“I am not a charter school fan,” Joe Biden declared in his 2020 presidential campaign. That’s disappointing, but not surprising, coming from the self-declared “most pro-union president” in history.
His would-be successor, Kamala Harris, claims to still be equivocating, as is her wont, over her position on charter schools. But she has the enthusiastic support of the teachers’ unions, so that’s a bad sign too.
Her dilemma is that the teachers’ unions, the political partners of the Democrats, are dead set in their opposition to charter schools for two reasons. They expose the education failures of the union-dominated district schools, and most charter school teachers aren’t unionized and therefore don’t pay union dues.
Charter schools, first created in the 1990s, are publicly funded but independently administered. They don’t charge tuition and aren’t allowed to “cherry-pick” the best students.
Charter school opponents once could claim that charter schools “don’t work” to improve academic outcomes. But we know now that this is simply not the case.
Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) released a 2023 report tracking charter school outcomes over 15 years. The study covered 2 million charter school students in 29 states with a control group in district schools. It is arguably the most comprehensive, credible study ever done of charter schools.
The conclusion was decisive. Most charter schools “produce superior student gains despite enrolling a more challenging student population.”
CREDO’s first study in 2009 showed no improvement in student outcomes from charters, a result still cited as evidence that charters fail to help those deemed “uneducable” by some. But each subsequent CREDO report has shown improvement and superior performance overall.
New York charter school students gained 75 days reading improvement and 73 in math each year compared with traditional schools. In Washington state, the numbers were 29 days in reading and 30 in math. In Illinois, it was 40 in reading, 48 in math.
The recent study also showed that black and Hispanic students achieved disproportionately large gains. A section in the CREDO report described several “gap-busting schools” which educate students from underprivileged backgrounds to perform at the same level as white peers. So much for the myth of “uneducable” students.
The overall statistics would be even better if not for the 15% of charter schools that underperform their local district schools. The telling difference is that failing charter schools can be and are closed. Failing district schools just keep on failing year after year.
There is even more good news. Charter schools benefit even those students who do not attend them. According to an analysis by the Fordham Foundation, at least 12 studies indicate that the scores for all publicly enrolled students in a geographic region rise when the number of charter schools increases. Moreover, neighboring schools which don’t experience academic improvement often showed progress in school attendance and behavioral problems due to competing with charters.
The reason is obvious. The mere presence of choices for parents breaks the district school monopoly. Competition brings more accountability and a “customer orientation” that benefits everybody.
It’s no coincidence that, while traditional public schools have lost students, charter schools have gained over 300,000 students over the last five years. But the institutional opponents of the charter schools are unmoved by the good news. The growth of charters would undoubtedly be even greater if not for the relentless opposition of the teachers’ union/Democratic Party axis.
Ironically, for charter school opponents, charters are highly popular with the working class, ethnic minority constituencies they claim to champion. A poll this May by Democrats for Education Reform found that 80% of black parents and 71% of Hispanics had a favorable view of charters, as well they should.
But the teachers’ unions don’t give away their formidable political support, and they clearly dominate educational policy making with today’s Democrats. The Biden/Harris administration has continued a program of budget cuts and onerous regulations for charter schools, including a proposed reduction for the Charter Schools Program, which provides grants and was even supported by the Clinton and Obama administrations.
The Democrats – and all of us – have a clear choice to make between the needs of students versus the demands of the teachers’ unions.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
The Arizona Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that the practice of union release time was unconstitutional.
Release time occurs when government agencies direct their employees to be released from their job duties in order to work for their union advancing private interests such as lobbying and recruitment. While on release time, those government employees would still receive their regular government pay, benefits, and retirement.
Chief Justice Clint Bolick on behalf of the Arizona Supreme Court ruled in Gilmore v. Gallego that release time constituted a violation of Arizona’s Gift Clause prohibiting the granting of public money to private entities, or “gifts,” because it used public funds raised by general taxation in the aid of enterprises engaged in private business.
“[R]elease time should be separately scrutinized to determine if it has a public purpose and provides sufficient tangible, enforceable consideration to the City,” wrote Bolick. “The release time provisions at issue are precisely that: a ‘release’ from the ordinary duties for which [city] employees were hired, to instead perform, in the main, lawful union activities.”
The Gift Clause prohibits the state and its subdivisions from giving or loaning credit, or making any donations or grants, to any individuals, associations, or corporations.
The Goldwater Institute sued the city of Phoenix in October 2019 over the practice of time release, on behalf of two non-union city employees and taxpayers.
