Using testing as a backdrop, NEA president promotes 1950s industrial-style education. The American Enterprise Institute’s education policy maven Rick Hess has been traveling around the country promoting his new book The Cage-Busting Teacher. So last week he left his Education Week blog in the hands of National Education Association president Lily Eskelsen García. Interesting choice,...

… and continue to block any and every meaningful reform the California state legislature has to offer. On May Day (how fitting!) the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers filed their appeal of the Vergara decision. In that 2014 ruling, Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu struck down California’s teacher tenure, layoff and...

Teachers unions turn to “facts” as they desperately cling to their monopolistic, anti-privatization narrative. Last Thursday the “non-partisan” Center for Tax and Budget Accountability rolled out a report that slammed vouchers, claiming that there is “no statistical evidence proving that students who use vouchers perform better than their public school counterparts.” The “study,” as reported...

With the sincerity of an elixir hustler, NEA boss pretends to be objective about the 2016 election. The National Education Association is serious about the 2016 presidential election. The union is serious about every election of course, but this time the union’s leader is actually asking for input from viable candidates even if they haven’t...

NEA president praises Finland, Singapore and Canada, conveniently omitting facts about school choice and competition. The “global education reform movement has failed” … or at least that’s what National Education Association president Lily Eskelsen García told a group of businessmen in Detroit last month. Spouting the usual edubabble, the union president told the Detroit Economic...

“Teachers Unions Take a Beating in Midterm Races” “Teachers Unions Take a Shellacking” “Teachers Unions Get Schooled in 2014 Election” The above is just a small sampling of post-election headlines which flooded the media after last Tuesday’s historic election, which generated a major political shakeup in the nation’s capital as well as state houses from...

The latest chapter in “kill or unionize” sees the unions in organize mode. As I’ve written before, the teachers unions have a constantly shifting relationship with charter schools. When Mercury is in retrograde, the unions want to limit their growth or legislate the publicly-funded schools of choice out of existence. At other times, organizing them...

As the teachers unions lose popularity, some think that they will soften their positions. But as recent events show, this is very far from the truth. A poll taken in June, right after the Vergara decision was handed down in Los Angeles, found that 49 percent of California voters think that teachers unions have a...