Tearing apart the public education system

Teachers unions take a hit

Rss@dailykos.com (laura Clawson)
Saturday, February 14, 2015, 5:26 pm
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The large-scale attack on teachers unions is going according to plan:
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In 2014, about 49% of teachers, or about 2.5 million, were covered by unions, down from 50% in 2013 and 53% just a decade ago, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 1984, teachers union coverage was 64%. A teacher in a unionized school district can get some benefits without joining the union. [...]
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The shift away from unions is happening as three trends collide: Baby Boomer teachers, who have higher union membership rates, are retiring. School districts, rising from the recession, are picking up the pace of hiring. And a greater percentage of students now attend independently run but publicly financed charter schools, which overwhelmingly hire non-unionized teachers.
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In a few cities, such as Detroit and New Orleans, charter school enrollment accounts for the majority of public school students.
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Considering that student performance is higher in states with unionized teachers and that teachers unions are one of the key forces pushing back against standardized testing's takeover of the school day, this is bad news. And it's no accident, as you clearly see when you look not just at Detroit and New Orleans, but at Chicago and Philadelphia, where politicians have pushed charter schools while closing down traditional public schools and laying off teachers en masse.
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The end game is highly privatized education with teachers who do not have the due process protections they need to speak out against abuses without losing their jobs. The recession sped up this process by allowing the corporate education policy movement to apply the shock doctrine, taking advantage of economic crisis to accelerate the reshaping of American education.
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But you know what they say: Don't mourn, organize.
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