Posts tagged education
Chicago Teachers Seek Billions in Special Session for “What We Are Owed”
June 25, 2026 // The teacher unions funded Democratic campaigns and Democratic politicians then sign off on windfall union contracts without forcing any improvements for the actual students. For these students, the system borders on the criminal. Rather than actually improve their educational results, the Chicago teachers (like unions and administrators in other cities) have lowered their proficiency standards.
I Asked My Florida Teachers Union for Basic Records. Then They Expelled Me.
June 17, 2026 // Thankfully, the Florida Public Employees Relations Commission ruled I’d been wrongfully expelled. The union filed an appeal just before the deadline, but the Commission’s clear ruling confirmed what should have been obvious from the start: that my expulsion was unlawful.
USC faculty groups vote to unionize and university vows to challenge it
June 7, 2026 // Not all eligible USC faculty have been supportive. The effort drew opposition from full-time non-tenure faculty at the Gould School of Law, who said in spring that they were “unanimously opposed to the effort to include us.” The group cited American Bar Assn. accreditation standards that it said already provided workers with protections “reasonably similar to tenure” and encouraged law faculty to remain out of university unions. Some professors in pharmacy, engineering and education schools also publicly opposed unionizing.
Editorial Board: Unions held Massachusetts schools hostage. Now the bill has come due.
June 3, 2026 // Sometimes even an override isn’t enough. In Brookline, which had a one-day teacher strike in 2022 that ended with a pay raise, voters overwhelmingly approved a tax increase last month that will bring in an extra $23 million, including $18 million for the schools. The vote helped stave off hundreds of teacher layoffs and cuts to the fire department. Even still, the district will still be forced to cut some school jobs. “Not only did these unlawful strikes add to the already historic student learning loss after the pandemic,” said Jim Stergios, the executive director of the Pioneer Institute, “but over the long term jeopardized the jobs of rank-and-file teachers and local municipal budgets.”
Head of major teachers union calls for restrictions on AI, screens in schools
May 29, 2026 // American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten called for restrictions on artificial intelligence and screen usage in schools. In a speech on Wednesday, Weingarten said that students are “drowning in tech” and there needs to be research done on the effects of students’ learning with AI.
Report: The diminishing power of teacher unions
May 29, 2026 // The result is A Crowded Table: Teacher Union Strength in 2026. Building on our original study, the authors set out to gauge teacher union strength in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia (D.C.). Collectively, the 59 measures—which include 29 new measures that were not in the original report—seek to quantify union strength in five key areas: Resources and Membership; Involvement in Politics; Labor and Bargaining Policies; Policy Wins and Losses; and Perceived Influence, which draws from an original survey examining how stakeholders in each of the 50 states and D.C. perceive teacher union strength today. The states with the strongest teacher unions are Vermont, California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Hawaii. The states with the weakest teacher unions are Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Mississippi. (See our interactive table on the report website for the overall rankings alongside the rankings for each of the five areas.)
Disregard for students showcased in Sheridan teacher strike
May 27, 2026 // The Sheridan teachers did have a legal right to strike, but not a morally justifiable one. They seriously disrupted the lives of innocent schoolchildren and their parents, holding them hostage to the union’s demands. When a grocery union strikes, customers can do business elsewhere. However, teachers are government employees within a school district that has a monopoly on publicly-funded education. And unlike private sector employers, Colorado school boards can refuse to allow a union. In 2012, a new Republican majority on the Douglas County School Board decertified its teacher union when the collective-bargaining agreement expired. (A new Democrat majority on the DougCo school board will likely welcome the union back with open arms.)
Leadership of Norfolk teachers’ union ousted, president accused of misappropriating funds
May 26, 2026 // The documents outlined “the clearest example where Mackey and the executive board failed to exercise their fiduciary obligation to the membership” as a clothing allowance that was raised to $3,000 and stipends for hourly work despite holding a salary position. NFT officers had not been elected in a democratic manner, the decision and order read. Half the union’s executive board had been appointed. Its members, in a meeting, nominated one another for office. Hernández-Mats said only 16 of 1,100 dues-paying members participated in that union election. Many of these ranking members, she said, enabled the spending outlined in the report. Union budgets during that period, the documents read, included unreliable figures and displayed a lack of transparency.
Tucson charter school teachers vote to unionize
May 23, 2026 // CITY charter school network becomes second unionized charter school in Arizona
When Educational Institutions Drift, Build New Ones
May 13, 2026 // For educators who do not want to spend their time or hard-earned paychecks on these unions, alternatives are emerging. Teacher Freedom Alliance and the Association of American Educators offer liability protection and classroom-focused professional development—without forcing members to subsidize political advocacy. This model reflects the original intent of unions to support and protect educators, not push ideological agendas that make their jobs harder. The same pattern appears in standardized testing. Many parents may not realize that SAT is owned by the College Board, an organization that has drifted ideologically left over the past decade. A 2024 report by the Goldwater Institute highlights this with examples of the organization’s embrace of “anti-racism” and “equity.”