Here’s a headline from a Minnesota Public Radio news story that should cause some sleepless nights for leaders of the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers: “Teacher seniority, NCLB top education in low-key legislative session.”

The story reports that Minnesota lawmakers want to end the practice of basing teacher layoffs on seniority rankings, a disgusting practice known as “last in, first out.”

The state currently mandates “that schools use quality-blind seniority privileges for retention decisions,” said state Rep. Pat Garofalo, a Republican, according to MPR News.

“That doesn’t work; it’s being widely criticized. I think we’ll take a look at repealing that,” Garofalo said.

Here’s why this story should have teacher union leaders reaching for the antacid. Not only is “last in, first out” in danger of being repealed in the union-friendly state of Minnesota, but a left-wing media outlet describes the proposal as being part of a “low-key legislative session.”

(more…)

Fresh from his overwhelming re-election victory, Gov. Bobby Jindal has unveiled an audacious education reform agenda that built around an expanded school voucher program, new charter schools, a rigorous teacher evaluation system and a revamped tenure system. With the Louisiana state legislature set to go back into session this coming March, the governor is expected to win broad support for many of the proposed changes.

If so, the voucher program, which is now limited to New Orleans, would go statewide. Low-income families with a child enrolled in a school that has received a C rating or lower could use public dollars to cover the cost of private school tuition.

Jindal also favors using the new “value-added” teacher assessment to deny automatic tenure for teachers that do not received high marks. Beginning in the 2012-2013 school year, 50 percent of evaluations for teachers in academic classes will be based on the LEAP and iLEAP test scores, while the other 50 percent will be based more on subjective criteria built around classroom observations to determine how effective instructors are in motivating students. A pilot program that involves nine school districts and one of the charter schools is already underway.

“This is historic change and an important step forward for our education system,” said  Brigitte Nieland, vice-president and communications director of the Education and Workforce Development Council for Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI). “For the first time, teachers will be evaluated based on how their students perform. This is about transparency and accuracy.”

(more…)

The Occupy movement may have been kicked out of nearly every one of their makeshift encampments this fall, but don’t worry. They are counting on unions to keep them nice and warm this winter, and that includes the United Federation of Teachers union, which forces New York City to hemorrhage tax dollars at the expense of children’s education.

The Occupy movement had little concern about the effect they had on other people or the costs that they racked up. If you’re going to have a revolution, after all, you need to break a few eggs — other people’s eggs, apparently. But for gosh sakes, don’t ask the Occupiers to get chilly!  In a recent spate of email correspondence, John McGloin (who we featured on Big Government weeks ago) gives the weather report and makes lemonade from lemons.

This is from the email exchange between a few Occupy insiders…

We should not be fighting nature when it is unnecessary.  It is cold outside and everything slows down in the cold.  We don’t need to hibernate, but we don’t need to pretend its [sic] September.  It is important to remember that occupation is a tactic, not the goal. Although there were definite advantages to having a centralized place on the ground, our movement doesn’t depend on centralization, and in many ways Bloomberg did us a favor.

If you’re going to overthrow the entire capitalist system, you can’t fight nature and you obviously need a decent meeting space. One great idea – hold meetings in storage locker! Luckily, the United Federation of Teachers has provided just such spot for Occupy. (more…)

OLYMPIA, Wash. – Hundreds of protesters are converging on the state capitol in Olympia, Washington to protest cuts in K-12 education spending, and promote various plans to restore that funding.

We wish we could be on hand to join the protest – but for very different reasons. The teachers unions and Occupy crowd want higher taxes on those they call rich. Gov. Christine Gregoire wants a sales tax increase or the unthinkable – a school year shortened by four days.

Those are the only two choices they’re offering. What a crock!

The fact is the state of Washington, like the entire nation, is embroiled in a vicious economic recession. That means people are making less money and paying fewer taxes. And that, in turn, means government institutions like public schools are facing financial problems.

When a private sector company has money problems, it necessarily cuts costs. While we realize that Washington schools have already cut a lot from their budgets, we doubt they’ve looked under every rock.

Every school district in the state should open its teachers union collective bargaining agreement and start identifying costs that could be frozen or cut.

We guarantee there are many, including automatic, annual step raises for teachers (regardless of performance), free or low-cost employee insurance coverage, free or low-cost retirement pensions, reimbursement for unused sick or personal days, seniority bonuses, retirement bonuses, longevity bonuses, salaries and benefits for union officials who do not teach, etc.

The list of pricey provisions in a typical teachers union contract is quite long. That’s why most school districts spend 75-80 percent of their budgets on labor costs.

(more…)

NESHAMINY, Pa. – Some well-meaning people still cling to the notion that teachers union collective bargaining is healthy for public schools.

