National Education Association declares war, but finding allies could be difficult. It’s hardly a secret that the National Education Association is an organization that has had its political way for the past 35 or so years. However, voters are fed up with the union’s attempts to keep a failing public education system from being reformed...
Weingarten is schooled by WSJ’s Jason Riley; Van Roekel is clueless as usual. The National Education Association and the American Federation of teachers represent over 4.5 million teachers and educational support workers across the United States. These two unions have been under attack for the past few years by reformers who point to their slavish...
Misinformation is at the heart of unionspeak. Public school teachers have been told for years that they are only respected by the general public because Big Union fights for them and gets them that respect. However, the opposite would appear to be true. America still loves its teachers…the good ones, that is. They don’t like...
NEA’s reprehensible sexual agenda goes on unabated and the MSM is MIA. At a time when teachers’ unions are battling for their collective bargaining lives, courtesy of Governors Scott Walker, Chris Christie, John Kasich et al., it’s hard to go a day without reading a newspaper account of the latest union news. However, there is...
NEA boss has it backwards when he claims that America cannot have a middle class without unions. Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, America’s largest union, claims, “In actions more fitting for comic book arch-villains, a new crop of state leaders have launched blistering attacks on working families disguised as budget and...
Conservatives have been pointing out for years that the unintended consequences of big government programs often do more harm than good to the minority communities they are designed to help – and at last conservative reformers are not only being joined by good-government liberals, but also by the new conservative members of minority communities. Revelations...
It should come as no surprise that Democrats in Sacramento are diligently attempting to pry a handful of Republican legislators away from their party in order to attain the 2/3rds vote necessary to place a tax increase onto the ballot in a special election. But as this lobbying effort works its way through the halls...
School district and teacher union leaders need to embrace serious education reform or go the way of the Stegosaurus. My post last week concerned itself with the fact that some or even many teachers might lose their jobs come June due to the dire financial straits in which many school districts find themselves. The Los...
Excessive teacher hiring invariably leads to layoffs; teachers need to understand this trap and protect themselves. We are now in the midst of RIF season. In California and elsewhere, when the economy is unstable, Reduction in Force (RIF) notices must go out to teachers by March 15th. These notices apprise teachers that they may be...
While attention focuses on the battle in Wisconsin between a Republican Governor and public employee unions who overwhelmingly support Democrats, it is in California where the future role of public sector unions in politics is being most severely tested. Because in California, Democrats exercise nearly absolute control over the state’s political agenda, and as a...
No one should be surprised at the actions of teachers unions and their acolytes who laid their cards on the table a long time ago. In an op-ed published in the San Jose Mercury News last Wednesday, I made the point that while the rest of the country had made some positive movement toward badly...
Teacher union legal teams gear up for battles all over the country as union power is threatened. With the recent changing of the political guard in statehouses across the country, teachers unions appear to be in for a rough ride. As one state succeeds in passing reform legislation, another state is encouraged to follow suit...
While anti-bullying programs for students are currently in vogue in our nation’s schools, teachers need to recognize that they too are being victimized. As president of the California Teachers Empowerment Network (CTEN), I talk to people about teachers and education all the time. Politically speaking, most people think that teachers are to the left of...
Before the Reformation, it was common for Europeans to pay Tribute to the Church. People across Europe would have to give something to Rome as a way of submitting to, or showing allegiance to, the church. Tribute in another form came about in the U.S. the 1920s when organized crime carved up cities and claimed...