LAUSD Offer Worth $122,938 Per Year – Will They Strike Anyway?

By Edward Ring
03/03/2015
“Our demands, they’re not radical. When did it become radical to have class sizes that you could actually teach in? When did it become radical to have staffing and to pay people back after eight years of nothing?”  – Alex Caputo Pearl, President, UTLA, February 26, 2015, Los Angeles Times If the 35,000 members of the...

TAGS: Alex Caputo-Pearl, CalSTRS, Los Angeles Unified School District, United Teachers Los Angeles, UTLA

LA Teachers Union: Striking Out?

By Larry Sand
03/03/2015
UTLA is planning to walk out over a mess that it helped to create. The case is being built for a teachers’ strike in Los Angeles. The next step in the contract negotiation process is mediation, whereby a state-appointed mediator will try to get the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and the United Teachers...

TAGS: Alex Caputo-Pearl, Chicago Teachers Union, Eric Hanushek, Larry Sand, Los Angeles Unified School District, Mark Berndt, Mike Petrilli, pension tsunami, small class size, teacher pay, teachers strike, teachers union, Terry Moe, United Teachers of Los Angeles

The Shrinking Teacher Union Brand

By Larry Sand
02/24/2015
Teachers unions are losing members, but stubbornly stick with the same old product. Earlier this month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics informed us that in 2014 – for the second year in a row – that there are fewer unionized than non-unionized teachers in the U.S. The reasons for this are many: more right-to-work states,...

TAGS: Alex Caputo-Pearl, Bob Peterson, Chicago Teachers Union, Karen Lewis, Kyle Olson, Larry Sand, Mike Antonucci, National Education Association, Paul Ryan, Scott Walker, teachers union, United Teachers of Los Angeles

Chicken Little Class Size

By Larry Sand
01/06/2015
With a big assist from the teachers unions, the small class size myth lives on. “The sky is falling” is well-known throughout the world as an admonition to be wary of hysterical claims. While we appreciate the silliness of the Chicken Little story, we fail to recognize its relevance in many of the myths perpetuated...

TAGS: Alex Caputo-Pearl, California Teacher Association, Caroline Hoxby, Eric Hanushek, Jay Greene, Jay Mathews, Larry Sand, Michael Mulgrew, small class size, teachers union, United Federation of Teachers

Social(ism) Justice Lessons

By Larry Sand
07/22/2014
Teacher union progressives seek to socialize our country, but the Koch brothers have other plans. The recent teacher union conventions were full of self-pity, angst and anger over the Vergara and Harris legal decisions. Unfortunately that’s not all they concerned themselves with. The union avatars explored various progressive schemes with the intention of dragging us...

TAGS: Alex Caputo-Pearl, American Federation of Teachers, Harris v. Quinn, Joy Resmovits, Koch Brothers, Larry Sand, Randi Weingarten, social justice, socialism, teachers union, United Teachers of Los Angeles, Vergara v California