Teachers Unions – Part 11

Summarizing the previous ten essays.

In this final essay in this series on how teachers unions influence America’s public schools, we’ll sum up some of the main points presented in the previous essays in the series.

As Terry Moe writes in his book Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America’s Public Schools:

The public schools are hobbled by many … aspects of their organization … One example: salary schedules that pay teachers based on their seniority and formal credits and that have nothing whatever to do with whether their students are learning anything. Another example: rules that give senior teachers their choice of jobs and make it impossible for districts to allocate teachers where they can do the greatest good for kids. Another example: rules that require districts to lay off teachers (in times of reduced revenues or enrollments, say) in reverse order of seniority, thus ensuring that excellent teachers will be automatically fired if they happen to have little seniority and that lousy teachers will be automatically retained if they happen to have lots of seniority. These sorts of rules are not unusual. They are common. But who in their right mind, if they were organizing the schools for the benefit of children, would organize them in this way? No one would. Yet the schools do get organized in this way. Indeed, the examples I've given are the tip of a very large and perverse iceberg … [T]he teachers unions have thrown their support behind mainstream approaches that carry the label of reform — bigger budgets, across the-board raises, stronger certification, smaller classes (which require hiring more teachers), and the like — but leave the existing system, its perversities, and all of its jobs entirely safe and intact. Needless to say, these inside-the-box “reforms” have not led to significant improvement. America's schools are still not organized in the best interests of children … From the beginning of the reform era, reformers have focused on the problem of ineffective schools, and thus on fixing the schools themselves. Yet they have failed to resolve this problem because there is another problem — the problem of union power — that is more fundamental, and has prevented them from fixing the schools in ways that make sense and have real promise. If our nation ever hopes to transform the public schools, this problem of union power must be recognized for what it is. And it must be resolved … What the rise of the teachers unions has meant in the grander scheme of things, for all of us, is a radical shift in the structure of power in American education, and with it the emergence of what amounts to a new type of education system for the modern era: a system in which … the schools are heavily shaped by special interests, efforts to bring improvement are regularly blocked, and the new status quo is fiercely protected by entrenched power. The rise of the teachers unions, then, is a story of triumph for employee interests and employee power. But it is not a story of triumph for American education … When it comes to basic components that are obviously necessary — that anyone can see are fundamental to a true system of accountability — there's simply nothing there. Among other things: There are no mechanisms for weeding out mediocre teachers. Teachers stay in the classroom year after year even if their children learn absolutely nothing; Data on student performance are regularly collected, but they are not put to use in measuring the performance of teachers. Teacher performance is quite purposely not being measured; Teacher pay continues to follow the traditional salary schedule and is not linked in any way to how much students learn; [and] Schools rarely suffer any sanctions (reconstitution, leadership or staff changes, choice options for students, and the like) for continually failing to teach their children … Business leaders take accountability for granted as an essential component of any effective organization, and surely the same applies to the nation's school system. Indeed, the notion that our governments would hand over more than $600 billion a year to the public schools and not hold them accountable for teaching children what they are supposed to know is shockingly irresponsible and by almost any managerial standard, stupid. Yet the public schools have had free reign, and been virtually accountability free, for more than 100 years now. Reformers are trying to change that. The unions are trying to stop them — and despite their “defeats,” they have been quite successful at seeing to it that the nation now has accountability systems that don't actually hold anyone accountable.

As Michael Hartney summarizes in his book How Policies Make Interest Groups: Governments, Unions, and American Education:

In his seminal book The One Best System, decorated education historian David Tyack bluntly describes teachers unions as “the group with the greatest power to veto or sabotage proposals for [education] reform.” … Terry Moe, who in the first decade of the 2000s began to argue that teachers unions “shape the schools from the bottom up, through collective bargaining activities that are so broad in scope that virtually every aspect of the schools is somehow affected … and from the top down, through political activities that give them unrivaled influence over the laws and regulations imposed on public education by government.” … Heritage Foundation senior research fellow Jay Greene … elaborates: “The problem is not that teachers unions are hostile to the interests of students and their families, but that teachers unions, like any organized interest group, are specifically designed to promote the interests of their own members and not to safeguard the interests of nonmembers.” … [T]he unions will pursue those goals, even if achieving them comes at the expense of students. That is what interest groups do … Terry Moe argues that teachers unions “represent the job-related interests of their members, and these interests are simply not the same as the interests of children. Some things are obvious,” Moe reasons. “It is not good for children that ineffective teachers cannot be removed from the classroom. It is not good for children that teachers cannot be assigned to the schools and classrooms where they are needed most. It is not good for children that excellent young teachers get laid off before mediocre colleagues with more seniority. Yet these are features of ... schooling that the unions fight for, in their own interests.”