In a press release on their court win, the Goldwater Institute’s Timothy Sandefur and Jon Riches said that the end to government-funded union activities through release time would ensure private interests weren’t financed by taxpayers.
“Today’s ruling is a watershed decision that ensures taxpayer dollars will be spent to advance public interests, not private special interests, including the politically powerful special interests of government labor unions,” read the joint statement.
As disclosed in court documents, release time cost the city of Phoenix nearly $500,000 annually.
That six-figure cost became a factor in the court’s decision. Bolick noted that the city had no direct control or supervision over the employees under release time, “an essential criterion” to establish the public purpose standard for Gift Clause adherence.
“[T]he City costs are substantial, but the benefits are so negligible as to render them largely illusory. The Union receives four full-time employees, who are released from their public duties but paid as if they were performing public work, for the Union to direct as it sees fit,” said Bolick. “In return, the MOU provides ‘examples’ of the uses of release time, and the City argues that ‘release time promotes cooperative labor relations and facilitates an open dialogue about employment issues.’ At best, these are anticipated indirect benefits that do not count as enforceable obligations for consideration purposes.”
The city of Phoenix argued that release time yielded benefits to city work by improving union-government relations. The Arizona Supreme Court rejected that argument.
“To the extent that the City values the purposes to which release time might be devoted, it has not explained why it could not assign employees, under its direction and control, to perform precisely those tasks (such as serving on task forces), rather than placing them at the Union’s disposal,” wrote Bolick. “Indeed, the costs and benefits here are so one-sided that it is difficult to envision how such expansive time release provisions could ever survive the consideration prong unless the employees genuinely paid for them through foregone wages or otherwise[.]”
However, the Arizona Supreme Court did reject arguments that the release time provisions violated the state’s constitutional protections for free speech and free association.
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American school children are taught that they are being raised in a democracy, where elected officials pass the laws, bureaucrats administer the laws, and government workers dutifully carry them out.
That’s a crock. Americans at this time are mostly governed under rules generated by an unelected bureaucracy, the so called “dark state.” Worse, personnel and financial matters are controlled by the workers themselves through their government unions. The rest of us are left out of the loop.
It was in the 1960s, at the height of the “rights” revolution, that 38 states and the federal government first granted government unions the right to collective bargaining. Curiously, government workers already had civil service protections, and there were no abusive work conditions needing reform. Government employees were considered to have a moral duty to protect the public interest, not bargain against it.
Since the door was cracked open, there has been a relentless torrent of workers’ rights and benefits. In every bargaining cycle, workers win so many concessions from the bosses they elect that government managers no longer really manage. Unions do.
There are consequences. Baltimore schools have received heavy criticism for having 23 schools last year without a single student proficient (i.e., barely adequate) in math. Baltimore is hardly alone. Chicago had 37 schools last year with zero students proficient in either math or English and many other urban school districts have similar records of failure.
Normally, administrators faced with a crisis of this magnitude would radically overhaul their operations and personnel. But because of union controls, political leaders, school boards, and administrators are essentially powerless to make meaningful changes. In Illinois, an 18-year study found two out of 95,000 teachers were terminated for poor performance. The dismissal rate in California, the home of multiple failing districts, is even lower. In fact, almost every teacher is rated as excellent.
The disastrous closing of the schools during COVID and the attendant learning loss were also totally union-inspired. Long after it was well known that children were at minimal risk from COVID, intransigent unions refused to return to the classroom. The educational damage callously inflicted on our school children is a national shame.
Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer who killed George Floyd, igniting racial riots worldwide, was a known bad actor with multiple complaints in his record. But the police chief lacked authority to terminate or even reassign him. Union-imposed “due process” for police typically precludes interviewing the officer until he views all witness statements, then multiple hearings and reviews, and finally a chance for reprieve from union-selected arbitrators.
The process is so daunting that many supervisors don’t even try to address bad behavior. Of the 2,600 complaints against Minneapolis police officers in the prior decade, just 12 resulted in disciplinary actions, none of them severe. This inability to discipline rogue officers is a major contributor to the undeserved poor public image plaguing many police departments.
The outsized influence of unions has a single source: their ability to financially influence elections. Public unions in America collect about $5 billion in compulsory dues annually or $20 billion per election cycle. So, for example, newly elected Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who will head the “management” team in union negotiations, received over 90% of his campaign funding from public unions, assuring the talks will go smoothly.
