Imagine your organization is facing attacks from all sides.  Imagine it’s losing members and revenue.  Imagine governors and mayors – of both political parties – publicly denouncing your industry as “broken” and move swiftly to stifle your power and influence, while you flail away helplessly.

What to do?  What else to do but go down drinking?

That’s what members of the National Education Association’s National Staff Organization have apparently decided.  The NSO is an association of sorts for teachers’ union staff – political and communications types.

Following an “Advocacy Retreat” with the theme “Building Our Unionism,” members set sail on a 7-day cruise from Miami on February 5^th “with stops at Cozumel, Grand Cayman Island and Isla Roatan.”  Sounds fun!  [In case the Facebook link disappears, never fear: here’s a PDF of the NSO newsletter.]

Guess what union staff?  There are going to be cameras all over the ship documenting your every move – from every Fuzzy Navel to every game of shuffle board. Just think how your rank-and-file members might appreciate seeing all the “fun in the sun” you’re having, courtesy of their dues dollars.

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It’s so reassuring to have the intellectual elites in our nation’s teachers unions, like Sandy Hughes of Tennessee, looking out for us rubes.

Hughes, a local union president, is pitching the idea that school board membership be limited to people who “have worked in the education field,” because the issues at hand are “so complex” and too complicated for average citizens.

In other words, all will be well if taxpayers just get out of the way and let the wise and wonderful union folks run our schools, no questions asked. All we have to do is keep paying the taxes, then mind our own business.

This is a perfect example of the snobbery and arrogance that is so pervasive in the public education establishment.

A stay-at-home mom that wants to be on the board?  Sorry.  Business owners who know how to control labor costs and balance budgets? They don’t have the right skill set, according to Hughes. Public education is too “complex” for them.

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Imagine watching Fox News one night and your high school child walks into the room and proceeds to tell you that “Fox News lies!”

That happened to Nick Benson, a Californian who had two students enrolled at Barstow High School in San Bernardino County.

“How do you know that,” Benson said he asked the boy.  “My teacher told me,” was his grandson’s response.

An editorial cartoon Barstow high school students read in "World History" class

Sure enough.  His grandson’s “World History” teacher, Jim Duarte, fed a steady dose of radical left wing propaganda to his students, disguised as classroom assignments.  It was like students were receiving their news from a slightly more sophisticated source than The Daily Show.

Last week Benson provided Education Action Group with several assignments that Duarte handed out last school year, when Benson’s grandson was in his class.

The articles and editorial cartoons students were expected to review were ridiculously slanted to the Big Labor/socialist point of view, as were the leading questions on classroom worksheets.

On one such worksheet, students read an article on how Fox News supposedly “pushed” a “falsehood” that government workers make more than their private sector counterparts. Says who? Media Matters, far-left reactionary outfit that based its public/private comparison on a “study” published by the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C. think tank largely funded by Big Labor.

Duarte’s efforts to sell his personal political beliefs to students are all-too-familiar. Throughout the nation, we’ve been hearing teachers union leaders openly calling for instructors to preach pro-union and anti-American philosophy to their students, some as young as preschool age.

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Bill Ayers recently appeared before a group of activist teachers to encourage them to keep up the fight.  He told them about the assistance he provided in getting the very radical Bob Peterson elected president of the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association.

Hoping to wow his friendly audience, he also gushed about another leader he helped.

Ayers admitted he hosted a fundraiser at his home for Barack Obama in the 1990s.  “I thought he wanted to be mayor of Chicago – that’s the limit of my imagination,” he told the audience in a video released exclusively by Education Action Group.

This is likely the first time Ayers has been caught on tape discussing his connection to Obama.  Their relationship has been routinely been downplayed by Ayers, Obama and his associates, since the national media took a glancing look into their ties during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Ayers’ impact on America cannot be underestimated.  While many have exposed and condemned his leadership in the radical and violent Weather Underground – and the group’s efforts to terrorize the country in the 1960s and ’70s – he has done far more damage to our students’ minds.

