More Good News: Teachers Union Loses 100,000 Members
Something to raise a glass to at tomorrow's barbeque, from USAToday:
The National Education Association (NEA) has lost more than 100,000 members since 2010. By 2014, union projections show, it could lose a cumulative total of about 308,000 full-time teachers and other workers, a 16% drop from 2010. Lost dues will shrink NEA's budget an estimated $65 million, or 18%.
NEA calls the membership losses "unprecedented" and predicts they may be a sign of things to come. "Things will never go back to the way they were," reads its 2012-14 strategic plan, citing changing teacher demographics, attempts by some states to restrict public employee collective bargaining rights and an "explosion" in online learning that could sideline flesh-and-blood teachers.
This is a fitting -- and cheering -- factoid for this Independence Day holiday. There are no groups or institutions that have been more destructive, more reactionary, more hidebound, and more corrupt than the various teachers unions around the country. Kids in public schools won't be free until they -- and their parents -- can celebrate an Independence Day from the monopolistic and almost criminal teachers unions.
(How's that for a seasonal tie-in?)
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Jun '10
Re: More Good News: Teachers Union Loses 100,000 Members
It always warms my heart to hear stories of criminals going straight.
Jul '10
Re: More Good News: Teachers Union Loses 100,000 Members
I was a dues paying union member for seven years and the only time I ever heard from them was when elections rolled around or they were collecting dues. If unions were actually providing valuable services to their members they wouldn’t be fleeing by the thousand at the first opportunity. The message to the unions is reform or die. My bet is that they double down on political contributions to avoid reform.
Mar '12
Re: More Good News: Teachers Union Loses 100,000 Members
We needed some good news after last week. Somewhere, Troy Senik is smiling.
Re: More Good News: Teachers Union Loses 100,000 Members
How many of the lost members are due to teacher layoffs, though? Do public school teachers have any choice in whether they join the union or not? I was under the impression that they didn't. Is this incorrect?
Apr '12
Re: More Good News: Teachers Union Loses 100,000 Members
"(How's that for a seasonal tie-in?)"
Terrific.
Aug '10
Re: More Good News: Teachers Union Loses 100,000 Members
Perhaps with the waning of teacher's union, so will go tenure. And with the passing away of tenure will come the firing of really incompetent teachers. And with the firing of incompetent teachers will come the increased demand for better teachers. And with that increased demand will come better pay for good teachers.
The free market rocks - if we will only allow it to.
Dec '10
Re: More Good News: Teachers Union Loses 100,000 Members
Could it be that many are no longer *required* to send in dues...? I seem to recall an article or radio interview pointing to that possibility. If so, then it's a case of the teachers schooling the union since they focused on power and control as opposed to real teacher issues or "the children"
Aug '10
Re: More Good News: Teachers Union Loses 100,000 Members
Not to be a pedant, but a "factoid" is spurious information presented as fact and not a "little fact." Just as penultimate doesn't mean mega-absolutely-super-ultimate, rather merely next to last.
Feb '11
Re: More Good News: Teachers Union Loses 100,000 Members
The North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE) is a highly partisan political organization that collects dues automatically from teacher's salaries. [The Democrats organize fundraisers using NCAE headquarters.] The director of the NCAE is Scott Anderson, who has been an aide to Democratic governors of North Carolina and South Carolina. At a minimum a partisan hack. He has a much more colorful history in his role of getting North Carolina's lottery passed.
The NC legislature is now controlled by Republicans and they passed a measure to make it so that dues to the NCAE were no longer collected by the state. Governor Perdue, a Democrat, vetoed the bill. The NC House then called a special session after midnight to override the veto. The NCAE has filed a suit against the legislation based on the legislature not in proper session, the bill was retaliatory, and the amount of time taken between the veto and the override. An injunction has been issued to require the state to continue collecting dues. Article here.
Dec '10
Re: More Good News: Teachers Union Loses 100,000 Members
A small victory, perhaps, for parents.
I attended a fundraiser at our youngest's school and was horrified that some of the teachers were wearing AFSCME shirts and buttons; it just seemed so out of place. I attended an awards ceremony, against my better judgement, when our youngest was named top math student, even though he hadn't brought homework home for months and had required considerable help with math, up to that point.
We now have finally received the results for the statewide standardized tests and the top student will require remedial math and everything else, because parents have been frozen out for the last half of the year. While the students have brought home nearly straight As. And we have been told not to worry, they're doing fine, and the kids believed the teachers.
NEA/AFSCME Delenda Est.
Re: More Good News: Teachers Union Loses 100,000 Members
Indeed I am. The smirk in question can be found at the Manhattan Institute's Public Sector Inc.
Re: More Good News: Teachers Union Loses 100,000 Members
Whether union membership is (at least de facto) compulsory depends on the state. We should stipulate too that layoffs aren't necessarily an unalloyed evil (though the practice of issuing layoffs based on seniority is indefensible). In some places, maximum class size mandates have resulted in an inefficiently high number of teachers (one of the reasons the unions always support them), though most of the empirical evidence suggests they have no real effect.
But, as this piece notes, another big factor is the elimination of mandatory dues. In states where that's happened, union support inevitably collapses. The unions find it nearly impossible to survive as political powerhouses without coercion at their disposal.
May '12
Re: More Good News: Teachers Union Loses 100,000 Members
And yet, states without teacher's unions (like my home, Georgia) partake of the same troubles as the rest of the nation, union or no. It's just too simple to blame teacher's unions for the problems in education. They are simply a problem - not THE problem.
Jul '11
Re: More Good News: Teachers Union Loses 100,000 Members
CJRun: A small victory, perhaps, for parents.
I attended a fundraiser at our youngest's school and was horrified that some of the teachers were wearing AFSCME shirts and buttons; it just seemed so out of place. I attended an awards ceremony, against my better judgement, when our youngest was named top math student, even though he hadn't brought homework home for months and had required considerable help with math, up to that point.
We now have finally received the results for the statewide standardized tests and the top student will require remedial math and everything else, because parents have been frozen out for the last half of the year. While the students have brought home nearly straight As. And we have been told not to worry, they're doing fine, and the kids believed the teachers.
NEA/AFSCME Delenda Est. · 2 hours ago
I am enormously sorry to hear this. That this effect isn't more rampant is probably only due to the general incompetence of union organizers.
Or community organizers.
Apr '12
Re: More Good News: Teachers Union Loses 100,000 Members
Rob, I'd like to believe you're right, but I think the remaining members will tend to be more loyal and will pony up more dough to get more dough.
Nov '10
Re: More Good News: Teachers Union Loses 100,000 Members
I notice there's no mention of Charter schools. Is this not a significant factor in this trend? It's something we have an eye on up here in Canada.
CJRun's math education anecdote rings true. You can find dozens of tales like it on the math education reform website I help to adminsiter, where we invite folks in Western Canada to sign onto our initiative (we're proposing scrapping the current WNCP curriculum, which has mirrored some of the worst things they've done to Math Education in the U.S. over the last 15 years, and follow the recommendations of the NMAP report, an excellent "way forward" proposed under the Bush administration, but still merely beginning to have an impact).
In my work with WISE Math, we've found the Manitoba teacher's union to be quite problematic. I have yet to figure out why they have invested so deeply in the obviously flawed methodology accompanying the current curriculum -- it is not from teachers themselves, who are quite discontent. Many, or even most, teachers appear to support the reforms we propose, particularly those with mathematical training, high school teachers, and those with decades of teaching experience.
Mar '12
Re: More Good News: Teachers Union Loses 100,000 Members
Now if we can get the education money to follow the student, home, parochial/religious, private, public school, our children would be well served.