Today’s Wall St. Journal has an editorial on the national waning of support for teacher unions – including support within their own ranks.This reported trend is based on an annual survey conducted by Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance, and the journal called EducationNext.
Whereas 58% of teachers took a positive view of unions in 2011, only 43% do in 2012. The number of teachers holding negative views of unions nearly doubled to 32% from 17% last year. Perhaps this helps explain why, according to education journalist and union watchdog Mike Antonucci, top officials of the National Education Association are reporting a decline of 150,000 members over the past two years and project that they will lose 200,000 more members by 2014, as several states have recently passed laws ending the automatic deduction of union dues from teachers’ paychecks.
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