By Steve Gunn
EAGnews.org

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Mitt Romney and a Mississippi newspaper may not be able to produce the precise words, but their interpretation of Albert Shanker’s famous quote regarding union disinterest in the fate of school children is right on the mark, according to a Washington Examiner editorial.

Last month Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, fired up everyone in the education reform movement by publicly questioning the role of organized labor in public schools.

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As part of his speech, Romney used a famous quote from Shanker, the late president of the American Federation of Teachers: “When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of schoolchildren.”

The quote was first published in a 1985 editorial in the Meridian (Miss.) Star.

Of course there are many in the labor movement who wish Shanker would have kept his mouth shut. Last year two researchers at a so-called think tank named after Shanker accused the Meridian newspaper of failing to be “journalistially rigourous” in its sourcing of the quote, because it didn’t indicate when or where he made the remark.

Some critics also blasted Romney for supposedly failing to use the exact words of the quote.

But the Examiner editorial pointed out that Shanker, in a 1976 television interview, admitted that students were of little consequene in the school collective bargaining process.

“I don’t see a voice for students in the bargaining process,” Shanker was quoted as saying on an ABC News Closeup, which was broadcast May 27, 1976. “I think it’s one of the facts of life. It’s very much like a strike, let’s say, or negotiations in the private sector. The consumer, basically, is left out.”

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If Mr. Shanker were alive today, we and millions of other Americans would look him in the eye and say, “That’s unacceptable, sir.”

We know teachers unions love to play their strong-arm collective bullying game with weak school boards across the nation, extracting every tax dollar possible to finance overpriced employee perks, Democratic political campaigns, massive lobbying efforts  and huge salaries for union leaders.

But public schools exist for students, not the people who work in them, and certainly not for their union leaders. There is never a good reason to spend a single penny of school money on anything that does not involve and benefit students, period.

We appreciate the fact that Gov. Romney seems will to go toe-to-toe with the powerful teachers unions in an effort to return public education to the public. We wish President Obama would push beyond his lukewarm education reform efforts and tell the unions to get out of the way, as well.

Teachers unions are parasites sucking the life out of our nation’s public schools. The schools will never be everything they need to be until the parasite is banished, once and for all.