How to Get Rich by Teaching at UC
How to Get Rich by Teaching at UC
They may not have won a Nobel Prize, but California taxpayers and students are awarding ten retired University of California professors an attractive consolation prize: pension benefits amounting to more than $300,000 each per year. Topping the list of UC pension beneficiaries is Fawzy I. Fawzy, M.D. a Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA. He received over $354,000 in 2014, an amount that will continue to grow each year with cost of living increases. Recently, Dr. Fawzy generously helped his junior colleagues by explaining their compensation and pension benefits in a lecture uploaded to YouTube. His knowledge of the ins and outs of the UC payroll and retirement systems is truly impressive.
By Marc Joffe
Are Workers and Their Union the Same?
Are Workers and Their Union the Same?
The disconnect between many workers and union leadership is wider than ever. For years, former Executive Director of the National Education Association John Wilson wrote a regular blog post for Education Week. Never shy about his political leanings, the far-left Wilson composed “Teachers and Teacher Unions Are the Same” in 2012, in which he accuses...
By Larry Sand
Teachers’ Unions Spend Over $27 Million on State Races
Teachers’ Unions Spend Over $27 Million on State Races
In a recent op-ed, California Federation of Teachers (CFT) President Joshua Pechthalt calls out special interests for pouring money into California elections in support of charter schools. He writes: The charter association spent better than $24 million in relatively few races this year. Oakland, where previously $20,000 was a lot of money for a school...
By Marc Joffe
Anti-Trump Hysteria Plagues Our Schools
Anti-Trump Hysteria Plagues Our Schools
Teachers and their unions are front-and-center in advancing Trumpocalyptic fearmongering. Worse than anything Donald Trump ever said, the backlash to his election has been horrifying. While the hysteria and teddy-bear-clutching over the election of a Republican president is nothing new – remember “Bushitler?” in which some on the left equated W to Der Führer –...
By Larry Sand
UTLA’s Eli Broad Rage
UTLA’s Eli Broad Rage
Los Angeles teachers union turns down millions of dollars from the philanthropist earmarked for schools that work. Last year, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation formed Great Public Schools Now (GPSN), an organization whose goal was to create 260 new charter schools in Los Angeles. The plan was to enroll at least 130,000 students in...
By Larry Sand
Teacher Union Agenda Dysphoria
Teacher Union Agenda Dysphoria
Alberta teachers union pushes a radical sexual agenda on kids. Earlier this year, several doctors tore into new guidelines that promote transgenderism in the Canadian province of Alberta. These MDs haven’t fallen for the uber-progressive fairytale that “gender is a social construct” and insist that identifying one’s gender as different from one’s biological sex is...
By Larry Sand
Anti-Charter School Labor Union Controlling San Diego County Board of Education
Anti-Charter School Labor Union Controlling San Diego County Board of Education
How does the San Diego County Board of Education become dubiously entangled with the owner of a solar company and a labor union boss? It’s For The Children… Yeah, right. In 2012 and 2014, the American Federation of Teachers labor union local 1091, led by union boss Jim Mahler, financed the take-down of community based...
By Katy Grimes
NEA’s and Hillary’s Bully Folly
NEA’s and Hillary’s Bully Folly
Teachers union and Hillary Clinton team up to tackle the (nonexistent) bullying epidemic. For several weeks now, the National Education Association has been running ads in in nine swing states on the so-called “Trump effect.” The six-figure campaign maintains that Donald Trump’s inflammatory campaign rhetoric has caused a substantial uptick in bullying in schools. NEA president...
By Larry Sand
The World’s Largest Oligarchical Organization
The World’s Largest Oligarchical Organization
The WikiLeaks document dump exposes NEA’s manipulation of its purported democratic process. The WikiLeaks email release, unmasking the Hillary Clinton campaign, has become a daily ritual. A treasure trove of communiqués has exposed Hillary to be just about everything that the right (and even many on the left) has said she is. The emails from...
By Larry Sand
American Federation of Teachers Costly Staff Spending
American Federation of Teachers Costly Staff Spending
Dropout Nation recently reported on the American Federation of Teachers’ 2015-2016 financial disclosure to the U.S. Department of Labor. As you would expect, the nation’s second-largest teachers’ union spent big on influencing Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and her apparatchiks, as well as pouring heavily into what should be like-minded advocacy and nonprofit groups. But AFT’s...
By RiShawn Biddle
Limiting Charter Growth by Any Means Necessary
Limiting Charter Growth by Any Means Necessary
Teachers unions in Chicago and Massachusetts are doing their darndest to stop the spread of charter schools. Amazingly, the Chicago teachers’ strike didn’t come off. Less than 10 minutes before a midnight strike deadline on October 10th, the district and union cobbled together a deal, pending approval by the rank-and-file. One of the more contentious issues was...
By Larry Sand
Teacher Union Political Spending: Liberal as Ever
Teacher Union Political Spending: Liberal as Ever
AFT continues to use teachers as ATM machines to fund their pet leftist causes. The latest American Federation of Teachers annual financial disclosure has been released (H/T RiShawn Biddle). This year’s LM-2 is filled with goodies that are sure to warm the cockles of leftist teacher union members, but apolitical educators, centrists and certainly those...
By Larry Sand
NPR Ignores the Real Problem of Uber-driving School Teacher
NPR Ignores the Real Problem of Uber-driving School Teacher
National Public Radio’s Sunday morning story last month was a failure of basic journalism. “In Silicon Valley, Where a Teacher Works for Uber to Stay Middle-Class” features Matthew Barry, a high school economics teacher in California’s Morgan Hill Unified School District (MHUSD). He says his $69,000 annual salary is so insufficient to his surroundings in the...
By Catrin Thorman
Charters Under Attack
Charters Under Attack
For years, teachers’ unions have tried to kill charter schools—but only on odd-numbered days. On even-numbered days, they tried to organize them. Things lately have become very odd, at least in California; the unions are in full-assault mode. United Teachers of Los Angeles president Alex Caputo-Pearl has long groused about how charter schools don’t play...
By Larry Sand