Taken to task. Updated: “Unhinged.”
John at AFT’s Let’s Get it Right takes me to task for linking Rich Berman’s Center for Union Fact’s (which I had posted about several times last week) and Ed Sector’s anti-union bloggers like Andy Rotherham.
While the Youtube we both posted was meant to be funny, or at least ironic, it was not intended to imply anything about John’s views of Ed Sector.
However, I don’t agree with John at AFT about Ed Sector:
It’s true that certain of Ed Sector’s positions, practices and blog posts seem to be at odds with its noble mission statement… But Ed Sector’s ability to live up to its mission statement is limited because it can’t quite handle its twin roles as advocate and think tank… it can’t see outside the Beltway (our members serve as a great reality check for us); and it must please the funders (as we must please our members).
However — and this is a big however — there is a world of difference between Ed Sector and the Center for Union Facts.
CUF has no interest in education for education’s sake, hides its funders, and uses an ad campaign based on the weakest of researchiness to try to destroy unions.
Blurring the differences between the two makes it harder to see CUF for what it really is and harder to get Ed Sector to listen to union members who work in schools every day.
CUF may be more crude. But Rotherham’s anti-union record has been displayed revealed on this blog for almost a year, going back to our original exposure of Rotherham’s unseemly partnership with Fred Hess and the neo-cons at the American Enterprise Institute.
Ed Sector doesn’t listen to union members who work in schools every day (that would be me, by the way), because they choose not to. Not because a “no name” like me is mocking them.
Update: Ed Sector’s Kevin Carey says I’m “unhinged.” Ouch.
Says Kevin:
Reasonable people understand the distinction (although with too many caveats, c’mon); people who are pretty much just as unhinged as their critics don’t. As AFTie John notes, the vlog in question hilariously blames teachers unions for promoting standardized tests and accountability, which is kind of like complaining about the AARP’s nefarious plan to privatize Social Security.
But how different is your little AARP example from your boy Andy Rotherham when he claims, as he did last week, that teacher unions are more responsible for putting a “straightjacket” on school change than NCLB. In fact he says we are the most responsible.
Talk like that would should make anybody (particularly union people) unhinged. Except for “reasonable” people. But I’m not very reasonable when you want to take away my collective bargaining rights.
But I have an idea, Kevin. If you are so interested in establishing your pro-labor cred, send a check to the Association members who have been on strike in Southern Illinois for nine days so that their custodians can have health insurance.
