Ms. Weingarten gives her enemies a breather as she jets off to Kiev to “promote democratic values.” American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten has been on a tear lately, working diligently to build up her long and growing enemies list. As reported by The Wall Street Journal’s Allysia Finley, The American Federation of Teachers...

Predominantly minority D.C school kids are not sharing NEA leader’s glee over President Obama’s budget. Last week, President Obama released his administration’s budget for fiscal year 2015 and National Education Association president Dennis Van Roekel was ecstatic. He was especially pleased that Obama plans to move “towards ending the era of austerity.” (Austerity? I must...

Latest teacher union stunt to discredit charter schools rings hollow. As I have written before – as recently as last Tuesday – the teachers unions have a schizoid relationship with charter schools. Depending on the tides, they either want to kill charters off or unionize them. Last week – in kill mode – Randi Weingarten’s...

Though National School Choice Week ended a couple of weeks ago, reactionary rhetoric and political clashes are just heating up. With National School Choice Week behind us, the battle – and it is a battle – to free our children from a monopoly by zip-code public education system is being fought on fronts all over...

By meekly surrendering paycheck deductions on a monthly basis, teachers are complicit in their unions’ policy making and politicking. In a great majority of cases across the country, when teachers get work in a public school, they join the teachers union. Or, more accurately, they join three of them. There’s the “local,” whose responsibility is...

A recent memo accuses educators of racial discrimination while failing, with a few exceptions, to address the real problems. Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a series of guidelines regarding the suspension of students from school. In short, though partially correct, the DOJ report is misguided, misleading, and missing key elements relevant...

CTA ends 2013 spewing meaningless bromides in an effort to convince us that the union is the victim and the Students Matter lawsuit is the work of a vast corporate conspiracy. On January 27th, the Students Matter (Vergara v. California) case starts in Los Angeles. John Fensterwald explains that the lawsuit … asserts that five...

Not going to happen. If change comes, it will be from the outside. Mike Stryer is a former teacher and co-founder of NewTLA, a union reform group that came into being in 2010. One of its goals was to get the powerful United Teachers of Los Angeles to adopt a sweeping education reform agenda. Now...

“Although fully aware that Neal did something illegal, I am very proud to have him as my friend.” “… his dedication and leadership qualities gained him the respect of his administrators, staff, students and community.” The above quotes are from letters that were written by teachers to a judge last June on behalf of a...

National Education Association new “reform” document is free of substance. Apparently threatened by the education reform movement taking hold across the country, the National Education Association has decided to join the party. In concert with six other organizations – including the American Federation of Teachers – the biggest union in the country has released “Excellent...