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Now here’s something you don’t see every day: Much of the pushback against No Child Left Behind comes from teachers and school administrators. Some object to the accountability it has imposed. Before it, there was little accountability in public education – astoundingly little, given the billions of dollars involved and the importance of the enterprise […] Read more »

New York State United Teachers (the state arm of the AFT) has launched a "massive campaign" (their words) to fight Gov. Pataki’s education tax credit proposal.  And judging from their online campaign, they aren’t kidding.  Like many such unions, a significant portion of their website devoted to the struggle against the nefarious cabal looking to […] Read more »

Our warmest congratulations to the inimitable Andrew Rotherham of Eduwonk for his newborn bundles of joy (yes, plural).  Read more »

George F. Will: What Florida’s teachers unions consider a menace, and what Florida’s Supreme Court considers an affront to the state’s Constitution, weighs 105 pounds, smiles shyly, speaks softly and wants to be a nurse. Octavia Lopez, 17, an 11th-grader at Miami’s Archbishop Curley-Notre Dame High School in the heart of this polyglot city, was […] Read more »

Today’s guest blogger over at Mike Antonucci’s Intercepts, a present AFT member in West Virginia, is a must-read: In WV we join unions by "choice," not by law. We do not have collective bargaining for school employees. So why join a union at all? Protection. As a teacher, it only takes three words to ruin […] Read more »

One of our colleagues, Matthew Ladner, has thrown down the gauntlet: The first person in the nation who can send me two random assignment school-choice studies showing significant declines in either academic performance or parental satisfaction will win a steak dinner. I’ll even throw in drinks and dessert — the whole nine yards. You have […] Read more »

That’s the ominous opinion from the L.A. Daily News (hat tip: Charter Blog).  Upshot: an LAUSD school looking to go charter is running into a number of procedural obstacles from the district.  But the devil is in the details: Instead of making Parkman a charter, LAUSD and UTLA (United Teachers of Los Angeles–ed.) brass propose […] Read more »

You gotta hand it to Mike Antonucci–he sure knows how to pick his guest bloggers.  This anonymous writer has nothing nice to say about the NEAAFTAFLCIO merger.  NEA leaders refuse to organize mass actions of teachers, parents, students, and others over issues that clearly tie them all together: class size, books and libraries, free supplies, […] Read more »

Imagine, if you will, the following scenario.  You live in Pasadena, California.  NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which has been running the ongoing exploration of Mars, is right in your backyard.  Your high school junior has a chance to have regular visits from a real, live, currently employed NASA engineer for more instruction in physics and […] Read more »

Whatever you do, never call teachers’ union watchdog Mike Antonucci intolerant.  While he’s out on vacation, he’s invited a couple of guest bloggers to take the helm of Intercepts, and this week, it’s…a member of the NEA! The transfer of authority from appointed staff to elected leadership within the NEA and its affiliates, whether it […] Read more »