Teachers unions’ enrollment cataclysm

OPINION:

Over 60 years ago, union-label politicians in Wisconsin initiated what soon became common practice in the vast majority of the 50 states: In exchange for ongoing campaign support from government union bosses, Badger State legislators and then-Gov. Gaylord Nelson handed them new monopoly-bargaining privileges over rank-and-file educators.

Today, all but a handful of states have statutes authorizing the officers of a single union to speak for all the teachers in a school district, whether union members or not, on matters concerning pay and typically benefits and work rules in dealings with elected and appointed school officials.

Extensive research shows government union bosses routinely wield their bargaining power in ways that undercut the economic interests of many teachers, such as those with low seniority, those who specialize in hard-to-fill subject areas such as advanced math and science and English as a second language and those who are most effective at helping children learn.

For example, in New Jersey, as one perceptive commentator explained in 2022, new teachers are, largely as a consequence of school union bosses’ extraordinary clout, “forced to join a state pension system” that takes “7% of their salaries,” even though “almost half of the new teachers will leave teaching before they vest and will end up subsidizing older, career teachers.”

Besides hurting a majority of teachers to benefit a relatively small share of them, monopolistic unionism in K-12 education is associated with lower student achievement at a higher cost to taxpayers when demographic differences among students in different states are factored in.

As harmful as union monopoly bargaining has proved itself to be for public education, until recently, the total share of parents opting to protect their children from its detrimental impact by exercising their constitutional right to enroll their children in private school or homeschool them showed little sign of rising in response.

The high direct cost normally associated with private schooling and the high opportunity cost of homeschooling were undoubtedly important factors stopping parents from withdrawing their children from unionized government schools.

But according to data furnished by the National Center for Education Statistics, a federal agency, public school enrollment in many states where organized labor wields coercive clout over educators began falling steadily and substantially a few years ago, and there is no end in sight to this trend.

The key precipitating factor behind the decisions of millions of parents to pull their children out of government schools or never enroll them there in the first place was clearly the extraordinary, medically unwarranted COVID-19 lockdowns of government schools across the country commencing in March 2020 and continuing, in many cases, for a year or more.

Enrollment data for the fall of 2019 and the preliminary estimate for the fall of 2024 show K-12 government school enrollment in union-dominated New York and California fell by 10.6% and 10.1% respectively over the past five years. In the 23 states that have never had right-to-work laws barring forced union dues as a group, government-school enrollment fell by 6.9%, from 24.10 million to 22.44 million.

In the 26 right-to-work states, where teachers union bosses are typically “merely” a powerful lobby rather than the virtually indomitable army they constitute in labor stronghold states, government school enrollment has also fallen in the aggregate since the fall of 2019, but by a far more modest 1.3%.

When they acknowledge government school enrollment is declining at all, apologists for the U.S. education establishment like to say it is largely a consequence of demographics. The reality is very different. The latest available Census Bureau data show that since 2019, the nationwide total of K-12-aged U.S. residents (5 to 17 years) has risen by more than 850,000.

The data show that, in the wake of teachers union bosses’ gross abuse of their power during the COVID-19 pandemic, they have lost all credibility with parents, who are striving to get their children out of unionized government schools any way they can: by homeschooling, by paying for private school or by moving to a right-to-work state.

Politicians who continue to court the support of teachers union bigwigs whom American parents now clearly recognize as their enemies do so at their own peril.

• Stan Greer is the senior research associate with the National Institute for Labor Relations Research.