The GOP’s animosity toward teachers’ unions was on full display last month, when Republican presidential candidates held their first debate. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie accused unionized teachers of “putting themselves before our kids” and Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina said breaking the back of teachers’ unions is the only way to change education. The unions, Scott added, “are standing in the doorhouse of our kids, locking them in failing schools, and locking them out of the greatest future they can have.”
‘Worst I’ve ever seen’
Republican attacks on teachers unions aren’t new, says Ruth Milkman, a sociologist at CUNY Graduate Center in New York who studies labor movements.
“The core of this is simply the size of the teachers’ unions and their ability to support electoral campaigns on that basis that has put them in the Republican crosshairs,” Milkman said in an email. “This is not really new, it’s been the case for decades.”
Rep. Frederica Wilson, a Florida Democrat and a former teacher, elementary school principal and school board member, said Republicans’ hostility toward teachers’ unions and educators in general has ramped up in recent years. “This is the worst I’ve ever seen,” she said in an interview. Attacks on unionized teachers are part of a “GOP ploy to dismantle the public education system,” added Wilson, who sits on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
That strategy was behind an effort by Republicans in the House to advance a “parents bill of rights,” Wilson said. “They’re going after the teachers, they’re going after the teachers’ unions, and they’re not even thinking about the shortage of teachers,’’ she said. “Every time they amplify these culture wars, we lose more and more teachers.”
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