Commentary and Criticism about the National Education Association
We have absolutely no affiliation with the National Education Association and do not represent its views in any way, shape or form.
“I am so proud of West Virginia educators and the West Virginia Education Association … They have stood in solidarity and made their voices heard to demand recognition of their professionalism and dignity …”
Lily Eskelsen Garcia, NEA President “We decided to wildcat when the union leaders told us to go back to work. I said, ‘Hell no, I’m not going back.’ I thought others would trust the union. When the people said, ‘We’re going to stay out,’ it was so exciting …” West Virginia Teacher in response to her union’s order to go back to work SOLIDARITY? NOT SO MUCH ... The NEA President, Lily Eskelsen Garcia, claimed that unions and teachers in West Virginia “stood in solidarity,” while a teacher defiantly stated “Hell no” when instructed by her union to return to work. Solidarity? Sound more like strife if you ask me. I’ll tell you this. If "solidarity" means that union members actually defy their leaders, do you want to be around when unions and their members REALLY disagree on something? That would probably be a really ugly scene ... But, back to the topic at hand, how can this be possible? How is it possible that the perspectives of individuals who should be in complete agreement be so diametrically opposed when their benefits are on the line? A HIDDEN CONFLICT OF INTEREST The following short quote from the NEA document, Unions and Collective Bargaining: Setting the Record Straight, will point you to the answer. “The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that … union representation … supports important governmental interests such as promoting labor peace and stability.” And there you have it. The reason why “union representation,” aka collective bargaining, is allowed in the first place is because it “supports … labor peace and stability” which is an “important governmental interest.” If you think about it, this is kind of a conflict of interest. While union officials are negotiating for teacher benefits, they are, at the same time, part of a process which must ensure “labor peace and stability.” AN ACTUAL EXAMPLE FROM MY EXPERIENCE I can give a actual example of this during contract negotiation years in my district. After the union and the board of education come to an agreement on a new contract, union leaders crank up the propaganda machine to make sure that its members vote “yes.” We hear about how voting “no” will lead to “starting from square one.” Then we might be enticed with how much back pay is due us – along with the veiled threat that if the contract is not accepted, back pay may be totally eliminated the next time around. Finally, we are only given 24 hours within which to vote. This stymies any attempt to analyze and discuss the details of the contract with fellow teachers. In other words, we get the hard sell. And If you thought that the board of education would rather not have a unionized work force, you would be mistaken. Governments like unions because, as the NEA document indicates, it insures “labor peace and stability.” They know that union leaders will keep their members in line. BACK TO “SOLIDARITY” But to return to my original point, if you want to comprehend why that West Virginia educator and her colleagues went “wildcat” when their union demanded otherwise, you should have a clearer picture now. Here are some other quotes from the World Socialist Web Site article which show that union leaders are fulfilling their “labor peace and stability” interest at the possible expense of members:
Unfortunately, most teachers are completely in the dark about what goes on behind the scenes when the doors are closed during negotiations. They think that their union is 100% in support of teachers. The reality is quite different.
0 Comments
“The overdue national attention on the erosion of teacher salaries across the nation couldn’t come at a more urgent time … the teacher pay penalty – the percent by which public school educators are paid less than comparable workers – has reached an all-time high.”
