Read Shadowbosses: Government Unions Control America and Rob Taxpayers Blind Online
Authors: Mallory Factor
Tags: #Political Science, #Political Science / Labor & Industrial Relations, #Labor & Industrial Relations
Taxpayers need to watch carefully how teachers unions respond to this latest challenge to their control of our education system. Generally, if there is a new platform or technology which will change the way things can be done, watch for unions to resist it. If you see them start to
embrace it, you can bet that unions will try to take it over and become the gatekeepers once again.
Teachers unions are trying to get online education under union control—at least with respect to programs paid for with state education dollars. Teachers unions want to bog down state-supported online education with the same inefficiencies that plague public education—unionized teachers, restrictive work rules, and content restrictions.
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If the teachers unions succeed, innovation in this field will slow, and the diversity of options available in online education will recede. Soon, the escape valve that online education is now providing may be stopped up by union gunk.
Another group of students that “escape” from the public schools are homeschoolers. Homeschooling is on a huge growth trajectory. While the number of private school students has declined slightly in recent years, the number of homeschoolers has increased a whopping 74 percent in a recent eight-year period and shows no sign of decreasing anytime soon.
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Just over 2 million American school-aged children, about 3.8 percent of all school-aged children, were homeschooled in 2010.
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In comparison, 5.5 million American students attend private or parochial school, representing 10 percent of all schoolchildren.
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One of the reasons that homeschooling is on the rise is that online education has made homeschooling much easier for parents. Twenty years ago, homeschooling parents had to locate books and materials to teach their children all the subjects they needed to learn. Today, homeschoolers can choose instead to sign up their children for a full online school program, such as K–12, which supplies all coursework, testing, and online tutors. And many states even provide comprehensive online school programs for free. Technology has lowered the barrier for families to homeschool and provided many more educational opportunities for homeschoolers—from remedial programs to AP and college courses.
Homeschooling brings educational costs down for our states and municipalities because parents generally pay the cost of the schooling, which is great for taxpayers. But its growth is a big problem for teachers unions. State-supported virtual homeschools take educational dollars
away from teachers-union-controlled schools. And by taking large numbers of schoolchildren out of schools, homeschooling also reduces the number of unionized teachers and school workers needed in schools.
Imagine how pleased teachers unions would be if they could force those 2 million homeschooled children back into the public schools. The schools would have to hire 250,000 additional teachers and other school workers to keep the current union-mandated student–educational worker ratio of eight-to-one. Using current membership and dues rates, this represents a missed opportunity of over $100 million in potential dues income for the teachers unions annually!
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And as the number of homeschoolers grows every year, so does the amount of union dues forgone.
Watch for teachers unions to chip away at protections for homeschoolers across the country. Teachers unions will suggest that homeschoolers follow the state’s subject matter standards and take assessments showing their mastery, all developed by teachers union educational specialists and proctored by union teachers. Teachers unions will try to require homeschooling parents to be certified by the state. And if they’re successful, they may try the ultimate power grab: they’ll try to force homeschooling parents into teachers unions.
This battle is on. Will technology and homeschoolers take down the teachers unions?
We have seen how teachers unions control education policy and classroom content across America. As Michelle Malkin rightly observes, “Instead of incentivizing fixes, politicians—dependent on teachers union campaign contributions and human shield photo-ops—incentivize more failure.”
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In the face of their huge organizational advantages, how can we possibly pull teachers unions’ tentacles out of our system of education?
A critical first step toward reclaiming our K–12 schools is for taxpayers to pay attention to elections for the state superintendent of education and the local school board members. After all, many of these state and local government officials are elected with teachers union help while
we are not paying attention, and they significantly determine educational policy in our states and school districts. We need to elect government officials that truly represent the interests of families, children, and actual teachers—not just teachers unions.
A second line of attack is to hit teachers unions where it really hurts—the dues income that they extract from teachers in forced-dues states. Teachers, like all workers, should have a choice over whether or not to pay union dues, a choice that they don’t have currently in the F-grade states. Also, states with dues checkoff arrangements should stop collecting union dues for teachers unions—or any other unions, for that matter. Dues are payments to private organizations, so why should the state collect them on the unions’ behalf? States also should require school districts to hold new elections to recertify the teachers union on a regular basis. This would give teachers an actual vote on whether or not they want to have a union represent them, instead of sticking them with a union that was elected many years before by their predecessors. Elections are not useful or fair unless they’re regular.
Third, we should encourage our states to try innovative solutions in education that put our children’s needs before those of the teachers unions. Even if we don’t have kids in the local school system, we all have skin in the game as taxpayers and citizens.
