Teach Unions Make Lemons From Lemonade?

Teaching is one of the toughest jobs on this planet, but the ongoing crappiness of our inner-city schools evokes calls for “Teachers, heal thyself,” as biggest union leader “wants racial preferences to hide the failure of union schools.”

So says the WSJ’s editorial board in its “Randi Weingarten & Racial Disparities in Education.” As the editors argued: “Right on cue … the teachers union hief denounced the Supreme Court’s [recent] ruling on racial preferences without so much as a bow to her own role in creating racial disparities. Declared Weingarten: “This decision ignores the original sin of this country – it’s a throwback to a cruel, racist past that admissions policies like this [at Harvard & UNC] tried to repair.” Retorted the WSJ: “Has she read the briefs by teachers unions in the case? [Those] briefs admit that colleges use racial preferences to increase enrollment of minority students who are often less academically qualified because they’ve been trapped in rotten public schools.” For instance, the National Education Assn’s brief stated, “Our schools, from K-12 to higher education, still struggle to provide equitable opportunities for students of color.”

Asked the editors, “But, why is that?” Their answer: It’s “because the unions fight educational choice for minorities & protect bad teachers in low-income schools from accountability. Teachers usually receive tenure protection after two to three years. After that, school districts must spend inordinate time & money to remove them. Instead, they are typically rotated around poor, mostly minority schools in what’s known as the “dance of the lemons.”

Davd Soul