Throughout my life I have always been a supporter of unions, although I have never been the member of a union that really looked out for its rank-and-file. As a kid growing up in Los Angeles, I was a member of the projectionists union, Local 150 of the IATSE, which had the distinction of turning down a cost of living increase. When I drove cab in New York, our union was headed by an electrician who had never driven a cab. And now as a teacher, I am a member of UTLA, which is headed by staff and administration that will never see the inside of a classroom again and whose president A.J. Duffy controls access to the UTLA newspaper, so that rank-and-file are unable to express their ideas.
After being subjected to a barrage of articles in the media trying to lay off failed public schools on teachers, NPR decided to have a debate on the following topic:
Are Teachers' Unions to Blame for Failing Schools?
The problem I have with this topic stems from the false dichotomy that assumes teachers unions and public school districts are adversarial. It is my contention that if they were, most of the problems we now face in public education
would not exist. Whether it is LAUSD and
