American Teachers Unions Oppose Innovative Schools—in Africa – by Eric A. Hanushek
Posted: 12 Apr 2017 03:43 AM PDT
No longer content to oppose educational innovation at home, the unions representing America’s teachers have gone abroad in search of monsters to slay.
For nearly a decade, Bridge International Academies has run a chain of successful private schools in the slums of Kenya and Uganda. A for-profit company, Bridge has shown that it’s possible to provide high-quality, low-cost primary education to poor children in the developing world. Naturally, the teachers unions are outraged.
“Bridge’s for-profit educational model is robbing students of a good education and depriving them of their natural curiosity to imagine and learn,” said National Education Association president Lily Eskelsen García in October. “This is morally wrong, and professionally reprehensible.”
