Teachers should stop listening to union leaders and look at the data before striking. When one looks at the actual dollars-and-cents reality, the emotional photo of the kindly old 1st grade teacher picketing for more money “for the classroom” falls flat. Very, very flat. There are several relevant facts that teachers and all Americans – especially the taxpaying variety – need to know.

Union rhetoric about the Janus case has gone from hyperbolic to just plain crazy. If successful in the Supreme Court, the Janus v AFSCME case will free public employees from paying a union as a condition of employment in 22 states. Government workers in the other 28 states already have been spared the unions’ forced...

Too many schools are failing, and parents need a way for their kids to escape from them. A couple of months ago, the education establishment told us that “U.S. Graduation Rate Hits New All-Time High, With Gains in All Student Groups.” But in the real world this is nothing more than a façade – a...

Teacher union leaders palavering about evil corporations and the rich is a modern-day version of The Emperor’s New Clothes. The teachers unions really need to get some new talking points. Granted, straw men and hyperbole are common in political discourse, but union verbiage needs a serious makeover – the old model is giving hypocrisy a...

As we celebrate National School Choice Week, some data, news and questions about the private option. Though the usual suspects are resolute as ever, school choice is advancing. There are now 469,000 students enrolled in 63 different private school choice programs in 29 states and Washington, D.C. Between 2013 and 2015, enrollment at private schools...

A new poll shows that teachers are politically divided, but union political spending is anything but. The results of a poll released last week by the Education Week Research Center reveal that teachers are evenly distributed across the political map. 29 percent said they are liberal, 27 percent conservative and the remainder describe themselves as moderate. The results are not really surprising, as an internal National Education Association poll dating back to 2005 shows pretty much the same thing. In fact, the 2005 NEA survey, consistent with previous results, found that members “are slightly more conservative (50%) than liberal (43%) in political philosophy.”

Flawed reports aside, charters – schools of choice – are flourishing. As I wrote last week, too many government-run schools are failing and the future for them, collectively, is not rosy. But the monopolists running our traditional public schools (TPS), in addition to blaming lack of funding, have been busy lashing out at charter schools, which are decentralized and give parents a right to choose where to educate their kids.

The case is pretty cut-and-dried, but the ramifications are anything but. Janus v AFSCME is due to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court early in 2018, with a decision announced in June. If the lawsuit is successful, no teacher or any public employee in the U.S. would have to pay money to a union...

Thanks to collective bargaining, traditional public school teachers “get sick” way too often. It’s no secret that many teachers take advantage of the “sick days” that are part of a typical union collective bargaining agreement (CBA). Of course, while sick days are used legitimately by all teachers at some point, many (including yours truly, on...

Anti-school choicers are getting desperate. The traditional public education monopolists are using some truly bizarre arguments to ensure that children remain in government-run schools. In July, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten intimated that parents who opt out of government schools are equivalent to southern segregationists. Then later in July, Katherine Stewart penned possibly...