Why Teachers’ Unions Matter
by ilene - March 16th, 2010 3:38 pm
Unions have become a divisive issue in the financial bloggosphere, so in the interest of presenting both sides, here’s an article supporting Unions. Another article showing a flip side to prevailing anti-Union wrath is Zero Hedge‘s Labor Unions Preparing To Take Goldman Sachs To Task, Push For Transaction Tax In Upcoming Widespread Rallies. – Ilene
Why Teachers’ Unions Matter
By SHAMUS COOKE writing at CounterPunch
Nowadays a newspaper cannot be opened — or a TV turned on — without one being subjected to anti-teacher misinformation. The anti-teacher hysteria looks diverse on the surface, but underneath, this public controversy seeks to dislodge teachers unions: the right-wing trashes teachers’ unions outright, while the “liberal” media takes a more subtle, sophisticated approach, blaming the state of public education on “bad teachers” who must be fired and replaced. Both styles are the same in essence.
The bi-partisan goal is to undermine and dismember public education, so that public funds may be instead channeled into paying debts racked up by multiple wars and corporate bailouts. Also, as public education is gutted, rich investors parasitically benefit from it by opening for-profit “charter schools,” curriculum corporations, or the bevy of new companies that "certify" teachers for a fraction of the cost or time of universities, ready to serve at the new corporate McEducation institutes.
Obama’s Race to the Top campaign enshrines these odious goals into governmental policy, picking up where Bush’s anti-teacher union policies left off, and racing frantically in the same direction, to the bottom.
The schools that Bush’s No Child Left Behind labeled as “failures” are to be shut down under Obama’s Race to the Top. These schools are almost entirely in poor neighborhoods, where the social disease of poverty is an easy predictor of a child’s poor test scores.
But Obama ignores this obvious fact and blames poor grades and test scores on the teachers, exclusively.
Thus, Obama cheered when every teacher at a Rhode Island “failing” high school was fired. He praised the past closures of dozens of public schools in both Chicago and New Orleans as examples for others to follow. Indeed, Detroit and Kansas City each have plans to close dozens of schools, while California is set to fire thousands of teachers. Under Obama’s plan, federal money is awarded to states that fire the most "bad" teachers and close the most “failing” public schools.
Charter schools…
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW.