Echoing other strikes, WaPo is reporting that Oklahoma teachers are walking out. Why?
The 30 or so teachers joined thousands more at the state Capitol, part of a statewide walkout that has shuttered schools across the state. Teachers in Muskogee, where the gym roof is so leaky that volleyball games get “rained out,” arrived to urge lawmakers to restore education funding. Many of them came bearing a threat: Increase education funding, or teachers will not return to work.
“I’m fed up,” said Rusty Bradley, a high school technology teacher whose classroom computers are more than a decade old, as the bus rumbled toward the state Capitol. After nearly 28 years on the job, he has seen state lawmakers repeatedly pledge to give teachers raises and restore education funding, only to be disappointed. “I want them to get off their butts and do something.” …
They were joined by students who also feel the impact of dwindling financial support for education. Many schools do not have enough textbooks for students. The tomes are often outdated, tattered and missing pages.
Raylynn Thompson, 16, a top student at Muskogee High, said her history textbook is at least 10 years old — stopping at the 2009 inauguration of President Barack Obama. Wearing red sneakers, she wrapped herself in a blanket on the back of the bus, saying she made the journey because she hopes the next generation of students does not have to suffer through leaky classrooms with shared textbooks.
“For me, school is a big thing in my life, and it’s one of the only things that matters,” the aspiring doctor said. The chronic textbook shortages and deteriorating classrooms make it hard to concentrate, she said. “It’s just making it really hard for me to go school.”
It’s not so much teachers’ pay, but the entire educational establishment is underfunded. Steve Benen presents a rather dire history of GOP governance:
Under former Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), Louisiana Republicans took control, cut taxes, and slashed spending. The result was a fiscal crisis and weakened public services. Under former Gov. Sam Brownback (R), Kansas Republicans took control, cut taxes, and slashed spending. The result was a fiscal crisis and weakened public services.
And under [Oklahoma] Gov. Mary Fallin (R), the same experiment has unfolded the same way.
Here’s what concerns me – this could become a self-reinforcing vortex if the Republicans get stubborn about their taxes. There is a certain value to having well-educated workers to fulfill business needs. I don’t even mean college graduates, but folks with high school degrees which actually mean something. If business doesn’t find what it needs, it has two choices.
First, It can pick up and leave. That would be very bad for Oklahoma. While small, locally run businesses are certain critical to any State, large, national businesses are at least as important, if not more so. Their tax revenue would dry up even more, which would no doubt be compensated for by sucking it out of the education budget – if the educational establishment doesn’t protest it. Soon, education would consist of unpowered schools run by folks who don’t even have a high school degree themselves. How does this lead to prosperity?
Second, business can try to remedy the problem. I’m not talking about for-profit schools, which are an entirely different kettle of fish, and have done poorly, as I’ve discussed elsewhere on this blog. I mean business simply does the educating it needs to do to get workers with the proper skills. Vocational schools, if you will, but this is not a good situation, either, because those skills may be very narrowly defined, such that they don’t transfer to any other employer. Now the workers are really tied to the apron strings of a company that may not be sentimental about you – or may go under abruptly itself.
Furthermore, businesses don’t know much about doing a full education. It’s not their job. Properly, it’s the job of the local government to provide high quality schooling, and that requirement should be a priority. Why? Because study after study show that better educated people are more productive and, generally, happier.
Oklahoma has pursued the illusion that dropping tax rates will cause prosperity, and it hasn’t worked out. Kansas Republicans had the balls to reject that approach, finally. Will the Oklahomans? For a bunch of Sooners, they’re way behind the curve.