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When news broke that the American Federation of Teachers is targeting Michelle Rhee’s education reform group, StudentsFirst, through an online website, it was less than surprising.

It wasn’t that long ago that Education Action Group found its own cyber stalker site, a union-organized publication with the ironic title EAG Truth. Virtually every sentence on the website is filled with inaccuracies, distortions or misinformation aimed at discrediting our successful non-profit.

Weingarten's AFT: Purveyor of 'Anonymous' Internet Attacks

In the education reform world, it’s like a badge of honor if the teachers unions hate what you have to say and devote resources to counter your message online. It usually means that the ‘students first, union concerns second’ message is resonating with the public. That’s bad for union business.

The fact that Politico tracked the address of the AFT’s anti-Rhee website back to the union isn’t surprising. Neither is the personal attacks and doctored photos posted on the site. We’ve seen them before, and they aren’t pretty.

When StudentsFirst revealed that the site originated at AFT headquarters, the union barked back in typical fashion, questioning the funding of StudentsFirst. It’s the same response we’ve seen from other unions when we questioned their motives.

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Emails obtained through the Wisconsin Open Records law indicate former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk emailed all county employees and circuit court judges, including Circuit Court Judge Maryann Sumi, with a memo announcing her intention to file suit against Gov. Scott Walker’s budget repair bill.

In response, Falk received three responses from court employees.  Kathy Melzer and Elaine Creager responded with encouraging notes.  Peter Anderson replied with “doubts about the appropriateness of sending a message about filing a legal action to the judges of the circuit court where the action is likely to be filed.”

Anderson is Sumi’s colleague on the bench.  He’s a judge who felt it was inappropriate to give the judges a heads-up that this lawsuit was coming.

There was no similar statement from Sumi.  Instead, with this knowledge in hand, she moved quickly to agree with Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne’s suit to void the budget repair law.

Was this all a set up from the beginning?

The end result, of course, was that Sumi’s ruling was ridiculous and the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported, “The court concluded that Sumi exceeded her jurisdiction, ‘invaded’ the Legislature’s constitutional powers and erred in halting the publication and implementation of the collective bargaining law.”  The Supreme Court reinstated the budget repair legislation, including the curtailment of collective bargaining privileges.

Ozanne was quoted by the AP as saying, “We’ve done the best we can…it looks like we’ve lost.”

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Earlier this year, Education Action Group released a chart documenting the 15 separate steps involved in firing a tenured teacher in the state of New Jersey. The process involves a months-long investigation followed by a trial which can last a year or more. All told, it takes between two and five years (and a pile of money) to terminate an ineffective teacher in the Garden State.

The destructive nature of teacher tenure is, of course, not confined to New Jersey. If it were, we could all rest easy knowing that Gov. Chris Christie is on the case. Unfortunately, teacher tenure is wreaking havoc all across the fruited plains.

Take this recent case from Michigan. According to the Jackson Citizen Patriot, “A former Stockbridge High School teacher accused of threatening to kill the principal signed a severance agreement that will cost Stockbridge Community Schools about $135,000.”

This particular teacher had been suspended for two weeks by the principal for showing an R-rated movie to her students without permission from parents or school administrators. Apparently, this caused the teacher to go crackers, because she then threatened to “off” herself and the school principal, the paper reports.

But tenure served as the teacher’s ace-in-the-hole. Despite all of the teacher’s transgressions, it was the school that ended writing a six-figure check as a result of the episode.

“The sooner you can resolve the issue, the better off you are,” an official said of the district’s decision.

Think the Michigan case is an aberration? Consider this recent example of tenure-gone-wild from the state of California.

