Washington, D.C.

On Monday, a federal district court judge in Maryland granted a barring the Department of Education and the Office of Personnel Management from disclosing personally identifiable information to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

The American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second-largest teachers union, filed a federal lawsuit with a coalition of labor unions Feb. 12 alleging that the department illegally gave DOGE access to millions of private and sensitive records.

The court ruled that the AFT would likely succeed in its lawsuit and agreed that the two agencies “likely violated the Privacy Act by disclosing their personal information to DOGE affiliates without their consent.” The restraining order will expire March 10. 

“This is a significant decision that puts a firewall between actors whom we believe lack the legitimacy and authority to access Americans’ personal data and are using it inappropriately, without any safeguards,” union President Randi Weingarten said in a press release.

In other action, the union announced on Feb. 19 that as part of a recently launched campaign called . 

The National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union, organized a rally outside the U.S. Capitol on Feb. 12 to protest the nomination of Linda McMahon as secretary of education.

In response to administration efforts to downsize federal agencies, the American Federation of Government Employees filed a lawsuit to stop a resignation program that prompted thousands of workers to leave their jobs. The nation’s largest federal employee union — which represents U.S. Department of Education staff — argued that the program was unlawful, .

California

Members of unions in 32 California school districts have banded together to negotiate a shared set of contract demands: improved wages and benefits, smaller class sizes, fully staffed schools and more resources for students.

The locals united as part of the California Teachers Association’s , which launched Feb. 4. The districts employ a total of 77,000 educators and teach 1 million students, and include some of the largest in the state: Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Oakland and Sacramento. 

Many of the unions’ contracts are set to expire this summer. California Teachers Association President David Goldberg said in a Feb. 4 webinar that the campaign is intended to build pressure statewide, .

At one charter school in the San Fernando Valley, teachers staged a four-day after working without a contract since July 1. Educators at El Camino Real Charter High School, who are represented by United Teachers Los Angeles, walked out from Feb. 10 to 14 before reaching an agreement that includes a 19% salary increase over three years, .

The nation’s first charter school strike occurred in 2018, a four-day work stoppage at Acero, one of Chicago’s largest charter school networks. The vast majority of charter schools are not unionized.

Idaho

A bill that would ban taxpayer funds from going toward teachers union operations advanced out of committee to the full House on Feb. 12. The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Judy Boyle, said is intended to cut down on what she called “under-the-table” dealings between school districts and unions, according to the .

HB98 would apply only to teachers unions, not to other public-sector unions that represent occupations like first responders, according to the Idaho Education Association. It would require teachers to use personal leave to do union work, eliminate payroll deductions for dues and ban distribution of union materials on school property. Violators could be fined up to $2,500.

“This wasn’t the outcome we wanted, but we’re not done fighting this bad bill yet,” Chris Parri, the union’s political director, said . “We’ll need all hands on deck to kill it for good in the [state] Senate when the time comes.” 

Illinois

The Chicago Teachers Union rejected a recommendation Feb. 4 from a neutral arbitrator that negotiators return to the bargaining table and reach agreement with Chicago Public Schools on a that includes higher pay for veteran teachers and more librarians. In a letter to the district, the union that the mediator “rightly notes that [Chicago Public Schools] consistently signs … labor contracts despite claiming it lacks the funds to afford them.”

Once the recommendation is rejected, the union has to wait 30 days before it can give the district a 10-day strike notice. The Chicago Teachers Union went on strike during contract negotiations for seven days in 2012, one day in 2016 and 11 days in 2019.

Massachusetts

Lawmakers questioned the state’s largest teachers union at a special hearing Feb. 10 over learning materials that some members believe were antisemitic. 

The Massachusetts Teachers Association, which represents more than 117,000 educators, was about the Israel-Hamas conflict. President Max Page said that the documents were created by request from the union’s board and published in a members-only area of the union website.

Examples included a poster on the Israel-Hamas war reading, “what was taken by force can only be returned by force” and a book about a Palestinian girl who says, “a group of bullies called Zionists wanted our land so they stole it by force and hurt many people,” according to .

