America's teachers unions have a lot to answer for.

An international comparison study found that the United States gets the least bang for the bucks it spends on education, putting the U.S. at 18th in reading (behind countries like Japan and Poland) and a dismal 28th in math.

While they're always the first (and loudest) ones to demand more money for schools that don't teach kids anything, when it comes to promoting quality schooling or offering ideas for reform, the unions are nowhere to be found.

That's why the Center for Union Facts has launched TeachersUnionExposed.com, a new campaign to shine the spotlight on the failures of teachers unions. Visit the site to learn all about how these unions have crippled American education - and what the Center for Union Facts is doing to get bad union-protected teachers out of schools!

Blocking education reform: Teachers unions will do anything to stop education reforms that might threaten their own power. Anything that gives parents more power over their children's education or allows teachers to distinguish themselves on individual merit is obstructed and blocked at every turn. In 2002, for example, a philanthropist offered the city of Detroit $200 million to establish 15 charter schools.

n September 25 of that year, the Detroit teachers union led a one-day walkout that shut down the city's schools in protest of the offer. The deal collapsed immediately thereafter, denying Detroit school kids $200 million in charter schools. Unions protect bad teachers and hold back good teachers: Unions enforce the policy of teacher tenure, which makes public school teachers basically impossible to fire, no matter how bad they are. At the same time, they fight to keep schools from rewarding good teachers for good work. As a rule, union contracts don't recognize teacher quality, whether high or low. For example, Cathy Nelson, Minnesota's Teacher of the Year, was laid off when school enrollment declined because of her union's contract, which required the most junior teachers to be canned first, regardless of ability.

Unions take teachers' money and give it to left-wing politicians and activist causes: The national teachers unions give money to practically every left-wing group in America. Teachers are actually more conservative on average than the typical American, but from the way their unions act, you'd think it was the opposite. Between 1990 and 2008, 93 percent of donations made by National Education Association political action committees and individual officers went to Democrats.

he website also features a wide array of completely new, original research on some of the nation's largest local teachers unions -- focused on how "tenure" policies keep union-protected teacher firing rates absurdly low. Here are some highlights:

• Boston: Thanks to laws and policies kept in place by teachers unions, the Boston public school system is only able to fire about 0.14 percent of its tenured teachers annually.
• Minneapolis: Out of about 3,500 teachers, only about two are fired a year, thanks in large part to the work of teachers unions.
• Sacramento: The Sacramento City Teachers Association has bad-teacher protection so locked up
that the district did not fire a single tenured teacher in five years.

So what is the Center for Union Facts doing about it? We've exposed the facts that teachers unions don't want you to know and we're letting the public know about it with national newspaper and cable ads! We've also announced the "Ten Worst Union-Protected Teachers" contest, where we will pay the ten worst union-protected teachers $10,000 a piece to get out of the classroom-for good. Visit TeachersUnionExposed.com today to learn more!

So what can you do?

• Help support our advertising efforts by donating online.

• Go to TeachersUnionExposed.com to see our ads and pass them along to friends.
• Vote in our "Worst Union-Protected Teachers" Contest if you know someone who should be shown the door.

source: email from TownHall Spotlight http://townhall.com/

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