Oh, about those teacher unions and our educational system.

Let me see if I have this right, teachers see themselves as professionals; ok, I buy that they are (although I am at a loss as to why professionals need a union in the first place). Teacher’s unions are almost universally supporters of Democratic politicians who in turn more often than not support teacher union goals, especially when it comes to pay, pensions and benefits and collective bargaining rights which is interesting since the collective bargaining is generally between the union and the people they support with campaign contributions.

Every politician is for education reform; the President’s proposal includes pay for performance based on student test scores which the unions oppose. In fact these “professionals” oppose most measures assessing the quality of their performance especially when linked to their pay. Many Republicans want to rein in the union’s right to bargain for the things that bust state budgets like pay, pensions and health benefits and which are negotiated with the politicians who are dependent on the unions for their job.

Confused? Me too! Where do the children fit into this equation?

Well here’s one clue, when it comes to ranking in the world, the United States of America is dead on mediocre, average, right in the middle in student’s ability to do math, science and more. Chile, Germany, Great Britain and 22 other countries are ahead of the US in teaching the skills our children need. Why?

So, this great country has another crisis of mediocrity on its hands while our “leaders” in public, private and union sectors wrangle over who is responsible, who deserves more and who to blame; some professionals.

Note: Teachers like to point out that even if they teach only four or six hours a day they actually work much longer and often take work home. In many cases that’s true, but you know what, that is what all professionals do, they work the number of hours it takes to get the job done, they generally don’t get paid over time and their free time is rarely really their free time. There is one thing most other professionals don’t do however, they don’t get two months or so off during the summer along with a few weeks here and there during the rest of the year. Chicago teachers have been reported to earn an average of $76,000 a year (some say $71,000) so that works out to the equivalent of about $91,146 if they worked a normal work year (plus an additional 20% or so for pensions and other benefits) for an equivalent of $109,397 a year. Now if two of these teachers just happened to be married to each other, their combined pay would be equal to $182,292 a year placing them in the top 10 % of households in the US… and they need a union!

Related articles

• Polling Shows Most Americans Think Teachers Unions Have Hurt Public Education Quality (reason.com)
• Why Teachers Unions Aren’t Always Public Friend #1 (motherjones.com)