Marc’s posting highlights another outstanding piece by Terry Moe. I would encourage you to read both Marc’s fine posting and the entire editorial by Moe, which you can access in Marc’s posting.
As a former East Greenwich School Committee member, I would like to expand on several of Marc’s points:
First, I agree that parents need to make their voices heard about educational issues in their town, including the impact of “work-to-rule” actions on their children. Marc is right that silence equals consent to the status quo – and the union will not stop pushing to maximize its self-interest during that silence. However, I would add this cautionary note. The most frequent comment I received from parents – by far – while serving on the committee was: “I agree with you, I want to openly support you but I am afraid to speak out because I do not want my children to suffer as a result.” What a sad commentary on the politics of public education. The impact of this potential threat should not be underestimated and dictates that others of us who don’t face the same threats must lead the change efforts.
Second, people should not underestimate the long-term impact on teachers from working in a union environment that blocks change, punishes excellence and protects mediocrity. Public school teachers desperately want to be considered “white collar professionals.” Yet, many of them buy into a work environment that provides lifetime tenure, outrageously rich benefits and pensions, equal pay simultaneously to the best and worst teachers while resisting accountability and making the removal of bad teachers nearly impossible. In the end, public school teachers cannot have it both ways – they are either professionals or they are unionists. Right now, some of them hide happily behind the union label and that makes those teachers part of the problem.
Third, the public education bureaucracy is also a significant part of the problem because they have no incentive to challenge the mediocrity of the status quo. They should not be expected to support meaningful change since their economic (including healthcare and pension benefits) and professional self-interests are largely aligned with the unions. As a result, the bureaucracy can easily outlast parents who raise concerns, wearing them down until the parents simply give up and go away.
Fourth, a quick perusal of Linda Chavez’ book entitled “Betrayal : How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics” drives home the point that this is all about money and power politics. The lack of competition and proper incentives in the public sector creates a fundamental impediment to change, a point I have made in a previous posting.
Fifth, the power politics angle is only reinforced when you look at the balance of power in union contract negotiations. On one side of the table, you have a part-time volunteer school committee aided by an educational bureaucracy with the wrong incentives and who will be dealing with the union long after the committee members move onto other activities in their lives. On the other side of the table, you have the national teachers’ unions with essentially unlimited money and political muscle. In Rhode Island, that structural problem is compounded by having nearly 40 tiny school districts individually going up against national unions. All the unions have to do is find a weak spot in one of the tiny districts and then they use that concession as a negotiating hammer with all the other districts.
There are all sorts of contract “tricks.” Here is one of the more current ones: The union agrees to have teachers pay a percentage co-payment on health insurance premiums but… most deals have either dollar caps which make the percentage irrelevant or the teachers receive other new cash payments (for things like professional development) which just happen to offset the amount of the co-payment. And the unions and teachers really believe that they have made a concession in such a deal! The taxpayers – whose hard-earned monies fund these contracts – are often the last to know that a bait-and-switch was pulled on them.
Why are all of the above points important? Education is the gateway to the American Dream for all citizens. Yet, we are failing to provide a quality gateway for our children. The performance of public education in America is absymal as we have one of the weakest performing educational systems in the industrial world. It is not for lack of spending money: We have tripled our per-pupil spending in real terms over the last 40 years, a period of time which coincides directly with the growth in power of the teachers’ unions. More money won’t fix the structural problems highlighted above. Only competition from true educational choice will solve the problems.
As an aside, I find it particularly ironic that certain liberal U.S. senators (who often have sent their own children to the most elite private schools) consistently do the bidding of the unions to block the inner city black children of Washington, D.C. – who are stuck in the worst public education system in our country – from receiving the educational vouchers which would give them educational freedom and a fair shot at living the American Dream. The unions and their cronies are willing to risk creating a permanent underclass so they can maintain their chokehold on public education in America. That is morally offensive.
Competition from true educational choice is the only thing that can bust this underperforming and overcharging monopoly. With choice, comes accountability for performance results. I would gladly support merit pay and no cap on the maximum salaries for great teachers in exchange for having true educational choice and accountability, including the ability to fire poor teachers. That will never happen as long as we have a union-dominated public education system. Years of experience have led me to conclude there is no viable middle ground.
ADDENDUM:
Well, silliness from the opposition continues unabated, as shown in this ProJo letter to the editor. Part of the letter states:
Of course unions must take a hard line in order to secure certain rights for their members, but, as Ms. Ohanian says, “positing teachers’ need for a living wage and adequate working conditions as proof of their disinterest in what’s good for children is one more page in the corporate-politico agenda of deprofessionalizing teaching and gutting public education.”
