Shadowbosses: Government Unions Control America and Rob Taxpayers Blind

by Mallory Factor

  102 See 5 U.S.C. § 7106(b)(1).

  Chapter 5. Schoolhouse Shadowbosses

  1 Nathan Rabin, “Waiting for Superman Director Davis Guggenheim,” A.V. Club, October 13, 2010, http://www.avclub.com/articles/waiting-for-superman-director-davis-guggenheim,46295/, accessed January 2012.

  2 OECD, Education at a Glance 2011: OECD Indicators, table B1.1a, available at http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/61/18/48630868.pdf.

  3 Likewise, we spent in 2008 on secondary students—$12,087 per student. This is 41 percent more spending than Germany, 33 percent more than Japan, 53 percent more than Korea, and 28 percent more than the UK. Education at a Glance 2011: OECD Indicators, table B1.1a.

  4 OECD, PISA 2009 Results: Executive Summary, figure 1, OECD, http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/34/60/46619703.pdf, accessed December 2011. On the mathematics scale, the United States scored 487; the UK, 492; Germany, 513; Japan, 529; and Korea, 546. On the science scale, the United States scored 502; the UK, 514; Germany, 520; Japan, 539; and Korea, 538.

  5 Richard Lee Colvin, “Can Obama Reverse the Dropout Crisis?” Special Report introduction, Washington Monthly, July/August 2010, pp. A2–A4.

  6 Johanna Sorrentino, “ ‘Waiting for Superman’: What it Means for You and Your Child,” Education.com, http://www.education.com/magazine/article/waiting-superman-means-parents/, accessed January 2012.

  7 “Two Million K–12 Teachers Are Now Corralled into Unions,” Fact Sheet, National Institute of Labor Relations Research, August 18, 2008, http://www.nilrr.org/files/How%20Many%20Teachers%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf, accessed December 2011. Terry Moe estimates that the two teachers unions make $2.7 billion a year. Terry M. Moe, Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America’s Public Schools (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2011), p. 280. Our own analysis confirms this approximate figure as follows: For 2011, the financial disclosure for the national NEA shows dues and agency fee income of $370,805,951. We know from unified dues examples and other data that the ratio of NEA income to total dues income at NEA/state/local union level is about 25 percent, so we know that the total income for NEA and its state and local affiliates is approximately $1.48 billion. Similarly, for 2011, the financial disclosure for AFT shows dues and agency fee income of $148,388,677. We know from the unified dues examples that the ratio of national AFT dues income to total AFT/state/local union dues income is in the range of 27 to 32 percent. Accordingly, we can estimate that total AFT/state/local union dues collected are in the range of $458 to $535 million for 2011. Therefore, the total amount of dues collected by both teachers unions at the national, state, and local levels is between $1.9 to $2.0 billion for 2011. The teachers union makes income from other sources, as well, so their total income would be significantly higher.

  We can also confirm the $2 billion total dues number by considering data for state affiliates and certain local affiliates of the National Education Association, available on the Education Intelligence Agency website: http://www.eiaonline.com. From this data, we learn that the NEA plus all its state affiliates took in $1.4 billion in dues income alone in the 2009–10 school year. Additionally, the top thirty-six local teachers unions took in over $337 million in dues in the same school year, for a total of $1.73 billion. To this amount, we would need to add all the other local affiliates of the NEA, plus all the national headquarters of the AFT, plus all its state and local affiliates, which would easily result in a total dues number of over $2 billion. See http://www.eiaonline.com/archives/20120312.htm, accessed April 2012.

  8 Moe, Special Interest, pp. 54–55.

  9 Orrin Hatch, “Putting Workers over Union Bosses,” Washington Times, December 1, 2011, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/dec/1/putting-workers-over-union-bosses/, accessed February 2012.

  10 Moe, Special Interest. Terry Moe’s book provides an excellent in-depth treatment of the effect of teachers unions on America’s public schools. Since the writing of his book, Wisconsin changed its laws so that teachers are not required to pay dues to a union, and so Wisconsin in now a C-grade state.

  11 The New Haven, Connecticut, school district’s contract with the teachers union provides in Article 3.A: “All teachers in the bargaining unit, as a condition of continued employment shall on the sixtieth (60th) day following the beginning of the school year, beginning of their employment or the execution of this Master Agreement, whichever is later:

  1. Become members of the Association, or

  2. Pay a service fee, which is equivalent to the amount of dues (including New Haven Education Association, Local 1 MEA and NEA dues) uniformally [sic] required of members of the Association.” In other words, whether you join or not, you pay the same amount, although a later provision states that the teachers who decide to pay the service fee may file a written objection to the fee under certain conditions for spending of fees on political or ideological causes. See Master Agreement between the New Haven Schools Education Association MEA/NEA/LOCAL 1 and the New Haven Schools Board of Education, 2008–09, 2009–10, 2010–11, http://newhaven.misd.net/uploads/transparency/NHCS%20Teachers%20Contract%202010-2011.pdf, accessed February 2012.