The captive New York legislature passed 21 bills to enhance public employee benefits in 2021 alone. In California, union-mandated rules are so lax that last year, 3,600 state employees received $100,000 each in overtime pay, very little of it legitimate overtime. In Illinois, a state that would declare bankruptcy if it were a private enterprise, Governor J.B. Pritzker settled his political debts with a 19.28% raise for 35,000 state employees.
Put simply, government unions have used collective bargaining and campaign cash to seize effective control of government and run it for their own benefit. A Republican government can’t work if authorities selected through the democratic process don’t have the ability to do their jobs.
We need to find fearless leaders who will have the guts to take on the unions and once again restore government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
“Let’s just make everything free!” That might as well be the Left’s motto at this point as they clearly don’t understand how a good economy works. While the past 18 months under President Biden is proof enough of that, they’re not done yet. The Left is fully committed to its plan to build back even broker. And now, they’re targeting conservative states like Arizona to do so.
The latest initiative being pushed in our state comes from California unions. (Because apparently no one knows a good economy like a California union.) It’s called the “Predatory Debt Collection Practices Act,” which sounds harmless enough. After all, who doesn’t want to stick it to predatory debt collectors? But just as you would expect from a California initiative being pushed here in Arizona, it’s not only anti-creditor, it’s anti-business. And it would make Bernie Sanders proud…
Most of the attention of our nation’s businesses entities is focused on attempts to win government favors. That’s typical of political economies sliding into corruption mode.
America’s unions have been a big winner of the competition. They poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Democratic campaigns. Their bet paid off when Democrats swept the presidency and both houses of Congress. Not only that, ole’ Scranton Joe is a longtime friend.
So White House favors have flowed in a torrent. For example, a new law mandates union labor on virtually all federal projects, automatically adding 20 to 30% to the cost. There is also a provision making union dues tax deductible, another huge union subsidy.
The Green New Deal is union friendly. A $4500 tax credit is available for electric vehicles only if the car is union made. The $14,500 tax credit for homeowner energy-saving devices also requires the work be done by union members.
Worst of all, the “jobs bill“ would abolish the 26 state right-to-work laws. Tens of millions of workers would be forced to pay union dues and support union political causes.
There are legitimate reasons why workers may decline to join a union. The benefits of membership may not be worth the dues. They may not support the union’s political views.
Especially ambitious or capable workers may not want to be bound by union work rules, promotion and salary schedules, typically designed to protect the weakest performers. Moreover, many workers are repulsed by the 2,100 documented cases of union corruption, including embezzlement, racketeering and inflated salaries.
But it’s no secret that mandatory membership would massively increase union rolls and coffers. Joe Biden may have lied about a few things here and there, but his vow to have “the most pro-union administration in history” meant business.
But if the unions are experiencing a bonanza, how about the rest of us? After all, only 6.3% of private sector workers are union members (about half of government workers are unionized). How do the other 93.7%, and those of us not considered “workers“, fare?
Not that well. You may have heard of the supply chain shortage and the massive backup at our ports. You’ve seen prices rise and empty shelves starting to appear.
In response, President Biden recently announce a “gamechanger”, ordering more hours for the ports. Union work rules regarding off-hours pay make the option a significant burden for the port operators. But it would increase cargo movement by less than 10%, hardly solving the problem.
The dysfunction in America’s ports isn’t news. The World Bank rates LA and Long Beach 328 and 333 worldwide for speed and efficiency. Not one US port was in the top 50.
Here’s the reason. Our ports lack modern technology. Automated cranes and other laborsaving devices operate worldwide over twice as fast as our outdated equipment.
But unions demand the obsolescence to preserve make-work jobs. The International Longshoremen’s Association has a contract blocking the use of automated cargo handling equipment.
Biden could take action, but he won’t. His Build Back Better bill specially prohibits using any funds for automation.
Government unions, because they needn’t worry about any economic impact on their employer, are even more abusive of the public trust. The main reward for teachers’ union loyalty has been the party’s staunch, enduring opposition to school choice.
School choice for underprivileged children is rightly considered the civil rights issue of our time. Many leading Democrats, like the Obamas, Clintons and Kennedys send their own children to desirable schools but deny the same privilege to millions of children who will be economically handicapped for life by the school they attend.
The teachers’ unions displayed their impressive clout again during the recent pandemic. Long after research data had thoroughly discredited the wisdom, (children were essentially COVID-19 proof), they selfishly kept schools closed. The education fallout is proving to be catastrophic.
Unions historically have played a role in improving the plight of workers. Private sector unions particularly deserve the right to exist, to organize and to be treated fairly. But when the scales are tipped to afford them political benefits not enjoyed by other Americans, we all get hit.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