We invite them to visit Neshaminy, Pennsylvania, or at least do some research on the three-year labor standoff that has been tearing the school district and community to shreds.

Neshaminy teachers are among the most highly compensated in the state, with above-average salaries, generous insurance and retirement benefits. Their last contract expired in 2008, and they haven’t been able to negotiate a new one because the school board, battling financial problems brought on by the recession, can no longer afford extravagant compensation.

The teachers union has responded with ugly tactics, including a threat to strike and a decision to “work to contract,” which is a nice term for a general work slowdown. The community has reacted with anger toward the union’s self-serving demands, and the Philadelphia suburb has been poisoned with an environment of anger and mistrust.

“What started as a skirmish a few years ago has become an all-out war, precipitated by union misinformation, deception and malice,” one citizen wrote to a local newspaper. “In this two-sided war between an intransigent teachers union and suffering taxpayers/parents/students, there can be no sitting on the fence; we’ve advanced too far for that.

“Everyone should take a stand for what they believe in.”

Spoiled union avoiding concessions

Let’s start with a few facts:

The Neshaminy school district, like most across the nation, is facing dire financial problems. It has closed two school buildings in recent years, laid off more than 60 employees and cut several student programs, in an effort to keep up with runaway labor costs.

The Neshaminy Federation of Teachers has been working under the terms of an expired collective bargaining agreement for the past three school years. Those terms are very generous indeed.

The 675 teachers on staff are the second highest paid in the state, with an average salary of $81,816. Teachers have never had to contribute a dime toward health insurance premiums for themselves and their families. Teachers receive longevity bonuses, reimbursement for unused sick days, as well as a $27,500 cash bonus and full health coverage upon retirement.

The school board has made it very clear that the district can no longer afford lucrative labor expenses during the current economic crisis. Still, it has offered contract terms that would be considered generous in many school districts across the nation.

(more…)

CHICAGO – If well-known people want to avoid controversy, they should avoid making ugly comments about respected citizens and public officials, particularly in public.

That’s a lesson Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis has yet to learn.

Last week, while researching footage of Lewis for a documentary project, we at Education Action Group came across a YouTube video of Lewis giving the keynote address at the recent Northwest Teaching for Social Justice Conference in Seattle.

During the course of her remarks, Lewis attempted to draw a few laughs by making fun of U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s speech impediment.

“Now you know he went to private school ’cause if he had gone to public school he would have had that lisp fixed,” she said.
Lewis went on to laughingly talk about her former marijuana use during her college days.

“I spent those years smoking lots of weed – self-medicating,” she said. “Self-medicating – thank you! Sounds like you all did, too. Oh, I’m sorry, there’s kids here. I wasn’t supposed to say that, right? Too late!”

We thought Lewis’ comments were highly inappropriate for the leader of one of the nation’s largest teachers unions, so we released the pertinent clips of the video to the media.

(more…)

OAKLAND, Calif. – We were dismayed a few weeks ago when hundreds of union teachers in Oakland, California skipped work and forced the shutdown of several schools, in observance of the Occupy movement’s national strike day.

We thought their commitment to their students should come before their outside political activities. We wondered how they could be so passionate about national tax issues, but fail to display the same type of concern about educational quality issues.

But now they’ve sunk to a new low, and it should not be tolerated.

Dozens (or perhaps hundreds) of teachers in the Oakland school district pledged to use taxpayer-funded class time to teach their students about the Occupy movement – from a positive viewpoint, of course. We can safely assume that critics of Occupy were not invited to participate in the lessons.

Here’s what the teachers pledged to do:

“During the week of 10/31 to 11/4, I pledge to teach about: the Occupy movement; the role of strikes in movement history; the systems and issues this movement is protesting against; the possibilities for change this movement is part of envisioning; what students need to know about how to stay safe during these protests.”

Unique lesson plans

Several teachers shared their ideas for lessons on the “Teach Occupy Oakland” website.

(more…)

School reformers across the nation are closely watching Ohio, where a statewide referendum next Tuesday will determine the fate of SB 5, the legislation that would greatly curtail collective bargaining privileges for teachers and other public employees.

This gutsy law, approved by the legislature and Gov. John Kasich, is similar to the very effective Act 10 in Wisconsin. It would allow cash-strapped school boards to cut labor costs, balance their budgets and put more focus on student instruction without interference from local unions.

Of course the teachers unions (and every other sort of union) hate this law, because it threatens their ability to dominate school budgets. They led a petition drive to challenge the law through popular referendum and are pouring cash into the campaign to kill it.

