REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Education Moe-Joe
A teachers union spams The Wall Street Journal.
Saturday, January 22, 2005 12:01 a.m.
Every op-ed writer dreams of stirring controversy, so congratulations to Stanford education scholar Terry Moe for provoking an e-mail blast with his piece in The Wall Street Journal last week arguing that the teachers unions need to be politically constrained if public school reform is ever going to be possible.
Our e-mail server has been filling ever since with hundreds of letters professing outrage, and soon enough we found out why: One of the most powerful unions, the American Federation of Teachers, had ordered up the broadside as follows:
Dear AFT leader/activist,
Today's Wall Street Journal includes an outrageous attack on teacher unions by Terry M. Moe (reprinted below). Moe suggests that "If the teachers unions won't voluntarily give up their power, then it has to be taken away from them--through new laws that, among other things, drastically limit (or prohibit) collective bargaining in public education. . . ."
AFT president Edward J. McElroy will prepare a response to this, but we are also asking our leaders and activists to respond as well and to encourage letters from classroom teachers on this issue. Please send your letters and e-mails to [the Journal].
The "classroom teachers" line is an especially nice touch. Whenever anyone dares to challenge the unions, they portray it as an attack on all teachers and roll out some union "activist" to pose as Miss Devoted from a second-grade classroom to express her dismay. In reality, a major goal of reformers is precisely to liberate individual teachers to do what is best for students. The unions continue to insist on rules that reward the worst teachers as much as the best, and that make it nearly impossible to fire failures.
Most of the letters are, well, unrestrained, and many seem to have been fired off without having read Mr. Moe's piece. Our favorite is from a Greg Paquin, from Massena Central High School in New York, who writes "Get a grip, you have no clue. What's life like writing for the Times? Tough gig I bet!" Sorry, Mr. Paquin, wrong newspaper and unfair to the Times, which adores teachers unions. We will publish a few of the letters when we hear from Mr. McElroy.
Far from refuting Mr. Moe, the AFT's letter barrage proves his point. Teachers unions have become the largest single barrier to better American schools, and the political system needs to find ways to reduce their destructive influence.
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