A few years ago the teacher’s union tried to push a law through in Michigan that would ensure that teachers always received a raise whether the state could afford it or not. No matter what the economic conditions were, the teachers would always get a raise. The measure was soundly defeated by a two-to-one margin if I remember correctly. People were absolutely appalled at the audacity of the unions to think they could get away with something like this. And yet they had every reason to believe they would. After all, education funding (and therefore teacher salaries) are a major sacred cow. No one dares to mess with them because to do so is just completely un-American in the extreme.

I believe one of the very last sacred cows in America has put the first two feet into the slaughterhouse. I suspect we are about to witness something very few would have ever imagined just a decade ago.

Public education is about to undergo some radical changes in the coming years. Automatic and ever-increasing education funding and teacher salaries are a thing of the past.

Now that Americans are finally waking up to the reality of the complete economic nightmare we are in the midst of, everything is being scrutinized in a way it never was before. This includes education funding. Mish had an interesting piece in which he tackled some of these issues (scroll down) including this stellar analysis Raise My Taxes! Raise my Taxes! Raise my Taxes! from the Ace of Spades (caution: raw language in comments) (bold mine):

The rest of the public is finally starting to notice that, and that the public — 20% of whom are out of a job or working part-time when they want a full-time job — is basically paying their employees more than they themselves receive in salary, and with far better benefits and job-security, too.

I think the public is finally starting to wake up to that. People have this asinine “let’s not be mean” thing going with public-employees unions. They don’t like being a cheap boss who won’t give a big raise every year.

But they’re finally starting to understand that they are, ultimately, the boss, and all these 4%-per-year raises and ridiculously huge pension plans are coming out of their own hide.

I don’t think the unions understand this. They are getting more aggressive and obnoxious about their undeservedly high salaries and pension plans rather than being conciliatory about it. They are continuing to demand salaries and benefits that most of the rest of the country could only dream of without even offering even the slightest apologies to the strapped taxpayers whose incomes they are reducing in order to increase their own.

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve heard it said twenty times at every single Democratic National Convention that it was absolutely imperative we pay our teachers as if they’re doctors or lawyers (!), and everyone dutifully applauds, because it’s just the sort of sentiment that you’re supposed to agree with.

I don’t think that’s going to play well in 2012. I don’t think these guys are understanding that things have changed, and that the public is no longer willing to uncritically bless 4%-a-year-regular-as-clockwork raises when their salaries have been more or less flat for a good long time.

The New York Times recently ran a piece called The Teachers’ Unions’ Last Stand.  From the article (bold mine):

MICHAEL MULGREW is an affable former Brooklyn vocational-high-school teacher who took over last year as head of New York City’s United Federation of Teachers when his predecessor, Randi Weingarten, moved to Washington to run the national American Federation of Teachers. Over breakfast in March, we talked about a movement spreading across the country to hold public-school teachers accountable by compensating, promoting or even removing them according to the results they produce in class, as measured in part by student test scores. Mulgrew’s 165-page union contract takes the opposite approach. It not only specifies everything that teachers will do and will not do during a six-hour-57 ½-minute workday but also requires that teachers be paid based on how long they have been on the job. Once they’ve been teaching for three years and judged satisfactory in a process that invariably judges all but a few of them satisfactory, they are ensured lifetime tenure.

Next to Mulgrew was his press aide, Richard Riley. “Suppose you decide that Riley is lazy or incompetent,” I asked Mulgrew. “Should you be able to fire him?”

“He’s not a teacher,” Mulgrew responded. “And I need to be able to pick my own person for a job like that.” Then he grinned, adding: “I know where you’re going, but you don’t understand. Teachers are just different.”

I think Mr. Mulgrew is going to find out that teachers aren’t just different. It is going to be a very hard sell.

And from the UK comes Failing to teach them how to handle real life about how children of today are considerably less “intelligent” than children of thirty years ago (bold mine).

