Archive for August 2017

Larry Sand reviews Steve Jobs’ ground-shattering views on teacher union officials’ power in an interview from 1995. While he does not mention merit pay, the idea that teacher unions have turned education into a bureaucracy and not a meritocracy still rings true.  Check it out on californiapolicycenter.org. Despite what union leaders say, competition makes everything better.…

New Jersey Education Association teacher union officials are attempting to relieve Senate President Steve Sweeney of his job. How much of this money is taken from teachers against their will? Andrew Seidman has the story on philly.com. The high-profile bid by New Jersey’s largest teachers’ union to unseat Senate President Stephen Sweeney in November’s election has intensified, as political…

There are examples of teacher union officials’ extraordinary power, but this one takes the cake, especially considering the financial woes currently plaguing Illinois.  Jim Dey has the story in News-Gazzette. Consider the embittered David Piccioli, a consummate insider who worked for Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan for 10 years (1987-97) before going to work as…

Steven Greenhut explains how forced union membership hurts the public on the California Policy Center Online. His comparison includes teacher and police union officials. America’s public school systems are notorious for their rubber rooms. That’s where teachers deemed unfit to work in a classroom pass the time as their disciplinary actions or terminations move through the convoluted…

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf has made an enormous pay back to Big Labor by appointing the top officer of the Pennsylvania State Education Association to serve as head of the Commonwealth’s Department of Labor and Industry. Check out the story in the Editorial section of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. It’s hard to conceive of Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf handing Big…