Why enjoy labor rights when you can implement bad policy?

So rich boy Paul Grogan has decided to buy himself a public policy. This week he announced almost a million dollars of bribe money was available to any school wishing to become a pilot school. What's a "pilot school"? Well it's a "school" in the tradition of public education about as much as is a group of fish. Pilot "schools" get to ignore any hard-won union regulations, treat staff like crap and shovel on more responsibilities, ignore the bizarro public policy requirements such as NCLB (you get to set your own graduation requirements), bypass nearly all district policies and decisions, and restructure away from a democratically elected school board.

So, Adrian Walker asks in the tone of the willfully ignorant, does the "union" not rush at the bait. (Of course, he means "groups of teachers democratically voting against such schemes", but Walker doesn't have the honesty to call it what it is.) The Boston Globe is annoyed at these "obstructionist" unions that have been creating an "ongoing struggle" to implement these gorgeous laboratories in amateur adventures in education. So let's see: pilot schools get to treat their workers however they like, firing, punishing, transferring, and manipulating staff at will while amping up their demands on staff with no warning. Who wouldn't take that deal?

Of course there need to be a lot of changes. But why rejecting bad public policy Strange, by the way, that we never see a pilot "school" that actually protects the academic integrity and personal rights of its workers, and just tries it without NCLB. It's almost as if school privatization reform advocates don't want to find out what happens when you get to teach children, rather than teach to a test. It's a false choice we're given: NCLB, or glorified temps as teachers.

NB: I don't like my local or national union (state chapter seems okay for the main part). But expecting me to give up any hard-won protections on my job just to fulfill Richie Rich's policy fantasy only makes sense if you know nothing about education.