(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
I’m just starting to read the Citizen Commission on Civil Right’s report National Teacher Unions and the Struggle Over Education Reform, but I’ve already found a wonderful quote:
While teachers’ unions are legitimately concerned with securing fair and unbiased treatment at the hands of management, these concerns have often been translated into fierce opposition to reforms designed to hold schools and their faculties accountable for how their students perform.
This resistance has posed a barrier to improving educational opportunity for the most disadvantaged students and closing the performance gap between them and their more advantaged peers. It has also led to calcified systems in which talented people are deterred from applying or staying as teachers because they believe their skills will not be recognized or rewarded.
Hmmm…does this statement have more than a faint echo of this? I predicted that the political marriage between progressives and education unions would come under increasing strain, and this report is the latest signal.
Question for Leo: how does it feel pretending to be a “progressive” when you are actually a part of the most reactionary force in American politics?
Posted by matthewladner 
Jay P. Greene's Blog 