Unions Escalate Attacks On Those ‘Trying To Fix’ Education

Teachers' unions like NEA and AFT are escalating attacks on non-existent "teacher haters" while vilifying those who are trying to reform a failing system.

Over the past year, there is a growing tension in the country between public-sector unions and the general tax-paying public.  Organizations like The National Education Association have mounted campaigns to rebut what they feel are unfair and unwarranted “attacks” on the way they make their living.  Turns out, they can give as good as they get.

From Larry Sand, writing at RedCountry.com:

In her address last week at the American Federation of Teachers TEACH conference, AFT President Randi Weingarten came out swinging. In an emotional speech to the faithful, she said that education reform should come from teachers and their communities, rather than from people “who blame teachers for everything.” While the teachers unions have been hammering away at this “blame the teacher” myth for some time now, the rants seem to be intensifying.

Sand believes that typically what is labeled “teacher bashing” is nothing more than anger at the teachers unions for blocking every type of education reform imaginable.  Also adding to the frustration many taxpayers feel is the belief that the unions are doing their level best to block school districts’ attempts to fire bad and even criminal teachers. Sand believe that to be fair, these phenomena should be called “teacher union bashing” and “bad teacher bashing.”

Education writer RiShawn Biddle does an excellent job of poking holes in the teacher bashing argument, claiming, among other things, that Weingarten “is just using a rhetorical trick often deployed by teachers unions and other education traditionalists to oppose school reform. They declare that any criticism of the unions and any effort to overhaul teacher quality are forms of ‘teacher bashing.’ And such proclamations end up forcing reformers onto their heels when they should actually take these critics to the woodshed.”

Groups like the NEA are essentially saying, “You see. We are really not obstructionists.”  But course, Sand contends, when it comes time to nail down specifics, the union will do what it always does: aggressively block anything approaching meaningful reform.  The devil is always in the details, and Sand believes that the track-record of the teachers’ unions is such that they will do everything in their power to ensure that the details don’t do anything at all to disturb the moribund status quo.

Read Sand’s full column here.