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Over at Hot Air, Ed Morrissey pulls together some more useful information about states reining in teachers’ and civil servant unions and their bargaining power when it comes to current fiscal woes.
It started in New Jersey, where Chris Christie decided that the only way to real education reform was to challenge the powerful teachers union in the state, 200,000 members strong, and to do it loudly and boldly. That effort has spread through several states, with the latest battleground erupting in Wisconsin, where teachers staged a wildcat strike with mainly unwitting students in their tow. As Politico’s Jennifer Epstein reports, even Democrats have stopped defending tenure and other job protections demanded by teachers unions:
In Wisconsin, about 1,000 teachers called in sick Wednesday to protest Gov. Scott Walker’s attempt to strip their union bargaining rights.
In Washington, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie recounted his battle with his state’s teachers unions Wednesday, calling their leaders “greedy” and “selfish.”
And in Nevada, Indiana and Florida, Republican governors are targeting teacher contracts and work rules to fix a system they say is broken. “The status quo has put us at the bottom of the heap,” Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval told POLITICO.
The events point to a convergence that is remaking the politics of education. Teachers unions, historically one of the most powerful interest groups in American politics, are being besieged like never before – under attack from conservative GOP governors with a zeal for budget-cutting even while taking fire from some Democrats, including President Barack Obama, who has suggested he agrees that unions can be an impediment to better schools. … On both sides of the aisle, politicians are unhappy with how teachers are compensated, hired and fired, and are eager to introduce reforms.
Teachers unions dropped $40 million on the midterm election, which Democrats desperately needed — and which did them almost no good in the end anyway. The public has grown angry over decades of accelerated spending and federal interference in education with little to show for all of the resources sunk into it. The government protects education as a near-monopoly, where only the wealthy can have actual, real choice in how their children are educated. Union control of education has led to mediocrity rather than excellence, and sclerosis where there should be innovation.
Based on what’s happening in New Jersey and Wisconsin, and other places, it feels like some kind of critical mass has been reached in the quest to deal with what once seemed intractable problems. Looks like there’s hope after all. But, like in any situation where someone’s goodies are going to be messed with or taken away, there’s going to be a lot of screaming about it.
Read the rest at Hot Air
