Rank-and-file teachers speak truth to prog power
“To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.” – Thomas Jefferson
Since my days as a columnist for the Seattle Times, I’ve profiled courageous public school educators who have challenged the compulsory dues racket of their teachers’ unions. Here’s my 1999 column on how public school teachers in Washington state challenged their union over their political dues power grab. Here are your rights as a union worker. Here is a backgrounder on the permissible use of forced dues. As I wrote on Labor Day last year, free speech not only means the freedom to voice your political views, but also the freedom from being forced to pay for someone else’s. U.S. Supreme Court precedent established by the D.C.-based National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation guarantees the right to full financial disclosure from a union and a right to challenge the figures in court if they disagree.
On Sean Hannity’s Fox News television show last night, one of those brave teachers from the state of Ohio exposed how her union siphoned off her dues ($700 a year) to attack her husband, a GOP state legislative candidate whom the left-wing Ohio Education Association opposed:
You’ll recall that I shared Thompson’s plight last October:
I’m Jade Thompson and my husband, Andy Thompson, is running for the Ohio House of Representatives. I am a teacher at Marietta High School. Imagine my chagrin when my friends and colleagues began showing me the awful attack ads against my husband which they had received in the mail. Now imagine my dismay when I saw that those defamatory mailers were paid for by the Ohio Education Association – my teachers’ union. In effect, they are using my union dues to attack my husband! This is a new low, even for the OEA.
There was a recent letter to the editor about AEP withdrawing its support from the Ohio Chamber of Commerce because the chamber made a political endorsement. The writer found it “inappropriate and shameful” for that organization to ignore its members. I wonder if she would say the same for the OEA, an organization that endorses the most liberal candidates in the field and which month after month promotes progressive causes and programs in its member newsletter. Are Ohio’s teachers that unanimously liberal or does our union simply not represent our views at all? If teachers are representative of the larger voting public then you would expect that our political views would be just as diverse.
Teachers should be free to spend their hard-earned dollars to contribute to the candidates and causes they actually support. The OEA and its parent organization, the NEA, refuse to acquiesce because they have an obvious agenda. After all, as the general counsel for the NEA once said in federal court, “if you take away payroll deduction, you won’t collect a penny from these people, and it has nothing to do with voluntary or involuntary. I think it has to do with the nature of the beast, and the beasts who are our teachers … (They) simply don’t come up with the money regardless of the purpose.” Teachers, this is what your union thinks of you.
Jade Thompson is not alone. Across the country, there are thousands and thousands of teachers disgusted with the monopoly power-tripping of public employee unions whose politics they abhor.
Reader and teacher Mike Bennett of California writes:
Dear Michelle,
I am a public school teacher for the Yucaipa/Calimesa School District in Southern California.
Since November of 2008 I have been trying to get some answers from the California Teachers Association as to how my dues are spent and why they continue to support the Democratic Party and paganistic liberal causes and propositions. I have been promised both responses from the President and Controller of the CTA yet have never received any!
I have continued to complain to my local union president and she keeps forwarding my complaints to the CTA. I have e-mailed the CTA asking what are the salaries of the employees of the CTA?
Again I get no response.
I have just sent a letter of complaint to the state controller (endorsed by the CTA), asking him to investigate the CTA. I don’t know if I will get much help from him either.
I wanted you to know that there are many teachers who do not want their money funneled from their check to support causes they are diametrically opposed to.
Reader and teacher Sondra Barnes shared her letter to Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker:
Dear Gov. Walker:
I am so sorry you are getting pounded by those teachers, students and unions. As a teacher in California, I got into trouble with the unions myself when I only asked a simple question.
I repeatedly tell everybody I know that they are crazy to give any more money to education/teachers/teacher’s unions. Here in Los Angeles, all we do is throw money at education and here we are at the bottom in the country. We only graduate 40% of our high school students and they can’t even read, do not know history or math, and more importantly cannot do any critical thinking.
What I see in the Los Angeles classrooms is pretty much just ideological brainwashing by a huge majority of their teachers– and yes, teaching their students to protest and to march. In my humble opinion, this is child abuse.
Please stand strong and do not let these union thugs beat you down. So many of us stand behind you.
Sondra Barnes, Van Nuys, CA
From the Milwaukee Sentinel-Journal, a telling chart on the Wisconsin Education Association Council’s political priorities and clout:
And this:
On top of being one of the state’s most dominant political forces, with an ability to influence legislation and elections, Wisconsin’s teachers unions have a direct effect on teacher quality through the role they play in local contract negotiations and representation of teachers targeted for improvement or dismissal.
By adhering to pay schedules that fail to distinguish between low- and high-performing teachers, protecting ineffective teachers from dismissal and fighting for work rules that provide more benefits for their members than for children, teachers unions stand in the way of improving the profession, critics argue.
…According to figures from the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, WEAC’s political action committee has spent more than $9 million in unlimited independent expenditures on behalf of political candidates between 1998 and 2008, with only $17,136 of that amount spent to help a single Republican candidate – one who was challenging a GOP Assembly incumbent.
In the November elections, the WEAC political action committee spent nearly $1.5 million to help Democrats in just four state Senate races, only to see three of them lose.
Higher-ed employee Jason Hart exposes where Ohio teachers’ dues money goes:
Who but a union would insist merit pay is the wrong way to encourage hard work and reward the best educators? That anyone capable of enduring several years as a teacher should have a job for life, with longevity raises on top? That charter schools and vouchers should never be tried? As with AFSCME Council 8 & Local 11, the OEA stands between Ohioans and the services our tax dollars fund.
Exciting OEA Facts, Fiscal 2009* $22,771,159 paid to union officers and staff — equal to $176.71 per member
* 143 union employees paid more than $70,000
* 117 union employees paid more than $100,000
* 12 union employees paid more than $150,000
* Executive Director Larry Wicks paid $208,469
* Executive Director Dennis Reardon paid $202,997
* $8,151,341 spent on benefits — less than 36% of the amount disbursed to union officers and staff
* $25,000 given to Policy Matters Ohio, a far-left Cleveland think-tank (09/23/2008)
* $10,000 sent to Colorado education union (10/17/2008)
* $10,000 sent to Oregon education union (10/27/2008)The OEA also found $1,614,690 in the couch cushions to donate to Democrat campaigns in the 2010 cycle, according to records from the Secretary of State.
It comes to this: should we buy the OEA’s sales pitch about outsized union influence being the route to effective education? Or should we resist demands to further increase taxes, disassemble the union machine, and allow teachers, parents, and school districts to make their own decisions? This is what an attorney might call a leading question.
More from Jason on Ohio’s Senate Bill 5 here.
***
I’ve linked it before, but it’s well worth revisiting Mike Antonucci’s investigation of where $13 million in NEA dues go:
An Education Intelligence Agency analysis of NEA’s financial disclosure report for the 2009-10 fiscal year reveals the national union contributed more than $13 million to a wide variety of advocacy groups and charities. The total was about half the amount disbursed in the previous year, though more than in 2007-08.
The expenditures fall into broad categories of community outreach grants, charitable contributions, and payments for services rendered. In this list, EIA has deliberately omitted spending such as media buys, or payments to pollsters or consultants that have no obvious ideological component. The grants range from $2.125 million to a California ballot initiative campaign, down to smaller grants to organizations such as People for the American Way, Media Matters and Netroots Nation.
Here is an alphabetic list of the 130 recipients of NEA’s contributions, with relevant web links. All of these were paid for with members’ dues money (the union’s federal PAC is a separate entity funded through voluntary means):
AFL-CIO – $150,000
AFSCME – $90,000
Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity – $33,000
America Votes – $300,000
American Constitution Society – $15,000
American Federation of Teachers – $28,365
Arizona State University Office for Research & Sponsored Projects Administration – $325,000
Asian American Justice Center – $7,500
Asian & Pacific Islander American Scholarship Fund – $5,000
Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies – $5,000
Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance – $5,000
Baptist Center for Ethics – $20,000
Campaign for America’s Future – $15,000
Campaign for College Affordability – $25,000
Center for Economic Organizing – $13,200
Center for Independent Media – $5,000
Center for Law and Education – $25,000
Center for Tax and Budget Accountability – $60,000
Center for Teaching Quality – $230,767
Center for U.S. Global Leadership – $10,000
Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association – $50,000
Children’s Defense Fund – $5,000
Citizens United for Maine’s Future – $25,000
Citizens Who Support Maine’s Public Schools – $250,000
Coalition for Our Communities – $625,000
Coloradans for Responsible Reform – $400,000
Colorado Deserves Better -$50,000
Committee for Education Funding – $25,000
Committee on States – $6,500
Communities for Quality Education – $1 million
Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, Inc. – $8,800
Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute – $50,000
Council of Chief State School Officers – $50,000
Council of State Governments – $34,500
Democracy Alliance – $85,000
Economic Policy Institute – $250,000
Education Commission of the States – $50,000
Education Law Center – $5,000
Educational Policy Institute – $5,000
Educator Compensation Institute – $25,000
Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate – $200,000
Emerge America – $5,000
Employee Benefit Research Institute – $7,500
Everybody Wins DC – $8,000
Excelencia in Education – $47,400
FairDistrictsFlorida.org – $250,000
FairTest – $25,000
Gay and Lesbian Leadership Institute – $10,000
Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network – $5,000
Global Institute for Language and Literacy Development – $10,000
Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice – $250,000
Harvard Labor and Worklife Program – $5,000
Health Care for America Now! – $450,000
HEROS, Inc. – $202,835
HOPE (Yes on SQ 744) – $1,758,000
Human Rights Campaign – $15,000
Jobs with Justice – $15,000
Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy – $12,230
KnowledgeWorks Foundation – $75,000
Labor-Religion Coalition of New York State – $5,000
Leadership Conference on Civil Rights – $15,000
Learning First Alliance – $91,199
Lincoln Center Institute – $50,000
Mana – $25,000
MediaMatters – $100,000
Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund – $25,000
Midwest Academy – $5,000
Missourians for Early Vote – $41,000
NAACP – $5,000
National Action Network – $10,000
National Association for the Education and Advancement of Cambodian, Laotian, and Vietnamese Americans – $5,000
National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Education Fund – $12,500
National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification – $5,000
National Coalition of ESEA Title I Parents – $5,000
National Coalition on Black Civic Participation – $15,000
National Conference of State Legislatures – $64,043
National Congress of American Indians – $10,000
National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education – $381,576
National Council of La Raza – $26,500
National Forum on Information Literacy – $5,000
National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts – $10,000
National Indian Education Association – $50,000
National Latino Children’s Institute – $15,000
National Popular Vote – $5,000
National Public Pension Coalition – $90,375
National Staff Development Council – $25,000
National Urban League – $33,700
National Women’s Law Center – $10,000
Netroots Nation – $15,000
New Democratic Network – $25,000
New Organizing Institute – $65,000
New Teacher Center – $325,000
No on 1033 – $328,600
Organizations Concerned About Rural Education – $5,000
Organization of Chinese Americans – $5,000
Partnership for 21st Century Skills – $61,350
People for the American Way – $64,538
Plan!t Now – $25,000
Progress Now – $60,000
Progress Ohio – $50,000
Project New West – $185,000
Protect Colorado’s Communities – $25,000
Rainbow PUSH Coalition – $5,000
Rebuild America’s Schools – $10,000
Republican Main Street Partnership – $25,000
Ripon Society – $10,000
Robert Russa Moton Museum – $50,000
Roosevelt Institute – $5,000
San Diego Public Library Foundation – $5,000
Stop the Gag Law – $350,000
Task Force Foundation – $5,000
Trans Afro Group of Companies – $7,600
Tribal Education Departments National Assembly – $5,000
United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce – $30,000
U.S. Action – $70,000
U.S. Global Leadership Coalition – $35,000
U.S. Hispanic Leadership Institute – $26,447
Vote Yes for Oregon – $200,000
Voter Activation Network – $9,500
WAND Education Fund – $15,000
Washington, DC Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation – $166,666
Washington Families Standing Together – $15,000
Wellesley Centers for Women – $6,151
Wellstone Action! – $47,532
Will Steger Foundation – $15,000
Win Minnesota Political Action Fund – $50,000
Women’s Campaign Forum – $10,000
Yes on 100 – $50,000
Yes on 24 – The Tax Fairness Act – $2,125,000
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“Wisconsin state senators who miss two or more session days will no longer get paid through direct deposit. They’ll have to pick up their checks in person on the Senate floor during a session.”
Somewhere a cat has been skinned.
For anyone looking for an alternative there are many fine Lutheran parochial K-8 schools out there run by local parishes. And good Lutheran high schools.
You know Omaha I may just do that, but as a teacher or assistant. I was just out checking already Bend, Oregon and looked at two private high school I will contact about volunteering. I want to help those families who care enough to pay their children’s tuition. I use to teach, mostly in Catholic schools and now that I am retiring from my second career, I see it as a good way to give something back.
Well, its looking like Daniels of Indiana caved when the Dems threatened to walk out. Chalk another “contender” of that presidential list. I was thinking. Maybe some Republican minorities in other states can do the same thing. It can become a trend. We will call it the cowards way out.
Thanks for sharing these letters Michelle, it is easy to lump all teachers into one big screaming collective.
So many of them would love to simply teach, without all of the politikking on the side…
Yes. I for one am sick of meddling & incompetence.
Let me teach, please.
Get rid of the PC BS, lazy a-holes, worthless managers, & let me teach.
But we also need to let kids fail.
No free passes.
I know.
I’m dreaming.
Lutheran parochial schools are America’s best kept secret.
I used to b & whine about having to attend CDS (Christian Day School) K-8 in the sixties, but had the chance to thank mama before she went to heaven. She, of course, was right.
The benefits will last eternally.
Thank God mama was right.
I am
proudBlessed to be a Sacramental Lutheran.Thank you, Michelle, for providing the hard facts to cram down the throats of liberals who believe we are upset ONLY with teachers. No, it is their unions – the unions that protect the bad apples and influence elections contrary to the will of the taxpayers.
Private and parochial schools are nicer and safer, but one reason for that, which teachers’ union reps never fail to bring up, is that these schools can bounce disruptive kids.
This is the Hell of inner-city schools. One determinedly disruptive kid can control the classroom and make sure nothing gets done.
If we could solve this problem, it would help kids and teachers. Is bringing back the rod the answer? But that’s politically impossible, isn’t it?
Me like.
Play hard ball with these usurpers of Democracy.
And, for future reference, if we ever find ourselves in the minority facing unfair legislation, I offer my home to Republicans who want to hide out for a week or two. Turnabout is fair play, Democrats.
This is for everyone but RedDog should like part of this.I’m retired from the USCG,Semper Paratus to the “Coasties”.I’m married to a Jamaican lady.We have three kids.Live in a small coastal town in Jamaica.I have a business with a partner in the U S.Our three kids all go to advanced public schools,not classes,schools.They wear uniforms to school.The teachers are not union.I rate all my kid’s teachers they have or have had as good,very good,or excellent.Most being very good.
My daughter was telling me that one of the “children”,that’s how she said it,in her Phys Ed class forgot her P E clothes and the teacher made her stand outside in the sun for two hours.My daughter said “that’s harsh”,but that’s the way it is here.
The teachers are paid very little here but their concern for the students isn’t affected by the pay they receive
There’s a private school in a town north of me, Catholic, & they can cherry pick who comes in.
However, any parent shelling out their own cash will demand results, not just of the teachers but their KIDS.
Any kid not adhering to the rules, any parent making sure their kids are not adhering to the rules-that kid should not be given the opportunity to learn til they can pull their head out of their a$$.
Simple as that.
And if you can’t get your little Johnny to behave himself, then there’s always reform school.
Do you have a guest house? Maybe I’ll relocate my family so my 2 kids can get a quality education. Oh, and there is that coastal climate for the parents.
Dear Badger40,
Say what?
“Simple as that. And if you can’t get your little Johnny to behave himself, then there’s always reform school.”
C’mon, don’t you read the news? The DC voucher plan Obama killed for his union buds, what was that about?
Imagine a 3rd grade class in DC. One kid who never gets attention at home rules the classroom. “Look at me,” he means, whenever the teacher is not directly addressing him, “LOOK AT ME!”
Send him to the principal? She sends him back. The law says every kid must be there while the teacher is “teaching”.
Well-behaved kids get almost no attention from the teacher because the badly-behaved are stealing it all.
Illegal to expel, illegal to send out for long, illegal to punish corporally.
Reform School’s for little murderers, Badger!
Propose a real solution.
I love teachers, it is the public unions I want to BUST. Without the unions the bad teacher problem will work it’s self out.
“Once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader — the barbarians enter Rome.”
~Robert A. Heinlein~
Which Heinlein book is that from, Splinter?
And President Jefferson was a democrat. Hmmm. The liberals probably don’t teach that in schools anymore.
Andy Jackson was the first Dem prez, TooMuchTime. I think HIS most famous quote was “To the victor go the spoils.”
Hillary put that a different way during Travelgate “We have to get our people in the slots!”
I have one relative that is a teacher who constantly screams about the union. Loves the high school students she teaches – cannot tout often enough her conservatives values – yet was one of the first on a picket line when the state asked them to take just a little bitty cut in pay. Oh, she also has never seen a school bond issue she wouldn’t vote for, regardless of how wasteful or redundant it was/is. IMHO, it’s called riding the sawhorse on the sharp end.
My favorite Jefferson quote:
Thomas Jefferson-1816
This is what our country was founded on. Completely opposite from marxism.
Fundamental transformation.
Dear Virginia Patriot,
A nice quote, but didn’t Jefferson say lots of things? He was a compulsive letter writer, and I’ll bet he’d be commenting here on Michelle’s blog if he were alive today!
So it’s a little like quoting scripture – somebody else can come along and quote something that seems semantically the opposite. (One thing I wish he’d kept to himself was “wall of separation” talk, unless he meant between gov’t and the arts!)
“Robbing Peter to pay Paul” is a shorter, sweeter expression of the sentiment here, I think.
