Portside

Nobody expects an internship to make one rich — but for many, the entire experience has become simply unattainable.

Because their traditional allies from the Democratic Party have obsessively embraced corporate-motivated innovations, teacher unions seem paralyzed, unable to respond with a new strategy. They criticize the overuse of standardized tests, but they keep electing Democrats to office who, once elected, more often than not join the corporate attack on education.

There is nothing new about Republican opposition to teachers unions, but in recent years, it has become increasingly clear that some Democrats have turned against them as well. In the following post we hear from a union leader, Bob Peterson, the president of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association, about how he thinks teachers union must change to keep alive public education.

If more union leaders follow Weingarten's lead speaking up about the epidemic of sexual assault around the country, and amongst the rank-and-file, it could greatly strengthen the movement against sexual assault while expanding the purview of the American labor movement.

USAS is the country’s largest student labor organization. The group’s main gripes with TFA and its Peace Corps-like model for American education, bringing college students—most from elite universities—to teach for a short period of time in some of the country’s poorest school districts, are that it is inadequately training teachers and promoting a for-profit, anti-union education reform agenda.

Civilians need to understand-- the biggest problem with the destruction of tenure is not that a handful of teachers will lose their jobs, but that entire buildings full of teachers will lose the freedom to do their jobs well.

Adapted from a longer piece in the current issue of New Politics (see link below). Fighting corporate education reform is less about restoring the old system to its former glory than building a just one for the first time.

How will the clash over education reform between neoliberal democrats and teachers unions play out in the presidential elections?

Cory Booker, Chris Christie, and Mark Zuckerberg had a plan to reform Newark’s schools. They got an education.

Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis specifically said the union is willing to consider reducing benefits for those who still are working, although she emphatically ruled out changes for members who already have retired. But such compromise wont come until the city and the school board agree to contribute more to pensions each year in order to at least partially make up for a contribution shortfall that occurred during much of the past two decades.