L.A. Teachers Union: Give us $250 Million, Or Keep Schools Closed

By Edward Ring
07/16/2020
Wiki Commons The second-largest public school district in the United States is in turmoil. Los Angeles Unified School District, with over 600,000 students in kindergarten through twelfth grade at over 1,000 schools, may not be open for the business of teaching on August 18. How to handle the COVID-19 pandemic is the issue, and there is...

TAGS: class-size, reopening schools, teacher pay, teachers unions, UTLA

The Orange County Classical Academy is Going to Transform Education in California

By Edward Ring
07/08/2020
***Watch a mini-documentary on the creation of OCCA HERE*** In barely one month, 360 elementary school students will begin attending a new charter school that offers a dramatic departure from the failed public education model in California. The Orange County Classical Academy (OCCA) will open its doors to kindergarten through 5th-grade students, and apart from the...

TAGS: Charter schools, Common Core, orange county, orange county classical academy, school choice, teachers unions

California is Ready to Get Rid of Newsom

By Edward Ring
05/11/2020
Across California on May 1, tens of thousands protested in defiance of the lockdown orders. In Sacramento, the west lawn of the state capitol building was filled with protesters, with thousands more marching along the sidewalk surrounding the capitol grounds. Additional thousands driving their cars and honking their horns created three hours of total gridlock on...

TAGS: coronavirus, recall, teachers unions

Allocation of Teacher Union Dues by State

By Reiss Becker
06/25/2019
First and foremost, teachers’ unions are passionate advocates for their members interests, fighting tirelessly for their wages, benefits, and working conditions. Or so the theory goes. But much like communism, unions in theory and unions in practice are very different things. In reality, teachers’ unions do not primarily spend their members’ dues on representation– they...

TAGS: teachers unions

‘Cherry picking’? Union-run schools dump struggling kids on charters

By Steven Greenhut
09/06/2017
Sacramento — Teachers’ union leaders hoping to discount the runaway academic success of charter schools have claimed charters lure the best-performing kids, leaving traditional, union-run public schools to handle poor-performing and struggling students. In its statement launching the anti-charter “Kids Not Profits” campaign, for instance, the California Teachers’ Association claimed that charters “cherry-pick the students...

TAGS: Charter schools, teachers unions

Union dues are cutting into teacher’s retirement funds

By Jackie Lavalleye
06/27/2017
Union dues take a large bite out of the paychecks of California teachers. We estimate that newly hired, full-time teachers will pay $37,000 in dues over a 30-year career. Further, if new teachers could fully opt out of the union and instead save their dues in an Individual Retirement Account, they would each have $228,000...

TAGS: California Teachers Association, National Education Association, public sector unions, teachers union, teachers unions

Police misconduct undermines justice and costs taxpayers plenty

By Steven Greenhut
05/30/2017
Sacramento — News reports last week suggest the city of Oakland may be ready to settle a civil lawsuit filed by the teenage woman at the heart of a sex-abuse scandal that rocked Oakland’s and other nearby police departments since 2015. All things considered, the city is fortunate. The reported settlement is just under $1...

TAGS: police unions, teachers unions

Teachers’ unions losing the long battle over parental choice

By Steven Greenhut
05/22/2017
Sacramento — Supporters of charter schools, homeschooling and other forms of school “choice” are so used to fighting in the trenches against the state’s muscular teachers’ unions that they often forget how much progress they’ve made in the last decade or so. Recent events have shown the degree of progress, even if they still face...

TAGS: LAUSD, school board, teachers unions