Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
How Long Will We Tolerate Teachers’ Unions Abusing Their Power?
Over the past two years, in particular, we have learned a great deal about teachers and their unions, and the picture is a grim and tragic one. Teachers only care about exerting power and controlling the education environment, and the students be damned. School superintendents, administrators can only meekly go along with the unions’ demands, and politicians aren’t willing to sacrifice the political and financial power that the unions wield over them. Everyone has something to gain.
Except our children.
Where are we now, and how did we get to this point?
During the coronavirus pandemic, teachers dictated rules that no one dared to counter: they made demands about when schools would be open, whether students could attend in-person, who needed to wear masks, the role that vaccinations would play, whether teachers would teach remotely or in-person (or a combination). Meanwhile, the damages inflicted on the children seemed irrelevant to the unions:
Some states, like Texas, opened their doors in the fall. However, schools in many other states such as Virginia, New York, Kentucky, Oregon, California have remained shuttered or at least partially so. Forcing children to learn virtually has adversely affected their emotional and mental well-being. The CDC found that suicide and depression rates among children have skyrocketed. After an unusual uptick in suicide rates this last week, the Clark County School District — the nation’s fifth-largest school district that pulls students from Las Vegas, among other cities in Nevada — decided to reopen schools for in-person learning as soon as it could. There’s another point to make here: Virtual learning doesn’t work very well. NPR recently reported that 4 of 10 teenagers don’t even log on for virtual learning! Children at risk for abuse and neglect are even more so with their school buffers gone.
And many states appeared helpless to take action and save our kids from these union mandates.
Now the teachers are demanding, in spite of rising resistance from parents, that Critical Race Theory be taught in the schools. At one time, school boards and superintendents decided the schools’ curriculum, but in many districts they either don’t know what is being taught in their schools, don’t care what is taught, support CRT in spite of its racist goals, or are cowed by the teachers’ unions. And the unions continue to mandate that CRT be taught:
One of the nation’s largest teachers’ unions vowed Tuesday to go to court to allow the teaching of critical race theory.
Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.7 million-member American Federation of Teachers, said in a speech that she considers teaching critical race theory to be teaching ‘the truth.’
‘Mark my words. Our union will defend any member who gets in trouble for teaching honest history. We have a legal defense fund ready to go. Teaching the truth is not radical or wrong. Distorting history and threatening educators for teaching the truth is what is truly radical and wrong,’ Ms. Weingarten said at the union’s virtual professional development conference.
The National Education Association agrees with this decision.
It has been over ten years since a country-wide effort was made to limit the power of the teachers’ unions through collective bargaining. It was a dismal failure, primarily because politicians are beholden to the unions. And they still are.
But my hope is that the power centers begin to shift. Citizens, particularly parents, need to tell their legislatures that they cannot, must not, cater to the teachers’ unions any longer. Voters need to tell those running for political positions that they must include changing the collective bargaining laws in their platforms, and must follow through when elected. They must be willing to sacrifice the perks they are given by the unions and transform the balance of power. They must refuse to acknowledge that teachers’ unions are special-interest groups worthy of recognition and compliance.
But the only way this can happen is for people to realize that the teachers’ unions have gone too far and must be stopped in this escalation of power. These unions are the source of the abuse of our educational institutions and the distortions of the history curriculum we are teaching our children. We are seeing parents protesting at the local and county levels; they are running for school boards and actively promoting their cause: the healthy and proper education of our children should be in the hands of citizens, not teachers and administrators.
It’s time to take back our education system, city by city, county by county, and state by state.
It’s time.
Published in Education
The Farmer and the Stork
Eugene, can you help me understand the purpose of the various teacher unions? As a general rule, at least as I understand it, professionals don’t have unions. Trades formed unions, but not professions. Is it something to do with the history of teaching/teachers in this country?
(@susanquinn If you think this is off-topic [since it’s your post], let me know and I’ll start a different post.)
I think it’s a good question! Ask away.
Teachers’ Unions negotiate with the states on behalf of the teachers. Government employees effectively sit on both sides of the negotiation table. The actual customers being served are not part of these negotiations.
Yeah, the same dynamic as with all public-sector unions (which ought to be banned).
