A Teachers’ Union Speaks Power to Truth
Children suffer, but they aren’t the point
http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detai...power-to-truth

On March 22, Joshua Pechthalt delivered a “state of the union” address at the 72nd convention of the California Federation of Teachers (CFT). Union Watch, an organization that monitors California’s unions, called it “refreshingly candid.” It bluntly revealed the union's political and social goals without wrapping them in rhetoric about educating children. Pechthalt declared:

[The CFT is] a beacon of progressive, social justice unionism. . . . That’s why we have consistently supported single payer health care reform and progressive tax reform measures. . . . The CFT is committed to the vision articulated by the civil rights movement and efforts to ensure class, race and gender equity and the just demands for comprehensive immigration reform. We understand that central to the mission of public education is the need to advocate for a different kind of society.”
Could the teachers have been any clearer?

Pechthalt also pointed to “the Vergara lawsuit” as “the latest attack on public education.” On January 27, the non-jury trial of Vergara v. California began before Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu. In the suit, nine public school students and their parents accuse state statutes of protecting the jobs of grossly incompetent teachers, which amounts to an unconstitutional denial of education. In California, students have a constitutional right to “substantially equal opportunities for learning,” which the Vergara plaintiffs claim was abrogated.

The Washington Post explained, “In states such as California, there are so many legal and procedural hurdles before a tenured teacher can be fired, they say, that it’s difficult to shed even the worst teachers.” Moreover, California school districts have an unusually short time—about 18 months—before tenure is granted. “The complaint also attacks seniority rules and ‘last in, first out’ policies, which say the newest teachers are the first to be laid off when jobs are cut, regardless of performance.”

In short, the legislature and teachers' unions are accused of putting the interests of their members above the educational interests of children as encoded in law.
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One theme that binds Pechthalt's speech and Vergara together is the high priority that teachers' unions have given to their own interests rather than to the goal of quality education. But equally questionable is the priority they are giving to political and social causes rather than to quality education. Even though the plaintiffs are poor minority children and their parents, the unions are casting Vergara as a “class” conflict in which they are the underdog being persecuted by rich people and corporate interests (sound familiar?). In other words, the unions wish to appear as David against Goliath. Who is cast as Goliath? Billionaires David Welch and Eli Broad as well as the corporate-friendly law firm of Gibson Dunn and Crutcher—all of whom are backing Vergara.