Time and time again, we hear about how important it is to educate our children, yet any time a financial dispute arises, the teachers are the ones who bear the brunt of the public disdain…
For a contrasting viewpoint that is fact-based instead of opinion-based, see this earlier posting.
ADDENDUM II:
Sometimes, there are simply no words available to respond adequately to sheer, utter nonsense. Today’s ProJo contains one such ridiculous letter to the editor. Here are two choice quotes:
Merit-pay plans are contentious and divisive. They rarely have objective criteria. Merit pay is nothing more than a means of cloaking management favoritism in meritocratic mumbo-jumbo. The results are that a healthy group dynamic is undermined, morale is lowered, and higher-level employees receive the bulk of the money available…
Institute merit pay and those who compromise the integrity of their teaching to curry favor with administrators and parents will be rewarded. Taskmaster “unpopular teachers” who maintain the integrity of their classrooms (and whose students can demonstrate achieved goals of learning and attainment of critical skills) will be punished…
Those of us that live and work in the real world know that merit-pay plans work well because competitive pressures of the marketplace allow the natural alignment of good individual performance and good system-wide outcomes. By contrast and without realizing it, the author of the letter has just presented the core reason why the existing union-dominated government monopoly of public education is structurally incapable of working effectively and efficiently. Only true competition will get us the results our children deserve.
ADDENDUM III:
Justin has added some valuable, additional perspective on the letter referenced in Addendum II.
ADDENDUM IV:
To further clarify my final point in the original posting, I don’t believe charter schools – as currently defined – can be the answer. Marc has already shown (here, here, here) how the teachers’ unions and public education bureaucracy will play power politics and/or will selectively twist data to knock performance by today’s charter schools. All in all, there are too many ways for them to manipulate the status quo, thereby ensuring the existence of an uneven playing field. Even though there may be well-performing individual charter schools, these postings and the Washington, D.C. experience reinforce how the educational establishment will make every effort to sabotage any broad-based implementation of a truly competitive alternative.
Therefore, for all the reasons noted above, charter schools today represent only incremental changes that leave the status quo in place and will not be able to deliver a broad-based, high-quality public education. We must seek more significant structural changes to the status quo. Our children, particularly the most disadvantaged, need and deserve nothing less.
ADDENDUM V:
Another nonsensical letter has now appeared in the ProJo. Here is the first sentence:
Only the naive can truly believe that merit pay will reward superior teachers and shun incompetent ones.
Sometimes foolish people make your case for you. It’s almost enough to make you feel embarrassed for them.
[Open full post]Terry Moe of the Hoover Institution and a Stanford University political-science professor (and winner of the Thomas B. Fordham prize for distinguished scholarship in education) has written an important piece explaining the motivation of Teachers’ Unions. The most important point is that the unions aren’t inherently “bad,” but that they are merely looking out for the interests of their members.
Their behavior is driven by fundamental interests . . . jobs, working conditions, and the material well-being of teachers. When unions negotiate with school boards, these are the interests they pursue, not those of the children who are supposed to be getting educated. . .
When the teachers’ unions want government to act, the reforms they demand are invariably in their own interests: more spending, higher salaries, smaller classes, more professional development, and so on. There is no evidence that any of these is an important determinant of student learning. What the unions want above all else, however, is to block reforms that seriously threaten their interests — and these reforms, not coincidentally, are attempts to bring about fundamental changes in the system that would significantly improve student learning.
The unions are opposed to No Child Left Behind, for example, and indeed to all serious forms of school accountability, because they do not want teachers’ jobs or pay to depend on their performance. They are opposed to school choice — charter schools and vouchers — because they don’t want students or money to leave any of the schools where their members work. They are opposed to the systematic testing of veteran teachers for competence in their subjects, because they know that some portion would fail and lose their jobs. And so it goes. If the unions can’t kill these threatening reforms outright, they work behind the scenes to make them as ineffective as possible — resulting in accountability systems with no teeth, choice systems with little choice, and tests that anyone can pass.
Yes, and so it goes in Rhode Island, too. I appreciate the wonderful job that teachers do and I don’t begrudge them fair compensation. Yet, as Don has recently shown, Rhode Island teachers are well-compensated. They must remember that they are paid by the taxpayers and the taxpayers can’t continue to give-give-give without seeing some results. In fairness, at least in my town, it looks like the teachers are doing a great job bringing the schools up to the standards outlined in No Child Left Behind. I hope all Rhode Island school districts follow suit.