This would seem to fit here:
When I started teaching in 1967 my first contract was for $4300/ per annum. There were no preparation periods, and very few benefits. After that two week strike my salary went up to $650o. We got three prep periods per week. Nothing would have happened had there not been a teachers’ union. The following year the decentralized OceanHill Brownsville district fired all of their white teachers. The ten week strike that followed and saw their reinstatement would not have happened without a union. Over the years I had one or two incidents which would not have worked well for me had there not been a union and a contract to protect my rights.
There is no question that teachers unions have grown too powerful. They have done so largely with the involvement of the districts and the districts administrations, many of which are made up of former teachers, now administrators. Initially, the Seattle Education Association was made up of the teachers and administrators. They eventually separated since their interests diverged. However, without some form of representation it is highly unlikely that salaries or benefits would have developed over the years.
I don’t think there is much difference between teachers unions and labor unions in their initial developments. Workers would never have attained a living wage or health benefits out of the beneficence of their employers. It took unions to get those things. Unfortunately, the balance of power shifted. Unions became too rich and too powerful. Their purposes became the perpetuation of the union hierarchy rather than the benefit of the workers. That would seem to be the same with a lot of organizations, notably the NRA and Sierra Club, both of which pay their leaders outrageous salaries, and neither of which seem particularly interested in achieving the goal for which they were originally begun. All organizations ultimately become grifters.
That is a fine parallel if you understand that closed shop doesn’t give you any choice as to the company you keep. If you are suggesting that one shouldn’t become a teacher because it entails joining a union, I would say that no one should join anything, no matter its purpose.
You are right and your are wrong. School boards aren’t government employees. The customers, the people whose children go to the schools, elect school boards. The school boards are the ones who appoint those who negotiate for the school district. They are the representatives of the customers, just as the union represents, or pretends to represent, the teachers.
My experience in Seattle is that the school board is made up largely of idiots, people whose ambition far surpasses their intellect. Many of them have their own agendas. They like, Deblasio, are elected by a minimum turn out of voters. If you don’t vote or vote out of ignorance you have no right to complain when things don’t work out in the way you want them to.
I agree with your assessment, @eugenekriegsmann. It must be very difficult to be part of an organization that does productive, appropriate work when they begin, but abuses its power as time goes on. It puts a lot of dedicated teachers in awkward positions.
Fundamental question. Why can’t we undo the disaster? I don’t know. One kid raised her three over a decade ago in Colorado. They survived and do well. I don’t understand them, but they seem ok. Another has 5, home schooled them for years, then found a fantastic small private non demominational religious school that allowed them in at reduced prices. Old fashion curricula taught with rigor. They graduate with what most kids need a couple years of a good university to reach. They’re all solid, which means they agree with me and when they differ, I have to consider their views. The New New Yorkers stays on top and have switched several times. They can’t home school, both work long hours. We’ll see. Kids are brilliant and it’s possible to find good New York public schools. Why we can’t just eliminate public school unions I don’t understand. Glad your raising the question because it won’t self correct.
They have far too much money, and far too much power.
You think that would help? The courts could simply decide that parents don’t have “standing.”
If I am not mistaken, it was President John F. Kennedy who signed the executive order allowing government employees to unionize. That executive order still applies today, and can be rescinded by any president, just like Biden rescinded every executive order issued by his predecessor. My guess is that every president since Kennedy who would have done so, did not, because he was afraid of the raw power of all the government employee unions. These days, that raw power is orders of magnitude greater than ever.
Except we learned that the courts decided that Trump couldn’t just undo Obama’s EOs, but Biden can just undo Trump’s…
The likelihood that any major politician would cross the teachers’ unions is pretty slim. As I said, they have incredible wealth. When I was teaching they took $1000/year in dues from my salary. They do nothing with their money but buy politicians at all levels of government. When I signed the order that they could not use my dues for political action, as many did, they simply ignored it, even though the law said that they couldn’t, and nothing happened. It would take an act of congress to get them under control, but congress is highly unlikely to take any action at all. Biden certainly won’t. Just look around the country, what governor has done anything to force them to open schools and report to work?
DonG:”States should outlaw public sector unions or regulate them to death.”
Public Sector employee unions have already been banned under the 1935 Labor Relations Act. These public employee unions sprang to life under an Executive Order issued by President Kennedy in 1962.
Think about that for a moment. Our vaunted legal system has allowed these cancerous suckers of public funds that wield untold power over many state governments unconstitutionally to continue to ruin this country while they are already illegal and any court worth it’s salt should rule them unconstitutional and should rule all their contracts to be null and void as a result of public extortion. But not one has.