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I have been advised that my recent characterization of Dr. Stephen Hicks was inaccurate and that he is not, in fact, a “Marxist educator.”  My conclusion was drawn upon a series of videos in which he discussed Marxism and education. Upon further research, and out of an abundance of caution, I have asked BigGovernment.com to take down my post. I apologize to Dr. Hicks.

Being vocal about the need for serious education reform means you must face a few arrows heading your way from teachers’ unions and the educational establishment.  Both have a lot to lose if a student-centered education system emerges.

Education Action Group, my organization based in Michigan, often receives e-mails larded up with rhetoric and vitriol.  Just this week, we were accused of being “Nazis” for having the gall to chastise school districts that want to charge thousands of dollars for public records.

So when we highlight the impressive array of reforms being proposed in Indiana by state superintendent Tony Bennett, what’s the reaction by unionized teachers?  Consider the e-mailed thoughts of one Terry Daugherty of Monroe County, Indiana schools:

“I always wonder if Jesus were in Michigan, is this what he would do?  Spend his time destroying public education in Indiana?”

Determining Jesus’ position on political issues can open up quite a can of worms, but I’ll try. The book of Matthew tells the story of Jesus cleansing the temple of the money changers.

“As Jesus entered the temple and drove out all those who were buying and selling in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves.  And He said to them, ‘It is written, “My house shall be called a house of prayer”; but you are making it a robbers’ den.’”

So, Terry, you got me thinking.  What would Jesus say of Detroit Public Schools?  That public education “temple” graduates kids who can’t read.  A majority of kids don’t graduate.

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In the ongoing battle between public employees and taxpayers, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has cited WEA Trust, a company that specializes in providing health insurance to unionized school employees, as the number one reason why collective bargaining must be reformed.

As Education Action Group pointed out last year, WEA Trust is controlled by the Wisconsin Education Association Council – WEAC – the state’s largest teachers union. EAG produced an in-depth report revealing how the teacher unions use the collective bargaining process to demand that WEA Trust be used as their health insurance provider. WEA Trust is typically the most expensive insurance on the market, but no matter. The union’s insurance company gets a fat contract, and the taxpayers are left with the bill. It’s a clever scheme, that’s for sure.

Even more evidence of the cozy relationship between WEAC, WEA Trust and Wisconsin politicians (especially Democrats), can be found in the 2009 election of Tony Evers as Wisconsin’s state superintendent.

For whatever reason, Wisconsin doesn’t hold its state superintendent election with all the others.  Instead, it is held in the quarter following a presidential election, when most voters aren’t paying any attention. Such off-off-year elections are prime opportunities for the special interests to come out and play.  So when the election for the state superintendent post was held in spring 2009, the special interests did some serious playing.

According to the left-leaning Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, Evers spent $228,419 on his campaign.  In contrast, WEAC spent a whopping $564,993 — nearly two and a half times what Evers spent.

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Many parents and taxpayers feel the problem is overwhelming for one person and there is nothing they can do. There are several things individuals can do to make a difference.  In the first several segments of “Kids Aren’t Cars,” we laid out many of the problems and some of the solutions.

Watch ‘What Can I Do?’ – Episode 9 – “Kids Aren’t Cars”

Parents

• Look at all of your schooling options.
• Get to know your teacher.
• Find out: Does your child attend a student-focused school?
  • Is the staff more worried about pay and benefits than putting your kids first?
• If your neighborhood school is ineffective, demand options from community and elected leaders.

Taxpayers

• Know your school board.
  • Who did the union endorse in the last election?
  • Are they calling for tax increases or spending reform?
  • If you’re a taxpayer, parent or Tea Party group, interview candidates and hold them accountable.
  • If you don’t like what’s happening, run for the school board. Contact American Majority for training. (link to americanmajority.org)
• Look into how your public school is spending YOUR money. It’s not their money – it’s your money.
• Demand to know what is going on in contract negotiations.

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The high school graduate who cannot read his diploma is a favorite cliché among education reformers.