We Are Ohio, the coalition spearheading opposition to the law, received $19 million in donations during the last campaign financing reporting period, according to a recent story in the Columbus Dispatch. In contrast, Building a Better Ohio, which supports the law, reported contributions of nearly $7.6 million.

Of course, much of the money for We Are Ohio is coming from organized labor. Reports indicate that the Ohio Education Association contributed more than $4.75 million to the campaign in the most recent filing period. (more…)

For years we’ve been preaching the same fundamental message – public schools have more of a spending problem than a revenue problem.

And the spending problem is largely caused by skyrocketing labor costs and stubborn unions that refuse to make any concessions during hard times.

The union’s answer, of course, is to raise taxes to provide more revenue for public schools. As long as struggling taxpayers cough up more money, teachers won’t have to give up their perks, and everything will be back to normal, right?

Not according to the voters of Colorado, who had the good sense to soundly reject a ballot proposal Tuesday that would have increased income and sales taxes to help fund public schools. The proposal died an ugly death, with 64 percent of voters saying no.

The main supporters of the measure were the usual suspects: School boards, the Colorado Education Association, and one very wealthy state senator, Rollie Heath, who can afford higher taxes.

(more…)

Cleveland’s schools are facing a $13 million deficit.  Because of this, the district is forced to make cuts to pre-school, sports, busing and textbooks.

But worry not, the Cleveland teachers union has a solution to these cuts.

Issue 2 will help Ohio schools deal with rapidly rising costs.  Vote YES.

(more…)

From BusinessInsider:

Steve Jobs told President Obama he probably would not be re-elected, Walter Isaacson wrote in Jobs’ soon-to-be-released biography.

That’s because regulations and unions in the United States were crippling its ability to remain competitive with emerging powerhouses like China.

The biography was picked up by the Huffington Post, which published excerpts earlier today.

Jobs met with Obama in fall 2010 and said it was too difficult to build a factory in the U.S., which led the company to build manufacturing plants in countries like China.

(more…)

Virtually no state is immune to the red ink found in school budgets, which is a result of routine overspending.  For too long, schools have not kept spending in check.  They’ve given raises they couldn’t afford, they maintained bloated benefit packages that far exceeded their private-sector counterparts, and they haven’t employed much business sense in managing massive, multi-million dollar operations.

Unions, of course, have felt the greatest heat.  They, along with complicit school boards and administrators, were so reckless with school finances, that a course correction was inevitable. The nation’s economy has been slipping for the past several years, forcing school districts everywhere to reacquaint themselves with reality.

Meanwhile, the unions believe they have a restraining order against reality, and have taken to what they do best: protesting.

Back in March, the American Federation of Teachers took to Alabama streets to protest the fact that the legislature there is failing to quench the union’s insatiable thirst for unchecked spending.  The Birmingham News reported at the time:

“About 80 people rallied in front of the Jefferson County Board of Education during rush hour this afternoon to protest state budget cuts in education, which they say is increasing class sizes, drying up school supply money and killing teacher morale in just about every school district.

“The American Federation of Teachers led the rally, accompanied by parents, other labor unions, the NAACP and a few students.”

“The fact is there are some schools that won’t even be able to open their doors this fall,” said Vi Parramore, president of the Jefferson County AFT.

(more…)

Vladimir Lenin is popularly attributed with coining the term “useful idiots” – a description of Americans who were in effect doing the bidding of the communist Soviet Union – and subverting American exceptionalism – in the name of global humanity.

Lenin “has left the building,” but his leftist agenda lives on among progressives who are obsessed with trying to subvert our free market economy.  And it’s those progressives who control the nation’s teachers unions and the rest of the education blob which manipulates a naïve and sympathetic public to do their dirty work.

Many parents have come to believe that the red ink in public school budgets has been caused by politicians who have scaled back the increases in public education spending.  Parents have been duped into thinking that it’s the “evil” and miserly politicians who are to blame for government schools going broke.  Parents don’t want to confront the fact that it’s the pensions, benefits, and other perks for the adult school employees that have brought the system to the financial brink.  Worse, parents have fallen prey to the notion that spending must be increased or little Johnny’s art teacher will have taught his last finger painting lesson.

The teacher unions are fighting for their very survival, and have taken to creating a sense of panic among parents, in hopes the public will push the unions’ agenda.  As a result, some parents become desperate to do something – anything – to fix the problem.

That desperation seems to have motivated a group of California parents to create a music video that features a group of elementary children singing the following words:

“It’s my school, your school

Gotta get dough for our schools

This money won’t raise itself

But we can

“Unity! Community!

Funds, funds, funds, funds!

