Teacher Freedom Alliance touts free-market alternative to teachers’ unions

(The Center Square) – What’s the free-market alternative to teachers’ unions?

The Freedom Foundation hosted a launch party Saturday night to promote what it sees as the solution, the Teacher Freedom Alliance (TFA).

The organization reiterated it sees teachers’ unions as the problem – and good teachers as the solution.

"The teachers’ unions have owned our public education system for decades now, and for decades, our kids' education outcomes have gotten progressively worse,” Freedom Foundation CEO Aaron Withe said during the event. “This is not the fault of you. This is not the fault of the teachers, but it's the fault of the radical teachers' unions."

Withe said the teachers’ unions want the next generation of students to vote for liberal politicians and claimed they care more about this than educating students.

Areas he said teachers’ unions want promoted in schools include: critical race theory, the Black Lives Matter movement, DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion), gender ideology, anti-semitism, socialism and helping children identifying as transgender without their parents’ knowledge.

“Notice what I didn’t say: reading, writing and math,” Withe said. “None of this has anything to do with preparing our kids for the workforce in the next stage of their life.”

Withe said the TFA aims to break the teachers’ union monopoly and that the Freedom Foundation has helped over 3,000 teachers leave their respective unions in recent years.

The TFA aims to provide teachers with liability coverage, better curricula – including patriotic and pro-capitalist teachings – plus professional development, Withe said.

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The organization also wants to recruit the next generation of educators from colleges nationwide.

Withe said the TFA supports free market principles in education, like rewarding good teachers with more money and firing bad teachers, regardless of longevity.

He said teachers’ unions oppose these concepts, instead rewarding longevity and punishing newer teachers.

Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters also spoke in favor of the initiative at the event.

Walters also touted merit pay, along with teacher signing bonuses.

He noted that teachers’ unions have opposed such policies in Oklahoma, even though they benefit many teachers.

“They tried to kill those signing bonuses we gave,” he said. “They tried to kill the merit pay that gives up to $120,000 per year for a teacher that’s high-quality. And guess what? I’m proud to announce that our teachers’ union membership is at a 30-year low in Oklahoma.”

Walters also said teachers’ unions oppose student discipline measures, even though disruptive students make teachers’ lives more difficult.

The 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees makes union alternatives like this possible nationwide. The court's ruling determined that public sector employees cannot be forced to pay union dues as a condition of employment, even in states without right-to-work laws.