During speaking engagements and media appearances for my recent City Journal piece on the depredations of the California Teachers Association -- the Golden State's most powerful teachers union -- one particular question came up with metronomic regularity: how do we diminish the power that unions have to set education policy in America? My answer was twofold -- through public policy changes that diminish union power and through consumer mechanisms that allow parents to bypass union monopolies altogether. Based on a report appearing in today's USA Today, it appears as though the combination of precisely those factors is already starting to enervate the nation's largest teachers union.
From the piece:
The National Education Association (NEA) has lost more than 100,000 members since 2010. By 2014, union projections show, it could lose a cumulative total of about 308,000 full-time teachers and other workers, a 16% drop from 2010. Lost dues will shrink NEA's budget an estimated $65 million, or 18%.
"Things will never go back to the way they were." Music, no doubt, to the ears of parents, students, and devoted teachers throughout the nation.NEA calls the membership losses "unprecedented" and predicts they may be a sign of things to come. "Things will never go back to the way they were," reads its 2012-14 strategic plan, citing changing teacher demographics, attempts by some states to restrict public employee collective bargaining rights and an "explosion" in online learning that could sideline flesh-and-blood teachers.