“The notion that our union is trying to ‘indoctrinate’ our young people is simply not true, and accusations to that effect have led to death threats to me and my staff, and to other attacks on our union,” Page said. “Posting resources does not imply agreement with each and every document. Nor would we ever expect that our members would look at these resources with an uncritical eye.”

An by the Israeli-American Civic Action Network that asks lawmakers and state agencies to halt collaboration with the union on legislation has received more than 17,000 signatures.

Utah

One of the first bills Gov. Spencer Cox signed into law this year bars teachers unions from bargaining collectively and conducting operations on school property.

The governor on Feb. 14, marking the end of a weeks-long debate about how public-sector unions should operate. Lawmakers who favored the bill said it will ensure transparency in unions and protect taxpayer resources, but educators said it will only make a job that’s already full of challenges more difficult.

While it doesn’t prevent employees from joining a union, the law prohibits public agencies — which employ teachers, firefighters, police officers and county workers, among others — from “recognizing a labor organization as a bargaining agent” and “entering into collective bargaining contracts.” 

The Utah Education Association said HB267 will also weaken advocacy because it cuts off access to schools by barring unions from using public property for free. Some opponents of the bill charged it was created to retaliate against the Utah Education Association, which is The association is the state’s largest teachers union, with 18,000 members.

I took the long way around to get to this work. I was an animated film-maker …

… and a sheet metal worker and member of of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. I then spent almost eight years in the Air Force as a C-130 navigator.

To illustrate just how much technology has advanced since then, that box in the upper right corner of the photo contains a sextant, which was my primary means of navigating over water.

After leaving the service, I got my master’s in international affairs and began a freelance career as a .

I took work as a newsletter editor, back when the internet was a rumor, personal computers only did one thing at a time, and “cut and paste” meant scissors and glue.

My first article about a teachers union was published almost 30 years ago. For me, it was just another story, along with others I had written about California’s recycling program, or weird news I compiled and labeled “the outpost of the odd.”

But readers responded to the union story, so I wrote more, culminating in a 1994 long-form analysis of the California Teachers Association for the Golden State Center for Policy Studies. I called it “The Shadow Legislature.”

Three decades later, that’s still an accurate title.

Obviously, many things have changed in public education. When I started writing, charter schools were just a fledgling experiment and school choice an impossibility.

Unfortunately, many other things are almost exactly the same. I recently came across . It was about outcome-based education, and if you change some of the acronyms around and update the references, it could have been written last week.

Schrag described issues of textbook censorship, social engineering, performance-based assessments, phonics versus whole language and more. Then there is this paragraph:

“It’s striking how quickly our struggles about curriculum ideas escalate into quasi-religious controversies over social or moral absolutes. The right sees a conspiracy by the federal government and its secular humanist legions to strip parents of control over their children and inculcate them with relativistic values, witchcraft and satanism. The left looks at every parent who walks into a principal’s office complaining about a book or a school assignment as a tool of religious fanatics.”

See our full archive of Mike Antonucci’s Union Report

Schools are a political battleground, because everywhere is a political battleground. We can wish for things to be different, but we have to deal with the realities. My only goal for the past 30 years was to tell you the stories the teachers unions won’t. That’s all.

I couldn’t possibly list and thank all the folks who helped and supported me along the way. Some of them, on both sides of the divide, probably wouldn’t want to be mentioned by name anyway. But I do want to single out the good people, past and present, at this publication, The 74. For the past seven years, they have been patient, kind and invaluable in making this column much better than it otherwise would have been. So thank you, Romy, Steve, Bev and the entire crew. I wish you much future success in your continuing mission to challenge the status quo.

Finally, thanks to you, my readers. All of you have made my long career, and now, happy retirement, possible.

God bless you all.

But at least in a relative sense, the past five years have not been to CTA’s liking. It spent $20 million in 2020 in a failed attempt to raise property taxes, and the Supreme Court’s Janus ruling in June 2018, which banned the collection of agency fees from non-members, has had a damaging effect, but not quite in the way most observers expected.

By the union’s own calculation, only about 2,700 teachers dropped their membership in the five years since Janus. That’s hardly debilitating to a union of almost 300,000 members. The hopes of Janus supporters and the fears of union supporters that Janus would lead to wholesale resignations did not come to pass in California.

