With her nonstop knack for making waves, getting noticed, and possibly even advancing the interests of her members, American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten is now on the warpath against hedge fund managers. “Why,” she asks, “would you put your money with someone who wants to destroy you?” So her union is discouraging teacher pension funds—which invest many billions—from doing business with hedge funds led by people who do things she disapproves of. Those include supporting charter schools and pushing lawmakers to reform public sector pensions and expand the tax deductibility of donations to private schools.
As with the squalid crusade on some college campuses and churches to make endowment managers stop investing in firms that do business with Israel, one must ask whether the political ends being pursued justify investment portfolio changes that may diminish future returns. One hedge fund chieftain likened the Weingarten campaign to “hiring a dentist because of their political beliefs. You may see eye to eye on politics, but you may not have great, straight teeth.”
Meanwhile, back in Chicago, one of the AFT’s largest locals remains at war with Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, waging a strike on April Fool’s Day. Farther west, the United Teachers of Los Angeles (which is affiliated with both the AFT and the National Education Association) is bucking against a burgeoning plan to grow the charter sector until it serves half the children living in the City of Angels.
All of which is ugly and regrettable, even reprehensible, but not truly surprising to any veteran observer of American teachers’ unions. It is, however, almost all happening within our usual framework of laws, contracts, lobbying, and politicking. The unions are following a familiar playbook and mostly playing by the rules, even if many of the rules and practices in K–12 education don’t serve the interests of children.
Be glad you don’t live in Mexico, where the unions have long exerted immense power over the country’s miserable education system. As reported in the Georgetown Public Policy Review,
Most of the blame for Mexico’s poor education system is placed on the National Union of Education Workers (SNTE), which until recently interfered in all major educational programs and enjoyed monopoly power over labor relations between federal authorities and teachers. Historically the SNTE, with the assistance of state governments, was able to manage the hiring and promotion of teachers without taking into account any established recruitment or training standards. Some arrangements between unions and governments even allowed the sale and inheritance of teachers’ posts, exposing the lack of transparency and governance across Mexico’s education system.
The good news is that the government finally set out to rectify matters:
To combat this major problem, on February 25, 2013, President Peña Nieto adopted the Education Reform Bill. Viewed by many as a first step towards overcoming corruption and inefficiencies in the education system, the Education Reform Bill attempted to put an end to Mexico’s detrimental education system and was hailed by Peña Nieto’s as “the foundation for transforming Mexico.”…
The changes made to Articles 3 and 73 of the Constitution had at their core the proper evaluation of teachers, a system where merit would be the criterion by which teachers were appointed, and the promise that teachers could be fired if they failed to meet standards. While schools continued to be administered by the states and were given more autonomy over how they handled their own resources and defined their own curricula, the federal government took more responsibility for teacher certification, evaluation, and salary distribution.
Among other things, the bill created a new independent body…to periodically evaluate teachers, while the Secretariat of Public Education (SEP) is responsible for designing, organizing, and implementing teaching curricula. In addition to teacher evaluations, the reform package included the creation of a merit-based pay and promotion system, tests for new teachers entering the field, and more federal oversight. These constitutional amendments gave the government, rather than the SNTE, control over the hiring and firing of teachers, halting a structure where only union members could become teachers and where they were allowed to hold guaranteed lifelong posts without ever being tested for their performance.
While this was taking place, the long-time head of SNTE was jailed on grounds of embezzlement and corruption.
But Mexico’s teachers’ unions were not about to take any of this lying down—and they haven’t. The heck with civilized norms and playing by the rules of law and politics. Three years of labor unrest, protests, strikes, and increasing violence followed the 2013 reforms as the unions struggled (with partial success) to get the government to back down. With President Peña Nieto losing popularity (for a host of reasons)—and a national election on the horizon—they’ve doubled down to defeat him and his reforms.
Most vividly, and horrifically, they’ve organized violent protests in recent months in the poor southern state of Oaxaca that have led to fatalities as government authorities have sought to contain them.
As Wall Street Journal columnist Mary Anastasia O’Grady notes, Oaxaca is “an education disaster. It placed thirty-first out of thirty-two Mexican states in the annual ranking of education quality” released last week. She adds that Oaxaca’s branch of CNTE (the smaller and more militant of Mexico’s teachers’ unions) is
especially outraged because the federal government has taken over responsibility for the state’s education budget, denying the union access to hundreds of millions of dollars it once controlled. In June, federal agents jailed two CNTE leaders on corruption charges. The union responded with the roadblocks, which deprived local residents of food, medicine, gasoline, and mobility.
Violence followed, including at least six deaths, which the union (of course) attributes to the government.
My point, for now, is that as damaging as the tactics of Ms. Weingarten and her ilk are to the educational interests of American children (and, I would contend, teachers), it could be a heckuva lot worse! And indeed, it might well get worse if Ms. Weingarten continues on her present path, which now includes backing the Mexican teachers’ unions in their war against the reform-minded government.