For a decade we’ve been told that our kids, just as they seem to be getting taller with each generation, are also getting brighter. Every year new waves of children get better GCSE, A-level and degree results than their predecessors. Meanwhile, in primary schools, the standards in national maths and English tests at 11 head in one direction — relentlessly upwards.

Last week came the bombshell that blew a gaping hole in this one-way escalator of achievement.

Far from getting cleverer, our 11-year-olds are, in fact, less “intelligent” than their counterparts of 30 years ago. Or so say a team who are among Britain’s most respected education researchers.

After studying 25,000 children across both state and private schools Philip Adey, a professor of education at King’s College London confidently declares: “The intelligence of 11-year-olds has fallen by three years’ worth in the past two decades.”

It’s an extraordinary claim. But it’s one that should startle parents and teachers out of complacency. Shocked by the findings, experts are questioning our entire exam system and calling for radical changes in the way our children are taught in primary schools.

In their painstaking research project Adey and his colleague, psychology professor Michael Shayer, compared the results of today’s children with those of children who took exactly the same test in the mid-1990s and also 30 years ago. While most exams have changed (been made easier, if you listen to the critics) this one is the same as it was in 1976 when pupils first chewed their pencils over the problems.

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In 1976 a third of boys and a quarter of girls scored highly in the tests overall; by 2004, the figures had plummeted to just 6% of boys and 5% of girls. These children were on average two to three years behind those who were tested in the mid-1990s.

“It is shocking,” says Adey. “The general cognitive foundation of 11 and 12-year-olds has taken a big dip. There has been a continuous decline in the last 30 years and it is carrying on now.”

But what exactly is being lost? Is it really general intelligence or simply a specific understanding of scientific concepts such as volume and density? Both, say the researchers. The tests reveal both general intelligence — “higher level brain functions” — and a knowledge that is “the bedrock of science and maths” says Ginsburg. In fact it’s nothing less than the ability of children to handle new, difficult ideas. Doing well at these tests has been linked with getting higher grades generally at GCSE.

So why are children now doing so badly? Possible explanations are numerous. Youngsters don’t get outside for hands-on play in mud, sand and water — and sandpits and water tables have been squeezed out in many primary schools by a relentless drilling of the three Rs and cramming 11- year-olds for the national tests.

“By stressing the basics — reading and writing — and testing like crazy you reduce the level of cognitive stimulation. Children have the facts but they are not thinking very well,” says Adey. “And they are not getting hands-on physical experience of the way materials behave.”

Ginsburg says parents too can do their bit. “When did children stop playing with mud, plasticine and Meccano and start playing with Xboxes and computer games?” she asks. Parents should switch off the television and “sit children around the dinner table to debate issues such as ‘What should we have done about the whale in the Thames?’ ” says Adey.

If these experts are right — and our children are losing the ability to think, the burning question is: what is the value of what they are being taught in primary school and of all those test results that every year rise to new heights? Paul Black, professor of education at King’s College, London is one of the experts so startled by these findings that he now wants ministers to reassess what our children are being taught.

And consider this idea that there are a growing number of people who realize that teaching to the test and inflated test results are really quite meaningless here in the USA. A Classical Education: Back to the Future examines this very idea. Have you ever looked at a textbook from a hundred and fifty years ago?  Fourth grade students read and discussed content that most college students today would find challenging.

I have no idea where this will all end up, but the train wreck is there for all to see. We have been throwing money at our education system for decades and it isn’t getting any better. The problems are so huge and so complex that I cannot even fathom that this country has the will and the smarts to do what needs to be done to fix it.

But I’m very confident of three things.

One, the non-stop gravy train of education is at an end.

Two, it is going to get very, very ugly in the next few years.

And three, more and more parents such as myself will choose to completely disconnect from the mess that is education and pursue our own high-quality education on our own terms and in our own way.

I suspect homeschooling numbers will continue to increase as many parents are left with it as their only option as the public schools are simply not acceptable and private school is financially out of reach.