Posted on 09/24/2010 12:30:56 PM PDT by SmithL
Political pressure on teachers unions has been mounting for months, with national attention focused on charter schools, merit pay and other approaches to education that unions generally hate.
Now the pressure is moving to the big screen in a manner sure to pervade the public consciousness in a whole new way. Three new documentary films explore public education, taking stances that have inflamed teachers unions and brought applause from organizations that support charter schools and other union-busting changes.
The films criticize tenure and highlight how difficult it is for school districts to fire bad teachers. They present the unions as a major cause of problems in America's public schools. The solution, offered in two of the films through compelling stories of children trying to get into better schools through a lottery, is charter schools.
It's not the first time filmmakers have turned their lenses on schools, but the cluster of documentaries – and the massive publicity push associated with one of them – illustrates a new chapter in American education: the growing influence of charter schools and the philanthropies that support them.
Charters – public schools that are free from many of the regulations that govern traditional schools – have been around since the 1990s but have enjoyed increasing support under the Obama administration. Most charter schools are not unionized, making them a natural adversary for teachers unions.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
WHAT BS
I hear ya! Nonsense!
WHAT BS
So the removal of support for the Washington D.C. Charter schools was an oversight ? Far from increasing support they have been actively undemining them even when the parents want them retained. You're right utter BS.
Right. The interest parents have in seeing their children get a decent education has nothing to do with any of it. It's all because of those nasty union busters, many of whom are right-wingers, and, so, deserve to have no influence whatsoever.
Bravo!
Hopefully this will open some eyes.
Film's anguished lesson on why schools are failing
"The Terminator of that nefarious organization is Randi Weingarten, the head of one of the two biggest national teachers unions, the nation's top-spending interest group. She is a defender of the equation "status quo + more money = good education." As Guggenheim shows, though, we have more than doubled our per-student spending (corrected for inflation) over the past four decades, while US students keep slipping further behind. Weingarten has spent her career working to keep bad teachers on the payroll forever, and by commanding the Democratic Party (described by liberal journalist Jonathan Alter as "a wholly owned subsidiary" of the teachers unions), she has been unstoppable."
Charter schools equal “UNION BUSTING” techniques???? The Sac Bee exposes itself pretty early in this one.
Freepers—there is a quicker, easier, cheaper, and non-political answer to all this!
Homeschooling heads the pack.
There are strong homeschooling support groups everywhere, and they do a lot of the heavy lifting you set yourselves up for when you clear the kitchen table and surround it with your kids.
Simplify your life and really help your kid’s education.
.
The NEA is to children as
the UAW is to automobiles.
The lure of Federal dollars could well be for the purpose of making the school so dependent upon them that they will then accept forced unionization.
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