American Federation of Teachers Caught Screwing Over Parents In Connecticut

The AFT poses as more concerned about parents' desire for more control over the schools than does the Connecticut Education Association, which is more unabashedly teachers first, teachers last, teachers always.

The AFT pretended to be conciliatory with concerned parents on a "trigger" law, which would create power for parents to mandate changes in a school should it be failing for several years in a row.

But lobbyists for the AFT were actually working hard to kill the bill by making it so watered-down and weak as to not function at all in the way the parents intended.

And one lobbyist who was successful in undermining the law bragged about it on his website.

Parents are outraged over news that a lobbyist for the American Federation of Teachers bragged about watering down an education-reform bill at the AFT’s national conference last month.

...

At the AFT’s national conference last month, a lobbyist for the union described the state chapter’s successful efforts to weaken the legislation in a presentation entitled, “How Connecticut Diffused [sic] the Parent Trigger.” In it, the lobbyist recounted how the AFT initially tried to “kill the bill” but later decided to “engage the opposition” to mitigate its effect.

In the slides, the lobbyist noted that the AFT dragged the Connecticut Education Association “kicking and screaming” into line and that “parent trigger advocates . . . were not at the table.”

Eventually, legislators settled on a measure that set up “school governance councils” on which parents would hold most of the seats but which had only “authority to recommend reconstitution in [the] third year of poor performance.”

Also among the slides, first reported by Dropout Nation, was the lobbyist’s reminder that “school governance council” “is a misnomer.” “They are advisory and do not have true governing authority,” the slide reassured its readers.

At some point people's eagerness to be deceived and ill-used is their own fault.

posted by Ace at 03:17 PM

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