What Teacher Union Officials Really Want
This will come as no surprise to the thousands of teachers and other education professionals who have, over the years, been forced to pay dues until they were freed by the National Right to Work Legal Foundation’s Supreme Court victory in the Janus decision last year.
Terry Moe, Chairman of the Political Science Department at Stanford University and author the earthquake of a book, “Special Interest” (page 6).
On the surface it might seem that teacher unions would play a limited role in public education: . . . Yet nothing could be further from the truth. . . They shape the schools from the bottom up, through collective bargaining. . .[and] from the top down, through political activities that give them unrivaled influence over the laws and regulations imposed on public education by government…”
This editorial by the West Virginia Record reflects upon the West Virginia Education Association’s threat to sue over an education reform bill passed last month.
Members of this unmemorable majority often belong to teachers unions and ritually repeat the manifest untruth that their sole concern is for the welfare of the children who aren’t learning anything from them.
Knowing this fact helps explain the opposition of the West Virginia Education Association to education reform efforts, such as the bill passed last month by our state Legislature, which the union is now threatening to file suit over.
You’d think an “education association” would support education reform efforts, what with “education” being part of its name and all, but the WVEA is not really an education association. It’s a teachers union and it only cares about teachers, not students.
“The WVEA does not want your local and state elected officials to set policy for education,” says state Sen. Eric Tarr (R-Putnam). “The WVEA wants to set the policy. The lawsuit put forth by the WVEA is no surprise. In fact, it is consistent with their attempts to preserve their power that has been part and parcel to an antiquated education system surpassed by at least 82 percent of the rest of the country. They are much more concerned about their power than your child’s education.”
If the only thing you learned in school is that teachers unions care about teachers, not students, you learned a valuable lesson.