Even The Left Getting Tired of Teachers Unions?

by Warner Todd Huston | August 4, 2010 1:02 pm

An interesting article appeared in the Chicago Tribune lamenting the fact that teachers unions are standing in the way of good education for our kids[1] by constantly and in knee-jerk fashion opposing school reform efforts all across the country.

Penned by the Tribune’s Leonard Pitts, no arch righty he, the piece scolds teachers unions and postulates that we may be at the edge of a new day in education where the whining of backwards and uncaring teachers unions may be properly ignored as school districts, backed by parents and voters, launch into a new wave of reforms that will finally have a positive affect on America’s schools that have been failing for decades.

Pitts’ opening paragraphs really does highlight the problem with teachers: they think they are above accountability. Pitts says he had gotten a letter from a teacher whining about facing merit reviews and he wondered why she felt she was above being held to standards like everyone else in the work force is?

In other words, she’d be just like the rest of us. The lady’s detachment from the reality most workers live with struck me as a telling clue as to why our education system frequently fails to educate. When you can’t get fired for doing bad work, what’s your impetus for doing good?

Pitts goes on to detail just a few of the efforts to improve schools. Yet he finds that there is always ONE impediment in the way of improving our kid’s education. “Unfortunately, whenever anyone seeks to require better, they seem to find themselves at odds with the last people you’d expect: teachers. Or, more accurately, teachers unions,” Pitts writes.

And Pitts, for one, has had it with the recalcitrant teachers unions.

Enough It is time teachers embraced accountability. Time parents, students and government did, too.
Because ultimately, what is at stake here is not grades, not jobs and not blame. No, this is an argument about the future – and whether this country will have one. The fact is, it cannot in a world where information is currency and American kids are broke.
People like my correspondent need to understand: There is a groundswell building here. Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

I agree with Pitts here. There is a ground swell. Just last week I heard Bruno Behrend of the Heartland Institute say that he also thinks we are finally on the cusp of meaningful reform because the power of teachers unions is being broken down by exasperated lawmakers, voters and parents that have had enough of the union’s horrible efforts to continue the failed policies that have made American students some of the lowest academic achievers in the civilized world.

Maybe we are finally about to see the undeserved and unearned power of the teachers unions mitigated. For the sake of our kids, I hope so.

Endnotes:
  1. teachers unions are standing in the way of good education for our kids: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-oped-0803-pitts-20100803,0,1961165.column

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