Forbes | July 30, 2020
By Jeanne Allen, Founder and CEO of CER

The reactions to a recent article about reopening school and the pernicious effects of delaying school, in any form, any longer, have reminded me of a fundamental tenet of good communication: Never assume your reader knows anything about your subject.

Often the complexities of educational processes and policies get lost in the best of pieces. The endless barrage of articles and commentaries about education are sparking the most important but basic of questions that most people simply do not know how to answer, like, “who is responsible for the dysfunction of school reopening,” and “why shouldn’t teachers have more time to prepare?”

But the impact of teachers unions’ pernicious actions on potential reopening of schools begs the public’s understanding. “Teachers’ unions are playing a powerful role in determining the shape of public education as the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage,” reported the New York Times just today. 

Most do not have the luxury of knowing why, nor time to spend on learning the complex technical, social, political and practical aspects of how we do education in America. So here is a brief primer on why the ongoing actions of teachers unions, and the political leaders to whom they are beholden, continue to exacerbate inequity, unequal performance, and learning loss among students. Most important, this may help convey why their actions must be fought at every level.   

Union Organized Teacher Effort In Arizona Attacks Governor and Misinforms Educators About Current School Reopening Plans ARIZONA EDUCATORS UNITED

Follow the Power and Money

Unions control all employment and pay policies through the contracts they negotiate each year in most states and major cities, which also dictate educators’ time spent and even school operations. The National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, who together represent more than 3 million teachers, nurses and other staff, are able to force governors and school districts to accept their demands, often without any push back. Those groups derive their power from the dues money that, until two years ago as a result of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Janus v. AFSCME, teachers were compelled to pay regardless of choice. Unsuspecting teachers are led to believe that without belonging to the union, they will suffer greatly, and are fearful of stepping away completely. Said one teacher last year when I suggested she consider leaving after she complained of how her dues were being spent, “I just don’t want to cause trouble in my district.” Together the unions spend approximately $2 billion annually, of which more than $400 million is spent on politics (that we know of, not including labor when they get out the vote and send their members canvassing the countryside). Right now, these groups are working to force their own view of what should happen in states.

Most teachers do not even know the extent to which rules are made for them that cause one of the biggest challenges they have: failing to be well-compensated for their important work. The Massachusetts Education Association, for example, did not demand that teachers who want to work vigorously to prepare for a new, difficult school year should be paid more, but only that the state delay school to give them time to prepare. The false premise on which this is predicated is that all schools and all teachers are wholly unprepared to tackle the challenges of remote learning, which the entire country has witnessed, participated in and endured for several months.

The Arizona Educators United which is mobilizing a “death march” against Governor Doug Ducey, who gave teachers a 20 percent pay raise and an additional $450 million, is fueling the public with a campaign that claims schools are not going to be safe, ignoring the fact that teachers and schools are already taking safety precautions in the schools and spaces that are either already open or that will reopen soon.  They are also ignoring the fact that the mandate to “open” school includes offering a wide array of options to allow teachers and students to do so remotely. Yet they are spending time and money on a campaign to shame the governor when it all that effort and capital could be spent to counsel, train and support teachers. It’s part of a nationwide strategy, just months from an election, that aims to strengthen their hold on how education operates in the U.S.

It is these same organizations, which claim to represent teachers, that work to maintain fixed pay rules, uniformly applied across the board, no matter what the sacrifice, performance or responsibilities of the teacher might be. They work to make it illegal for a school to pay a teacher more or differently because their speciality is unique or hard to find (e.g., science) or because they are far more experienced than another person. Teachers are paid not based on whether they know their subject or have demonstrated success, but based on their time in the classroom, seniority, and many other games that are too numerous to mention here. Were that not the case, great teachers would make great sums of money, teachers who want to work longer and take on more responsibilities would work to earn more, and teachers who were not effective, were less inclined to work or perhaps even chose to work less to accommodate other responsibilities would earn less.  

Great teachers are always working to develop new skills and strategies. They relish being given challenges and while teacher pay is problematic and broken they nevertheless welcome the challenge of working to find new ways to support their kids.

Still, as states around the country are being bullied into delaying school further allegedly to give teachers time to prepare, we should ask why they were not expected to be preparing earlier or at least considering the possibility of extending the school year another ten days rather than shortening it entirely. Some argue that if teachers had been expected to prepare for this difficult time during the summer that they should have been paid. Few of us would expect a teacher to put in the hours necessary to plan for a new kind of school year for no pay. But the fact is they were, and are paid. Teachers are paid for 12 months, even if they work for 9. Their benefits extend throughout the year, and many teachers actually choose to have their paychecks split over 12 months to ensure continued income flows. School district employees, while most were also remote the majority of time, were still working and, presumably, planning.

The costs of remote education which will be the rule not the exception for students once again also costs less than physical school.  “School systems can provide what they’re currently offering for well under half of their revenues,” says American Enterprise Institute scholar Rick Hess. He argues that just as they default to remote learning and “demand massive additional support,” their costs actually should be less. Factoring in everything from how much time teachers were required to spend during the pandemic, and what their new contracts say since, plus buildings, plus technology and more, the cost for systems to return should be dramatically lower than the more than $13,000 per pupil we spend annually (well over $20,000 per student in most major cities).

We’d have done well, however, to offer additional bonus pay to teachers willing to go the extra mile in preparing and training others to prepare earlier. There are plenty of funds left to do just that. When Covid-19 sent everyone home, the costs of running a school should have dropped, not increased. Labor was already covered by state and school system budgets across the board through year end, and new budgets that had been negotiated far in advance would begin to kick in on July 1. 

Education spending in the U.S. is at an unprecedented level, with ratios of administrators and non-teaching staff to students far outpacing relatively stagnant enrollment. School district coffers have in the recent economic boom been filled with surpluses that get carried over year after year.  Yet districts and unions are complaining that they do not have enough funding to prepare. Just this week Politico revealed that only two percent of the entire $13 billion allocated for K-12 education in the CARES Act had been drawn down. “Uncertainty over the next aid package is playing a role, said Noelle Ellerson Ng, the associate executive director of AASA,” which represents school administrators.

Yet AFT union chief Randi Weingarten, who serves on the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force that is dictating policy for the Democratic platform outrageously called for $1.2 million per school “or $2,300 per student, to open its doors safely.” 

And if that proposal doesn’t go through the unions will strike until it does. Remember that an election is just around the corner and the biggest power brokers (save for parents), for all the reasons above, are the teachers unions. 

All this should help explain why so many – from left to right – are uniting in demanding that education funding bypass this corrupt system and flow directly to parents to make the decisions about where and how to educate their children. That way, great schools and teachers will earn the funds the parents trust them to manage, and the billions the nation is spending to prop up adult special interests will become a thing of the past. Or so we can hope.

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