Michelle Rhee, through her organization StudentsFirst, dropped $500,000 into a ballot initiative in Michigan, where there is an effort to establish the right to collective bargaining in the state constitution. Rhee thinks this is a terrible idea, because she loves teachers, but only “effective” teachers, the kind that get high test scores very year. If teachers join unions, the teachers won’t be effective any more or they might protect teachers who don’t get high scores every year.
Turns out that the right to join a union is contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Canadian Constitution. But corporations don’t like that idea. It restrains them from cutting costs. In a globalized and competitive world, the winners produce the most at the lowest cost. That means teachers must be low-wage and cheaper, or as Jeb Bush recommends, replaced by computers.
Thus the battle in Michigan.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
See this ten minute drawing by Klonsky…..the wicked witch is so greedy:
If she only likes effective teachers, then she must be pretty disappointed in herself.
Can we cheat like she did?
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Is it mean of mean to hope a house lands on her?
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A Seuss-style interpretation of Michelle Rhee’s “Erase to the Top” scandal:
http://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=fvwrel&v=tAc6bcMetDM
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Rheeply: “I’ll get you my little pretty”
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Haven’t we become smart enough to recognize a media hog? Rhee set her own agenda and believes her hype – how are the DC schools doing now? Not well…not well at all.
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The issue in Michigan is not the right to bargain collectively, both in public and private sectors, but the unions’ fears that Republicans will propose making Michigan a Right to Work state. Snyder has never said anything of the sort. But the union effort to CONSTITUTIONALIZE collective bargaining to prevent Michigan’s ever becoming Right to Work, even if the populace in general want it, is seriously anti-democratic.
Referencing The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is irrelevant, because our membership in the United Nations does not replace the Federal Constitution or the state constitutions. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights proposes many desirable rights, but not concomitant duties. It says nothing about how all these rights are to be paid for. Thus it is a plan for greater government power. The US constitution is a document devoted to limiting government power. Thus the Universal Declaration is fundamentally at odds with the American tradition of constitutional government. Government has a legitimate monopoly on some things, police power, the court system, roads, and the like. Education is debatable. But, in general unions don’t have a moral right to constitutionalize themselves in the fundamental law of a state. The effect would be that they could hold government hostage by strikes in the public sector.
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If the people vote the constitutional amendment in how is that “seriously anti-democratic”?
Government does not have a monopoly on education. The government has the charge of providing for public education, see your state constitution for starters. But they do not have a monopoly, pure nonsense. Boy, I love libertarian thought processes!
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Any treaty that is ratified and signed off on becomes the law of the land. See US constitution for that.
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