The leader of the Michigan Senate announced Friday that Republican lawmakers will move to eliminate the state law requiring school employees to belong to unions, the latest GOP-led effort to weaken the power of organized labor in one of its longtime strongholds, the Associated Press reports. Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville said Friday he doesn’t support making Michigan a right-to-work state because it won’t help the struggling economy…
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G.O.P. governors take aim at teacher tenure
Seizing on a national anxiety over poor student performance, many governors are taking aim at a bedrock tradition of public schools: teacher tenure, reports the New York Times. The momentum began over a year ago with President Obama’s call to measure and reward effective teaching, a challenge he repeated in last week’s State of the Union address. Now several Republican governors have concluded that removing ineffective teachers requires undoing the century-old protections of tenure. Governors in Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Nevada and New Jersey have called for the elimination or dismantling of tenure. As state legislatures convene this winter, anti-tenure bills are being written in those states and others. Their chances of passing have risen because of crushing state budget deficits that have put teachers’ unions on the defensive…
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