Senate Speaker Stakes out Fight with Union

State legislative Republicans have been criticizing the Tennessee Education Association for opposing several bills they are say are meant to reform education. Yesterday, the state’s lieutenant governor broadened that criticism to all unions.

Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey says a forthcoming bill to take away the collective bargaining rights of the Tennessee Education Association will help the state pursue education reform.

“The bill that will deal with the union contracts will help that, because I do believe that if we do keep status quo there, that the unions will continue to fight any kind of reform that we have.”

Once started, he lumped all unions together:

“The unions exist to promote mediocrity. They don’t exist to support excellence. They exist to, in most cases, protect the lowest common denominator, not promote excellence; again, that’s what we’re after, is promoting excellence.”

Because Ramsey is the state’s highest ranking legislative Republican, his words are often interpreted as an indicator of Republican political strategy.

The Senate this week passed not only the tenure reform bill but also a measure taking away the TEA’s ability to name teachers to two boards that oversee teacher retirement funds.

WEB EXTRA
Lt. Gov. Ramsey got onto the subject of unions Thursday by way of politics.

He noted that Republicans on Tuesday had elected a GOP senator to replace former state Sen. Diane Black, who had been elected to Congress.

“Another important issue that happened this week, across the state, was the fact that we elected Kerry Roberts up in Sumner and Robertson county, and I know that the unions came after him hard, did a couple of mail pieces against him, made phone calls against him. And yet he won with 67 percent of the vote. So I think that makes a statement, in and of itself.”

Once started, Ramsey characterized TEA opposition to the education bills as a continuation of union activity.
Ramsey blamed the union for the fading-away of Governor Lamar Alexander’s “master teacher” program, which paid more to teachers identified as high-performing.

“And so I’ve just seen that the unions will battle merit pay, they have battled paying more to teachers like science and math teachers … hard-to-staff teachers, they’ve battled that. The reason we don’t have any really good charter schools bill in this state, but have had to take kinda baby steps, is because the TEA battled that too.”

“So I think if we want this education reform, and we want a good teacher in every classroom, as long as the unions are there to be a filter between the teachers and the administration, that’s not gonna happen.”

“The unions exist to promote mediocrity. They don’t exist to support excellence. They exist to, in most cases, protect the lowest common denominator, not promote excellence; again, that’s what we’re after, is promoting excellence.”