NEA

Anti-Americanism - California - Children - Democrats/Leftists - Education - Ethics - Larry Sand - Liberals - Los Angeles - Public Employees Unions - Teachers Unions - Unions

Fake Teacher Evaluation Racket is Busted in Los Angeles

November 14, 2011 by

-By Larry Sand

Parents sue the LA school board and teachers union, forcing them to obey a law that they have ignored for 40 years.

There is nothing new about unions bullying weak-kneed school districts, but this may be the mother of all abuses– for forty years, school districts and unions have collaborated to break the law in California. According to the Stull Act (Section 44660 of the state’s education code), part of a teacher’s evaluation is required to include a student achievement component, but this has not happened anywhere in the state. Last week, after consulting with EdVoice, a reform advocacy group in Sacramento, parents of some students in Los Angeles Unified School District sued the school district and teachers union for what amounts to a dereliction of duty. While the lawsuit is aimed at LA, it will have state-wide ramifications.

Originally enacted in 1971, the Stull Act, named after State Senator John Stull, was amended in 1999 to include,

“The governing board of each school district shall evaluate and assess certificated employee performance as it reasonably relates to:

The progress of pupils toward the standards established pursuant to subdivision (a) and, if applicable, the state adopted academic content standards as measured by state adopted criterion referenced assessments….”

In other words, a part of a teacher’s evaluation is supposed to be contingent on how well his students do on state mandated tests. This is hardly a radical notion, as half the states in the rest of the country now evaluate teachers in part by student performance on these tests.
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Fake Teacher Evaluation Racket is Busted in Los Angeles”

Illinois - Larry Sand - Pensions - Public Employees Unions - Teachers Unions - Unions

Unions Continue to Swindle the Public

November 8, 2011 by

-By Larry Sand

Unions are still treacherous, but with a generous helping of legislative malfeasance, their tactics are more subtle.

“On the Waterfront” portrayed union power at its rawest. In the 1950s, the unions typically got their way with nothing less than brute force. But today the tactics are different. In “Pretty Boy Floyd,” Woody Guthrie sang, “Some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen.” The unions are well entrenched in the “fountain pen” camp and recently, Illinois has been in their crosshairs.

In September, the Chicago Tribune broke a story about Dennis Gannon, a former sanitation worker who became a president of the Chicago Federation of Labor. He went back to work for the city for one day, then took a leave of absence and was legally allowed to collect a $158,000 pension, about five times the average sanitation worker.
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Unions Continue to Swindle the Public”

Budget - California - Children - Education - Larry Sand - Public Employees Unions - Taxes - Teachers Unions - Unions

CTA Dons Victim Guise and Joins OWS Crowd

October 31, 2011 by

-By Larry Sand

It’s almost Halloween and the California Teachers Association, a rich and powerful outfit, is in costume as one of the “99%ers” – protesters who claim to be have-nots

A couple of weeks ago United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten made sympathetic statements about the Occupy Wall Street movement. Now the California Teachers Association has jumped in with a full endorsement and suggestions on its website as to how teachers and others can get involved in OWS activities.

Stunning in its mendacity, CTA issued a press release (H/T Mike Antonucci) which announced its “support of the nationwide ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement for tax fairness and against corporate greed.” It goes on to say, “…a stable tax structure begins with everyone paying their fair share.”
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CTA Dons Victim Guise and Joins OWS Crowd”

California - Children - Democrats/Leftists - Education - Larry Sand - Public Employees Unions - Teachers Unions

Teachers Unions: On the Road to Extinction?

October 23, 2011 by

-By Larry Sand

Online learning is the wave of the future, but teachers unions still have a Paleocene mentality

In his extraordinary book Special Interest, Terry Moe writes about the massive power of the teachers unions. After much gloom and doom, in the final chapter of the book, he manages to convey some hope about the future. Emerging technology-based education, he asserts, is the “long-term trend…, and the unions cannot stop it from happening.” Online teachers from different states and countries will be much harder for the unions to corral and control.

However, according to a post on hotair.com by Tina Korbe, the University of California chapter of the American Federation of Teachers hasn’t gotten the message yet. University of California schools, which are in dire financial straits, have begun using online education programs as a way to save money. As a result, some lecturers’ jobs could be done away with. However, their union is using its collective bargaining power to ensure that every job, no matter how unnecessary, will be saved.

