Teachers Unions: A Collection of Facts and Opinions
Whom do they benefit? Teachers, Children, Communities, Parents, Political Parties?
Your answers likely will range among, “I support unions; I don’t know; Good for teachers’ wages and working conditions, therefore good for children; Harmful to charter schools because unions fear perceived competition ; Too much power over curriculum content,” etc.
We searched for variety in opinions and facts and wow, did we find a wide range —about unions, not teachers.
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California Teachers Union Expects to Lose 4,000 Members
Despite the projected membership losses, the union will rake in $214 million next year, and executive pay will rise. It has been the best of times and the worst of times for the California Teachers Association.
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What You Need to Know About California Teachers’ Rights & Options
Deciding to leave your teachers union is not an easy decision.
https://teacherfreedom.org/opt-out-california-teachers-association/
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OPINION: Education Lawmaking in California is Overshadowed by Teachers Unions
The entanglement between teachers’ unions and progressive partisans makes the far left’s political call for limiting big money in politics a hypocritical, gaslighting act.
By Wenyuan Wu, May 5, 2022 9:15 am
In recent years, California has become a national icon for modeling progressive education policies, thanks to a State Legislature occupied by a Democratic supermajority and a complacent education bureaucracy. The state has codified controversial mandates for comprehensive sex education, ethnic studies, and is now considering a new set of state guidelines for equitable math. Many such sweeping initiatives were streamlined with little political resistance, even though the public had voiced growing opposition against ideologically driven teaching pedagogies.
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Teachers’ Unions: Don’t Underestimate Them. What do teacher unions do, anyway?
Teachers unions have tremendous influence in America’s public schools, perhaps nowhere more so than in California. This lesson describes the major functions of these unions, and summarizes varying points of view about their role in student learning.
https://ed100.org/lessons/teacherunions
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California’s schools are burning down, and teachers union leaders bring the gasoline
May 12, 2022
In just three days in early May, California’s teachers unions opened the vault and moved $1.2 million into Tony Thurmond’s campaign for Superintendent of Public Instruction.
Thurmond has earned their favor. In nearly four years as the incumbent, he has advanced the unions’ demands to end charter schools, and endorsed teacher strikes — which, in every case, led to school closures and, where the strikes were successful, pressure for higher taxes, greater public debt, and expanded union control over teacher discipline. In every case, it’s poor families who, trapped in failing school districts and facing higher taxes, will bear the burden.
The recent cash gusher came from just three sources. The California School Employees Association and the California Teachers Association each gave Thurmond $500,000. The California Federation of Teachers gave him $200,000. The contributions were tracked on California Policy Center’s Twitter bot, “Union Watch” (@CalUnionWatch).
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The Enduring Teacher Shortage Myth
Dire warnings about teachers leaving the profession have been with us for over a century.
Friday, June 17, 2022
Larry Sand Larry Sand, a former classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the general public with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues. The views presented here are strictly his own.
“Many teachers have left the profession and gone into other work of various kinds because they could make more money. Frequently the best teachers are the ones who have left the profession because they have been able to command exceptional salaries elsewhere.” (H/T Tom Gantert.)
The above quote is taken from the front page of the April 16, 1920 edition of the Charlevoix County Herald, a newspaper in Michigan. And the story has replicated itself repeatedly on a nationwide basis for the last 102 years.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/enduring-teacher-shortage-myth-larry-sand/
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The California Teachers Empowerment Network Story
The idea to establish a new network of educators in California came about when Larry Sand and several other teachers became aware that they were not getting the type of balanced information at their school sites which would enable them to make informed decisions related to their profession. A wide range of information from the more global concerns of education policy, education leadership, and education reform, to information having a more personal application, such as professional liability insurance, options of relationships to teachers unions, and the effect of unionism on teacher pay, comes to teachers from a single viewpoint.
The lack of open democratic dialogue on these matters has had a chilling effect on the ability of teachers to think for themselves. It is very difficult to navigate a complex maze of data with incomplete and biased information. It has become apparent that there is an urgent need to have an organization that provides reliable and balanced information and peer support for teachers of like mind who may adopt dissenting views or make decisions that could invite criticism and strained relationships. Because no other such organization of teachers exists, the California Teachers Empowerment Network was born to fill this void.
http://www.ctenhome.org/about/
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CTEN Blog, Wednesday, June 15, 2022
Dear Colleague,
As reported recently by EdSource, “Covid challenges, bad student behavior push teachers to limit, out the door.”
In the last six months of 2020 – after the pandemic began – there were 5,644 teacher retirements, a 26% increase the same period the previous year, according to the California State Teachers’ Retirement System. By the end of the school year, 12,785 teachers had retired – 8% higher than the previous year. Data for this school year is not yet available, but CalSTRS reports that the number of retirements has leveled off since 2020.
http://ctenteachers.blogspot.com/
