economic, not an educational problem.

Public Schools are not monopolies. If there weren't a million different school districts and no private schools they would be, but there are lots of districts and lots of private schools. Like our national defense, our public school system is everyone’s responsibility. Even if you don’t have children, it benefits you so much to have educated children in your community that we all pay taxes (well maybe not the uber rich), to educate America’s children.

John Stossel's hour-long tirade about public schools was put on to help out his Republican friends who already have their kids in private school. The Republicans want to go to private schools, in almost every case, for the following reasons. (1) They don’t want their kids in schools with blacks, Hispanics, or poor and uncultured children, or (2) they want religious indoctrination in their children’s schools. In a nutshell they want resegregation and dogma. No matter what they say, there are no other reasons. And they want taxpayers to fund their segregated religious schools, just like they did before Brown vs. the Board of Education. Sorry boys, it is just unconstitutional. Even if you ram it through the legislature and pervert the courts so they allow it, it is still wrong.

Stossel says teachers can’t be fired. The truth is teachers don’t have tenure and they get fired left and right. Anyone who tells you that they can’t be fired is lying. There may be a few places where it is annoyingly difficult to fire a teacher, but that is the exception, not the rule. Worse than that, their pay is so low and their working conditions so difficult that the average teacher quits work in less than 5 years. The good thing about that for the school system is that they system pays no retirement benefits for the average teacher. They never get vested in the system.

And let’s talk about their pension for a minute. Did you know that teachers can’t draw their retirement AND draw social security? It’s considered double dipping on a government pension, so all they get is their pension, even if like me, they have worked at other jobs most of their lives and paid in a gozillion dollars into social security. Sorry teachers, your pension means you just lose your social security and in most cases you lose survivor benefits as well (if your spouse is drawing social security, you can’t get benefits when they die.)

Stossel made a big deal about New York teachers being able to retire at 55. “55?” he said in a loud quizzical tone? I don’t know much about NYC so I’ll talk about Georgia, the 9^th largest state in population, 18^th best in pay, a couple of thousand below the national average. (Proposed salary increases this year, an election year raise, will not bring us back up to the national average). You can retire after 30 years service in GA. That could be around age 53 or 54! You would get 60 % of your salary in retirement, let’s see, 46 thousand average salary, times .6, equals 27,600 dollars. Have a nice retirement! I hope you invested your big salary well throughout your career because you are going to need some help. There are always those Wal-mart greeter jobs.

Stossel blasts South Carolina for being dead last in SAT scores. Hey they tied with Georgia, so I felt especially insulted by the way Stossel made faces and harangued the SC state school superintendent. Never mind that she was a lady, he was rude to her. I’ll bet that John Stossel knows the following information, but he was just acting like an ass, because he IS an ass.

The center for public education (www.nsba.org) says [italics and underlines are mine]:

“The SAT, like the ACT, is not an indicator, especially by itself, of overall student achievement. It does not measure a student's knowledge of his or her school district's curriculum. The student population taking the test is not random or complete, it is a self-selected group of students who may be college-bound.

“The College Board, which administers the SAT, warns against using SAT scores to rank or make judgments about states, school districts or individual schools. “Aggregate results of (students’) performance on these tests usually do not reflect the educational attainment of all students in a school, district, or state. Useful comparisons of students' performance are possible only if all students take the same test.”

Furthermore:

““Average SAT scores are not appropriate for state comparisons because the percentage of SAT takers varies widely among states,” they note. For example, the average math score for Iowa topped 600 this year, almost 100 points higher than the average math score for New York. But, New York had a participation rate of 87 percent, while just 5 percent of Iowa's high school graduates took the SAT (it is an ACT-heavy state). Comparing the two states is an apples to oranges exercise.”

Stossel ridiculed the South Carolina superintendent for saying that things are going well in South Carolina. He practically laughed in her face, with a “nanny nanny poo poo, you’re last, yoo hoo!” attitude. I was surprised he didn’t point his fingers and dance. The SC executive remained professional in her demeanor and talked of improvements in her state. Stossel felt that no one cared if they improved. Being last was his big issue. By the way, South Carolina's average score of 993, was 35 points below the average for all students. Wouldn’t a cogent question here be, “Did more students than average for all the states take the SAT in SC?” You’ll find the answer to that question is “yes.” “Yes” for Georgia too.

As for fantastic salary increases and 6-hour workdays. . .Georgia teachers’ salary increases during the Perdue administration have lost ground against the cost of living. Oh well. And the workday. . . on average it is about 9 hours, though many work 10 and at times more. We can leave at 4. But at 4 our parking lot is full of cars. It has thinned out by 6. You realize of course that there is work to take home for most teachers.

I loved that Stossel characterized charter schools by showing students in uniforms silently taking a test. He characterized public schools by showing two students in gang attire running in a crowded hallway, one shouting profanity. That seems awfully unfair of Mr. Stossel. Statistics are actually very mixed for charter schools. Some have done well. Others have folded with dismal records. Why didn’t Mr. Stossel say this? The thing that astonishes me about charter schools is that they allow uncertified teachers to teach, pay them less money than regular schools, and the schools make a profit for investors. Should we be making money off student education? Do you smell a rat? Then my favorite part of charter schools. What do they do when a student is a discipline problem? Why they just let her/him go. Goodbye discipline problem. Where does the student go? Back to the local public school. See how charter schools help? They take the good kids and leave the tough cases for me to work with. Oh yes, they have reduced the money I had to work with that student. Oh well.

Public school problems are economic problems. Pay is low, thus there are teacher shortages. Large classes are poorly performing classes. Job security and working conditions are not the best, thus there is poor retention of experienced teachers. Blighted economic areas with underprivileged children have blighted schools. No one wants to work there. It makes you cry.

Ca ching. You earned a dollar.