Taxpayer Funded Socialist Indoctrination Centers - Socialist Worker

Too many teachers are socialists! Don't agree? Read the story below! The following piece appears on the Socialistworker.org.


Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

Answering the attack on teachers
March 3, 2010

It's open season on the teachers' unions--and President Barack Obama has joined the hunt.

"If a school continues to fail its students year after year after year, if it doesn't show signs of improvement, then there's got to be a sense of accountability," Obama said in praise of the recent decision to fire all teachers at Central Falls High School in Rhode Island.

But while Obama's open endorsement of an effort to bust a teachers' union may seem shocking, his administration has been hammering teachers since he took office. Obama's $4.3 billion Race to the Top (RTTP) initiative doles out grants to states that have laws attacking teacher seniority rights and that tie teachers' pay to student test scores.



With the recession drying up normal funding channels for schools, states are rushing to pass union-bashing laws to get a shot at the federal money--even as they impose layoffs and cutbacks to close huge budget deficits.

The two big teachers' unions--the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA)--have so far failed to mount resistance to these attacks. But in teachers' union locals across the U.S., rank-and-file activists and union reformers have been trying to organize a fightback. In California, grassroots pressure led both the California Federation of Teachers and California Teachers Association to back the March 4 Day of Action to defend public education in that state.

Here, teachers across the U.S. talk about the battles they face and their efforts to resist the onslaught on their unions. Participants in the roundtable are Megan Behrent and Brian Jones from the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) in New York City; Laura Taylor from the Houston Federation of Teachers (HFT); Gillian Russom of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA); Adrienne Johnstone of United Educators of San Francisco (UESF); and Nate Goldbaum from the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU).

Read the rest of the story on the Socialistworker.org website.