I believe that the overwhelming majority of teachers and school committee members genuinely care about the welfare and best interests of students. However, as Moe points out, Teacher’s Unions are advocates for the teachers interests, not for those of the students. The School Committee, while it does set standards and seeks to look out for the students education, is also occupied with budgetary constraints and must be cognizant of its responsibility to the taxpayers. Thus, there is one group that should have the interests of the students as their primary concern: Parents.
In the end, it is the parents who have to make their voices heard. It is parents who have to watch as their kids are used as pawns, such as when “non-union-mandated” work-to-rule “policies” are in effect and after-school programs and educational field trips are suspended pending resolution of contract disputes. It is the parents who are taxpayers and must let the school committee know when an idea is good or bad. Unfortunately, as in so many other political issues, there is a silent majority. In this case, it is the parents. They are to be reminded that, in the realm of politics, silence equates to consent.
This posting continues a periodic series on Rhode Island politics and taxation (I, II, III, IV, V).
If you want to read another sordid tale about Rhode Island politics, check out Ed Achorn’s latest editorial in the ProJo.
Here are a few excerpts:
The people who led the fight against a constitutional convention in Rhode Island – members of an organization called Citizens for Representative Government – went to great lengths to cover their tracks. But all roads seem to lead to Guy Dufault, the labor and gambling lobbyist.
The public-employee unions put up the money to run phone banks, air TV and radio ads, and print posters in narrowly defeating a constitutional convention, 52 to 48 percent, on November 2. Mr. Dufault acknowledged on Friday that he filled out most of the group’s campaign-finance report now on file with the Rhode Island Board of Elections.
But you wouldn’t know of Mr. Dufault’s role by reading that public document. He kept that carefully hidden from the public…
What’s the upshot of this?
I don’t know if any of this constitutes filing and signing a false report…But it does seem puzzling that Mr. Dufault and Citizens for Representative Government chose to make it so difficult for the public to find out who was running the show. Why bother?…
Maybe Citizens for Representative Government did not want citizens to find out easily that it was a prominent State House lobbyist for the public-employee unions and gambling interests who fought to deny people the chance to shake up Rhode Island government with a constitutional convention. (Now, citizens will have to wait until at least 2016.)
That seems to be the way the game is played.
After reading the entire editorial, I would encourage you to pause and think about whether this deceitful political behavior is consistent with the values of the American Founding and the principles embodied in our Declaration of Independence.
Would George Washington or Thomas Jefferson have endorsed such behavior? Of course not.
Does this kind of political behavior reflect the values of our own Roger Williams? Not a chance.
And we should not tolerate it either.
To put it in perspective, I would direct you to a previously mentioned quote from Roger Pilon of the Cato Institute:
In the end, however, no constitution can be self-enforcing. Government officials must respect their oaths to uphold the Constitution; and we the people must be vigilant in seeing that they do.
The Founders drafted an extraordinarily thoughtful plan of government, but it is up to us, to each generation, to preserve and protect it for ourselves and for future generations.
For the Constitution will live only if it is alive in the hearts and minds of the American people. That, perhaps, is the most enduring lesson of our experiment in ordered liberty.
We have a long way to go in Rhode Island. Our moral obligation as American citizens calls us to nothing less than a passion for protecting our God-given liberty. Only when that passion stirs deeply in the hearts and minds of enough Rhode Island citizens will we shorten the distance we must travel to see a better day.
[Open full post]This posting continues a periodic series on Rhode Island politics and taxation, building on four previous postings (I, II, III, IV).
Governor Carcieri issued his State of the State Address on January 18. The following excerpts from that speech highlight the structural problems we face in this state:
A good government lives within its means and does not overly burden its taxpayers…by any measure Rhode Island’s taxes are among the highest…in the country…Taxes in Massachusetts – once known as Taxachusetts – are now among the lowest, 40th.
To keep this economy growing, we must lower taxes so Rhode Islanders keep more of what they earn. To do that, I am developing a five-year tax reduction plan. This plan will be broad-based, benefiting as many Rhode Islanders as possible. I will also propose that new lottery revenues be dedicated to direct property relief. We must work together to make tax relief a priority.
But tax relief is impossible unless we get serious about controlling spending. Two of the spending issues we must address this year are: state employee health care and pensions.
