The Wall Street Journal and Terry M. Moe got an earful from AFT members who took issue with a column by Moe in which he suggested that teachers unions be stripped of their collective bargaining powers.

AFT members bombarded the Journal with letters and e-mails—to the point where the newspaper refused to accept any more—in response to the Moe commentary, which appeared in the newspaper’s Jan. 13, 2005, issue. In it, Moe wrote that “if the teachers unions won’t voluntarily give up their power, then it has to be taken away from them—through new laws that, among other things, drastically limit (or prohibit) collective bargaining in public education.”

Moe, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution (a conservative think tank at Stanford University), scolded teachers unions for a litany of sins, including the temerity both to negotiate contracts for members for better salaries, benefits and working conditions and to argue for smaller class size and more professional development.

In a letter to the Journal in response to Moe’s article, AFT president Edward J. McElroy said, “Teachers—and their unions—want what children need. Reasonable class sizes, safe and well-equipped schools, high standards for conduct and achievement, and well-prepared and adequately supported teachers are entirely appropriate goals for teachers unions to pursue. But in the face of these facts Terry M. Moe regurgitates several tired canards about teachers unions to bolster his view that unions act solely in their own interest and ‘impede efforts to improve public schools.’”

The Wall Street Journal and Moe heard from AFT members of small and large locals, including Mary Kruchinski, a first-grade teacher in Salem, N.Y. “See how union educators devote their lives for kids while wearing a union label—a label I wear proudly,” she wrote to the Wall Street Journal. “My room number is 109. Stop by, pull up a chair and try teaching vowel sounds, writing process and math facts to 6-year-olds. If you [Moe] can do that you would be a voice to be listened to ... but until then you need to go to the time-out chair.”