But like all clichés, it holds a lot of truth.  Difficult as it may be to believe, there high school graduates who are barely able to read and write and do basic math.  Their schools hand them a worthless piece of paper and send them out into the world.  These kids are totally unprepared to handle life and the workaday world.

How is this possible? How can a child spend 13 years inside a classroom and have so few skills?

A big part of the reason is the automobile assembly line mentality that infiltrated of schools decades ago.

Watch ‘Assembly Line Education’ – Episode 1 – “Kids Aren’t Cars”

Consider a typical day in our public schools:  a bell rings (bringing the learning process to a screeching halt), kids get out of their seat and shuffle off to their next class to do it all over again — like an assembly line.

And like many factories, the teachers are part of a union in which work responsibilities are narrowly-defined, innovation and initiative are stymied and penalized, and excellence is treated no differently than mediocrity.

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In Boston, a special fund established in 1968 pays for teachers’ funeral expenses, hearing aids and a softball league as well as legal services that have nothing to do with classroom instruction.

In the last school year alone, Boston taxpayers shelled out $1.3 million from the trust to help teachers with wills, bankruptcy, real estate, name changes, and legal defense against some misdemeanor criminal charges, according to the Boston Globe. This year taxpayers will contribute $8.4 million to the teachers’ trust, even as the district faces an anticipated $63 million budget gap that is necessitating the closure or consolidation of 18 schools, the Globe reports.

This unnecessary expense is ludicrous considering the current economy, and is urging city leaders to eliminate the trust as they craft a new collective bargaining agreement with teachers. The city’s residents, struggling to cover the rising costs of their own health coverage, shouldn’t be required to subsidize these extra perks for public school teachers.

Samuel R. Tyler, president of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, said it best when he told the Globe that “It’s time to rethink health and welfare and treat teachers exactly as other employees in terms of benefits, and eliminate the expenditures for these other services. “It really ought to be an item on the list in terms of trying to negotiate changes,” he said.

The Boston Teachers Union has predictably defended the fund, negotiated in 1968 as an alternative way to compensate teachers. “It came in lieu of salary,” BTU President Richard Stutman told the Globe.

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While I run a non-profit, I feel very much like a small business owner.  I’ve got to meet a payroll.  I’ve got to be sure we are delivering the highest quality product.  I’ve got to make sure we’re getting the biggest bang for our health care dollars.

While my organization, Education Action Group, sells ideas and doesn’t make a profit, we are very much a business.

So it’s discouraging and infuriating to hear the National Labor Relations Board tell me that I’ve now got to inform my employees of their right to unionize.

Under a proposed rule, I will now be required to make sure a “rights notice [is] posted alongside other workplace communications, be it in the break room or elsewhere. Any employer who typically uses e-mail to communicate with staff would have to post the information electronically as well,” according to FoxNews.com.

To the NRLB: go to hell.

You can come to my workplace and post the notice, if you’re so hell-bent on doing the bidding of Rich Trumka.  I’ll be glad to meet you at the door.

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Former presidential advisor and best-selling author Dick Morris believes that newly elected Republican legislators in Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania and other states will explore school choice options to help remedy huge budget deficits.

In an interview with EAGtv, Morris said the failures of the nation’s public education system are obvious, and are tied to a lack of competition and choice inherent in the capitalistic system America was founded on. The reality of enormous state budget deficits will force newly elected lawmakers to return to those principles, Morris said.

“They are going to say ‘Well, do I want to spend $13,000 per student in a public school, or a better education at $8,000 in a charter school,’” Morris told EAGtv. “I think they are going to see the value of the $8,000.”

National School Choice Week, which runs January 23 – 29, will be a key factor in highlighting education options available. (more…)

The Illinois Education Association is reeling from a very bad 2009-2010 fiscal year, caused in no small part by the union’s exorbitant expenditures on parties, meetings and salaries, Education Action Group recently found.

