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Education Tue Dec 08 2009
Dan Hynes Believes in Teachers
Take the above with a grain of salt--it's from Hynes' campaign, so who knows what the rest of Quinn's statement was. But Hynes should be given credit for giving this answer before a hostile crowd (the Union League Club), and his answer is absolutely right: teachers unions built the American education system, and professionalized teaching. It was teachers unions that took the schools out of the hands of patronage machines and forced accreditation and intensive education to be part of teaching. The teachers unions democratized education--the privatization movement wants to make it pay-to-play again.
Brian / December 9, 2009 2:33 PM
Not attacking Dan Hynes, but the real reason the teachers union endorsed him is because he is against "two-tiered" pension reform, which would save taxpayer money by reforming the corrupt-clout-heavy-Illinois pension system. Quinn had a public tiff with the teachers union earlier in the year when he suggested getting the system more in line with 21st century pension plans, which subsuqeuntly infuriated many union bosses.