What You Need To Know About ALEC
Dear Deborah,
Since the 2010 elections, when Republicans took control of many
states, there has been an explosion of legislation advancing
privatization of public schools and stripping teachers of job
protections and collective bargaining rights. Even some Democratic
governors, seeing the strong rightward drift of our politics, have
jumped on the right-wing bandwagon, seeking to remove any protection for
academic freedom from public school teachers.
This outburst of anti-public school, anti-teacher legislation is no
accident. It is the work of a shadowy group called the American
Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. Founded in 1973, ALEC is an
organization of nearly 2,000 conservative state legislators. Its
hallmark is promotion of privatization and corporate interests in every
sphere, not only education, but healthcare, the environment, the
economy, voting laws, public safety, etc. It drafts model legislation
that conservative legislators take back to their states and introduce as
their own "reform" ideas. ALEC is the guiding force behind state-level
efforts to privatize public education and to turn teachers into at-will
employees who may be fired for any reason. The ALEC agenda is today the
"reform" agenda for education.
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