Posted on 10/02/2002 2:55:00 AM PDT by kattracks
CNSNews.com) - Teachers unions are the major obstacle to free market education reforms and don't serve the interests of their members well, education reformers and public interest law firms allege.
"Teacher unions enjoy a multiplicity of special privileges that make it very difficult to overcome their pervasive influence over politics and over teachers," said David F. Salisbury, education analyst for the Cato Institute, speaking at a recent forum.
Education reformers like Salisbury are frustrated with the monopoly status and political clout enjoyed by the nation's two largest teachers unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers.
Reformers allege that the unions flout IRS reporting requirements on their political activities, thereby deceiving their members and the taxpaying public. What is needed, some say, is more options for teachers in choosing union representation and new rules for union operations.
Myron Lieberman, of Bowling Green State University's Social Policy and Philosophy Center and lifelong NEA member, has some specific reforms in mind.
He recommends that all public school employees have the right to vote by secret ballot on choosing (and reauthorizing) an exclusive union representative, strike authorization, approving final contract offers, and approving the dues and fees paid for union representational services.
Under the current system, rank and file union members and especially nonunion members have little influence over these important matters, according to Lieberman. "Everybody in the bargaining unit should have the right to vote on those issues," he said.
"Teachers are not the problem," said Stefan Gleason of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which wages legal and legislative battles against the unions on behalf of people whose legal rights are allegedly violated by unions.
Instead, said Gleason, union bosses place their own high salaries and political power and alliances over the interests of teachers and educating kids. For example, he said, the unions have opposed merit pay increases that would reward good teachers and provide incentives for better performance from others.
Mark Levin, president of the Landmark Legal Foundation, has filed a complaint against the unions for failure to adhere to existing IRS reporting requirements for political expenditures.
Teachers unions are the "biggest tax deadbeats in America," Levin declared.
They signed a contract with the IRS to report political activity, he explained. "They told government that if they spent any money to influence campaigns...directly or indirectly, with direct funds or any kind of support, that they would report that on their tax returns."
But since at least 1994, "the NEA has put 'zero'" on the tax form line designating the amount spent on political activities. "We'd all like to do it," said Levin, but playing by the rules means declaring political expenditures.
John See, a spokesman for the AFT, denies that the union strays from their mission of serving teacher interests.
"That's just sort of a broadside against unions and teacher unions," he said. "We are, and our members are, in the classroom trying to help students learn. That's what we do."
The AFT is concerned with improving schools and "make sure that school districts can recruit and retain the very best teachers [and] improve working conditions for teachers," said See.
The NEA did not return calls seeking comment. But NEA board members have in the past dismissed allegations of widespread "schoolyard bullying" as "attacks on public education, NEA and its affiliates ... coordinated by the far-right ultra-conservative wing of the Republican Party as well as a number of extreme right organizations and 'think tanks' such as the Evergreen Foundation, the national Right to Work Committee and the American Legislative [Exchange] Council."
Such attacks "are designed to eliminate our ability to be involved in political activity at the local, state and national levels, and to turn members against us," the board members reported in a 1997 report.
E-mail a news tip to Christine Hall.
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Private schools and home schools are now the only real hope for our younger people.
The teachers unions have always irked me. Why do they pretend to be interested in the kids? Why do they pretend to be the expert on educating kids? Do other unions do this kind of thing? Historically, it seems that the role of the union is to secure wages and working conditions for workers. Do the electrician unions concern themselves with campaigning for various building codes? Does the airport security union take it upon itself to teach people how to pack baggage? I'd sincerely like to know.
But you AREN'T involved in political activity... otherwise you wouldn't be tax-exempt, would you??
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