Over in the Corner, Derb was engaging in some schadenfreude over the firings of a hundred or so unionized school employees (including all the teachers) in Central Falls, Rhode Island.  The problem?  According to this report, the recession is making folks a wee bit sensitive to the pay increases and pensions of public sector employees:

The teachers at the high school make $70,000-$78,000, as compared to a median income in the town of $22,000.  This exemplifies a nationwide trend in which public sector workers make far more than their private-sector counterparts (with better benefits).

Following that link to another story in Business Insider, we find the following from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS):

According to a December report from the BLS, state and local government employers spent an average of $39.83 per hour worked ($26.24 for wages and $13.60 for benefits) for total employee compensation in September 2009. Total employer compensation costs for private industry workers averaged $27.49 per hour ($19.45 for wages and $8.05 for benefits). In other words, governmentemployees make 45% more on average than private sector employees.

According to another BLS report, compensation for private industry workers has increased by 6.9% between December 2006 and December 2009, compared to a 9.8% increase for government workers (state and local) over the same period.

As with the unions, though, it’s not the pay that gets you, but the benefits and pensions.  Next time you run into a retired school teacher or counselor who is retiring at 45 with a pension you will only be able to dream of at 65, ask yourself:  Is this sustainable?

Yesterday I had the good fortune to attend the inauguration of Virginia’s 71st governor, Bob McDonnell.  All the guests were full of energy and enthusiasm as we watched him take the oath of office, along with his Lieutenant-Governor Bob Bolling and Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.  It really felt like being at a concert of my favorite rockstar – the excitement goes beyond description. I couldn’t do it justice if I tried. There was a little something for everyone, from the flyover after the oath to the Redskins cheerleaders to the history in which Richmond is steeped.  The next four years should be good for Virginia and I pray for the Governor and his family.

Below is the full text of his Inaugural Address, courtesy of #bobmcdonnell: (more…)

“Education, after all, is typically described as a core, and possibly the core, state responsibility . . . Homeschooling is now such an entrenched practice, recriminalization is not a viable option in any event.” ~ Robin L. West, Georgetown University Law Center

Not a “viable option?” Well at least I can rest peacefully tonight knowing that jack-booted thugs won’t be knocking my daughter’s door down any time soon to arrest her for teaching “the state’s children.” (My daughter would want to know where the state was when she was going through those labor pains to deliver “their” children. By the way Professor, the youngest one has something stinky in her diaper – could you lend a hand here?) Professor West thinks that more government regulation of homeschooling is a good idea:

As the political philosopher and homeschool critic Robert Reich has persuasively argued, curricular review would give the state a way to ensure that the academic content is such as to protect the children’s interest in both acquiring the necessary skills for active, autonomous, and responsible citizenship in adulthood, and in being exposed to diverse and more liberal ways.

Well, gee whiz, that approach certainly has worked wonders in the public schools, hasn’t it? Diverse and more liberal – that’s what this is really all about. Professor West doesn’t like the fact that “the state” is losing the opportunity to indoctrinate OUR children.  Maybe she’s bucking for Secretary of Education in the Obama administration. More here.

A nifty little essay that reminded me of the many important facets involved in a well-educated person (and sadly, the deficiencies in my own education). A short snippet of Mitchell’s thoughts after the jump:

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President Obama wants kids in school more hours per day, more days per year.

“We can no longer afford an academic calendar designed when America was a nation of farmers who needed their children at home plowing the land at the end of each day,” Obama said. “That calendar may have once made sense, but today, it puts us at a competitive disadvantage.”

Please excuse the “un-American” children at 4:22.

(Cross-posted at Underdog Soldier)

If I have to sell a kidney, I am going to do everything in my power to make sure my children do not attend public school.  This video is another reason why.

Ahh charming.  Little schoolchildren being taught a song in praise of our Dear Leader.  There’s nothing creepy at all about this.  This absolutely does not smack of totalitarian indoctrination a la North Korea. Nope.  Not at all.

This video was recently shown to elementary schoolchildren in Farmington, Utah. So pledge your service to the President and don’t flush after you pee-pee.

As a conservative, how do I differentiate between the government giving me money to buy a car vs. the government giving me money to send kids to the school of my choice? Why is the latter but not the former acceptable in a limited-government, conservative orthodoxy?

Slipped between his Chicago-style thuggery of Chrysler and the Swine Flu, the One is aiming for a rather significant consolidation and reform of Pell Grant and Financial Aid programs. Admittedly, I understand very little of how financial aid works (even though, yes, I’ve got loans). The political goal is simple: increase the percentage of Americans going into post-secondary education and eventually ensure that every American go to college. The idea is to consolidate over $56 billion in loans under the Department of Education and (more…)

The ever-irascible John Derbyshire over at NRO had a comment in The Corner that rather surprised me.  Rather than take teens the great books route, he argues that we should give them a sampling in textbooks and readers, but largely concentrate on keeping them ‘engaged.’

Reading for duty is a miserable business, from which little is gained. It’s much better, certainly for teens, to read second-rate stuff that engages one’s attention, than classics that leave you cold. In my own teens I read almost nothing but science fiction. (My son, though not much of a reader, seems inclined the same way.)

I agree that being dragged through Moby Dick (or the SparkNotes for the same) in a standard high school class is painful and counterproductive.  But the reason I disagree with the Derb is that he’s leaving something out of the equation, namely the teacher.  The main purpose of a classroom is to give students the chance to encounter not just texts, but another mind in relation to those texts.  Samuel Johnson, it is safe to say, would bore the mess out of your average American teenager, but if you happened to have John Derbyshire nearby and the students could spend two weeks with Johnson-Derbyshire, they would never see life-language-literature quite the same way again.  (more…)

Another op-ed from a North Carolina business man in favor of Charter Schools, in particular note his incentives to help address oversight problems with charter schools and to promote strategic and steady growth of new schools.

H/t: Jacques of all Trades