The Education Reform Fig Leaf Is Finally Stripped Away

by Jim Horn

I worked as a Tennessee teacher for almost 20 year before coming to higher education, where I have taught for the past dozen years or so. Never would I have imagined when I left Tennessee schools in 1996 that 15 years later I would be watching a full frontal attack waged to eliminate or neutralize collective bargaining, job security, due process, and the last shreds of academic freedom of Tennessee teachers. But then, it’s not just in Tennessee or just teachers, for this war is being waged on workers in the public or private sectors in Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, New Jersey, and elsewhere. This crusade is inspired, funded, and directed by a handful of billionaires who are guided neither by political allegiance nor moral compass. These oligarchs, rather, see workers’ rights to organize and collectively bargain as the final stumbling block to the creation of a corporate state that is unimpeded in its aspirations for social control and unrestrained greed and, thus, unchecked by either labor laws or considerations or workers' rights.

Pitted now against this billionaires’ campaign on teachers in Tennessee is the tepid and weak-kneed Tennessee Education Association. This is the same TEA that I remember from my time as a Tennessee teacher, the professional organization that we joined for the liability insurance coverage, not any anything significant they did for teaching. As easy as TEA was to roll in those days, the big difference now is that TEA is even friendlier to “education reform” than it was in the 80s and 90s. Back then, at least there was some modest and low-key protestation when Governor Lamar Alexander installed the Career Ladder Program, which left teacher salaries so low that I and many of my Career Level III colleagues back then worked part-time in the evenings so that we could afford to buy a house or take our families on a vacation.