However, it appears the ruling has been harmful to union recruiting of new members. According to internal union documents, in 2019 there were only 18,000 local public education employees who were eligible for CTA membership but did not join. As of the end of September 2023, the number of non-members had ballooned to almost 36,000.

Overall, the union ended the 2022-23 school year with 38,000 fewer members than it had when it began the first post-Janus school year in 2018-19. This chart, from internal CTA documents, shows the membership trends over the past 12 years.

CTA’s dues aren’t tied to membership levels, but to average teacher salary. Federal COVID relief money boosted that significantly, to the point where the union’s draft budget for 2024-25, obtained exclusively by Union Report, calls for a $30 dues increase. That would bring state level dues to $816. Coupled with national dues, every teacher belonging to CTA will pay at least $1,020 next year. Local dues will add to that figure.

The union estimates the increase will net it an additional $8 million, of which $3.3 million is earmarked for staff pay increases. Another $3.5 million is designated as “excess income over expenses,” which in another context would be called “profit.”

Overall, CTA is budgeting for $228 million, which is almost $40 million more than the national American Federation of Teachers received in dues this year.

The California union has several pots in which to place its income, many having to do with politics. CTA currently has $3.2 million in its candidate political action committee, $4.7 million in its independent expenditure committee, $8.4 million in its media fund, $15.3 million in its advocacy fund, and a whopping $38.9 million in its ballot initiative fund.

It is too early to list everywhere the union’s ballot measure spending might go, but it is already planning opposition to the . Scheduled for the November 2024 ballot, the measure would require majority voter approval for any tax increase passed by the legislature.

CTA’s financial involvement in local school board races is underreported. The state union recently pledged $100,000 to help elect Telly Tse and Neda Farid Faroumand to school board seats in the Glendale Unified School District, where CTA has roughly 1,300 members. Tse, coincidentally, .

The union also contributed $55,000 to in the Orange Unified School District.

There is no prospect for significantly diminishing the union’s role in state politics, though it appears CTA will maintain its position through ever-increasing funds collected from ever-decreasing membership levels. America’s industrial unions have survived decades with such a model. CTA may be on the wrong side of the slope, but the slope is shallow enough to ensure its continued influence for many years to come.

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

For years, the California Teachers Association has opposed universal dyslexia screening for students, helping to defeat legislation that would have mandated it. And yet, many classroom teachers are advocating for all students to be tested. 

As another possible legislative battle looms, the statewide teachers union’s opposition to mandatory screening continues to frustrate many educators. According to classroom teachers across the state, the California Teachers Association’s position will perpetuate a “wait-to-fail” approach to reading instruction that forces educators to sit by while students fall further and further behind.

Dyslexia is a neurological condition that causes difficulties with reading and affects  in the United States. But early screening and support can mitigate or even prevent illiteracy stemming from the learning disability.

Officials at Decoding Dyslexia CA, a grassroots advocacy group, say hundreds, if not thousands, of teachers working with students who struggle with reading support universal screening. The California Teachers Association doesn’t understand the benefits of screening all students for dyslexia, said Megan Potente, one of the co-directors of Decoding Dyselxia CA. 

“I think there’s some misinformation,” Potente said. “Some of the reasons for their opposition aren’t supported by the research.”

Doug Rich, a veteran teacher and reading specialist at San Francisco Unified, said he’s “gone rogue” and started screening all of his students for signs of dyslexia. He said testing is relatively quick — taking less than 10 minutes — but the results are crucial.

The test results can tell him where his students are struggling, whether it be sounding out letters or recognizing words. If all students were screened in kindergarten, Rich says, fewer would end up working with him.

“We know so much about dyslexia,” he said. “We know the underlying causes. We have these simple tools that are efficient and accurate.”

Reading instructors, education experts and neuroscientists all agree: early screening is one of the best ways to mitigate or even prevent the illiteracy that can be caused by dyslexia. Despite having some of the best experts in the field of dyslexia research, California remains  that doesn’t require universal screening.

