Teachers unions continue to use empty rhetoric to bash promising school privatization efforts. It is a given – and understandable – that teachers unions deplore vouchers or opportunity scholarships, arrangements whereby public monies are used to fund a private school education; it hurts their bottom line. With very few exceptions, private schools are not unionized,...
If the California Teachers Association and its parent, the National Education Association, represent Goliath, then ten teachers and a small union alternative called the Christian Educators Association International are fitting stand-ins for David. They’re taking on the CTA with a lawsuit aimed squarely at California’s “agency-shop” law, which they claim violates public school teachers’ First Amendment rights...
As charter schools have become more popular than ever, teachers unions dither about how to deal with them. Though there are now over 6,000 charter schools in the U.S., including 1,000 in California, it’s not nearly enough to satisfy demand, as parents have awakened to the fact that many traditional public schools aren’t doing the...
But in educational achievement, we are not even close to the top. The National Education Association just came out with a “research” report which should be taken about as seriously as the Tobacco Institute study that denied the link between smoking and lung cancer. The “Rankings of the States 2012 and Estimates of School Statistics...
June – Father’s Day, Flag Day, weddings … and loopy ideas on poverty. Last September I wrote about those who believe that poverty causes ignorance and how we must “fix” poverty before we can fix education. I suggested that maybe, just maybe, a good education is the best antidote to poverty and that school choice...
In the summer of 2012, the Nevada Policy Research Institute, a non-partisan think tank based in Las Vegas, initiated a campaign to let local teachers know that they could opt out of their union, the 12,000 member Clark County Education Association, by submitting written notice between July 1 and July 15. The reaction was dazzling....
An Education News report tells us that homeschooling is thriving. In a recent report, we learn that since 1999, the number of children who are homeschooled has increased by 75 percent. Though homeschooled children represent only 4 percent (about 2 million) of all school-age children nationwide, they are growing seven times faster than the number...
A week in June is being promoted to advise workers of their right to opt out of union membership. Unknown to many employees throughout the country – especially in non-right-to-work states – they have a right to not belong to a union. This year, June 23rd – 29th is being dedicated to informing America’s wage...
The ongoing battle between parents and the union-dominated education blob heats up in California. California state senator Gloria Romero’s Parent Trigger law has been around for over three years now, and its progress has been slow but steady. The law stipulates that if 50 percent +1 of the parents of children in a failing school...
Los Angeles school chief puts children’s needs over those of 600 sadists, pedophiles and assorted creeps. The teachers union is outraged. In any other field, getting rid of misbehaving or poorly performing employees is a natural and ongoing occurrence. Business leaders who don’t set standards and hold workers accountable will see their clientele shrink. But...
Throughout our nation, teachers are being trained to combat bullying within our schools and social media. It’s ironic that this movement is led by teachers unions, which have been bullying independent-minded teachers for decades. In California, where I’m a public school teacher, union bullying is enshrined in state law. The law requires that all teachers...
Teacher union twaddle is not fooling the nation’s moms any more. National Education Association president Dennis Van Roekel wrote a tired piece for Huffington Post last week in which he trotted out all the usual phrases and suspects that we have come to expect from a union boss who is trying to scare us into...
Douglas County Colorado lies immediately south of Denver, but is worlds apart politically. While Denver is a Democratic stronghold in this battleground state, Douglas County is registered 49% Republican, 22% Democrat, and 29% independent. What happens in places like Douglas County may not be easily replicated in California, unless you believe, as we do, that...
A recently filed lawsuit in California picks up where Knox v. SEIU left off. In a case brought to the Supreme Court by the National Right to Work Foundation last June, the justices ruled 7-2 that the Service Employees International Union could not force its members to pay the part of union dues that goes...