Pioneer Press Tue, 11 Mar 2008 13:00:05 -0600
Ad campaign, contest target teacher unions in Minneapolis and elsewhere
BOSTON â€" An advocacy group that has targeted unions representing service-industry workers and grocery employees is setting its sights on public school teacher unions â€" with a pledge to offer 10 teachers it deems the nation's worst $10,000 each to quit teaching. ... "This is unknown data sponsored by unknown funders. We're not going to dignify this with a comment," said Steve Crawford, a spokesman for the Boston Teachers Union, one of 20 that the Center for Union Facts highlights in its findings. The Center for Union Facts made the same claim of Minneapolis public schools, saying only nine of the district's 3,517 teachers were fired during that five-year period. Seventy-three teachers resigned or retired instead of being fired, the group said. Robert Panning-Miller, president of the Minneapolis union's teachers branch, said he believed the group's numbers were wrong. He called their attack "very misguided." "One of the headlines from the group was that teacher unions protect bad teachers, and that just couldn't be farther from the truth," Panning-Miller said. "Teachers' unions protect due process rights. ... Teachers, including tenured teachers, do get fired if they're not performing."
[[keywords: Schools;Metro;]]
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