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Monday, August 20, 2012

It's Paul Ryan - Not School Teachers - Putting Children At Risk | OurFuture.org

It's Paul Ryan - Not School Teachers - Putting Children At Risk | OurFuture.org:


It's Paul Ryan - Not School Teachers - Putting Children At Risk

Just like you can count on "Back to School" season cranking up retail sales this time of year, you can also count on it bringing on a new volley of criticism aimed at school teachers and their unions.
Leading off the charge this year was an op-ed written by ex-NBC talent Campbell Brown. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, she claimed that "teachers unions go to bat for sexual predators" and that parents in New York City have a "tremendous fear about what is happening in the classroom" due to the "trifling consequences or accountability" imposed on misbehaving teachers.
At the same time Brown was slinging accusations toward teachers and their unions, marketing hype was building for the new movie "Won't Back Down" that portrays how a group of parents use a law called the Parent Trigger to take over a "failing school" from teachers and their union. Brown, in fact, mentions the movie in her piece as yet more proof of how people have "turned on unions."
Writing about the movie in The New York Times, Frank Bruni explains that the film portrays teachers unions as having lost their way, "resisting change, resorting to smear tactics and alienating the idealists in its ranks."
His conclusion is that teachers unions, in sticking up for job protections and working conditions, "seem