“… the California lecturers, who make up nearly half of the system’s undergraduate teaching teachers, believe they have used … bargaining power to score a rare coup. The University of California last week tentatively agreed to a deal with UC-AFT that included a new provision barring the system and its campuses from creating online courses or programs that would result in ‘a change to a term or condition of employment’ of any lecturer without first dealing with the union.”

In other words, the union is determined to keep all its dues-paying members on the payroll whether they are needed or not, whether we can afford them or not. The fact that there are some excellent online classes and that their use would save the beleaguered taxpayers of California bushels

Business - California - Capitalism - Economy/Finances - Larry Sand - Public Employees Unions - Teachers Unions - Unions

Steve Jobs vs. Wall St. Whiners and Teachers Unions

October 17, 2011 by

-By Larry Sand

Steve Jobs knew how to create wealth. The parasitic Wall Street protesters and teachers unions want to destroy it

There are many theories as to who is orchestrating the “Occupy Wall Street” protests – known in some circles as “Kamp Alinsky” and “Kamp Kvetch” – in lower Manhattan and elsewhere throughout our country. George Soros? President Obama? Could they possibly be spontaneous?

No matter. The protesters and their message of social justice, socialism and general hatred of all things corporate will not affect the great majority of Americans. The average Joe and Jill are just trying to pay their bills, raise a family and live a decent life. Hence the Wall Street rabble, a motley combination of bored teenagers, old guard lefties and hard core partiers, many armed with iPhones, digital cameras and many other luxuries produced by corporations, are badly missing the mark. As usual, the protesters’ signs tell the story – none more so than the one that says, “A job is a right. Capitalism doesn’t work.” Could any serious types associate with this fringe mentality?

Enter Michael Mulgrew – the United Federation of Teachers president. Speaking “truth to power,” his tax-the-rich talk at a Wall St. rally fit right in with the angry mob that thinks wealth is evil and that if A has more money than B, A owes B some of it. It’s the mentality that thinks that there is no moral difference between Bernie Madoff and Bill Gates.
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Steve Jobs vs. Wall St. Whiners and Teachers Unions”

Anti-Americanism - California - Democrats/Leftists - Education - Government - Larry Sand - Liberals - Public Employees Unions - Teachers Unions - Unions

Cherry Picking Facts + Bad Polling = Demagoguery

September 27, 2011 by

-By Larry Sand

Teacher union boss cherry picks from a biased poll and ends up with the pits.

Cherry picking is a phrase that has become quite popular these days. The term simply refers to advancing a certain point of view by using only data which supports that POV and omitting any contradictory or mitigating information.

A recent illustration of this phenomenon is on display in an article written by NEA President Dennis Van Roekel. The ironically titled Back-to-School Reality Check is, in fact, quite short on reality. The article, primarily a pep talk for teachers, uses a recent Phi Beta Kappa/Gallup poll as its motivating source. Early on, Van Roekel tells us,

“73 percent (of the poll’s respondents) said teachers should have flexibility in the classroom.”

I’m all for that. But what the union boss leaves out is that for teachers to have more flexibility they would need to tear up the telephone book-size union contract that dictates every little move a teacher makes.
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Cherry Picking Facts + Bad Polling = Demagoguery”

Anti-Americanism - Barack Obama - Budget - California - Children - Democrats/Leftists - Education - Elections - Ethics - Government - Larry Sand - Liberals - Los Angeles - President - Taxes

Obama, Teachers Unions and Tax Evasion

September 19, 2011 by

-By Larry Sand

President Obama has talked a good education reform game, but when push comes to threats, he is above all a good union man.

On August 25th, AFL-CIO boss Richard Trumka uttered a few words that seemed to resonate with President Obama. He said, “The AFL-CIO has not yet decided if it will participate in next year’s Democratic National Convention, as labor union members ponder whether President Obama has earned their support.…” He said the major economic speech the president has planned for early next month will tell union members what they need to know about whether he will be worth supporting.”

