{"id":15079,"date":"2012-07-12T17:51:24","date_gmt":"2012-07-12T21:51:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=15079"},"modified":"2012-07-12T17:51:24","modified_gmt":"2012-07-12T21:51:24","slug":"aclu-v-teacher-unions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/15079\/aclu-v-teacher-unions\/","title":{"rendered":"ACLU v. Teacher Unions?"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the Washington Post<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In the first case of its kind, the American Civil Liberties Union is charging that the state of Michigan and a Detroit area school district have failed to adequately educate children, violating their \u201cright to learn to read\u201d under an obscure state law.<\/p>\n

The ACLU class-action lawsuit,<\/a> to be filed Thursday, says hundreds of students in the Highland Park School District are functionally illiterate.<\/p>\n

\u201cNone of those adults charged with the care of these children .\u2009.\u2009. have done their jobs,\u201d said Kary L. Moss, executive director of the ACLU of Michigan. \u201cThe Highland Park School District is among the lowest-performing districts in the nation, graduating class after class of children who are not literate. Our lawsuit .\u2009.\u2009. says that if education is to mean anything, it means that children have a right to learn to read.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Setting aside the questionable and problematic assertion that people \u201chave a right to learn to read\u201d \u2013 it will be interesting to see how a court tries to enforce this \u2013 the ACLU\u2019s frustration with underperforming public schools is shared by many.\u00a0 What\u2019s missing from its complaint, however, is any mention of how teacher union policies contribute to the problem.<\/p>\n

Later on in the article a teacher of readers below grade level is identified as \u201cnot provid[ing] instruction while students read books on their own, or in groups, or completed self-directed work on the computer\u2026\u201d\u00a0 Is it impossible to surmise that such behavior is protected from censure by her employment contract, the one negotiated by her union?<\/p>\n

So far, the ACLU is suing the school district and the state, but logic demands that if you\u2019re going to allege that \u201cnone of those adults charged with the care of these children\u2026 have done their jobs,\u201d then someone from the Michigan Education Association needs to be included in the lawsuit\u2019s defendant caption.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure there\u2019s plenty of blame to go around.\u00a0 The ACLU should make sure that the relevant teachers union gets its fair share.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the Washington Post: In the first case of its kind, the American Civil Liberties Union is charging that the state of Michigan and a Detroit area school district have failed to adequately educate children, violating their \u201cright to learn to read\u201d under an obscure state law. The ACLU class-action lawsuit, to be filed Thursday, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1454,64,814,1447,1801,1051],"class_list":["post-15079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-aclu","tag-education","tag-michigan","tag-reform","tag-teacher","tag-union"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15079","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\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15079"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15079\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15084,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15079\/revisions\/15084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}