Exposing The Exposer

by Geoffrey Norman

Remember how Angelo Dorta, on retiring as head of Vermont's teacher's union, crowed about having "exposed" Vermont Tiger and the Ethan Allen Institute?  It was, of course, just the usual sort of posturing and hyperbole we have all come to expect from public sector plutocrats who need to distract the taxpayers while picking their pockets.

Turns out that it is the teachers' unions that should be exposed.  Consider these concluding paragraphs from a report whose authors included Father Hesburgh, Birch Bayh, Bill Bradley, Eleanor Holmes Norton and Roger Wilkins.

The unions have battled against the principle that schools and education agencies should be held accountable for the academic progress of their students. They have sought to water down the standards adopted by states to reflect what students should know and be able to do. They have attacked assessments designed to measure the progress of schools, seeking to localize decisions about test content so that the performance of students in one school or community cannot be compared with others. They have resisted innovative ways-such as growth models-to assess student performance.

In their attack on education reform, the national unions have often been unconstrained by considerations of propriety and fairness. They have sought to inject weakening amendments in appropriations bills, hoping that they would prevail if no hearings were held and the public was unaware of their efforts. They have used the courts to launch an attack on education reform, employing arguments that could imperil many federal assistance programs going back to the New Deal. They have failed to inform their own members of the content of federal reform laws.*

Public sector unions, like the NEA, treat the public as their mortal adversary in a ceaseless struggle for improved wages and benefits.  From New York to California, they are resisting concessions that might help state and local governments close holes that the recession has blown in budgets.  New York City workers are, for instance, getting a 4% pay raise and taxes are being raised to pay for it.  This in the middle of what we are all told is the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. 

Good ideas for reforming and improving public education will be strangled at birth by the NEA which has one, all purpose comeback to any such proposal:

More money.  Or we strike.

That's the way a lot of people see it, anyway.  People like Father Hesburgh, for instance.  But, then, in Angelo Dorta's universe, they are, no doubt, just a bunch of ultra-conservative and "highly partisan" enemies ripe for exposure.

* (From the invaluable Kausfiles, a site which continues to shine a light on the obstructionist teachers' unions.)

Comments

[txgordo]

It's sure easy for Mr. Dorta to fight for the wages and benefits of these teachers, with no respect to the teachers' merit. Because he knows that the public school teachers are not required, and sometimes are not ALLOWED, to provide a quality education, he sent his own children to private schools.

[Jeffrey Pascoe]

Right on!

Dorta's most memorable attack on Education Reform in Vermont can still be found here: "Vermont's Powerful Anti-Public Schools Network"
http://www.vtnea.org/network.htm

Dorta is acting appropriately to advance his chosen career. I was just reading about one of his colleagues who "made the big time":

"A Union Promotion: An Enemy of Education Reform gets Kicked Upstairs" - From the Wall Street Journal, July 6, 2009
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124683510050697845.html

The day will soon come when these crooks are exposed to the general public...

[DJB]

A combination of the Vermont voter, town meeting govt - if you get 10% turnout it is exceptional - and the fact we just can't say no to budget increases, is the real culprit. You keep feeding the animal it will grow. The current legislature won't help. We are victims of a far bigger con than Madoff except we all know about it but won't act. We no longer have more cows than people in this state but we do have more sheep.

[TIMV]

Unions do what unions do:
Get the best deal (usually short term) for the membership.
In the schools and in the public sector generally, there is little or no functioning management and the monkeys are running the zoo.
AND, the legislature is firmly in the pocket of the unions, thus able to set policies and budgets to favor these contributors.