EDUCATION IS ABOUT UNION JOBS, NOT KIDS (via Glenn Dryfoos):

Charters on the Coast (New York Sun Editorial, April 6, 2007)

If the recent budget battle in Albany in which the teachers union and its allied lawmakers killed a proposed tax deduction for private or parochial school tuition and imposed mandatory unionization on charter schools that grow larger than 250 students in the first two years wasn't enough for you, consider California. There, the Los Angeles Times reports, the school board rejected an application by a charter school operator, Green Dot, to open eight new schools. The Times quoted a school board member who represents Watts, a poor Los Angeles neighborhood, Mike Lansing, as saying, "It's really disappointing that we keep talking about wanting to do what's best for children first, when without a doubt that vote was about a teachers union and three board members not having the backbone to stand up and do the right thing for kids over their ties to the union." The Times account of the school board meeting goes on to say, "Parents and students from the impoverished, gang-ridden community also implored the board to approve the charters, saying they were desperate for an alternative to the low-performing, often unsafe district middle and high schools in the area."

The blogger Mickey Kaus wrote, "If teachers' unions have lost the liberal LAT, they're in trouble, no?" Not in so much trouble that they lost the vote. Lance Izumi of the free-market Pacific Research Institute summed it up: "Despite Green Dot's promising results, the school board decided to side with the United Teachers of Los Angeles, a vociferous critic of charter schools…The union had contributed a total of $1 million to two anti-Green Dot board members in their recent re-election bids, virtually the entirety of their campaign war chests." The irony is that charter schools were championed by the late president of the American Federation of Teachers, Albert Shanker, who saw them as a way to improve public education while avoiding private school vouchers. What would Shanker think of the AFT affiliates in New York and Los Angeles blocking the expansion of successful charter programs in both New York (with a cap on the number of new charters, notwithstanding that two of the charters were granted to the union itself ) and in the nation's second largest city, Los Angeles?

One doubts he'd be overly surprised.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 10, 2007 7:22 PM