Finally, we need to pay attention to what our children are being taught in their classrooms. Do we really agree with what is going on in the classroom and the lessons and values taught there? And if not, are we willing to stand up for what we believe in?
If we don’t rein in the teachers unions soon, our nation and our children will continue paying a high price.
A lion and a wild mule once decided to hunt together. During that hunt, the mule observed a group of gazelle from afar. “Lion,” said the mule, “let’s make an arrangement. I’ll chase down those gazelle and drive them toward you—and as they reach you, you strike them down with your mighty claws. Then, we will share the spoils of our hunt together.” The lion agreed.
The plan worked beautifully—as the mule drove the gazelle toward the lion, the lion killed them, one by one.
Then the lion curiously divided the meat into three piles. “Why three piles?” asked the bewildered mule.
“The first share is mine,” said the lion, pointing to the first pile, “because after all, I am king of the jungle.” The mule nodded. The lion pointed to the second pile and explained, “The second share is half of what is left, also mine because, after all, I killed the prey.” The mule looked confused and then looked hopefully at the last pile. The lion concluded, “And the third share—well, let’s just say that you’ll give it to me also, and run off as fast as you can in case I get hungry again.”
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S we’ve seen, the lion of American politics is the government employee unions. And just like the lion in Aesop’s tale, government employee unions operate under the principle that might makes right. And we are the wild mules, hunting for food that the unions will
take for themselves, losing our own hard-earned share of the spoils. How much longer can we keep hunting?
Overly generous pay contracts, featherbedding, and pension schemes have been negotiated by the government employee unions and achieved with union political activities and donations in support of union-friendly politicians. Remember when we said that the problem with government employee unions is that they don’t have to worry about their employers going out of business? Well, they didn’t. Until now.
A number of states actually are on the verge of insolvency, although no one really understands what that will mean for the states and for America. “The ultimate check on the growth of public sector unionism is municipal insolvency,” writes scholar Eileen Norcross.
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She’s right. And we are approaching that ultimate check.
The
New York Times
reported “some states have deep structural problems, like insolvent pension funds, that are diverting money from essential public services like education and health care.”
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This illustrates a very important point—as states spend more money on salaries and benefits for current government workers and pension costs for retired workers, these states have less and less left in their budgets for essential services. But currently there is no way for states to get out from under crushing compensation and pension arrangements that were negotiated with the government employee unions. States are not permitted to declare bankruptcy and seek protection against their creditors, although cities are.
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While they can’t declare bankruptcy, states can become insolvent. It happens when a state doesn’t have enough cash to pay its bills, including its employees’ salaries and pension costs. A number of states are approaching insolvency fast. If one state reaches this point, the federal government will probably step in to pay the bills and spread the cost over all the taxpayers in our nation. But does even the federal government have enough money, or ability to borrow, to prop up Illinois, California, and New York, the three states most likely to default over the next five years?
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Already the federal government is providing huge subsidies to the states to plug holes in their budgets. Basically, the federal government allocates cash to the states, which they then use to keep up their spending. Federal subsidies for state government spending are a great deal for the states, but a terrible deal for America’s taxpayers. Over the last ten years, the federal government has subsidized more and more state government spending, covering 34.1 percent of all state spending in 2011, up from 25.7 percent ten years before.
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And as the financial condition of many states worsens, we can expect more federal subsidies to fill the gap between state spending and revenues.
How does our federal government do this when it is already running a deficit? It simply borrows more. But there is a limit. Our nation may be able to bail out a few states, but eventually America’s debt will be so large that our line of credit with China, the Arab oil states, and other nations will dry up. Our nation’s debt compared with the size of our entire economy is getting into the extremely unhealthy range.
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What happens if we continue in this direction? We become Greece.
Greece actually provides an example of precisely this disaster in the making. Recently, as Steve Forbes explains, the Greek government has cut expenses, but “not one civil servant from the bloated public sector was sacked. Thanks to fierce union resistance, privatizations have stalled… It’s no surprise that the economy is still sputtering and that deficits remain gargantuan.”
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Welcome to Greece.
As we’ll see, more and more states are now trying to cut back on the unwise, overly generous promises that they made to the government employee unions in the flush years. Now in the lean years, the unions are still holding states hostage, while negotiating for more in salaries, pensions, and other benefits. How exactly will this story end?
The battle over whether to grow government or reform government spending is
really
a battle between the net tax receivers and the taxpayers. Net tax receivers always benefit by the growth of government—and so do government employee unions. Taxpayers, including members
of private sector unions, pretty much always lose. There’s a well-known bumper sticker that states, “Work harder. Millions on welfare depend on you.” But the problem is much bigger than just welfare recipients. The bumper sticker
should
more correctly say, “Work harder. Millions of net tax receivers depend on you.”