For their steadfastness, courage, and consistency in fighting a governor who hates not only unions but public education, I place the teachers of Wisconsin on this blog’s honor roll. Scott Walker is a model ALEC governor, ready to do whatever corporations want, while failing to care for the children of the state. If only he would listen to the teachers of Wisconsin instead of ALEC, the Koch brothers, and big corporations in pursuit of tax cuts, he could secure the future of his state.
The CapTimes wrote an editorial saluting Wisconsin’s valiant teachers’ unions, which have been under sustained attacks by Governor Scott Walker. The editorialist knows that Walker wants to privatize public education and that he had to demonize the teachers’ union and undermine their political power to reach his goal.
The editorial describes the teachers’ unions as “vital defenders of public education” and says:
In recent years, Republican presidential prospect Scott Walker has attacked Wisconsin’s public employees and teachers as part of a cynical political ploy to weaken critics of corporate overreach. Walker’s extremism has been supported extensively by out-of-state special interests that want to privatize public services and public education — so extensively that he has had considerable success. No one is going to deny that.
Despite the governor’s money power, however, Wisconsin is still making labor history.
Walker’s anti-union initiative sought to make it virtually impossible for organized labor to function in Wisconsin by, among other things, requiring that every public worker union in every workplace must go through a process of recertification every year. Walker’s Act 10 set up a complex process where elections must be organized among workers in every community and school district.
To remain as the recognized representatives of teachers and other school employees, for instance, local education associations must win a majority vote not just from the teachers and other employees participating in the election but from all teachers and other workers eligible to vote — whether they participate in the voting or not. Just imagine if corporations had to go through the whole process of reincorporating, issuing stock and setting up business operations every year and you will begin to get a sense of the roadblocks Walker and his out-of-state associates have erected to teacher unions in Wisconsin.
But Walker did not count on one thing.
Wisconsin teachers like and respect their unions enough to thwart Walker’s anti-labor strategies.
This fall, 305 local union organizations representing public school teachers, support staff, and custodial workers held recertification elections in school districts across the state. Despite everything that Walker has done to undermine them, more than 90 percent of the local unions were recertified. Indeed, according to the Wisconsin Education Association Council, 97 percent of its units that sought recertification won their elections.
The numbers are even more overwhelming for American Federation of Teachers union locals in Wisconsin.
“Since recertification elections began in 2011, every AFT-Wisconsin local union that has pursued recertification has won convincingly,” notes Kim Kohlhaas, an elementary school teacher in the Superior School District who serves as president of AFT-Wisconsin.
In many school districts, the numbers were overwhelming.
In Madison, where the Madison Teachers Inc. union has played a leading role in opposing Walker’s anti-labor agenda, the pro-recertification votes have been overwhelming.
The teachers want a collective voice. They have made that clear. Walker will continue to seek ways to silence their voice, so he can promote more charters and vouchers, more schools that welcome non-union, often inexperienced and underprepared teachers. Despite the wealth of research showing that neither charters nor vouchers outperform public schools in Wisconsin, Walker continues to try to destroy public education.
The CapTimes editorial concludes:
Of course, unions will remain under assault in Walker’s Wisconsin. But Walker is spending more and more of his time preparing to abandon Wisconsin and to begin a presidential run that is likely not just to embarrass the governor but also to expose his failures nationally and in Wisconsin. Eventually, Walker will be gone, and Wisconsin will again elect a governor who reflects the best of our values and our hopes….It is vitally important that, when Walker is gone, Wisconsin’s rich legacy of supporting public teachers and public education remains — along with the unions that fight to maintain that legacy.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane, for the record, teacher unions are private organizations. Finding fault with them has little to do with ones position about “public” education — though I could argue, as I have done, that teacher unions have done great harm to public education. best, peter meyer
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Peter Meyer, whatever your opinion of teachers unions, they represent teachers. Teachers know more about what schools need than hedge fund managers.
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Given the state of public education in this country – and of the current crop of teachers – I tend to doubt that claim. If they “know more about [it]”, then I suspect our schools wouldn’t be in the fix their in.
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It is Walker and his private deform gurus who are harming public education way much more than what you identify as your nemisis. There’s no argument about it. There is an overwhemling amount of evidence against that governor on state corruption, failing accountability, shameless assault on public workers, increasing unpopularity, and dismal record of voucher programs. He is still in the office not because of public trust. It’s because of billionaires and hedge-fund managers who douse him a shower of $$$.
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Teachers unions are really, for the most part, grassroots organizations at the local level. The reason we have teachers unions is because of people making unsubstantiated and far fetched claims that professional organizations cause “great harm” to education. Putting the jack boot of big business and their political puppets on the throats of teachers and screaming “shut up and teach” does far greater harm.
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Rip off for-profit college opens charter school by creating non-profit board. Charter promoters in Indiana say this is great idea:
“Early Career Academy board chair Gary Carlson, a former ITT executive, said he is adamant about the separation between the charter school’s nonprofit board and ITT’s for-profit operation.
“We’re not going to promote or sell ITT,” he said. “We’re going to promote an opportunity that opens doors to students.”
I wonder if anyone in the state or federal government will do their job and stop this before it spreads from Indiana to Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin?
http://www.indystar.com/story/news/education/2014/12/07/itt-techs-new-charter-school-offer-free-aa-degree-catch/20003305/
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Reblogged this on tchrsmith and commented:
Keep on, Wisconsin! Keep on!
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I lived in Wisconsin for 25 years and was a teacher and principal for 23 of those years. What I saw repeatedly in those jobs was that the Madison teachers union fought for fair and compassionate treatment of teachers when the school district disregarded their needs and rights. When I became a principal I could no longer be a union member, but I continued to work cooperatively with the union on behalf of the teachers I knew. I still think fondly of the MTI and its leadership.
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Unless teachers and their unions aggressively stand up for themselves as they did in the 1970s they are doomed. http://wsautter.com/
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Thanks, Diane. We keep fighting. We are trying to expand our ties with others in our communities, to make more allies, in our fight to save our state. Thanks are owed to you and others who continue to bring the issues to the public, especially since most “regular” media are reluctant (or unable) to do so.
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