Larry Sand, a former classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the general public with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues.
Legislators in the Mountain State buckle to the teachers union. In aggregate, West Virginia’s public schools are not very good. According to the state scorecard, 88 percent of the state’s 116 high schools “do not meet standards” in math. Furthermore, the state’s eighth graders rank 45th nationwide in reading as per the 2017 National Assessment...
By Larry Sand
Conflating regulation with accountability, teacher union leaders continue their deceptive talking points. While it’s up for grabs who originated the saying, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it,” Alex Caputo-Pearl is certainly one of its modern-day avatars. In a recent Washington Post op-ed, the...
By Larry Sand
American Federation of Teachers demands justice in Saudi Arabia and compassion for the vulnerable in Syria, but in the U.S., it’s a very different story. As a way to show that they are “PEOPLE WHO REALLY CARE,” Randi Weingarten and her cronies at the American Federation of Teachers have been making forays into foreign policy....
By Larry Sand
In light of the Janus decision, union rule-rigging and ensuing lawsuits continue. As the Janus case (which ultimately would give public employees a choice whether or not to pay money to a union as a condition of employment) was headed to the Supreme Court, many unions saw the writing on the wall and cooked...
By Larry Sand
The horribly written, produced and directed teacher union play closed after six painful days. Like a much-ballyhooed but awful Broadway show, the Los Angeles teachers’ strike had a six-day run and no one was happy with it. Except maybe the producers. In fact, United Teachers of Los Angeles leader Alex Caputo-Pearl called the new contract...
By Larry Sand
The Los Angeles teachers union puts charter schools at the center of its vitriol. Now in its second week, it looks as if the Los Angeles teachers strike may be about to end. The issues have been argued ad infinitum – higher pay, smaller class-size, more nurses, etc. But along the way, the United Teachers...
By Larry Sand
Using a model from the Industrial Era, teachers in Los Angeles are striking. I have written about the subject many times, but it is worth revisiting as Los Angeles teachers are striking over a one-size-fits-all collective bargaining contract that is harmful to all concerned. Collective bargaining, a term first introduced into the lexicon by socialist...
By Larry Sand
New governor of the People’s Republic of California wants to expand a dubious universal preschool plan. California’s new Governor Gavin Newsom envisions a future where the state will be involved in your children’s lives from conception to adulthood. Newsom told EdSource in September, “Our role begins when babies are still in the womb and it...
By Larry Sand
Union boss’ orchestrated state crisis is well underway in Los Angeles. United Teachers of Los Angeles President Alex Caputo-Pearl’s long sought-after teachers’ strike is set for January 10th. He began the long march back in 2016 when he forecast a walkout and also boasted about the union’s ability to “create a state crisis” in 2018. Though...
By Larry Sand
Californians need to act now on the new state Health Education Framework. In 2016, several doctors tore into new guidelines that promoted transgenderism in the Canadian province of Alberta. They refused to accept the new orthodoxy advanced by progressive activists that “gender is a social construct,” and insisted that identifying one’s gender as different from...
By Larry Sand
The unions’ “If ya can’t kill ’em, organize ’em” mentality is on display in Chicago. In a refreshingly honest video from 2011, Leo Casey, New York City’s United Federation of Teachers Vice President, equates charter schools to Walmart – both being very resistant to unionization. Pounding on the table at a socialist gathering, he says...
By Larry Sand
The Janus decision in June has opened the door to litigation. Lots of litigation. It has been almost six months since the Janus ruling, which allows government workers to avoid paying a union as a condition of employment. But that was just a beginning. The decision has shone a light on many other union abuses...
By Larry Sand
The move to educational freedom brings together some unlikely allies. Shortly after the general election, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten was ecstatic. Writing in The New York Times, she insisted that there was a “realignment in the electorate.” She also claimed that “voters responded to a decade of disinvestment in public education and...
By Larry Sand
Perhaps the “fake news” story of the year – actually the last 20 years – is that small class size is essential to learning. Under the leadership of its cantankerous president Alex Caputo-Pearl, the United Teachers of Los Angeles is planning to strike – very possibly in January. The union’s demands haven’t budged, even as...
By Larry Sand
a new form will got here