Mark Zupan, in his book Inside Job: How Government Insiders Subvert the Public Interest, summarizes some of the main points that can be drawn from Terry Moe’s work:

In his book Special Interest, Moe details how teachers unions have become a potent vested interest. They exercise influence from the bottom-up, through collective bargaining that benefits them at the expense of our educational system’s effectiveness and children. They also shape schools from the top-down, through electing favorable school boards and legislators (largely Democrats) and blocking or weakening attempted reforms running counter to their interests. According to Moe, the ability of teachers unions to promote their interests is unrivaled by any other special-interest group. The 4 million members across the two leading unions, the AFT and NEA, are the nation’s top contributing interest group to federal elections, influencing outcomes of ballot measures and school board elections which directly impact school district management. In examining Los Angeles County school board elections in 1997 and 1999, Moe finds that only 7 percent of registered voters cast ballots. By contrast, 46 percent of teachers living in the district turned out to vote, thus magnifying their political impact. On top of their direct voting impact, teachers unions collect nearly $3 billion in dues annually. These dues allow teachers unions both to field an army of grassroots activists spanning the nation’s various political districts and to spend over $60 million per year at the local level in support of measures and elections favorable to their members. Over 85 percent of the local funding goes to Democrats, as does 95 percent of the $5–$6 million which teachers unions spend annually at the federal level … Terry Moe found that from 2000 to 2009, teachers unions “outspent all business groups combined” in thirty-six states. Total reported public union spending increased almost fourfold from the 2008 election to the 2020 election.

A single Wall Street Journal op-ed published in June, 2023, describing teachers unions influence in Illinois, also sums up so many of the dysfunctions caused by teachers unions generally.  The op-ed states:

We told you Wednesday about the Illinois Invest in Kids scholarship program, which lawmakers in Springfield had the chance to extend for 9,000 low-income students this week. Instead, Democrats led by Illinois Senate President Don Harmon and House Speaker Emanuel Chris Welch tossed it aside in rank obeisance to the teachers unions … Unions want to kill the program because its popularity showcases the failure of the public schools. Invest in Kids had more than 31,000 applications last year, roughly five students for every scholarship it could provide. Every family lined up for a place at a private school is an indictment of a union monopoly that continues to prioritize its power over student learning. Nowhere is this more pronounced than in districts with low-income families. Black and Hispanic families support the scholarship program in large numbers because they often have children assigned to Illinois schools where less than a third of students are proficient at reading or math, according to data from Wirepoints and the Illinois State Board of Education … The teachers at the failing schools are routinely categorized as excellent to ensure their job security. Any suggestion that the schools are failing is blamed on lack of funding. Illinois spends an average of more than $16,000 per pupil on its public schools. Gov. J.B. Pritzker conditioned his tepid support for Invest in Kids on the promise of massive new investments in public education that has included some $350 million a year in additional funding to public schools since 2017—more than $1.3 billion altogether. Where did the money go? The net benefit to educational outcomes has been zero. A glance at the National Assessment of Educational Progress for Illinois fourth-graders in 2017 showed 15% of black students were proficient or above in math. In 2022, 12% of black fourth-graders were proficient or above. In reading 15% were proficient in 2017 and 13% in 2022. Illinois Education Association President Kathi Griffin has said that “we are still not fully funding our schools . . . once we get to fully funding our schools, then let’s talk about adding these types of programs.” So to hell with the 9,000 students already enrolled. When Ms. Griffin and other union leaders speak, Illinois lawmakers fall in line. Messrs. Harmon and Welch have each had their political careers funded by more than $1 million in contributions from the state’s teachers unions, according to Illinois Sunshine and the Illinois Policy Institute.

That one story covers teachers unions’ rejection of school choice programs overwhelmingly popular with minority and low-income families, their demands for more tax money for schools to do the same things despite a long record of educational failure, continued categorizing of many teachers as “excellent” despite that same record of school failures, and the large amounts of union money spent on electing politicians who will block reform efforts that would inconvenience them if enacted.

At this point, many people may be wondering what the “solution” to the vast problems caused by the dynamics surrounding teachers unions might be.  Here are Moe’s comments on that subject:

I didn't write this book to offer a solution to the problem of union power. I wrote it to describe and document the problem — and to try to understand it. As it happens, there is solution, at least over the long haul. But it is only a solution because of an accident of history. The accident is that we live in a very special time: we are caught up in a historic revolution in information technology. This is a monster development, entirely beyond the realm of normal reform activity, that is being thrust upon the education system from the outside.

Simply relaying information regarding the problems for public schools caused by the dynamics surrounding teachers unions is a necessary first step.

Teachers themselves will be an unlikely spur to reform as a group.  As Moe writes, younger teachers who manage not to burn out relatively quickly and stay in teaching will tend to adapt to the union-created system over time and come to rely on it as they inch toward retirement:

The turnover among young teachers is typically substantial — over a third leave the profession within the first five years — and it is reasonable to think that, on average, those who stay are likely to be those who feel happier with the job and the school system, and thus happier with unions, than those who leave. Those who stay, moreover, will be subject to heavy socialization by their union leaders and colleagues over the years, which is likely to solidify and strengthen their prounion attitudes. And they will also undergo life-cycle effects: they will simply get older year by year, and as they do they are likely to get more risk averse, more concerned about pensions and retiree health benefits, and still more supportive of their unions. So, all in all, even if today's younger teachers are less pro-union than their older colleagues, the time dynamics would seem to work in the unions' favor.

In the next series of essays, we’ll look more closely at the local level, at how teachers unions control local school board elections, even in localities that don’t allow public school teacher collective bargaining.