Tim Walker, NEA Writer “Interesting. When you adjust the teacher ‘pay penalty’ to account for the fact that teachers only work 9 months a year while comparable workers put in a full 12 months, it vanishes completely.” Jonathan Smith, Anti-NEA Writer If you believe the NEA, the teacher “pay penalty” has reached a record high. That is what Tim Walker reports in his latest article at NEA Today: Teacher Pay Gap Reaches a Record High But after reading the study at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) website referenced in Walker’s article, I was confused about the reality of this so-called “penalty.” APPLES TO ORANGES? (9 months or 12 months?) According to the study, here are the weekly wages for comparison purposes:
By this metric, teachers are making $340 fewer dollars per week – a serious gap, indeed. But are we comparing apples to apples here? In its study, EPI notes that teachers work 9 months. “… teachers are typically contracted to work only a nine-month year.” Here is where it gets tricky. Is the EPI saying that teachers only make $1,137/week for 9 months as per contract, or are they assuming that they make $1,137/week for 12 months? The confusion arises because the authors of the EPI study specifically decided to use weekly wages rather than annual salary. They claim that there were good reasons for doing this: “… we elect to use weekly wages to avoid measurement issues that arise in many studies of teacher pay that use annual wages or hourly wages. Annual earnings of teachers cannot be directly compared with annual earnings of non-teachers, given that teachers are typically contracted to work only a nine-month year.” Fair enough, but what is not clear is whether an allowance was made for the fact that teachers work three fewer months than Other Comparable Workers. APPLES TO APPLES (Compare annualized figures) Which is why I decided to see what the numbers looked like after adjusting for this fact. When you annualize the weekly teacher wages, you find that the average salary of an educator is $59,124.
If you annualize the weekly wages for OCW, the total is $76,752.
Was my decision to annualize the weekly wages of teachers legitimate? Well, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the 2017 average teacher salary in the United States was $58,780. Because my calculation for annual salary and the actual average are so close, I think so. This means that the EPI was NOT comparing apples to apples. In fact, their use of weekly wages appears to have distorted the situation. ADJUSTING FOR THE 9-MONTH TEACHER YEAR So, on an annualized basis, teachers make $17,628 less than Other Comparable Workers.
But now you have to adjust for the fact that teachers are contracted for 9 months while OCW put in a full 12 months. I determined this adjustment as follows:
This is how much extra money those three months (12 weeks) are worth for the OCW. When you subtract this amount from their annual total, you now have a figure that can be properly compared to a 9-month teacher salary Here is my final figure: $59,028 ($76,752 - $17,724). WAIT, TEACHERS MAKE MORE??? Interesting … teachers actually make more money when you adjust correctly.
Something to think about at the very least. Unfortunately, Tim Walker and the NEA seem to have blindly accepted the conclusions of the EPI study. Sadly, more than likely, so will many teachers who read the article. “Vouchers Defund Public Schools … Period”
NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia “Well, what about vouchers for PUBLIC schools, Ms. Garcia?” Jonathan Smith, Anti-NEA Blog Writer VOUCHERS FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS ACTUALLY EXIST … Teachers unions do not support vouchers for private schools. Take the NEA, for example: “NEA opposes the use of tax dollars to provide vouchers for private education for all students …” No surprise there, but what about the idea of vouchers for PUBLIC schools? “Vouchers for public schools,” you ask, “what the heck is that?” Its called Inter-District School Choice and it is currently being practiced in New Jersey and Massachusetts (and possibly other states). What exactly is it? Here is a description from the NJ DOE website:
… AND THEY SURE ARE POPULAR I first touched on this topic earlier this month in a blog post entitled: That post was about a proposed NJ Constitutional amendment which would allocate education money per pupil rather than per district. That way, parents could spend that allocated money to send their child to any school in the state. As it turns out, that amendment (ASSEMBLY CONCURRENT RESOLUTION No. 204) didn’t go anywhere. But I thought that this was such a great idea, that I started doing more research on the topic. I found out that New Jersey actually already has a modified version of this very idea, and it has been operating since 1999. While the original program was temporary, the idea was so popular that NJ created a permanent program in 2010. In fact, by 2013 the program was so popular that it was getting a bit too expensive:
Eventually the program was capped out. School choice interest strong, but state program still capped “Despite ongoing and even growing interest statewide, there are no plans to expand the Interdistrict Public School Choice Program to accommodate them.” In its most current form (the 2018-2019 school year) there are 125 districts participating. You can find the entire list at the NJ State Department of Education website. PUBLIC SCHOOL VOUCHERS – Apparently a teacher union started it. The popularity of the Interdistrict Public School Choice Program (IPSCP) is strong proof that parents want choice when it comes to the education of their children. They want options, and, at least in New Jersey and Massachusetts, they have some. Incidentally, this program started after the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) successfully bargained with the state to allow its member's children attend the schools where their parents taught (even if they didn’t live in the district). “The IPSCP was born from perceived inequities between children of teachers and children of non-teachers … In other words, children of N.J. public school teachers can choose to attend the district employing their parents, tuition-free … But some officials worried that this perk of school choice discriminated against children whose parents didn’t happen to be teachers.” Now I understand why I can’t find any statement from the NJEA or NEA about the IPSCP program. They can’t criticize it because it was a teacher union that started it. But I still wonder if they regret bargaining for this perk. Yes, they gained because their children benefited from the ability to attend their district schools. But they also seem to have let the public voucher genie out of the bottle in a certain sense. NEA writer Tim Walker is at it again. When it comes to school privatization, he can’t seem to help himself.