Trumka has a history of following through on his threats. As president of the United Mine Workers in the spring of 1993, he wanted to ensure that no one would be able to find employment as a miner without paying union dues to the UMW. Accordingly, he proceeded to order more than 17,000 mine workers to walk off their jobs, and told the striking miners to “kick the sh– out of every last one” of their fellow employees and mine operators who resisted union demands. UMW thugs dutifully responded by vandalizing homes, firing gunshots into management’s offices, and cutting off the power supply to another mine, temporarily trapping 93 miners underground.
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Obama, Teachers Unions and Tax Evasion”

California - Children - Education - Larry Sand - Los Angeles - Public Employees Unions - Teachers Unions - Unions

Former Union Boss to Become Charter School Operator

September 10, 2011 by

-By Larry Sand

Once a rabid anti-reformer, termed out United Teachers of Los Angeles President A.J. Duffy has become a union apostate…maybe.

On September 1st, Los Angeles Times writer Howard Blume wrote what at first glance appeared to be satire. He reported that A.J. Duffy is starting his own charter school. For those of you who live a peaceful life outside the realm of the education wars, Duffy is the crusty and cantankerous, raspy and rabid former president of the United Teachers of Los Angeles – a man who never met a charter school or any education reform that he liked. And when he didn’t like something, he made sure you knew about it.

But it’s a new day and Duffy indeed will be soon become the executive director of Apple Academy Charter Public Schools, a new organization that hopes to open one or more schools by the fall of 2012.

To show how bizarre all this is, let’s take a step back a couple of years. In 2009, when the Los Angeles Unified School District wanted to expand the number of charter schools in the district, Duffy, then UTLA President said,

“All the data says charter schools do not do better than public schools. This is bureaucracy putting in a top-down plan which hasn’t worked before.”

Now he says he has a vision, and while his schools will be unionized, it will not be at the expense of sacrificing his new ideas about how a school should operate.
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Former Union Boss to Become Charter School Operator”

Budget - California - Children - Democrats/Leftists - Education - Government - Larry Sand - Liberals - NEA - Public Employees Unions - Taxes - Teachers Unions - Unions

Teachers Unions Happy to Say Goodbye to August

September 3, 2011 by

-By Larry Sand

The Dog Days of summer are making teachers unions sweat as they get caught being, well, teachers unions

August has been a bad month for teachers unions. And looking at things objectively, it would appear that every one of their hot flashes has been well deserved. In no particular order:

The SOS March was a dud. It was supposed to be a teacher-led event, but the unions were really behind it. The small turnout had its share of angry, mostly leftist teachers whining and shouting about this and that. No one paid much attention. The speakers were just what you’d expect. Jonathan Kozol, forty years later, is still railing about poverty causing ignorance. (No, actually ignorance causes poverty.) Then the marchers were treated to former reformer and current union mouthpiece Diane Ravitch who chirped about how wonderful they all were. And then the big gun, Matt Damon, who if nothing else showed what a great actor he is. The guy who played a convincing genius in Good Will Hunting demonstrates that without a good script he’s about as sharp as a marble.

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Teachers Unions Happy to Say Goodbye to August”

Budget - Democrats/Leftists - Elections - Ethics - Liberals - NEA - Warner Todd Huston

National Education Association to Double Members’ Dues Spent on Politics

February 27, 2011 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Even as it tops the list of organizations spending money on political causes, the National Education Association (NEA) is planning to double the amount of its members’ dues spent on politics so that it can spend yet more on political campaigns — and all left-wing causes to boot.

Last year the NEA teachers union spent over $56 million on left-wing political causes but that is not enough according to union’s leadership. They want more. In 2010 the NEA took $10 from each member and spent that amount on its political activism. Going forward the NEA has announced that it will hike that amount to $20 per member.

The spending hike supposedly has a five-year sunset time limit on it, but as Mike Antonucci notes, the last time such a hike was proposed it also had a sunset provision but that provision was never implemented.

This raise in political spending comes at a time when the NEA has seen membership fall by some 54,000 members and found a $14 million shortfall in its general operating budget.

One wonders how members feel whose organization can’t even pay its bills but is doubling its spending on politics?
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National Education Association to Double Members’ Dues Spent on Politics”