The ACLU has aimed its considerable legal firepower at charter schools. The reason? They aren’t enough like our failing traditional public schools. In a recent report, the ACLU condemns 253 California charter schools for what it sees as a violation of discrimination law, citing examples of charter schools requiring consistent attendance and, in some cases,...

Chances are that you don’t think that New York City Patrolman’s Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch has much in common with Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers. In fact, after Lynch sparred earlier this year with Weingarten protégé Michael Mulgrew, the president of the union’s United Federation of Teachers local, over the unit’s collaboration...

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...

… but the war is just beginning. Despite a landmark education decision in California favoring children over teachers unions, how much will really change? On June 10th, Judge Rolf Treu issued an unequivocal decision in the Students Matter (Vergara v California) case which revolved around the tenure, dismissal and seniority statutes in California’s education code....

The “housed teacher” syndrome is a problem created by the teachers unions and administered by an inept school district. For years, teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District who have been accused of misconduct have been “housed” as they wait for investigators to figure out if they are really guilty. These so-called “teacher jails”...

“Landmark settlement” song has hackneyed words but still makes Top 10 in the “Hubris” category. In 2010, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit which claimed that seniority-based layoffs take a disproportionate toll on poor and minority schools. The ACLU won the case and the settlement protected students in up to 45 schools from...

Why ‘Harris v. Quinn’ Has Labor Very, Very Nervous By Joel Rogers, April 14, 2014 Edition, The Nation Sometime soon, certainly by the late-June conclusion of its present term, the Supreme Court will tell us its decision in Harris v. Quinn, arguably the most important labor law case the Court has considered in decades. Harris...

In a refreshingly candid speech, union leader minimizes bromides about “the children” and relentlessly bangs the class warfare drum. In his March 22nd state-of-the-union talk to the faithful, California Federation of Teachers president Josh Pechthalt made no bones about the ultimate mission of his union. Absent were the usual silly platitudes like “working together with...

A trial began last week in Los Angeles challenging the state laws granting teacher tenure after 18 months, “last-in, first-out” layoff laws, and the elaborate dismissal procedures which make it virtually impossible for teachers to be laid off. Together, these teacher protections result in far too many grossly ineffective teachers who cannot be fired. The...

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...