Looking forward to the next year

“No more music, PE, drama,

Spanish and art class goin’ bye bye

Funds, Funds, thinkin’ about funds

You know what I mean …”

The video – which appears to have been filmed at a taxpayer-funded school – is as pathetic as it is absurd. At one point, the children take turns putting money in a donation box, only to have an actor portraying Uncle Sam take the money out of the box and stuff it inside his coat.

(more…)

Ridiculously false choices and rhetoric ruled the evening when the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers hosted a closed-media conference call with Vice President Joe Biden to inform their members about the latest government school and teachers’ union bailout.

In a recording obtained exclusively by PublicSchoolSpending.com, Biden explained the administration is seeking to spend $30 billion to create a “Teacher Layoff Prevention Fund.”  He also said that many schools today are “deciding whether or not to heat the school or keep a teacher.”

Like school stimuli-past, Biden said schools would not be able to bank the money, but would be required to spend it.  “It’s to be able to keep you at work and even rehire teachers,” he told the unions.  So the Obama administration – yet again – is setting up a situation where the problem will be the same next year and the administration will have to propose another bailout or the school sky will fall in and even more kids will graduate unable to read.

Obama’s proposal includes $10 billion for the 100 “largest, high need public school districts” to use for renovations.  So just prior to the election, the administration is proposing to spend $100 million in communities that traditionally vote for Democrats.  Coincidence?

(more…)

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.

(more…)

There was an open revolt this summer against a local a teacher’s union and its school board accomplices in left-wing Berkshire County, Massachusetts.  This is news that does not bode well for public employee unions and their beneficiaries nationwide.  The Berkshires are a liberal fantasy camp in the “Rachel Maddow Belt,”  Michael Barone’s name for the Massachusetts’ 1^st Congressional District. Made up of wannabe and former hippies, ornery Bush-hating Yankees, artistes and transplanted New Yorkers the District gave Obama 64% of its votes.  It’s a made to order liberal electoral stew that usually loves higher taxes and government largesse.  Not this time though. While the people who went all “Tea Party” on the union might not want to be identified as such, they achieved Tea Party goals, spurred by a small band of fiscally conservative citizens who sounded the alarm and stayed engaged.

Without confusing and boring the reader I will say the process for approving budgets for our Southern Berkshire Regional School District is migraine inducing. Five towns make up the district, and towns must separately approve the budget in an anachronistic town meeting format, then, if a Proposition 2 1/2 override is required (Prop 2 ½ is a Mass law that prohibits raising property taxes more than 2.5% without a override vote) to pay for a town’s share, a ballot initiative is also required. Four towns out of five must approve to pass a school budget.

That scenario happened three separate times this summer in a school budget tussle. The first school budget was larded with, among other items, retroactive raises for teachers – who hadn’t had the raises they were accustomed to in the previous two years and were trying to get them in addition to ones for the coming year. People at the town meeting were wondering aloud on what planet you get a retroactive raise in the worst recession in 60 years, when the people who you work for are unemployed, underemployed or suffering through a downturn in business. This is a school district with falling enrollments and above state average costs per student.

In my home town, New Marlborough, the budget was defeated in the town meeting and in the Proposition 2 ½ override ballot question a few days later was also voted down. The budget failed district-wide because one other town also voted against it.  In a contemptuous move, rather than cut the budget, the school board came back with a second budget identical to the first – in effect saying “screw you.” New Marlborough voted the budget down again in a second town meeting , and also on the override  ballot, this time by a 2 to 1 margin. The budget failed again district-wide with the help of  one other stalwart town. The third time the school board  decided to cut the budget by dipping into “rainy day funds.” Four of the five towns approved this irresponsible approach to funding a budget (which included teacher raises), thus passing it. New Marlborough, had to live with the budget because four other towns approved it. However, New Marlborough voted down the Proposition 2 ½ override which would have raised our taxes to pay for that budget and the raises.

(more…)

Last week, Andrew Breitbart sat down exclusively with EAGtv and shared the purpose of BigEducation.com, his next website to be launched.

Last week, Andrew Breitbart sat down exclusively with EAGtv to discuss the state of American education, school choice and a new movie that will show the battle for a better education.

He said the “status quo is deplorable.”

At FreedomFest in July, Reason’s Matt Welch talked with political consultant and Fox News contributor Dick Morris about the school choice movement.

Morris argues that past reforms – such as increased spending, changes in curriculum, and standardized testing, have failed because they don’t create the sort of competition and innovation that would come with the implementation of robust school choice that is already happening around the country. The former adviser to Bill Clinton believes school choice is a “game-changer” regarding partisan voting patterns, with Democratic-leaning women voters increasingly interested in broadening the ways in which K-12 education is delivered. As important, he says that the once-immoveable object of the teacher’s union “ain’t so immoveable.”

(more…)