I wrote several blog posts about his ‘stretching-of-the-truth’ last year when he discussed vouchers and charter schools. You can read them at the links below if you are interested. By the way, Mr. Walker is paid big bucks for writing this kind of garbage, and your union dues are paying for it if you are a member of the NEA. According to UnionFacts.com, his salary and benefits in 2017 totaled $116,449 while the average teacher salary was only $58.950. Just saying.... RELYING ON A BIASED REPORT = PROPAGANDA His latest article, “Fewer and Fewer States Escaping School’s Privatization Reach,” was published on August 17, 2018. The point of his article is that privatization of education is bad because:
The only problem is that he bases his entire argument on a report … “… released by the Network for Public Education and the Schott Foundation titled “Grading the States: A Report Card on the Nation’s Commitment to Public Schools.” Why is this a problem? Well, first consider the fact that this report was released by the Network for Public Education. If you think this is some non-partisan think-tank, you would be very wrong. From its website: “The Network for Public Education was founded in 2013 by Diane Ravitch and Anthony Cody. We are an advocacy group whose mission is to preserve, promote, improve and strengthen public schools for both current and future generations of students.” Can you imagine that there might be a slight bias in that organization, given that it is a network that is advocating to “strengthen public schools?” It gets worse - consider the Schott Foundation. At first you might think that the name sounds pretty legit, right? What Mr. Walker doesn’t tell you is that the full title of this organization is the Schott Foundation for Public Education whose mission is … “To develop and strengthen a broad-based and representative movement to achieve fully resourced, quality PreK-12 public education.” So, Walker relies on a study put out by two organizations that outright claim that their goal is to support public education. Yeah, we can trust that – sure … THE NEA’S LIBERAL ECHO CHAMBER As long as teachers keep an open mind, I guess its not a problem that the NEA publishes a one-sided article like this one. The problem is that too many teachers live in a liberal echo chamber and think that everything that the NEA says is the Gospel Truth. I have written about this NEA liberal echo chamber before. If you are reading this blog post and are like-minded, you are probably already aware of it. But if you want some more information about it, you can read two of my older posts which talk about it:
Consider this blog post part of my continuing series on two recurring topics:
Stay tuned for more because I am sure that the National Education Association will deliver. “Now is the time for us to become more active and persuade our co-workers who are not yet NEA members that everything we stand for remains at risk … the many attacks on unions and collective bargaining across the country tell us we can never take our rights for granted.”
NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia on the importance of collective bargaining COLLECTIVE BARGAINING IS INHERENTLY UNFAIR If someone does a better job at something, shouldn’t she be compensated accordingly? This was the question that came to mind after I read that Mandy Manning had been chosen 2018 National Teacher of the Year. Here is what NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia had to say about this exceptional woman: “Mandy is a shining example of how teachers transform the lives of their students every day, engaging them and creating enthusiasm for learning … she takes the time to connect with all of them one-on-one to find out who they are and discover their passions. Mandy sees no barriers—only bridges. She believes in her students, and it shows in the growing confidence they have in themselves.” I think most would agree that people who work harder and accomplish more should be paid more than those who do and accomplish less. And yet, unions ignore this obvious fairness issue when they champion collective bargaining as the answer to teacher compensation in schools. Collective bargaining results in a salary guide where teachers are compensated, not by how well they do their jobs, but by how long they have been teaching in a school district. So, if you put in more time, you will get paid more – it doesn’t matter how well you teach your students. How is that fair? COMPENSATION FOR THE 2018 TEACHER OF THE YEAR Consider Mandy Manning, the 2018 National Teacher of the Year, who works in the Spokane, Washington school district. She is compensated based on her 18 years of service as well as her two master’s degrees (approximately 60 credits) “Manning has taught for the past 18 years. Manning earned a Bachelor of Arts from Eastern Washington University, a Master of Arts from West Texas A & M University, and a Master of Fine Arts from Northwest Institute of Literary Arts.” Using the current salary guide, my estimate is that she earned $65,900 for the 2017-18 school year (MA+45) when she was named Teacher of the Year. COMPENSATION COMPARISON – Manning vs. Brocklebank Specifically, Ms. Manning works at Ferris High School in Spokane. Now, I don’t personally know any of the teachers at that school, but I turned to RateMyTeachers.com to find other teachers at that school who have been rated by students. I wanted to see if I could find another teacher that I could compare to Manning to support my contention that collective bargaining may, indeed, allow compensation without merit. It didn’t take too long. A Ms. Ruth Brocklebank had been rated 7 times on this website for a total teacher score of 1.98 out of 5. Here is what kids had to say about her:
Can we all agree that she is probably not a really good teacher? Well, guess how much she earned in 2011-12? $62,955 Ms. Manning, on the other hand, only made $52,788 that school year. You can check this website to find all of the teacher salaries in Spokane, WA. Think about that. Assuming that Manning was just as exceptional a teacher in 2010-11 as in the year she won National Teacher of the Year, she made more than $10,000 less than that poorly rated teacher Ms. Brocklebank. How fair is that? MEDIOCRE TEACHERS SUPPORT COLLECTIVE BARGAINING FOR GOOD REASON Is Ms. Brocklebank an outlier? Perhaps. Many of the other teachers listed on Rate My Teacher certainly had decent reviews. But the point should still be clear: When teacher unions collectively bargain to establish a pay scale, they have no way of rewarding exceptional teachers. Worse, the really bad and mediocre teachers get compensation way above what they deserve. Is it any wonder that most teachers support collective bargaining? The majority of teachers can just show up and do a decent job and know that they will receive a paycheck every couple of weeks. Why on earth would they want to be forced to prove themselves and then have to personally appear before the Board of Education and have to negotiate a salary based on the job they actually did. This would mean having to show evidence of all of the exceptional and innovative things that they prepared for their students during the course of the year and what they planned to do for the next year. It is much easier to just let the union bargain for a decent salary and be assured that each year they will make more money no matter what. PUBLIC EDUCATION’S INSULATION FROM THE MARKET In the free market for salaries, excellence on the job is rewarded by higher compensation. So, you have to ask yourself, why is it that teachers don’t get paid more? Is it possible that because public education (by its very nature) is insulated from the free market, salaries are artificially held down? If so, it’s no surprise that unions have stepped in to this artificial situation and taken over the salary determination process by necessity. But a skeptic of my point of view might rightly ask: “If the private sector and the free market do such a great job, then why do private teachers get paid so much less than public teachers?” First, there is no doubt that private teachers make less. But this could very well be the result of monopoly public education short-circuiting a true market-determined salary. Without eliminating public education, what would teacher compensation look like if it were managed by the free market? As I wrote in my last blog post, if school funding was distributed per student rather than per district, parents could then decide to send their children to whatever public school that they wanted using that allocated money. This would incentivize schools to do better to attract more students/money. As more money flowed towards better schools with better teachers, these schools could then afford to hire teachers at higher salaries. Salary guides where teachers get paid for years served would go by the wayside and teachers could negotiate on their own based on their personal merits. Something to consider if you think that teachers are not fairly compensated in the United States today. |
Looking to start a website or blog?
Consider our hosting company - Domain.com. Click below for information. Archives
October 2018
AuthorJonathan Smith - A New Jersey Public School Teacher who disagrees with the National Education Association. |