unions

Finnish schools are unionized. American schools are unionized. The similarities end there.

The research is mixed. Some reviews (of the many studies on retention or promotion) have shown little benefit for retention in grade 3 compared with social promotion to grade 4. 

Donny Kendal and John Nothdurft present episode #149 of the In The Tank Podcast. Today’s podcast features work from the American Enterprise Institute, the State Policy Network, the Ethan Allen Institute, and the Foundation for Government Accountability.

Our country’s teachers unions are doing what they do best: throwing a childish tantrum and demanding they get more of your hard-earned tax dollars to spoil their underperforming members.

As nice as it is for these people to care as much as they apparently do about other people’s children, it’s arrogant for them to think they know what’s best for another parent’s child. And trying to control where and how a child who is not your own is educated makes me wonder: Why do you care so much about the children of others?

Government regulations are keeping young people down at the expense of established, older generations. Instead of using occupational licensing rules to protect their cronies from competition, lawmakers should reform.

Betsy DeVos survived a Senate confirmation process made bitter because of the opposition of the teachers unions, which fear that she can parlay her advocacy of school choice into much bigger gains for choice in her powerful new position.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its annual report on union membership last week, and the numbers are not favorable for the U.S. labor movement.

It’s strike season for teachers unions across America, and people are waking up to the destruction the unions’ juvenile behavior inflicts on children, parents and taxpayers.

On the same day FBI Director James Comey was exposing Mrs. Clinton as a serial liar for her actions related to the infamous State Department email scandal, she was buttering up the NEA — the largest teachers union — by telling members they are the cat’s meow of American education.

DPS has operated its school system using a top-down, bureaucrat-run model for decades. Under this structure, teachers are protected with outdated tenure rules and rewarded for the amount of time they work in the system, rather than for performance. Innovation is scarce, and administrators, who often enjoy exorbitant salaries, are not encouraged to make the sort of radical changes that are needed to turn the city’s schools around.

John Nothdurft and Donny Kendal bring you episode #30 of the In The Tank Podcast. This weekly podcast features (as always) interviews, debates, roundtable discussions, stories, and light-hearted segments on a variety of topics on the latest news. The show is available for download as part of the Heartland Daily Podcast every Friday. Today’s podcast features work from the Cascade Policy Institute, the Commonwealth Foundation, and Yankee Institute, and the Tax Foundation.

Personal choice and freedom of association are two fundamental and essential principles of any truly free society, and this includes a free market workplace. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is spending taxpayer dollars to undermine those principles in other countries around the world.