Albert Shanker, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, said: “When school children start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing them.”
As Douglas County (Colorado) school board president, John Carson, recently said: “The union is just a small group of people who have figured out a great way to be paid to be political activists.”
The truth is not that teachers need strong unions, it’s the other way around: Unions need teachers and the dues money they provide. After all, how else would they be able to pay the generous salaries of their leaders, like American Federation of Teachers’ president, Randi Weingarten’s salary of $407,323 and her National Education counterpart, Dennis Van Roekel’s $362,644?
They also need the dues in order to maintain their political muscle in Washington and various state capitals. In 2012, the NEA spent $18.1 million on political contributions with 95 percent going to Democrats and another $5.9 million on lobbying.
Without these payments, it’s very possible that politicians might finally stop pretending that ideas like tenure and seniority pay make sense for our kids.
Unions know that their members don’t join because they want to; they join because they are forced to. Unions strive to elect union-friendly school board members who reward them with fat compensation packages that cripple school budgets and lock taxpayers into decades of ever-increasing property taxes.
Unions pump millions of dollars into the campaigns of union-friendly political candidates in an effort to guarantee influence over policies and budgets.
Federal and state spending on public education has increased nearly 1500 percent since 1970. The total cost of a K-12 public education student now stands at more than $151,000. Unfortunately, that investment hasn’t yielded much of a return. According to a study by the Cato Institute, math and reading scores at the end of high school are unchanged over the past 40 years, while science scores have suffered a slight decline.
Our students also continue to fall behind their peers in other nations. According to 2012 PISA test scores, American students rank 31st in math, 24th in science and 21st in reading globally. Our students are outperformed by those in Vietnam, Iceland, Estonia and Hungary to name a few.
It’s clear we haven’t been getting our money’s worth from our education system.
David L. Gallagher
Altoona