Dick Morris has picked up on a theme Education Action Group has been trumpeting for months: public employee union contracts, including school employee contracts, are unsustainable and have several states on the verge of fiscal collapse.

Recently on Fox News, Morris suggested California, Michigan, Illinois, New York, and Connecticut are the top five most likely to default, given the severity of their situation and the unlikelihood of the Feds or bond holders coming to the rescue.

“Education Action Group has been way ahead of the curve on this,” Morris told me.  “EAG has been showing the major spending problems, stemming from outrageous contracts, for quite some time.”

Buffalo Public Schools revealed recently that it spent $9 million last year alone on elective surgery for employees.  Coverage for such an extravagance, by its very nature taking funds away from the education of children, was due to the collective bargaining agreement.

In Milwaukee, the school district pays nearly $24,000 per employee for health insurance because such lavish benefits are demanded by the union. (more…)

As “Waiting for ‘Superman’” so eloquently points out, the industrial assembly-line model of America’s public schools, created decades ago, isn’t working.  In fact, it’s setting us further and further behind our global competitors.

Today, it is essential that our children graduate high school and college prepared for the fierce competition they will face in the global marketplace.  Their economic survival will be determined by their ability to compete with countries like China, India, and other emerging economies.

This requires that our public schools be innovative and effective.  Instead, our schools are using a failed, one-size-fits-all approach to education that may actually end up hurting our children.

It’s interesting that our slide began in the 1970s.  Just ten years earlier, collective bargaining, the crowning glory of labor unions, took root in our public schools. Coincidence?

Collective bargaining agreements, which carry the weight of law, enshrine such policies as seniority (last hired, first fired), tenure (lifetime job protection in as little as two years) and due process (an extra-legal process outside the court system).  Oh, and automatic yearly raises– not for performance, but simply for logging another year in the system.  In other words, we give teachers raises simply for not dying over the summer.

This is a beautiful system – if you’re a public school employee.  But if you’re a student in the public school system, well, it’s like being drafted by the Detroit Lions.

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The Education Action Group believes that the New York City teachers union’s impending lawsuit over the release of teacher ratings exposes its true motivation to protect sub-par teachers and preserve the failing system.

New York education officials’ made the bold move to release rankings of 12,000 fourth through eighth-grade teachers recently to inject more accountability into an education system plagued by huge union-related costs, terrible graduation rates, and thousands of teachers that simply collect checks to do nothing.

The financial and other abuses the teachers unions perpetuate on public schools is a national problem that can only be corrected when citizens have unfettered access to all information available to make informed decisions. Transparency is critically important to ensure that all students receive the best education possible.

The New York City teacher rankings would, like recently released Los Angeles teacher ratings, lay the groundwork for a more transparent, effective public education system.

Unfortunately, the NYC teachers union, the United Federation of Teachers, has vowed to take the issue to the State Supreme Court in Manhattan today because UFT President Michael Mulgrew contends that the system is “unreliable and in a developmental stage,” the New York Times reports.

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It should come as no surprise that unions are spending big bucks to keep their Democratic friends in power.  And with good reason:  Does anyone honestly believe with fiscal conservatives in control of Congress, legislation like last summer’s $10 billion “education jobs fund/teach union bailout” would stand a chance?  Of course not.

November is shaping up to be a historically bad year for Democrats, and the teacher unions know they’re living on borrowed time.

Not only will the money spigot be turned off, but Americans are beginning to realize the corruption of the nation’s public education system that serves adult interests very well, but fails so many kids. Americans wonder:  How can a system graduate a child who cannot read?  Yet, it happens every year.

The teacher unions say they care about such problems, but it’s so hard to tell.  They resist education reform and accountability at every turn.  And when the union stages a protest, it invariably revolves around protecting their pay, benefits and power.

Now comes word that the National Education Association, the largest labor union in the country, is digging deep into its members’ pockets to spend $15 million on protecting vulnerable Democrats, as well as a few big spending Republicans.

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