That’s not for lack of trying. State , a Democrat from Glendale who’s dyslexic, tried and failed twice in the past three years to pass legislation that would have mandated universal screening for students in kindergarten through second grade. In February, he said he is trying .

Although it has not taken a position on the latest bill, the California Teachers Association opposed Portantino’s last two bills. Claudia Briggs, a spokesperson for the union, said the association’s leadership team believed that bills would have caused “.” The association’s position is that universal screening will take valuable time away from instruction and may misidentify English learners as dyslexic by mistaking their lack of fluency in English for a learning disability. Briggs said the union would decide its position on the new bill in March.

Potente is optimistic about this year’s bill. It has 33 co-authors, more than double that of last year’s bill. 

If the bill gets to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk, it’s not clear whether he’ll sign it. Newsom, who’s also dyslexic, supported dyslexia research by funding UCSF’s Dyslexia Center to the tune of $28 million in recent years. In 2021, he published a children’s book based on his childhood experiences. His office, however, declined to comment on whether he supports universal screening.

In response to the union’s objections, a chorus of experts and classroom teachers, backed by a well-established body of research, contradict its arguments. CalMatters interviewed 10 teachers from across California who said screening students early prevents students from needing more intensive services when they’re older. They also said universal screening would prevent English learners from being referred to special education because it would allow teachers to remedy early signs of reading challenges.

“Teachers are already spending an overabundance of time using other horrible assessments for reading,” Rich said, referring to tests for reading comprehension or vocabulary. “And they’re not getting good information.”

A patchwork of screening

Some districts, like Pleasanton Unified in the Bay Area, already screen all students in kindergarten, first and second grades. In other districts, top officials encourage screening all students but haven’t adopted a universal screening policy. 

Jennie Johnson, a reading intervention teacher for the Lancaster School District, 50 miles north of Los Angeles, said the district is in its first year of screening all students. It’s also training teachers on how to use the results from the screening to refine reading instruction. 

Universal screening is even more critical now because pandemic-era learning loss resulted in so many students reading below grade level, Johnson said. Half of the fifth graders at her school are currently reading at a third grade level.

“We are not surprised by the lack of literacy because that’s where our school typically is,” she said. “But the number of fourth and fifth grade students reading below grade level is alarming this year.”

In other districts, it’s up to individual teachers to advocate for screening their students. Kristen Koeller, a reading intervention teacher in the Cupertino Union School District, said she has to be strategic about which students get screening. When she recommends a student for a dyslexia screening, she said her supervisors encourage her to use other reading assessments that have been purchased as a part of the district’s reading curriculum. She said this ultimately discourages teachers from using screeners that haven’t been approved by district officials.

While district-approved assessments can help determine a student’s reading level, Koeller said they don’t test whether a student is at risk of dyslexia. 

“You can be a bit of a rebel,” Koeller said. “But you can’t just go around thumbing your nose at your boss. I just continue to advocate respectfully for the change I’d like to see.”

Decoding Dyslexia CA includes a coalition of teachers like Koeller who are willing to buck both district policies as well as the California Teachers Association. They lobby state lawmakers and sponsored Portantino’s universal screening bills. 

By at least one measure, most California voters support these efforts. A  found that 87% of the state’s voters are in favor of a policy requiring universal early screening. 

Without a mandate, teachers say, whether a dyslexic student learns to read will be left to chance. That approach deepens inequities, as some students have parents who can afford private assessments and tutoring. But those who lack the resources are much more likely to become illiterate adults. 

“I see this as a huge social justice issue,” said Lori DePole, also a co-director of Decoding Dyslexia CA. “This ‘wait-to-fail’ model that we’re using in California is unacceptable.”

The California School Psychologists Association also supports screening all students between kindergarten and second grade, saying a small investment of resources earlier in a child’s education can pay off exponentially. 

“If you catch them young, you can implement interventions that may prevent them from needing more intensive services later,” said Melanee Cottrill, executive director of the .

The importance of early screening

Kristina Delgadillo, a middle school special education teacher at Visalia Unified in the San Joaquin Valley, said she regularly works with students who could have learned to read if they had been screened earlier. She said screening younger students is worth the relatively small time investment.