We are currently negotiating with all the major state employee unions for co-sharing of their health care premiums. Rhode Island is one of only five states in the country where employees do not co-share. 45 states do. Massachusetts employees pay 20% of their premiums. Since the vast majority of taxpayers co-share their premiums, it is only fair that those of us who work for them do as well…
Without any reforms, the taxpayer bill for pensions will rise from $188 million in the current year, to $283 million next year, a $95 million increase in one year! This is an urgent problem and we must work together on a reform plan…
We now have eleven public charter schools serving 2,200 students, 90% of them from urban districts. These schools are thriving. They thrive because they are innovative, challenging, and family-friendly. Every one of them met its performance targets this year. But we don’t have enough of them, particularly in urban communities. Over 500 students are currently on the waiting list to enroll in a charter school. I will submit legislation removing the moratorium on charter schools passed last year. This moratorium is not fair to our children and we need to end it now.
Getting better education results means implementing these reforms, not spending a lot of money. Our spending per pupil is already seventh highest in the nation. The increase in state support for education over the last five years has averaged 6% a year, over twice the rate of inflation. And, by the way, the level of state support for urban schools is one of the highest in the nation. The 5 urban core cities got almost $80 million, 63% of the increase in those 5 years. So, let’s find new ways to be more effective.
Reforming the state pension system will save school districts nearly $18.5 million next year. Providence alone will save over $3.0 million. My new state health care contract will allow school districts to piggy-back on the state’s low cost. Combining such purchasing will save municipalities additional millions.
In summary, among the 50 states, Rhode Island (i) has the 5th highest overall state and local tax burden, per the Tax Foundation; (ii) is one of only 5 states where state employees have a zero co-pay on their health insurance premiums; (iii) has one of the richest state pension programs; (iv) spending per pupil is the 7th highest; and (v) limits educational choice. This is not a formula for success.
Take a minute and ask yourself the following questions:
Who opposes health insurance premium co-payments for state employees?
Who opposes changes to a grossly underfunded state pension program?
Who demands school contract terms that result in overpaying for underperformance?
Who blocks educational choice for those who need it most?
In other words, who is not a friend of Rhode Island working families, retirees and children?
[Open full post]According to a story in Sunday’s ProJo by Katherine Gregg
Out of last year’s political scandals came a law that is shedding new light on the financial ties between some of the state’s part-time, $12,285-a-year lawmakers and major corporate and union players at the State House.
In the first batch of filings made last week, it was reported to the public . . . [s]everal high-ranking Democrats in the House and Senate are not only pro-labor boosters on Smith Hill but also full-time union employees.
Among them were the following:
Senate Whip Dominick J. Ruggerio – $163,717 in salary and benefits as the administrator of one arm of the Laborers’ International Union of North America. (Ruggerio estimated his salary alone was $122,000).
Deputy Senate majority leader John J. Tassoni Jr. of Smithfield – $79,060 in salary alone as business agent of Council 94 of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employeesa deputy Senate majority leader.
Sen. Frank A. Ciccone III – $135,177 for various positions. As an elected officer of the Laborers’ union affiliate known as Local 808, Rhode Island Judicial, Professional & Technical Employees, Ciccone made $15,600 as the business manager for the local that represents about 17 bargaining units within state government, including RIPTA, E-911 and court employees, plus a number of Johnston school employees. He is also a field representative for the Rhode Island Laborers’ District Council headed by Ronald Coia. (Ciccone estimated he made ($80, 000 in salary alone).
Deputy House Whip Paul Moura – $91,663 as health and safety field specialist for the New England Laborers’ Health & Safety Fund. (Moura estimated he made $55,000 in salary alone).
According to Gregg:
The three are among the most prolific sponsors of legislation dealing in one way or another with labor issues, employee legal rights and, in Ciccone’s case, a bill to eliminate lifelong tenure for judges.
Further, Gregg’s story details the following illuminating conversation between Moura, Ciccone and Ruggerio:
“This is new. I don’t think they are aware of it,” Ciccone said in a brief exchange with Moura at the State House before the reports were filed.
“But I don’t have a problem telling people what I make,” Ciccone said.
Moura’s reply: “Maybe they should file out of an abundance of caution.”
Ciccone: “No big deal.”
Moura: “That’s fine with me, too. When they see how little I make, they’ll realize its no big deal anyway.”
Added Ruggerio a short time later: “I didn’t think we were obligated to file that, but we’re going to file anyway because obviously we have nothing to hide.”
