Nov. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Teachers unions remain the Goliath
to the school reformers’ David, even in red states. That was the
lesson from votes last week in Idaho and Indiana, where unions
successfully took on or took out Republican school
superintendents.
In Idaho, three laws associated with Tom Luna, the state
superintendent of public instruction, were repealed by
referendum, turning back the clock on efforts to phase out
teacher tenure, to link pay increases to performance and to
expand online learning. Luna’s counterpart in Indiana, Tony
Bennett, often called the darling of the national education-reform movement, was fired from his job, despite outspending his
little-known, though union-backed, opponent by 4-to-1. Bennett
had been an aggressive advocate of vouchers and charter schools,
and had called for stronger state control of struggling schools.