“I’ve been assessing too many kids for the first time in fourth, fifth and sixth grade when I should have already been providing them services,” she said. “I see kids fall through the cracks.”

Delgadillo cited  that found that it takes an additional 30 minutes a day for a kindergarten or first grade student with dyslexia to read at grade level. But if a student waits until fourth grade to be screened, it takes two hours a day.

Echoing the concerns of school psychologists, education experts say teachers can mitigate the illiteracy caused by dyslexia if they can detect the warning signs early. Even third grade can be too late, as students go from “learning to read to reading to learn” in other subject areas. If teachers can’t get students reading at grade level by then, it means they’ll struggle with reading textbooks in social studies or word problems in math class.

“Students don’t want to be in a classroom if they can’t read,” said Jordan Paxhia, a special education teacher at San Francisco Unified. While effective reading instruction on its own can’t ensure a student’s success, universal screening is a crucial step to making sure all students can read at grade level.

“Literacy may not be a panacea, but it certainly would give students more of a chance,” Paxhia said.

Teachers say screening English learners is even more urgent. If left unaddressed, dyslexia could delay students’ acquisition of English while they struggle to read their native language as well. And because they aren’t diagnostic tools, a red flag on a dyslexia screener won’t mean a student will be sent immediately to special education. If a dyslexia screener detects a student is struggling with reading, a teacher will spend more time with the student. From there, the teacher and the school can provide more resources and services if necessary.

“I’m not overly concerned about false positives,” Paxhia said. “It doesn’t mean they have dyslexia. And isn’t that a better use of our time than letting something go unnoticed?”

It’s harder to reverse the damage for a student who isn’t screened early. High school and middle school teachers know this best.

Holly Johnson teaches ninth grade English at Santiago High School in Garden Grove. She works with students who read below grade level, but by the time they arrive in her classroom it’s too late to remedy the effects of dyslexia. She doesn’t know for sure how many of her students have dyslexia, but she said it’s clear that they never got the help that would have been provided had they been screened earlier.

“Screening can be done in high school, but it’s so difficult,” she said. “Their relationship with school and their narrative has already been built.”

Research shows that failing to read at grade level can have ripple effects for a student’s academic success as well as their mental health. Students who can’t read will struggle across all subjects in school. They’re less likely to  and tend to  once they enter the labor force. But in the short term, illiteracy leads to anger and hopelessness for Johnson’s students.

“Rather than being embarrassed about reading, they’ll pick a fight with the teacher,” Johnson said. “That’s more cool than everyone knowing you can’t read.”

A failure to screen students and help them in earlier grades means high school teachers like Johnson must not only teach them how to read but how to rebuild their identities as students.

“If we can get these kids diagnosed, their problems won’t be as big,” she said. “All of it can be nipped in the bud.”

This story was originally published by .

The effort to get on the November 2022 ballot is just getting started, but such a statute would give parents “legal standing” before a judge to argue that districts should make better use of education dollars, said initiative spokesman Michael Trujillo, a veteran political strategist.

“Here’s a chance for parents to become effective policymakers on behalf of their children,” said Trujillo, who has long worked for former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a supporter of the initiative.

The move comes as parents across the country are vocally asserting their rights to influence the education agenda. Parents’ anger over school closures and controversial diversity and equity initiatives was considered a key factor in tipping the Virginia governor’s race in favor of Republican Glenn Youngkin.

The California initiative would be the third effort nationally to enshrine a child’s opportunity to receive a high-quality education in a state constitution. Supporters have launched similar campaigns in and . 

“Having that right in the constitution could be very helpful in addressing long-standing inequities in our educational system and closing opportunity gaps,” said Ted Lempert, president of Children Now, an Oakland-based advocacy organization. He added that “getting more dollars to kids of color and English learners has to be part of the equation.”

The California initiative, however, includes wording that would prohibit courts from issuing remedies that include “new mandates for taxes or spending.”

That restriction could be an obstacle to improving educational quality, said Jessica Levin, a senior attorney at the Education Law Center, based in New Jersey. 

“More funding would be the way to address many of the issues that the proponents of this initiative are purporting to want to fix,” she said. The center represented plaintiffs in , a 1998 New Jersey school finance case that led to far-reaching reforms, including universal preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds.

