Caught in the Web: The Teacher Union Counterattack

A disturbingly successful ideological assault on teachers’ unions has united both parties. Those unions—well funded and full of smart, skilled people—should be leading a rousing cyber-counterattack. Alas, it would be an exaggeration to suggest they were doing this. But the National Education Association’s site does offer excellent talking points—and data—for the pro-union arguments that we all should be bringing into everyday conversation (because, sadly, everyone has neighbors, relatives, and PTA friends who hate teachers’ unions).

The best place to start is the NEA’s “Myths and Facts about Educator Pay” page (www.nea.org/home/12661.htm), which debunks the notion that teachers are well paid, compared to other professionals. In fact, the average national starting salary for teachers is just a little over $30,000/year, less than that of computer programmers or public accountants. Even sexism—though that’s undoubtedly part of the picture—can’t explain it: registered nurses, another mostly-female field, also make significantly higher starting salaries than teachers. The site also shows that the longer a person teaches, the wider the gap between her salary and the salaries of other professionals. The NEA’s site addresses the popular notion that teachers don’t deserve decent salaries because they have “all that time off.” Studies of teacher workdays show that they spend at least fifty hours a week on instructional duties, including preparation, grading, parent conferences, and so forth. As for their much-vaunted summer vacations, many teachers aren’t headed for the beach when the weather gets warm: they’re working second jobs to offset their low salaries, or taking classes to improve their teaching and advance their careers (often undertaking such professional development at their own expense). The NEA site also shows the starting salaries of other public-school workers (janitors, lunch supervisors, bus drivers); its data certainly refutes the idea that any money is being “wasted” on labor, or that anyone is making more than she deserves.

Another site with superb data to support a teacher counterattack is that of the Educator Compensation Institute (www.edcomp.org/default.aspx). The ECI—which is not funded by teachers’ unions—has posted a study showing that merit pay does not raise student test scores—a beloved plank of the union-busting education reform agenda. The ECI’s site also has a Teacher Turnover Cost Calculator (www.nctaf.org/resources/teacher_cost_calculator/teacher_turnover.html), which shows how to calculate the cost of your school’s or district’s teacher turnover rate—a number not often mentioned in these debates, despite the fact that recruiting, hiring, and training new teachers is expensive. The ECI provides a map of the nation, with links outlining compensation systems—existing and proposed—other than merit pay.

Leeches and Fat Cats?

The American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s other major teachers’ union, also has some fine resources on its site, including its Public Employees’ Compensation Survey (www.aft.org/pdfs/pubemps/pecompsurvey0910.pdf), an annual study of state government jobs, which shows that not only teachers but most public employees, contrary to popular myth, make less than those in the private sector. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a left-liberal think tank based in Washington, D.C., which has one of the best websites around (www.epi.org)—dedicated to debunking the current anti-labor nonsense masquerading as “common sense”—has also taken on the myth of the overpaid public sector worker (www.epi.org/analysis_and_opinion/entry/public_sector_workers_earn_less). College-educated workers in the public sector earn nearly $23,000/year less than their privatesector counterparts.

For catchier resources that are easier to use in a campaign, the best site (hands down) is Stop the Lies, a collaboration between the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees and Robert Greenwald’s Brave New Films. A five-minute video on the site features public sector workers like Lashon Wiggers, a laid-off child care director in California who, though she’s unemployed, is still concerned about the well-being of the children she looked after. The video also...