While it is indeed encouraging to see that Ruggerio feels he has nothing to hide, the degree these gentlemen are insulated from the average taxpayer is evident in Moura’s statement regarding how little he makes. There really is nothing else to say.
[Open full post]They may have invested millions in acquisition and sacrificed hundreds of lives, but there’s one thing that the terrorists haven’t counted on:
… the latest example of the sea’s, or at least the coast’s, medical potential comes from researchers at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. There, scientists, working under a grant from the Department of Homeland Security, dosed quahogs with the botulism toxin. They discovered that something from the shellfish neutralized the poisonous enzyme, a potential bio-terrorism agent.
Bal Ram Singh, a chemist, and his colleagues increased the dose until it was enough to paralyze and kill the population of a town of 1,000 people. But the botulism has little effect on the clams, except to cause them to secrete a mucous that turned the water they were in cloudy.
I don’t imagine many men and women of our armed services would mind a steady supply of my mother-in-law’s stuffies. And I can only hope that initial plans are underway to equip each EMT vehicle with a pot of chowder.
[Open full post]Related to Marc’s posts (here and here) on Peggy Noonan’s reaction to President Bush’s inaugural speech, Patrick Sweeney of Extreme Catholic delves into some of the relevant theological considerations. He also makes this story-behind-the-story suggestion:
Perhaps Peggy Noonan thinks she’s in the running for William Safire’s job.
This is ankle-biting envy. This is offering a “Good, but I could have done better” criticism.
Too much cynicism paints the world in nasty tones, but positioning is inevitably a part of decisions, particularly among writers and particularly among opinion writers. Noonan’s credibility is such that readers should doubt neither her sincerity nor perspicacity in picking up on something significant in the President’s speech. Still, it must be difficult, at her level of success, to close one’s mind to the benefits of dissent from the conservative Republican line.
[Open full post]This posting continues a periodic series on Rhode Island politics and taxation, building on three previous postings (I, II, III).
My town of East Greenwich has an increasingly ugly dispute between School Committee officials and teachers’ union officials. The dispute has been highlighted in local newspaper articles (here, here, here, here, here).
Comments by National Education Association (NEA) teachers’ union officials remind me of words spoken years ago by Soviet officials, whose views of the world were subsequently shown to have no connection to any form of reality.
As the union cranks up its disinformation campaign to intimidate East Greenwich residents, let’s contrast their Orwellian comments in recent newspaper articles with the facts:
Comment #1: The School Committee needs to get serious. Taxes in East Greenwich aren’t that high compared to other communities.
Data from the Tax Foundation notes Rhode Island has the 5th highest overall tax burden and the 4th highest property taxes. Minor town-to-town variations are irrelevant. As you read on, remember that the NEA doesn’t think you are paying enough in taxes.
Comment #2: The School Committee offer was completely unacceptable. It must make a financially reasonable offer.
The offer included a 3.5% annual salary increase for each of the 10 job steps over 3 years.
We frequently hear of 3-4% annual salary increases for teachers. But that is very misleading. That’s because most school districts have 10 job steps, and teachers move up the ladder. Every continuing teacher, up to step 10, automatically moves up one step per year, yielding huge salary increases written into contracts and all but hidden from the public.
Based on 2003-2004 data, here is what the committee offer means: 97 teachers are in job steps 1-9 and each of them will get 9.5-12.5% annual salary increases. The remaining 132 job step 10 teachers will get 3.5% increases each year.
Does any rational person think that a salary increase as high as 12.5%/year is financially unreasonable to the person receiving the increase? Or that a minimum salary increase of 3.5%/year is financially unreasonable?
The offer also included a 10% co-payment on health insurance premiums, up from a zero co-payment. With healthcare insurance costing about $13,600/year, that equals a payment of roughly $1,360/year.
The average state employee across America pays about a 15% co-pay. It is much higher in the private sector. E.g., employees at my company pay 24% co-pay on health insurance and 30% co-pay on dental insurance. Meanwhile, the NEA-RI whines here about the prospect of paying 10% without a dollar cap or new, offsetting cash payments elsewhere in the contract.
If teachers don’t use health insurance, they currently receive an uncapped annual payment equal to 50% of the annual premium cost or $6,800/year. 71 district employees received this amount, costing us nearly $500,000/year. I know of no corporation that does any sort of buyback cash payment like this.
The offer included capping the buyback at $4,500/year.
The offer also included no retroactive pay back to September. Note how the union has zero incentive to settle on reasonable terms as long as they get retroactive pay.
