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Source: Excerpts of On the Record With Greta Van Susteren. FOX NEWS. FIXING AMERICAN SCHOOLS
Monday Sept. 19, 2011

Greta spoke with Steven Brill the founder of Court T.V. who just released the book, CLASS WARFARE Inside the fight to fix America’s schools by Steven Brill.Greta - Where are we?
Steven - We’re in a school room at a very successful charter school called HARLEM SUCCESS ACADEMY. If we were allowed to walk the 50 feet that way, we’d be on the other side of the building, and there’d be a conventional public school that operates in Harlem.
…This is like a science experiment. What happens when you remove the burdens of a union contract and bureaucracy? You take the same kids in the same community. Here they perform on tests the same way the kids in Scarsdale do, a well to do school in New York. And on the other side of the building they perform unfortunately the way you suspect of a bunch of stereotyped kids coming from an impoverished home, maybe even broken homes would perform.
…This is a miracle, but it’s not a miracle because the teachers here work until 5 0’clock. They actually expect that their kids will succeed. They don’t assume failure and it works.
Greta – Who pays for this?
Steven – The taxpayer, this is a public school. The State and City paid less per student for the students here then they pay on the other side of the building in the public school, because the teachers union forced a law in the Al…n legislation. This is a public school with a charter.… The interesting thing is the school spends less per student, yet out performed that side of the building. So, it’s not about money!
Greta – It’s about the union contract.
Steven – It’s a large part about the union contract. The teacher’s union contract you have 3.2 million union paid teachers in this country. The single largest occupation except the salesperson. It’s the only occupation where performance doesn’t count. What counts is how long you have been breathing. And if the rest of the country knew about this and their starting to know about it in communities like this one, they would change that. That’s the purpose of this book.
Greta – How can anyone support a school, like the other side of the building, when you compare it to this side of the building? How can anyone be an advocate for breathing even another day?
Steven – I hate to say it, it’s the bigotry of low expectations that President Bush first talked about. The rationale has always been- we’ll, there isn’t anything we can do for those kids because poverty is such a terrible thing and discrimination and broken homes, all of those things are huge obstacles to kids succeeding. But the fact is their not obstacles that you have to give up on.
… This school, this building, if you can build this building this morning you would see in this room in this building demonstrated that those kids don’t have to fail. If you have the right teachers with the right motivation, the right training, the right tools, and also the right expectations, the kids in this room can succeed and are succeeding.
Greta – I can understand why the unions are fighting. It’s their livelihood, their future. But let me go all the way to the top, President Obama. What’s he said about teacher unions?
Steven – We’ll, President Obama gets credit. He didn’t get the memo that most of the Democratic Party has gotten out for the last 30 years. This is, the teacher unions are the base of the support of the Democratic Party. In primary elections they put money and everything else. President Obama sponsored something called Race to the Top, which is a competitive grant program and he got a lot of Democrats and a lot of union people very angry. Unfortunately, now that’s he’s asked for a new round of stimulus – he basically wants to dole out the money to the school system, without asking them to do the reforms that the Race to the Top package asked them to do. So he’s backsliding a little bit.
Greta – How about union leaders and teachers unions, what do they say?
Steven - We’ll, I probably sent more time with *Randy Weingarten, who is the most prominent union (person) than any other single person. I got to like her. I think she is sincere, she’s smart. I think she is struggling to make sure she doesn’t become the equivalent of the next president of the president of the united autoworkers. In other words, the contracts get so good and don’t stay so good for the narrow interest of the teachers that the competition from charter schools and then political opposition don’t overwhelm the unions.
Greta – Alright, in terms of the book, if you have only one thing to do and one thing, only one thing to fixing this whole problem, what would that be?
Steven – I would introduce as a general matter a work ethic of performance into the most important profession in our country as opposed to protection. Which is what it is now – Protected!
You’re in this job, on that side of the building; you’re in the job as long as you breathe. On this side of the building, in this classroom, you’re in this job as long as you’re producing an effective learning experience for the children.

*Randi Weingarten (born December 18, 1957) is an American labor leader, attorney, and educator, the current president of the American Federation of Teachers. Source: Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia