Public Education in the US Despoiled by Teachers' Unions & Activist Teachers

Is There Any Hope for Public Education in America?

A Short Personal Story

Pushing a strand of hair from my forehead, I looked around at my classroom with dismay. It was already Thursday of in-service week and I had barely made a dent in my new classroom. Blank bulletin boards stared back at me sullenly beckoning me to dress them with vivid colors and inviting characters, but I still had boxes of textbooks to unpack and place on shelves, lesson plans to prepare, and worksheets to print. I sighed heavily and sank into my rickety desk chair, catching myself before I toppled over. I made a mental note to speak to the custodian about repairing it before students arrived. By all appearances I would have to work over the Labor Day weekend to make sure everything was prepared for my new students. My students! It still hadn’t quite sunk in that this classroom was mine, and in a few short days approximately 160 students would be my responsibility. The thought was equally exciting and frightening for a 22-year-old teacher who had graduated a mere two months prior with a Bachelor’s degree in education.

Lost in my thoughts, I nearly missed the general announcement over the intercom system: All new teachers please report to room B-5 in five minutes. The announcement hung in the air like a dark cloud threatening to delay my progress even further. I reached for a pen and pad and strode toward the designated room. What could this meeting be about? I wondered. The entire week had been filled with meetings. A general staff meeting to welcome everyone back and to introduce new teachers like me, a meeting to discuss the discipline system, another meeting to discuss requirements for grading, and then there were the department meetings. Would these infernal meetings ever end?

As I entered the room, I noticed the familiar faces of a handful of teachers who were new to the middle school this 1979-80 school year. I smiled at a few and took a seat, pen poised on paper. It wasn’t long before a hefty woman with a very pretty face took center stage and began speaking. She introduced herself as Lila, a veteran teacher with ten years’ experience who taught 7th and 8th grade math. She further explained that she was our building rep. Rep? Why did I need a representative? I needn’t have pondered long about the necessity of a proxy. Lila described her job as the individual that teachers in the building could turn to should they find themselves in hot water with a parent or the principal or both. She would sit in on any disciplinary meetings, and like a lawyer, would represent our interests. Hmm...okay. That’s nice, I thought to myself.

However, it wasn’t long before Lila lowered the boom. She called every teacher by name and passed out an official document to each of us with our names neatly typed at the top. Before we could ask why she needed our signature, she explained that the document made each of us a member of the teacher’s union and allowed the union to deduct dues from our monthly checks. There were three deductions: one for the NEA (National Education Association), one for the OEA (Oregon Education Association), and one for the BEA (Bristol Education Association).* I can’t recall the sum total that would be pilfered from my check each month by the union, but I remember being stunned.

Although math had never been my strong suit, I quickly calculated the effect of the deductions. My contract for the year was a grand total of $11,400 for the year, and I took home about $600 a month. My apartment was costing me $240 per month and I had a car payment of approximately $150 a month. With monthly expenses like groceries, electricity and gas to purchase, I wondered how I could make ends meet. I guess I wasn’t the only one performing mental calculations because the room became eerily silent, with one exception.

One new teacher to the school, Francine, was a transfer from another district and was clearly not fresh out of college. She appeared to be in her early thirties and, with a herculean effort, she attempted to hold back her tears, but it wasn’t long before she sat quietly sobbing not far from me. I felt a mixture of sadness and embarrassment for her. I hadn’t realized it that day but soon discovered she was a single mother with two young daughters. My heart went out to her.

One brave young woman tentatively raised her hand and waited for Lila to acknowledge her. When called upon, she asked the question most of us were thinking: “What if we don’t want to join the union?” Lila smiled smugly, and her answer sent a chill down my spine. “You don’t have to join the union, but if you choose not to join, we take your money regardless,” she responded. Wait. What? The union can just take our money even if we don’t sign this document and we don’t agree to have the dues deducted from our checks? That can’t be right. What’s happening?

Dues Fund Leftist Political Groups & Issues

Ah yes, but Lila was correct. The teachers’ union basically was allowed to deduct money from educators’ checks each month to fund their needs. The money is spent on useless NEA and state education associations’ monthly magazines filled with left-leaning articles. The pilfered “dues” also fund politicians and political action committees (PAC) which in turn direct the money to issues that have nothing to do with education, like abortion rights, transgender and LGBTQ rights, and more recently support for Critical Race Theory implementation.

A 2016 article in Christian Educators Association International, revealed that in 2014 the NEA donated $995,000 to the leftist organization, America Votes Action Fund. That PAC turned around and sent Planned Parenthood $791,000. What in the world does an organization that aborts babies have to do with education, and why are the teacher unions supporting such a cause?

Bargaining for Mediocrity

Additionally, union dues go to support those in the association leadership who spend time collectively bargaining salary increases on behalf of its members. For those in the private sector, let me explain how this works. A teacher gets a raise every year based on his/her experience, not their performance. The union negotiates with the school board and administration on the salary steps for each year of service. This concept is definitely foreign to anyone who has worked in the private sector, and what it leads to is mediocrity for a vast majority of teachers. When you make the same amount of money working your keister off as the person next door to you who simply hands out worksheets and plays videos for students to watch as a way to keep them busy, you begin to wonder why you are working so hard. And, after a while, many begin cutting corners to avoid the laborious tasks of grading papers and planning exciting lessons for their classes. Incidentally, teachers’ unions abhor merit pay which they believe leads to teachers favored by the principal becoming the recipients of such incentive pay, lack of cooperation between teachers competing for the monetary prize, and teachers spending the year teaching to the standardized tests rather than finding innovative ways to impart material.

Sweden’s School Choice Revived Mediocre Public Education

To be sure, I understand all those arguments, but something must be done about mediocre teaching, and in my educated opinion it should include competition from charter schools, parochial schools, and homeschooling. Better yet, how about having school choice? The government—always eager to give away our taxpayer money to worthless causes—could cut each parent a check for $13,187 dollars (the average amount spent on each student in American public schools in 2021). Then each family could decide which school would receive those funds to educate their child. The Swedes did just that to improve schooling with great success. In a 2018 article, John Henschen writing for FEE (Foundation for Economic Education) explained,

“Parents and pupils decide what school they want to attend, and they are all paid for by taxes. corporations, towns, charities, religions; most anyone and anything can start a school, but it’s up to parents and pupils if they want to attend. The more people who choose a particular school determines if that school will get more government funding.”

This has fundamentally changed the once mediocre Swedish public schools who now must compete for funds. However, in America teachers’ unions would adamantly oppose such a notion. As Henschen puts it,

“The open-competition school choice model in Sweden would trigger U.S. teacher unions into a froth.”

Check out the video below to understand more fully the education choice system in Sweden, and see what could be possible in our country if the teachers’ union didn’t have such a stranglehold on public education. It begins at 35:02 and ends at 40:48. Nearly six minutes of your time, but well worth it if you’re at all interested in changing the current system of educating the youth in this country.

A Huge, Ill-Informed Voting Block for Democrats

Yet another way teachers’ dues are spent is in helping to elect Democrats to state and national positions in government. Every year during election season, the NEA and state education associations produce documents encouraging teachers to vote for certain candidates. Year after year I would receive said documents in my box at school, glance at them, and note that nearly all the candidates the association recommended voting for were Democrats.

It’s sad to say, but most of the teachers I know used those leaflets to decide for whom they would pull the lever on election day. Talk about groupthink! In one particular instance, I asked a young teacher why she was voting for Obama. Her answer was classic. She said, “I don’t know. Ask my sister.” Her sister was very active in the local union, so she trusted her older sibling to help her decide who to vote for, but she didn’t do her own due diligence. In another instance, when I asked a veteran teacher why she was voting for Obama, she gushed about how handsome he was and how she’d like to “kiss those luscious lips.” I was aghast and repulsed at the same time. These are educators. They went to college. They know how to research, but rather than do that, they instead rely on the advice of relatives or march lockstep with the union. These are the people educating your children, folks!

No Political Diversity By Design

Incidentally, I really began to believe that the Supreme Court “Janus vs. AFSCME” decision in 2018—which ended compulsory public sector union dues—would result in many teachers opting out of the union, enabling them to keep more of their paychecks. Apparently, that was wishful thinking, and I was being naïve. A 2019 Washington Post article reported on a study conducted by Verdant Labs. Researchers used “political-contribution data, on the Democrat-Republican divide based on job type.” Here’s what they found. Regarding English teachers, there are 97 Democrats for every three Republicans. Health teachers compose 99 Democrats for every one Republican. And, among high school teachers, there are 87 Democrats for every one Republican. I actually didn’t need these figures to conclude that Democrats outnumber Republicans in public education. After all, I was generally in a very small minority of conservatives in each of three middle schools and three high schools in which I taught during my 34 year career. So, since Democrats are leftists before anything else, it helps explain why many chose to stick with the union even though they could have opted out.

Critically, the question you may have after reading about the huge discrepancy between the number of Democrats teaching your children and the number of Republicans in public schools is probably: Why is there such a variance? Dr. Greg Forster, Friedman Fellow at the school-choice organization EdChoice, explains that those fresh, young teachers exiting higher education and entering the teaching field have been taking classes at universities that have indoctrinated them into left-wing ideology. Incoming teachers have been inculcated through their classes on critical theory (ie. there is no truth, only power), intersectionality (ie. you can’t be right about anything unless it’s a leftist cause), and liberation for everyone through left-wing ideology. Is it any wonder universities are cranking out leftists in every field, in particular education?

Final Thoughts

If contentious school board meetings, the stealthy critical race theory indoctrination of students, Marxist ideology, and transgender inculcation has taught us anything, it is that our public schools have been highjacked by leftist activists who are holding our children hostage. We need a new way to educate our students. School choice is but one avenue. I’ll have more to say regarding education in America in later posts, but suffice it to say, if I had children in public schools today, I would immediately pull them out, quit my job (no one said it would be easy) and home school them. That’s how dire the situation is.

As always, I will leave you with thoughts from the Bible. Why? Because the Bible is a book of wisdom, and we could use a healthy dose right now. James Chapter 3 warns,

“Not many of you should become teachers…because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.”

I understand that James was referring to those who teach the gospel, but I can’t help but feel that this admonishment should be heeded by school teachers as well. Jesus had a special place in his heart for children. Anyone who leads a child astray, indoctrinating them with atheist, Marxist ideals and transgender ideology will be held responsible and judged by the Almighty in the afterlife. You can take that to the bank.

*Bristol is a fictitious name. No such town or city exists in Oregon