The offer doesn’t even tackle other issues: East Greemwich is one of only fifteen districts in the state to offer tuition reimbursement and the only district to pay full reimbursement. Department chairs receive an extra $7,000/year while only teaching two periods. Extra stipends are paid for any additional work, such as coaching. Health insurance is fully paid for two years after retirement for people with at least twenty years of service.
Comment #3: We do not deserve a pay cut in any fashion…Teachers would ultimately be getting the raw end of the deal.
Here are two salary increase examples under the latest committee offer for teachers with bachelor degrees:
Job step 5 beginning teacher: $43,389 in 2003-2004 to $57,490 in 2006-2007, a 32.5% total salary increase over 3 years for an annual increase of 9.8%/year. Job step 10 senior teacher: $60,663 in 2003-2004 to $67,258 in 2006-2007, a 10.9% total salary increase over 3 years for an annual increase of 3.5%/year.
Even after paying about $1,360/year (in pre-tax dollars, no less) for a 10% co-payment on health insurance, that is some pay cut and some raw deal.
Nor should anyone forget that union surveys show Rhode Island teachers are already the 7th highest paid among the 50 states – and nobody ranks our statewide public school performance anywhere close to that high.
Comment #4: Teacher pay is lower than what other districts offer.
According to the Rhode Island Association of School Committees’ teacher data report for 2003-2004, East Greenwich salaries rank as follows:
The top job step 10 salary was the 7th highest out of 36 districts. The job step 5 salary for beginning teachers was 9th highest out of 36 districts.
East Greenwich is fortunate to have many professionally successful parents – who value education, speak English as a first language, and ensure their kids do their homework and come to school with food in their stomachs. We provide a better than average working environment and still pay above average salaries. Bluntly speaking, given our working environment, we should be able to attract good teachers while paying slightly below average salaries.
Comment #5: The union takes exception to comments that teachers were hurting students by working under [minimal] contract compliance, saying to keep students out of this.
Students at East Greenwich High School are now conducting peer tutoring because teachers are not making themselves available before and after school to help. Parent volunteers are needed as dance chaperones because teachers won’t show up. The senior project has been cancelled. Some field trips have been cancelled. Parents are talking all over town about how the students are being hurt. To which, the union says:
Comment #6: Teachers are still accomplishing what is expected of them legally. If we are not working the hours that we are supposed to work, then they should take us to court.
Ah, the attitude of true, white-collar professionals.
As committee member Gregson stated: “We’re giving them all the money they got last year and we’re giving them all the benefits that they got last year and they’re going to make the kids suffer by refusing to do the same amount of work as last year.
The union insists pay increases be retroactive to last September so they can be made whole – but our children won’t be made whole. That makes it hard to believe the union’s statements about how they care deeply for our children.
Comment #7: For the last twelve years there haven’t been any previous problems during negotiations.
After years of giving away 9-12% annual salary increases, zero co-pays, and 50% buybacks on health insurance, is it any wonder that there were no problems in the past? Outrageous union demands met up with spineless responses from politicians and bureaucrats – and the demands naturally won.
Comment #8: Upset that the School Committee publicly releases specific details of the negotiations instead of working with the union to finalize a deal.
The NEA wants to return to the gag order rules originally imposed by the union so they can conduct their legalized extortion act without public scrutiny.
Comment #9: Can we be a team? Can we start working together?
The school leadership has put a reasonable offer (for Rhode Island) on the table. These words are nothing but a demand for unilateral surrender.
School Committee Chair Bradley has stated that the committee is only trying to make sure the NEA accepts terms – just like the rest of us – live with.
There are still many egregious terms and conditions in this latest contract proposal. It is outrageous to grant anyone 9-12% annual salary increases, have a co-payment less than 20%, and pay any form of insurance buyback.
Seeing how difficult it is to even get a simple 10% co-payment on health insurance confirms yet again how there are structural problems to public education that only true competitive choice can fix.
It also shows yet again how the demands of public sector unions impede excellence in our schools. Excessive contract demands translate into not only a growing tax burden for residents but also less money for academic programs and facility maintenance. Unions block merit pay for the best teachers while ensuring that the worst teachers get the same compensation as the best teachers. And we wonder why public education performance in America ranks so poorly among countries in the industrial world. It is appalling.
But you have to start somewhere. And that is why I am proud of our new committee’s stance. I hope others will speak up in support of their efforts so we can begin to see the first signs of real change.
