Terry Moe on teacher union power

Eric Hanushek and Terry Moe, Hoover senior fellows and members of the K--12 Education Task Force, discuss Moe's recent book on teacher union power titled Special Interest. Moe's analysis pinpoints the self-interest of unions that leads them to block many education reform ideas. He concludes that "reform unionism" is unlikely to lead to any major policy changes and that improving schools requires curbing the power of unions.

[JRobbySh]

The unions are part of the Public school establishment, in full partnership with the Federal, state and local bureaucracies. Furthermore, the unions themselves are bureaucratic, and teachers are largely passive participants. Education colleges are basically boot camps for teachers, and the reason why they don't recruit high functioning secondary school students and why their curriculum is intellectually so unchallenging is that they are training people for jobs that demand little learning.