Education is quite the hot spot in the current war for the country, and here’s a rare occasion (these days) where California takes a leadership role.
Two news items help illustrate how things are moving in the world of public education, where so-called teacher unions have long held sway, especially politically, while student performance at every grade level has fallen ever downward.
One concerns teacher morale. Education Week’s annual State of Teaching survey provides a useful breakdown of morale by state, with California’s teachers landing just above the middle. But nearly half the teachers in the state say they plan to quit or retire in the next 10 years.
The other has to do with the public’s relationship with the union. The triumphalist exclamations on the Los Angeles teacher union’s website on a recent strike-avoiding settlement are clear: Whatever volumes of money taxpayers already throw at public education, they’re about to shovel a lot more.
Most disturbing is the context. The Los Angeles Unified School District operates on an annual budget of nearly $19 billion, but has structural operating problems and is shading toward a $1.5 billion annual deficit.
Add to that shrinking enrollment (on which much funding is based), an expanded bureaucracy bloated with federal funds during COVID but now being financed locally, a woke agenda and behavior that runs up legal costs (now over $1 billion) and voila, fiscal disaster.
And the test scores are just awful.
None of that is on the union’s website, which was fabulously successful in negotiating with a “management” that depends upon the union for re-election. Results: 24% raise for support staff over three years; teacher raises averaging 13.86% over two years; an 11.65% raise for administrators.
Whew. Layers and layers of new annual costs. That’s expensive.
But the union, called United Teachers of Los Angeles, is pretty pleased with what it sees as complete routs of area taxpayers over the years, then tells you how they do it:
“... thousands of UTLA members knocking on doors and talking to voters in the last two election cycles shored up a pro-educator school board majority… “
You don’t need a glossary to read the shorthand of “pro-educator” – that means “pro-union.” And a pro-union candidate can count on “thousands” of union members knocking on doors.
That’s how it came to pass that 26,745 union members voted in favor and only 2,080 against. Moolah moolah.
The school district rolled over for that on behalf of area taxpayers and said not a word about poor student performance. Doesn’t matter. This is all about political power, and the other side doesn’t have “thousands of … members knocking on doors.”
So, if the money and benefits are so good, why are teachers down? California’s teachers are the nation’s highest paid in both starting salary ($58,409, soon to be $77,000 in LA schools) and average salary ($101,084), according to the National Education Association.
Half the teachers in California would walk away from that? Plus generous pensions, ample time off, and top-level health benefits, which often boost total pay over $100,000 for most teachers?
Ed Week, a strong supporter of radical teacher unions, accidentally points to unions as the cause of poor morale.
The magazine said teachers wanted more mental health days, planning time, four-day weeks, smaller class sizes, and better-behaved students.
The first four are matters a union might tackle, and maybe UTLA or another one has and we just haven’t heard much about it. But the last one, student behavior, stands out.
Fifty years ago, teachers could count on administrators to help enforce a positive learning environment for students. They cannot now. Indeed, many campuses are hotspots of political activism. The union leadership pushes its politics far harder than classroom improvements.
For those teachers, somehow, politics has replaced math and language skills as the apple of the unions’ eyes. Their long-ago promise (the 1906 charter) to advance education and the teaching profession has morphed into, essentially, a nihilistic, anarchistic revolution against their own country.
Refocusing on children’s education means forcing educators back to emphasizing essential courses, and getting rid of them if they don’t.
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Retired newspaper editor Roger Ruvolo, a contributor to For Kids & Country, sends a thought from Harry Browne: The government cannot give anything to anyone without first taking it from someone else.
Click HERE to visit our new and improved official website on how to leave your union and for different education options!
