Tavis Smiley Quotes

By resisting almost any change aimed at improving our public schools, teachers' unions have become a ripe target for reformers across the ideological spectrum.

Teachers' unions don't act in the interest of most teachers.

To restore our public schools, we must put an end to the selfish agenda of the union bosses.

Perhaps there is no greater evidence that the teachers' union has swung too far out of the mainstream that they both have been a target of near-constant criticism from Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

They believe in teachers unions. We believe in teachers.

We need to take on the teachers' union once and for all.

The unions no longer control the education agenda of the Democratic Party.

I think the problem with schools is not too many incentives but too few. Because of tenure, teachers' unions, and the fact that teachers generally aren't observed in their classrooms, they can do whatever they want in class.

There is nothing that says unions have a God-given right to be there. We have to work at it and make ourselves relevant to every section of the workforce.

The N.E.A. [National Education Association] is a terrorist organization.

Liberals spend a whole lot of time trying to convince us they love teachers, but dig even skin deep into the matter, and it becomes evident that liberals hate teachers.

Political activity by unions is not wrong. It's their First Amendment right.

The teachers unions are the clearest example of a group that has lost its way. Whenever anyone dares to offer a new idea, the unions protest the loudest. Their attitude was memorably expressed by a longtime president of the American Federation of Teachers: He said, quote, 'When school children start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of children.'

So long as public schools are treated as places that exist to provide guaranteed jobs to members of the teachers' unions, do not be surprised to see American students continuing to score lower on international tests than students in countries that spend a lot less per pupil than we do.

We don't have unions in South Carolina because we don't need unions in South Carolina.

I sometimes think that unions don't understand that we live in a free society, and people have the right to not select union representation if they don't want it.

When I talk to teachers they tell me the things they'd most like from any government are a reduction in bureaucracy, support to help ensure good discipline and a reformed Ofsted.

We had rising student achievement across the board because high standards, robust accountability, ending social promotion in third grade, real school choice across the board, challenging the teachers union and beating them is the way to go.

Unionized teachers have destroyed much of the state school system.

Private sector labors unions continue to suffer losses in their membership while public sector and service unions grow.

Although unions may be good for a worker, singular, they are not always good for workers, plural. Especially when it comes to finding a job.

In the heart of the Great Depression, millions of American workers did something they'd never done before: they joined a union. Emboldened by the passage of the Wagner Act, which made collective bargaining easier, unions organized industries across the country, remaking the economy.

By the mid-1950s, more than a third of all America workers in the private sector were unionized. And the unions demanded and received a fair slice of the American pie.

At the federal level, we must help, not hinder, local school boards, parents, teachers and administrators as they make decisions about educating our children.

Teacher unions are an interest group that acts in defense of their own interests, which means the union bosses' interests, not the members.