Why are Teacher Unions So Bad at Math?

[XLFD]

You've undoubtedly got some flyers in the mail and seen the political attack ads on television and the internet, excoriating Governor Rick Snyder and your local incumbent Republican state congressman for taking $1 billion dollars from the Michigan educational system just like a bully taking some nerdy (or in Snyder's case, 'nerdier') kids lunch money.  You've probably seen a few teachers complaining about their having no future and living on subsistence wages now.

They love to tell you about the billion dollars he cut from education with his Republican raiders from both houses, but is this reality or is this new math?   At best, it is fuzzy math; numbers that keep getting repeated so often that it becomes ingrained in many people's subconscious.  But is that number legitimate, and why weren't we hearing of such cuts all through the last four years when we had an energized teacher's union working against making Michigan a right-to-work state, but otherwise not complaining?

It turns out that they really did not have much to complain about as Governor Snyder and his Republican-dominated state congress, by just about any metric used, actually helped funnel more dollars into the education coffers.  But even with their bailout, the teacher's union is a lot more interested in getting a Democrat in the top spot so that prospects for more money in the future will be even more rosier

What is too bad for the kids, however, is that a disproportionate amount of the money went outside the classroom to retired teachers.  But don't take my word for it, take Ken Braun's.  He is currently the director of policy for InformationStation.org, a contributor to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, and has had his data verified by the Detroit Free Press and Mlive.  His recent column for the latter is below.

For many years the official handbook of the Michigan Public School Employees Retirement System accurately claimed public school employees were recipients of “one of the best public pensions around.” Remember that boast, because it’s a profound one in a nation drowning in public pension debt. It alludes to all the math you need to know to understand the dung flinging between the campaigns of Republican Gov. Rick Snyder and Democratic rival Mark Schauer over whether or not the incumbent slashed school funding by a billion bucks.

(Note: Thanks potentially to repeated public quoting of the aforementioned MPSERS boast by yours truly, the Office of Retirement Services eventually removed it from the handbook sometime during June of 2011.)

Reporters from the Detroit Free Press and MLive have both tackled the Schauer team’s tall tale that under Snyder’s watch $1 billion has been snatched away from the classrooms of children. The truth, according to the Freep, is that K-12 spending is up $1.1 billion since the final year of Gov. Granholm’s guidance. But then there’s this: “Nearly $883 million of that increase went to cover a sharp hike in school retirement costs.”

The MPSERS pension and retiree health care benefit was a voracious spending monster raiding classrooms long before businessman Rick Snyder was known to more than a fraction of a percent of the state’s population. During 2004, the Citizens’ Research Council of Michigan showed the combined MPSERS cost to school districts was already expected to gobble up nearly a 15 percent surcharge on total payrolls.

But that was the good news. The CRC projected MPSERS costs to hit nearly 25 percent by 2014, and blow past 30 percent by 2020.

The inflating price tag wasn’t because of the pension, but the retiree health care benefit. This rare perk of paying the health care premiums for people no longer showing up for work is exceedingly rare in the private sector. (Remember, this is “one of the best public pensions around.”) Just one in four big employers offered retiree health care this year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, and it has all but vanished from the small employer scene. Middle class Michigan taxpayers were buying a perk for teachers that most didn’t get from their own employer.

School districts were paying this surcharge from their operating funds, meaning an ever-growing chunk of tax dollars were flowing out of classrooms and into the costly and rare school employee perk. The Michigan Education Association, the state’s largest public school employee union, responded to this looming crisis in 2006 by launching the “K-16 Proposal,” an initiated law that more or less asked voters to guarantee that the explosive growth in MPSERS costs would be permanently bailed out at the state level. On Election Day 2006, the electorate wisely and resoundingly rejected this “give us ours and everyone else be damned” request.

Gov. Snyder’s temporary $883 million bailout of MPSERS, which included a reform requirement that employees pay a bit more for their pricey perk, relieved schools of some of their MPSERS costs. In effect, that bailout was a straightforward slice of the underhanded and comprehensive financial malpractice the MEA was trying to permanently inflict on much of the state budget back in 2006.

Cynical admirers of brazen political hypocrisy should appreciate that the MEA has led the charge in perpetuating the “$1 billion cut” myth; that it hasn’t fessed up that the governor’s bailout of one of the “best public pensions around” came from its own playbook; and finally that the gluttonous union has endorsed Mark Schauer over Snyder.

http://www.mlive.com/lansing-news/index.ssf/2014/10/ken_braun_snyde...

[Willy]

Very informative X. Thanks for the information. To bad most people do not know about the bloated pension funds being paid to the MEA members. What a staggering amount of money they are receiving. All of the scare tactics to get more money. More money not for the children but for the teachers and their benefits. If there ever was an organization that is anti education it's the teachers union [MEA]. What has always irritated me about the MEA is the phony and misleading name they have given themselves. Calling themselves an "education association" is like calling a wolves union a "sheep guidance association". The only benefactors of the MEA is the teachers so why aren't they being honest by calling  themselves simply a "teachers union".

[XLFD]

Perhaps because Michigan Tech University already grabbed the MTU acronym.  The progressive playbook is filled with misleading titles, like Affordable Care Act, the Fairness Doctrine, the Employee Free Choice Act, and the Respect for Marriage Act.  All effectively run counter to what their title suggests.

With the initials MEA they can easily be associated with the related group Middle East Airlines.

[Dave]

The big thing that democrats seem to like to forget is those pesky publicly paid pensions.... and as shown in the commercial that's been running that is mentioned here, those teachers don't want to come to grips that the reason they didn't see more money in their classrooms was because most of that money was going to pay on the pensions.

[XLFD]

It's fine to look after your own self-interests and those of your fellow workers, and it's nice to know that our teachers are content (or were content until their union's political wing decided to make this a big issue this campaign) with their pensions, but it's disheartening that otherwise professional teachers allow themselves to spread misleading information about anything.  It gives you pause to think that their focus is away from what they are supposed to be doing; teaching should not be spreading propaganda and politicizing the profession.

[Willy]

The MEA is a perfect example of why there now exists a "Right to Work" law in Michigan. A large portion of the money they receive goes towards liberal, progressive politicians who help keep the money flowing to MEA members. We pay the teachers, they pay the union and the union pay  the politicians. All with hard earned dollars extorted from taxpayers.