A from the center gives California a C for the level of per-student funding schools receive from state and local sources. But it grades the state a D on how much it spends on education as a percentage of overall economic activity — less than 3 percent.

State constitutions, Levin added, all include some “affirmative obligation” to provide students a public education, but courts have varied in how they interpret what that education should include.

Federal courts in recent years have also been asked to consider whether the U.S. Constitution should entitle children to an education. Last year, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer agreed to a $100 million settlement in a 6th Circuit Court of Appeals case in which seven Detroit students argued their schools had failed to teach them to read.

On Nov. 1, the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in in which 14 Rhode Island students argue their schools don’t provide civics education, leaving them unprepared to exercise their rights as citizens. 

‘There’s no remedy’

In California, David Welch, who waged a lengthy challenging state laws on teacher tenure and seniority, is behind the ballot initiative. That lawsuit, Vergara v. California, argued such provisions keep poor and minority students from having effective teachers. In 2016, the California Court of Appeals ultimately held that the attorneys for the nine student plaintiffs were unable to prove that state law controlled teacher assignments.

The state’s powerful teachers unions came out on top when the state supreme court declined to review the case. A ballot measure that aims to improve schools by making it easier to fire ineffective teachers would be certain to reopen that fight. Levin said the initiative “on its face” might sound appealing, but could be a way to once again go after teacher tenure and laws that  result in new teachers being the first to go when budgets are cut.

Trujillo said the initiative is not just an effort to revive Vergara. 

“W�󲹳� Vergara taught us is that there is a right to a free education,” he said, “but if you want to sue because of a reading gap, there’s no remedy.” 

Some experts say the measure, which would need roughly a million signatures by June to qualify, is vague and ignores the limitations districts face when the majority of their budgets are spent on salaries. Laura Preston, director of governmental affairs at F3Law, a California firm that handles education cases, said laws that require districts to negotiate budgets with teachers unions can limit flexibility to address students’ needs. 

Schools are also facing teacher shortages now and even superintendents are — not a time to discuss getting rid of teachers, she said.

The initiative is “so broad that we’re all trying to figure out what it means,” Preston said, calling the proponents “a bunch of people who don’t know how education works trying to reform education.”

‘A battle royale’ 

The effort to add the constitutional amendment isn’t the only California initiative likely to provoke a fight with the teachers unions. A venture capitalist is behind a measure to eliminate collective bargaining for public sector employees. The argues that unions “protect bad employees.”

A failed in 2012, but the prolonged school closures could have shifted some voters’ attitudes. Julia Koppich, an independent San Francisco-based researcher, said proponents could play on “unions being blamed for keeping schools closed longer than some parents thought they needed to be.”

Republicans tried to use parent frustration with school closings during the September election to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom, but were unsuccessful.

“I’m not sure if that anti-union, pandemic-specific anger is of the lasting variety,” Koppich said, but even so, “if this initiative is on the ballot, it will be a battle royale and an expensive one.”

Lisa Gardiner, a spokeswoman for the California Teachers Association said members “certainly believe that all students deserve a high-quality public education,” but that the union does “not take positions on — or even consider — ballot measures until they have qualified for the ballot.”

School closures are also fueling efforts to get two private school choice initiatives on the ballot. Now in the signature-gathering phase, both would create education savings accounts, of either $13,000 or $14,000 per year, that families could use for private and religious school tuition. 

“The pandemic required families to try alternatives,” according to . “Today more than 60 percent of families are interested in alternative learning options for their students beyond the traditional public school system.” 

State officials estimate the cost of the program would range from $4 billion to $7 billion, which “could be paid with reductions to funding for public schools and/or reductions to other programs in the state budget.”

The unions are also likely to oppose efforts to expand school choice in the state. Trujillo said he’s expecting a “well-funded” campaign to defeat the constitutional amendment guaranteeing a high-quality education if it goes before the voters. But he’s hoping that when proponents highlight smaller class sizes and higher pay for qualified teachers as possible results of the amendment, the unions might like what they hear. 

“Unions that want to oppose this are going to feel like they’re in upside-down land,” he said.