These unions could also be banned by a stroke a pen by a President in an Executive Order if they have the guts. Yes, there would likely be nationwide chaos and untold massive rioting by our so-patriotic public servants but so be it.
What would they do, refuse to work? They’re already doing that!
Lewis E Lawes, who was warden of Sing Sing prison from 1915 to 1941, wrote an interesting book titled Twenty Thousand Years in Sing Sing. The title refers to the aggregate lengths of the sentences of the men in the prison at a typical particular point in time.
Lawes:Twenty-five hundred men saddled with an aggregate of twenty thousand years! Within such cycles worlds are born, die, and are reborn. That span has witnessed the evolution of the intelligence of mortal man. And we know that twenty thousand years have seen nations run their courses, perish, and give way to their successors. Twenty thousand years in my keeping. What will they evolve?
Following the same approach, the aggregate length of the terms to be spent in K-12 schools by their current students is more than 600,000,000 years. What proportion of this time is actually used productively?
And how many of the officials who supervise and run the public schools, and the ed-school professors who influence their policies, think about this 600,000,000 years in the same serious and reflective way that Lawes thought about the 20,000 years under his supervision?
See my post Six Hundred Million Years in K-12.
I am suggesting if you become a teacher, don’t complain because you get tarred by the reputation of teachers’ unions. It goes with the territory.
Why not take a page from Bernie Sanders and imitate the Swedes, who abolished their public schools decades ago, and replace them with a voucher system, which black parents already favor?
I hear Joe Biden yelling, “If they support a voucher system, they ain’t black!”
The goals stated are admirable, but i do not think they will be achieved by a blanket demonization of teachers. We of the conservative state of mind do this over and over again. We complain bitterly about teachers union support for the Democrats, but never seem to realize that our knee-jerk reflexive posture leaves them, teachers and especially unions alike, no where else to turn politically. Do we want teachers on our side, or do we want to keep them as forever scapegoats?
I expect it’s a good deal more complicated than just The Teachers or Not The Teachers. We all know that many Teachers are just time-serving hacks, especially in inner cities, who probably couldn’t even get some other Civil Service job if they tried, let alone something requiring more serious competence. If you expect to deal with The Teachers as a group, rather than individuals, that means busting the unions, and that a lot of Teachers aren’t going to be Teachers any more. And I expect getting a lot of them to accept that, will be difficult or impossible.
I have three “time-serving hacks” in my family. This has helped me see that one big reason the unions have so much power is that the “time-serving hacks” in the school administrations will throw a teacher under the bus with out hesitation. There are many teachers who would do without the unions if the administrations under which they work weren’t populated by feckless dolts who often can’t cut it in the classroom.
I don’t know. Watching porn on your government computer can be very stressful . . .
I want to stress that I’m not trying to attack teachers here, but I am pointing out that we all have difficult choices to make in life. Even when we start out in perfectly reasonable circumstances (such as unions acting appropriately), any group can get out of control and abuse its power. I’m sure there are many teachers out there who do care about the kids and hate working for unions. But the reality is that if they choose to work in a place that is a closed schop (or becomes a closed shop), they have to live with the consequences and fallout to their reputations. It’s unfortunate, but it’s real life.
Having said all that I said previously, I do want to say clearly that I am disgusted by teachers sitting at home for the last year because they are afraid of Covid. I worked in a school with a very large undocumented population. My last few years I had a pretty fair number of obscure illnesses, very few of which kept me home. We had outbreaks of flu, pertussis, measles, chicken pox, scabies, lice, and a host of other contagious diseases in my building. A reasonable level of prophylaxis kept us safe. Staying home wasn’t an option. The behavior we are seeing is that of sheep. They are scared and their leaders are feeding into it rather than attempting to overcome it.
It appears to me that in this instance (and many others), JFK wasn’t exactly a “Profile in Courage”.
The pressure is coming from the bottom up, not from politicians. Don’t worry, parents got this. Parents don’t give a hoot what the NEA and AFT have to say about it anymore. School board meetings have been the example du jour of people standing up, and featured on conservative media for the past two months because parents are angry and going full grass roots activist.
How successful has it been? Didn’t someone just label protesting parents a “threat to democracy”?