I & I Editorial BoardIf you want evidence that teachers’ unions are nothing more than taxpayer-funded left-wing rackets, look no further than the evidence dug up by the Progressive Policy Institute — a group founded by centrist Democrats.
The stronger the union presence in a state, the worse students do on literacy instruction.
It’s no secret that, despite the fact that taxpayers fork over roughly $1 trillion every year to finance public K-12 schools, math and reading scores are in decline.
“Children have lost so much ground, they not only know less than their counterparts did a decade ago; older children know as little as they have this century,” notes the PPI’s Rachel Canter. A new Gallup poll finds that just 32% of adults are “completely” or “somewhat” satisfied with the U.S. school system, down from 51% in 2019.
But that broad brush obscures important differences. Namely, that some states are doing much better than others. And what do these states have in common? Teachers’ unions are weaker.
“When my colleagues and I compared the Fordham teachers’ union strength ranking to ExcelinEd’s early literacy tracker, we found a strong, negative correlation between the two — the more powerful the unions, the fewer literacy policy principles the state had adopted,” Canter wrote in the Wall Street Journal. (See the chart at right.)
Sure, there are some outliers, but even those prove the point that teachers’ unions are a racket. As Canter notes, needed reforms in New Mexico, Maryland and Massachusetts came “despite pushback from their unions.”
The Massachusetts literacy reform bill requiring “evidence-based literacy instruction” in public schools has been described as “the greatest legislative loss for the teachers’ union in a decade.”
It’s not as though there isn’t evidence that these reforms work. Mississippi embarked on a comprehensive, science-based literacy effort more than a decade ago, and saw its students go from the bottom of the barrel nationwide to at or near the top 10 in reading and math.
So let’s see if we have this right. Each year, teachers’ unions collect more than $700 million in dues, all paid by taxpayers, and promise to “champion high-quality public education” and “fulfill the purpose of public education,” according to the mission statements of the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association.
Yet they wage wars against reforms that they know will improve education outcomes. Not just literacy programs, but merit pay, school choice, and countless other common-sense reforms.
So, what are these unions doing with all that money they collect if not fighting to fulfill their stated missions?
Turns out, they are far more interested in getting Democrats elected and pushing far-left causes.
Earlier this year, a report from Defending Education found that national teachers’ unions “have directed roughly $669 million toward left-wing political groups, advocacy organizations and campaigns since 2015,” a number that tops $1 billion when you count state and local affiliates.
This includes more than $2.4 million to the far-left Center for American Progress, $7 million to the Democratic Governors Association, nearly $26 million to the Democrats’ House Majority PAC and $32 million to the Senate Majority PAC. And, maybe because they figure it will cut down on class sizes, more than $400,000 to pro-abortion groups.
In 2024, the NEA and AFT gave more than $6 million to Democrats and less than $60,000 to Republicans.
Add it all up, and you have organizations that extort money from taxpayers to finance a protection racket for themselves, their Democratic patrons, and various far-left causes (which few taxpayers would support), while engaging in fraud by pretending to be looking out for the interests of public-school students.
We’re not lawyers, but we’d say that classifies as a criminal racket under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
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