  12 “Two Million K–12 Teachers Are Now Corralled into Unions.” The original report found that the twenty-three states at that time with forced unionism (which included Wisconsin, but didn’t include D.C. as a state) have less than 52 percent of the teachers but generate about 83 percent of all state and local dues collected by NEA and AFT affiliates. To update this analysis and account for changes in law, we used data from the Education Intelligence Agency on the dues collected by state-and local-level National Education Association affiliates for 2008. We also used data on teacher populations from Moe, p. 54, table 2-2. Our analysis generally confirmed the original report with some differences relating to regrading Wisconsin as a C state. We found that the twenty-two states and D.C. with forced unionism for teachers account for about 49 percent of the teachers but over 77 percent of the total NEA state- and local-level dues collected. Furthermore, the original report found that approximately 15 percent of America’s teachers work in C-grade states, but approximately 8 percent of teachers union dues are collected in these states. We found that 17 percent of teachers work in C-grade states (with Wisconsin), and that over 12 percent of dues are collected in these states. Similarly, the earlier report found that teachers in the B-grade states represent approximately 11 percent of all teachers but contribute only 5 percent of the total teachers union dues collected in the United States, while our analysis found that the B states represent 11 percent of teachers and contribute 6 percent of dues. The earlier report also found that teachers in the A-grade states represent approximately 23 percent of public teachers nationwide, but contribute only 4 percent of all teachers union dues, whereas our analysis found that teachers in A states represent 23 percent of teachers, but contribute about 5 percent of dues income.

  13 “Two Million K–12 Teachers Are Now Corralled into Unions.” These figures show that the B states are on average more than twice as unionized as the A states.

  14 Ibid.

  15 The percentage of dues income collected in right-to-work states is estimated by analyzing the dues figures for state NEA organizations provided by Mike Antonucci’s valuable Education Intelligence Agency website. See http://www.eiaonline.com/NEAandStateAffiliateFinances2008-09.htm. The percentage of teachers working in right-to-work states is based on Moe, p. 54, table 2-2.

  16 Randi Weingarten’s exact statement was: “First, the states that actually have lots of teachers in teacher unions tend to be the states that have done the best in terms of academic success in this country. And the states that don’t tend to be the worst.” “ ‘This Week’ transcript: Crisis in the Classroom,” ABC News, August 15, 2010, http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/week-transcript-crisis-classroom/story?id=11506701&page=4, accessed May 2012. See also “Randi Weingarten says students in strong union states perform better academically,” Politifact.com, September 2, 2010, http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/stateme
nts/2010/sep/02/randi-weingarten/randi-weingarten-says-students-strong-union-states/, accessed May 2012.

  17 Kyle Wingfield, “Do Unionized Teachers Really Produce Better Results?” AJC, March 3, 2011, http://blogs.ajc.com/kyle-wingfield/2011/03/03/do-unionized-teachers-really-produce-better-results/, accessed January 2012.

  18 Moe, pp. 207–213.

  19 Liability insurance is also available to teachers who join the Association of American Education (AAE), the largest national nonunion professional teachers organization, for a fraction of the cost of union dues, but many teachers are not aware of this option.

  20 Myron Lieberman, The Teachers Unions (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), pp. 75–76.

  21 Moe explains the different work rules in states with and without collective bargaining in chapter 6 of his book Special Interest. Moe, p. 196.

  22 “2011-12 Dues,” Westport Education Association, http://westportea.org/contracts/salary/dues/, accessed February 2012. Similarly, full time teachers in Union Local 3037 of BOCES Educator of Eastern Suffolk, an AFT affiliate, making at least $30,000 a year pay a total of $738.78 in teacher union dues, broken up as follows: $211.58 to their local union, $322.00 to the state union, and $205.20 to the national AFT, for the 2011–12 school year. “NYSUT/AFT/LOCAL Dues Schedule for 2011-2012 membership year,” The Beacon, BOCES Educators of Eastern Suffolk, Union Local 3037, http://www.beesbeacon.org/DuesScheduleTemplate%2010-11.pdf, accessed February 2012. Other examples can be found (as of February 2012) at: http://www.ntu1.com/teacher%2011-12%20dues.pdf; http://decaturea.org/pdf/1011dues.pdf; and elsewhere.

