Shortly after taking office, President Barack Obama's Secretary of Education, Arnie Duncan,

acknowledged that America's public school system is broken.

It's obvious the system is broken, he said.

Let's admit it's broken.

Let's admit it's dysfunctional.

Let's do something dramatically different and let's do it now.

Let's fix the thing.

Why are America's public schools failing?

Why, after more than a quarter century of perpetual reform, has the nation been unable

to bring real change to public education?

Well a complete answer, of course, would be very complicated.

But at the heart of it lies the power of the teachers unions, the National Education

Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and their state and local affiliates.

Now, I don't say this out of some sort of anti-union ideology.

I say it as an objective description of reality, backed by an enormous amount of data.

Union power has created insurmountable problems for effective schools.

Why has this happened?

Partly it's because the teachers unions are by far the most powerful groups in American

education.

More than that, they're special interest groups, which means that they use their power

to promote the special interests, the job interests of their members.

They're just not in the business of representing the interests of children and no one should

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