As a Masters Degree candidate at Cal State Los Angeles, I could not understand the bias which so many of my educator-colleagues had toward voucher systems. The instructor in one class would rebuff any discussion of giving choice to parents for their children's education.
When I discussed the research and the results which supported injecting choice and competition into the public system in Milwaukee and Arizona, and even in Washington D.C., the students whom I studied with just dismissed these findings.
"C'mon, Arthur, Vouchers just do not work."
No amount of research and reality would persuade them So much for elite opinions.
What holds so many teachers back from accepting empirical data? The world view which grips and blinds many teachers starts in the halls of academia, where every teacher, including myself, had to suffer through four years of schooling just to get the Bachelors degree, then two more years to get a Masters/Teaching Credential.
The coursework of a Masters Degrees in education leaves much to be desired. Half the courses that I took at Cal State Los Angeles reminded me of the first-year and introductory courses which I took at UC Irvine. The research/methods course which I took during the Summer of 2007 reminded me of the same summer course which I had enrolled in during the summer of 2001, when I needed to make up classes at the last minute in order to switch majors.
The circular reasoning which pervades the Ivory Tower of our university systems should raise serious concern among legislators who care about the well-being of our students, of our future. Teachers are not rewarded for independent thought, so it seems, especially in the seminars which they must endure in order to earn a Masters degree and thus advance on the salary schedules of their local school districts.
The whole thing seems like a cartel, a racket among the school district, the legislatures, and the public universities, forcing teachers to keep going to school learning facts and figures that do not figure with the facts of the real world, the same bill of goods that gets teachers in training excited about teaching, only to run smack-dab into the harrowing mess of conflicting rules, contradictory administrators, and contrary goals.
Elite opinions which dismiss vouchers are a mere symptom of the growing confusion and corruption corroding our public schools. And professional "educators" indoctrinate teachers to perpetuate this madness for incremental pay raises.
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