  23 Charles Sykes, Dumbing Down Our Kids (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), p. 230.

  24 Michael Barbera, “Teachers’ Union Fierce Foe of School-Choice,” National Catholic Register, Oct. 11, 1996.

  25 E. J. McMahon, Obama and America’s Public Sector Plague (New York: Encounter Books, 2010), p. 26.

  26 Sykes, Dumbing Down Our Kids, p. 230.

  27 Moe, p. 113.

  28 Ibid.

  29 Ibid., 138.

  30 Lieberman, pp. 101-103.

  31 Ibid.

  32 “Teachers Unions Will Target Swing States in ’04,” Washington Times, June 30, 2003.

  33 George Archibald, “NEA challenged on political outlays,” Washington Times, April 7, 2003.

  34 Phyllis Schlafly, “Who Is the Biggest Campaign Spender?” Eagle Forum (blog), September 3, 2010, http://blog.eagleforum.org/2010/09/who-is-biggest-campaign-spender.html, accessed March 2012.

  35 Mike Antonucci, “The Long Reach of Teachers Unions,” EducationNext 10, no. 4 (Fall 2010), http://educationnext.org/the-long-reach-of-teachers-unions/, accessed March 2012.

  36 McKinsey & Company, “How the World’s Best Performing School Systems Come Out on Top,” September 2007, p. 12, http://mckinseyonsociety.com/downloads/reports/Education/Worlds_School_Systems_Final.pdf, accessed March 2012.

  37 Eric A. Hanushek, “Valuing Teachers,” EducationNext 11, no. 3 (Summer 2011), pp. 40–45, http://educationnext.org/valuing-teachers/, accessed December 2011.

  38 Eric Hanushek, “Lifting Student Achievement by Weeding Out Harmful Teachers,” personal blog, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, October 31, 2011, http://hanushek.stanford.edu/opinions/lifting-student-achievement-weeding-out-harmful-teachers, accessed March 2012. See also Eric A. Hanushek, “Teacher Deselection,” in Creating a New Teaching Profession, ed. Dan Goldhaber and Jane Hannaway (Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute Press, 2009), pp. 165–180.

  39 McKinsey & Company, p. 20.

  40 Moe, p. 21.

  41 See ibid., chapter 6.

  42 Ibid., p. 180.

  43 National Center for Educational Statistics, “Digest of Education Statistics 2010,” Table 88, http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d10/tables/dt10_088.asp?referrer=list, accessed April 2012; Andrew J. Coulson, “The Effects of Teachers Unions on American Education,” Cato Journal, Winter 2010, pp. 160–61, http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj30n1/cj30n1-8.pdf, accessed December 2011.

  44 Ibid.

  45 McKinsey & Company.

  46 Ibid.

  47 Karen Matthews, “New York Teachers Paid To Do Nothing: 700 Of Them,” Associated Press, June 22, 2009, available at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/22/new-york-teachers-paid-to_n_219336.html, accessed December 2011.

  48 “Rubber Rooms Gone, But Idle NY Teachers Still Getting Salaries,” Eagle Forum, February 2011, http://www.eagleforum.org/educate/2011/feb11/rubber-rooms.html, accessed December 2011.

  49 Rachel Monahan, “Rubber-room teachers bounce back as city says most have returned to classroom,” Daily News, March 12, 2011; Karen Matthews, “NYC Teachers To Leave Rubber Rooms,” Associated Press, April 15, 2010.

  50 Eric A. Hanushek, “Teacher Deselection,” Leading Matters, Stanford University, May 2008, http://leadingmatters.stanford.edu/san_francisco/documents/Teacher_Deselection-Hanushek.pdf, accessed January 2012; PISA 2009 Results: Executive Summary, figure 1.

  51 PISA 2009 Results: Executive Summary.

  52 Rhee resigned as chancellor of the D.C. School District in 2010 and founded Students First, a non-profit organization that works to achieve meaningful improvements in public K–12 education. “Michelle Rhee, Founder and CEO of Students First,” Students First website, http://www.studentsfirst.org/pages/about-michelle-rhee, accessed May 2012.

  53 Sam Dillon, “A School Chief Takes On Tenure, Stirring a Fight,” New York Times, November 12, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/education/13tenure.html?pagewanted=print, accessed January 2012.

  54 Jason Riley, “Weingarten for the Union Defense,” Wall Street Journal, March 26, 2011, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704608504576208443882799456.html, accessed March 2012.

