Arne warns states not to "water down" education plans to please unions.

[madfloridian]

We have come to the point that the top leaders of our party are going after the teachers' unions. Arne may be doing most of the talking, but the others including his boss are sitting back and giving him the floor and the power. The power to destroy public education.

Here is the money quote from Arne in the Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Duncan said in an interview that he welcomed the friction between union and state officials but warned against states weakening their overhaul plans simply to win buy-ins from unions. "Watered-down proposals with lots of consensus won't win," he said. "And proposals that drive real reform will win."

Unions, States Clash in Race to Top

That should make his message pretty clear to all teachers and to their unions who holds the power.

Education Week also covers Arne's strong new stance against teachers.

After staying out of the Race to the Top round-two fray for weeks, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is finally starting to take the gloves off and wade into the middle of a big debate over just how important "buy-in" is in a state's application.

Today, in a routine conference call with the business community (he does this sort of outreach regularly), he declared: "At the end of the day we're going to (fund) the strongest proposals whether they have tremendous buy-in or not." (The department invited me to listen in on the call, which was to encourage business leaders to support states' Race to the Top efforts.)

Although broad collaboration and buy-in should remain a goal, he said, if a state's proposal is "more consensus but watered-down reform, that's not going to be a winning application."

Duncan on Race to Top: Bold Reform More Crucial Than Buy-In

Then Education Week goes a little mealy-mouthed, which is not too surprising.

So, will Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony "The Stud" Bennett reconsider his decision to withdraw from the competition, citing lack of union cooperation? Will the controversial teacher-tenure bill in Colorado, opposed by the state teachers' union but deemed important by state education leaders for Race to the Top, now garner even more support? Will unions, in general, lose a little bit of leverage?

Of course unions will lose leverage. That is a mind-numbing statement from Education Week. That is the purpose of the Arne's education plan.

In many cases union leaders in states have worked with party leaders to squelch any hope teachers might have had for fair treatment. One good example is Michigan in which a Democratic governor has used pensions to force experienced teachers to retire.

The proposal by Gov. Jennifer Granholm offers about 46,000 public employees — 39,000 of them teachers — a pension boost if they have worked at least 30 years and agree to retire by October, according to the report.

By replacing them with fewer employees, who would earn beginning wages, the Granholm administration estimated the state could save up to $450 million, The Times reported.

Those who do not retire by October would lose dental and vision benefits upon retirement and would begin contributing an additional 3 percent to their retirement fund, according to The Times. Newly hired teachers would have to pay a minimum of 20 percent toward their health care premiums."

Union executives went along in this case.

In fact, union executives have been openly working with the school authorities in Detroit to force hundreds, if not thousands, of experienced teachers to retire, so they can be replaced by a low-wage instructors, forced to work in charter schools without the slightest rights or input on how children are taught nor any control over curriculum or the day to day running of the schools.

I was talking to a couple of teachers I worked with who are not yet retired. It took them a long time to have a clue what was happening to them. They took pride in their many years of teaching, but now those years are being held against them. They will retire much sooner than they planned because of pressures.

Arne is speaking for the Democratic party when he says not to "water down" education plans to please unions. Teachers are no longer given respect by the Democrats. There is no one speaking up for them.