Sorry, Jefferson’s not even my second favorite Virginian.
On February 22nd, 2011 at 7:40 pm, diablophobe said:
Which Heinlein book is that from, Splinter?
To Sail Beyond the Sunset….I believe it was his last Lazarus Long, if not Heinlein’s last book. , Not his best,IMO, I prefer “Stranger in a Strange Land”…
This event in Wisconsin appears to be the tipping point for the US and based on the above data presented by MM – it is clear that it happened in the right state. I know a lot of teachers that would gladly move to Wisconsin to fill their empty seats if they are fired. Time for change Wisconsin!
Dear Splinter,
Thanks for reminding me, I knew I’d read it! Yeah, that’s the one about Lazarus’s mom.
I prefer THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS, if we’re talking his adult books. (And I mean adult! The guy was into polygamy and all kinds of license – “Mrs. Grundy” be damned.)
His best juvenile work was STARSHIP TROOPERS, which Hollywood peed on.
Thanks for the memories.
Well they have no trouble arresting a 11 year old for a drawing or with zero tolerance. I think in general they don’t want to solve this problem, because then they would have NO more excuses.
Does anyone know how much money the AFL-CIO President makes a year ?, and how much of a bonus does he get ?.
If anyone has any info, please let me know, thanks.
Dear Mister P,
I find your response
…less than responsive.
Who is “they”? The teachers? Aren’t we commenting on a story that separates teachers from their unions?
Or is it some other “they”? You sound like a lefty going on about evil corporations and Walmart and BOOOSH! Can’t we bring this up a notch?
The problem with public education is Democrats. First, it’s their patronage politics. They need the teachers to pay their dues to fund campaigns to elect Dems to pour money back to teachers to pay their dues. Teachers union reps double as neighborhood Dem committeemen, and can be paid for that work – on the sly – through unions.
Don’t forget the Dept. of Ed., home to some of the vilest bureaucrats in the USA. Staffed with, by, and for Dems. The quality of public education has been plummetting since D of E was created.
Every state has its own D of E to set curricula and approve texts. Again, in each state, including the reddest, these are staffed with, by, and for Dems. (Look at your kid’s history text. Pics of Harriet Tubman on one page, Klansmen on another – and it’s implied that the former was a Dem and the latter are GOP, but the opposite was true.)
The union system gives teachers wrong and dangerous incentives, just as the Democrats give to all members of the identity groups in their power coalition.
Dear Mister P,
Continued! (Sorry, but you’ve pushed my buttons.)
So, Dems and their patronage politics and unionism give lousy incentives to teachers.
And it’s so unnecessary for the profession of teaching! Look, the desire to teach is a human instinct – God put it there along with Love for our children to make sure men and women keep going and improve. Teaching’s a dream job for millions!
But schools are now set up to attract the lazy. A 12-month salary for a 9-month job, summers off and a month at Christmas. Best health insurance, best retirement, sick days, personal days, even “very personal” days when you needn’t say why you’re out – with pay!
And don’t forget TENURE. Once you get that, you have to be caught on tape selling drugs to your students to be fired – but still the union will hire a lawyer to keep the ball rolling and you can collect your salary for another 10, 15 years.
But still there are wonderful teachers with good values because, darn it, it’s a satisfying job.
Dear Mister P,
Continued again! (Wherein I finally address your point.)
Dems are also responsible for our horrible public education system with their infantilizing of society – government grows faster when more people depend on it.
People with big screen TVs are comfortable with letting their neighbors pay for their own kid’s school lunch, and now school breakfast and school dinner! Why, society OWES them, doesn’t it?
What, MY boy, disruptive?! Do your job, teacher, and leave me alone. But hit my boy, and I’ll sue! Say something mean to my boy, and I’ll sue! Watch your butt, you work for ME!
Tractable, smart kids can easily come out of 12 years of inner-city “education” without being able to read, and without it being the teachers’ fault. If teachers spend 100% of the time “managing” the class, they spend 0% teaching it.
But that’s okay, kids who can’t read can still pull the lever for the donkey, right? Teachers complain? Give ‘em a raise!
Oh, and Zero Tolerance? Which party pushes that, Mister P? Maybe the Party of Gun Control? Do you think the teachers all like it?
(By the way, have you noticed how identity politics trumps Zero Tolerance? Or is it just that no children of favored minority groups ever draw pictures of guns?)
It’s not teachers making excuses, Mister P.
It’s that we’ve allowed one political party to arrange the public education system so that its primary purpose is not to educate, but to ensure perpetual bureaucratic and political power for Democrats.
Thanks for your time!