  55 Evan Thomas, “School Yard Brawl,” Newsweek, March 5, 2010, http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/03/05/schoolyard-brawl.html, accessed May 2012; Jason Riley, “Weingarten for the Union Defense.”

  56 “Timeline: The Winding Road toward DC Schools Deal,” Washington Post, April 7, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/metro/teachers-union-timeline/?tid=grpromo, accessed May 2012; Sam Dillon, “Former Foes Join Forces for Education Reform,” New York Times, May 20, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/21/education/21rhee.html, accessed May 2012.

  57 See Coulson, pp. 162–163.

  58 “Union Blasts Jindal’s Choice Proposal for Louisiana Students,” Education News, January 28, 2012, http://www.educationnews.org/education-policy-and-politics/union-blasts-jindals-voucher-proposal-for-louisiana-students/, accessed January 2012.

  59 Becket Adams, “Revealed: Michigan Union Manual Instructs Teachers on How to Use Children as ‘Propaganda,’ ” TheBlaze, January 24, 2012, http://www.theblaze.com/stories/revealed-michigan-union-manual-instructing-teachers-on-how-to-use-children-as-propoganda/, accessed February 2012.

  60 Ibid.

  61 Coulson, p. 163, quoting James Cibulka, “The NEA and School Choice,” in Conflicting Missions? Teachers Unions and Educational Reform, ed. Tom Loveless (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2000).

  62 Kyle Olson, Indoctrination: How “Useful Idiots” Are Using Our Schools to Subvert American Exceptionalism (Bloomington, Ill.: AuthorHouse, 2011), p. 97.

  63 Nina L. Floro, “Beyond the Convention Hall and into the Classroom: Finding a Lesson at the 2009 CFT Convention,” Advocate, May 2009, http://www.publicschoolspending.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/advo5-09.pdf, accessed March 2012; Trouble in the Hen House: A Puppet Show, California Federation of Teachers, http://www.cft.org/uploads/LIS/trouble%20in%20the%20hen%20house.pdf.

  64 Trouble in the Hen House: A Puppet Show.

  65 ”Committee Curricula,” California Federation of Teachers, http://www.cft.org/index.php/component/content/article/40-uncategorized/309-committee-curricula.html.

  66 Olson, p. 160, citing Bob Bigelow and Bob Peterson, Rethinking Globalization: Teaching for Justice in an Unjust World (Wisconsin: Rethinking Schools Ltd., 2002).

&n
bsp; 67 Olson, p. 1.

  68 Olson, p. 3.

  69 Olson, p. 162. “Labor in the Schools Committee,” California Federation of Teachers, http://www.cft.org/index.php/committees/105.html, accessed May 2012.

  70 Howard Zinn, Transforming Teachers Unions: Fighting for Better Schools and Social Justice (Wisconsin: Rethinking Schools Ltd., 1999).

  71 Patrick J. Finn and Mary E. Finn, eds., Teacher Education with An Attitude (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 2007), p. 5.

  72 Denise Konkol, “Muskego-Norway Says Thanks But No Thanks to NEA Grant for Activism,” MuskegoPatch, October 27, 2011, http://muskego.patch.com/articles/muskego-norway-says-thanks-but-no-thanks-to-nea-grant-for-activism, accessed December 2011.

  73 Phyllis Schlafly, “How Did We Get a Federal Curriculum?” Eagle Forum, February 13, 2002, http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2002/feb02/02-02-13.shtml, accessed January 2012.

  74 Jonathan M. Seidl, “Shocking Vid: Wis. HS Students Admit Teachers Bringing Them to Protests But Don’t Know Why They’re There,” TheBlaze, February 16, 2011, http://www.theblaze.com/stories/shocking-vid-wis-hs-students-admit-teachers-bringing-them-to-protests-but-dont-know-why-theyre-there/, accessed December 2011.

  75 Daniel Halper, “In Wisconsin, Teachers Take Students from Class to Protest,” The Blog (blog), Weekly Standard, February 16, 2011, http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/wisconsin-teachers-take-students-class-protest_550230.html, accessed December 2011.

  76 Seidl, “Shocking Vid.”

  77 Sarah Palin, “Union Brothers and Sisters: Seize Opportunity to Show True Solidarity,” Sarah Palin’s Notes, Facebook, February 18, 2011, http://www.facebook.com/#!/notes/sarah-palin/union-brothers-and-sisters-seize-opportunity-to-show-true-solidarity/10150093967618435, accessed January 2012.