{"id":14244,"date":"2012-05-18T11:34:43","date_gmt":"2012-05-18T15:34:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=14244"},"modified":"2012-05-18T13:25:56","modified_gmt":"2012-05-18T17:25:56","slug":"cfifs-troy-senik-in-the-la-times-the-teachers-union-thats-failing-california","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/14244\/cfifs-troy-senik-in-the-la-times-the-teachers-union-thats-failing-california\/","title":{"rendered":"CFIF’s Troy Senik in the LA Times: The teachers union that’s failing California"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a stinging op-ed<\/a> published yesterday in the LA Times<\/em>, CFIF senior fellow Troy Senik focuses the blame for California’s failing public education system squarely where it belongs: the California Teachers Association (“CTA”).\u00a0 Senik writes:<\/p>\n

California’s education tailspin has been blamed on class sizes, on the property tax restrictions enforced by Proposition 13, on an influx of Spanish-speaking students. But no portrait of the schools’ downfall would be complete without mention of the California Teachers Assn., or CTA, arguably the state’s most powerful union and a political behemoth that has blocked meaningful education reform, protected failing and even criminal educators, and pushed for pay raises and benefits that have reached unsustainable levels.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Senik goes on to explain how the CTA is using its “fat bank account fed by mandatory dues that can run to more than $1,000 per member” to maintain and build\u00a0its political dominance in the state.\u00a0 In the past decade alone, Senik notes, “the CTA had spent more than $210 million…on political campaigning \u2014 more than any other donor in the state.”<\/p>\n

Fortunately, there are signs of hope\u00a0to help counter the CTA’s political stranglehold that has enabled it to\u00a0prop up its own\u00a0interests over that of students:\u00a0Parents are starting to revolt against\u00a0the\u00a0union’s orthodoxy.\u00a0 And\u00a0 “unlike elected officials, parents are hard for the union to demonize.”<\/p>\n

Read the entire piece here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a stinging op-ed published yesterday in the LA Times, CFIF senior fellow Troy Senik focuses the blame for California’s failing public education system squarely where it belongs: the California Teachers Association (“CTA”).\u00a0 Senik writes: California’s education tailspin has been blamed on class sizes, on the property tax restrictions enforced by Proposition 13, on an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[299,3128,173,3550,64,3551,1006],"class_list":["post-14244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-california","tag-california-teachers-association","tag-charter-schools","tag-cta","tag-education","tag-la-times","tag-troy-senik"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14244"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14251,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14244\/revisions\/14251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}