Teachers Unions and Truth: Rarely the Twain Meet

(Larry Sand/The Union Label) – Public school teachers have been told for years that they are only respected by the general public because Big Union fights for them and gets them that respect.

However, the opposite would appear to be true. America still loves its teachers…the good ones, that is. They don’t like the bad ones, the self-pitiers and the bullying unions that keep incompetent teachers on the job, ruining the lives of thousands of children every year. Nothing makes this point better than the recent situation in Wisconsin where certain members of the teaching community showed their true colors.

The unions also tell teachers that if not for them they’d be toiling away for minimum wage. But again, that’s wrong. And it’s not only teachers who buy this line – much of the general public does too.

Last week, Mike Petrilli, Executive V.P. of the Fordham Institute, became the latest to debunk the teacher salary myth. He compared teachers’ salaries in districts across the country which allow collective bargaining with those that don’t. He found that teachers who worked in districts where the union was not involved actually made more than those who were in collective bargaining districts. According to Petrilli, “Teachers in non-collective bargaining districts actually earn more than their union-protected peers–$64,500 on average versus $57,500.”

While admittedly his analysis was not methodologically sophisticated, it does jibe with other recent, more meticulous analyses.

Stanford Professor Michael Lovenheim, in an elaborately detailed 2009 study, The Effect of Teachers’ Unions on Education Production: Evidence from Union Election Certifications in Three Midwestern States came to a similar conclusion, saying, “I find unions have no effect on teacher pay.”

While Lovenheim’s study used data from just three states, Andrew Coulson, using national data, also came to the same conclusion. “Salary hikes, wage compression, and dramatic increases in the staff to student ratio have all undeniably occurred, but they have occurred in both unionized and nonunionized public school districts.”

The teachers unions also tell us that seniority is a fair way to make staffing decisions. They tell us that we need to hold on to arcane and harmful tenure laws which keep the worst rabble on the planet working with our children. They tell us that their budget busting pensions should not be blamed for the fiscal nightmare that many cities, counties and states find themselves in.

Okay, regarding the latter, it’s not all their fault. Other public employee unions share in the blame for that.

Recently at an international education conference, president of the National Education Association Dennis Van Roekel said, “It’s obvious to the people here that high-performing countries without exception have strong unions. You have to have strong collaboration with whoever is implementing the policies.”

When asked if lower performing countries have collective bargaining, Van Roekel said he didn’t know.

Indeed, the teachers unions don’t know very much and what they do “know” is wrong.

(Larry Sand began has taught elementary school as well as English, math, history and ESL in the Los Angeles Unified School District, where he also served as a Title 1 Coordinator. Retired in 2009, he is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network (CTEN) – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues.)