Shadow Organization Promotes Myths About Teachers, Tenure

A lot of news has been made recently by the labor-bashing group Center for Union "Facts" and their anti-education group "Teacher Union Facts".

They have been in the news recently promoting a contest to name the worst teacher in America. Nice.

Their website is full of disinformation about teacher tenure rights. See below.

Here's probably the worst example:

So why don’t districts try to terminate more of their poor performers? The sad answer is that teachers unions have made the process prohibitively expensive and time-consuming. In Illinois, Reeder found, it costs an average of $219,504 in legal fees alone to get a termination case past all the union-supported hurdles. Columbus, Ohio’s own teachers union president admitted to the Associated Press that firing a tenured teacher can cost as much as $50,000. In New York State, the average is $128,941 (Education Week reports that in New York City, the average is $163,142). A spokesman for Idaho school administrators told local press that districts have been known to spend “$100,000 or $200,000” in litigation costs just to get rid of a bad teacher.

I'm interested to know how teachers unions have made the process expensive and time consuming. Do unions set the rules for teacher dismissal, or do school boards and state legislatures? Do unions impose their contracts on helpless school boards, as though there is a gun to their heads? Of course not. Teachers and school boards agree on terms of their contracts. That's what negotiation is about.

How do teachers get tenure? Does the union force it on school boards?

Are administrators and school boards completely helpless in the face of unions' overwhelming power?

As I've said on this site many times, it's not the union's fault that bad teachers don't get dismissed. Or that they ever are granted tenure in the first place. Why blame the unions because their members don't get fired? Is it the unions' job to fire their members?

The liars at this site say, "everyone cares about public schools." Nothing could be further from the truth. These people, for example. Their operation refuses to release any information about their donors, and they don't accept comments on their blog. So not only are they liars, they're cowards too, afraid of any scrutiny or criticism.

This anti-education group is simply a front for right wing critics of the public education system, most like a combination of voucher proponents and right wingers who fear the political clout of the NEA. They're not reformers, they're political hacks out to make cheap points at teachers' expense.