The National Miseducation Association

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As I noted last week, the National Education Association, the largest union in the country, is an organization whose primary concern is its radical political and social agenda. But do they benefit education in any way?

Hardly.

In fact, these unions have caused serious damage to public schools, primarily through their mandatory collective bargaining agreements (CBAs), which are a major factor in our educational decline.

Collective bargaining, a term coined in 1891 by socialist Beatrice Webb, is a process of negotiation between employers and employees to reach agreements that set wage scales, work rules, and other terms and conditions of employment.

CBAs dictate that teachers’ unions treat teachers not as professionals but as interchangeable parts, all of equal value and competence. Their industrial-style work rules include one-size-fits-all salary scales, under which teachers receive salary increases not based on quality but on the number of years on the job and by taking often meaningless professional development classes; tenure (contractually known as “permanence”); and seniority or “last in, first out (LIFO),” under which, if a teacher must be laid off due to budgetary belt-tightening, it is not the least talented teacher who is on the chopping block, but rather the newest hire. Hence, a master teacher will lose her job before her less skilled colleagues. Most recently, Noelle Campbell, a Teacher of the Year in a Santa Ana, CA, middle school, received a layoff notice due to a district budget deficit.

Several studies document the extent of the damage CBAs have caused. “The Long-run Effects of Teacher Collective Bargaining,” an in-depth analysis by researchers Michael Lovenheim and Alexander Willen, found that among males, exposure to a CBA law in the first 10 years after passage reduces students’ future annual earnings by $2,134 (3.93%) and reduces employment and labor force participation. The adverse effects of CBAs are particularly pronounced among black and Hispanic males. In these two subgroups, annual earnings decline by $3,246 (9.43%), and employment and labor force participation are reduced.

In a three-minute video, Stanford professor Caroline Hoxby explains how CBAs stifle management’s ability to determine the best slot for a teacher at a given school and deny schools the opportunity to remove underperformers. Additionally, Stanford professor Terry Moe reports that collective bargaining appears to have a substantial adverse effect on larger school districts.

Moreover, teacher union-mandated permanence clauses make it nearly impossible to fire an incompetent teacher. In California, a 2012 court case revealed that, on average, only 2.2 of California’s 275,000 teachers (0.0008%) are dismissed each year for unprofessional conduct or unsatisfactory performance.

As Hoover Institution scholar Eric Hanushek points out, if schools cut the bottom-performing 5% to 7% of teachers—a common practice in the private sector—our education system could rival that of highly ranked Finland. If California adopted Hanushek’s idea, about 18,000 teachers would be let go. However, they’re not going anywhere anytime soon, which means about 450,000 kids are getting an inferior education year after year.

Furthermore, teacher unions played a significant role in the unnecessary closures of U.S. public schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. Research indicates that school districts with longer collective bargaining agreements “were less likely to start the fall 2020 semester with in-person instruction, were less likely to ever open for in-person instruction during the fall semester, and spent more weeks overall in distance learning.” By contrast, Sweden, which never shut down its schools, saw no child deaths, and teacher COVID cases were rare.

The NEA has long been a leading proponent of “restorative justice.” This touchy-feely, new-age canard, which took hold in the 1990s, has taken root throughout much of the country. It emphasizes “making the victim and offender whole” and involves “an open discussion of feelings.” Restorative justice emerged because black students are far more likely to be suspended than other ethnic groups. The suggestion here, of course, is that white teachers and administrators tend to be racist. But the racial bean counters never explain why the racial disparity exists even in schools where black principals and staff predominate.

So, what do we do to counter the destructive power wielded by teachers’ unions? Franklin Delano Roosevelt, hardly a right-winger and a champion of private-sector unions, wrote in an August 1937 letter to the National Federation of Federal Employees that “All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.”

But trying to outlaw them now is a nonstarter. The best way to defang the unions is for teachers to stop supporting them.

Most teachers don’t realize that when they pay union dues, they are actually subsidizing three unions. In addition to their local union dues, typically around $200 per year, they also pay money to state and national affiliates. Here in California, for example, NEA dues are $216 per year, and the NEA state affiliate, the California Teachers Association, takes $858. So teachers wind up on the hook for about $1,300 per year, the great majority of which goes to left-wing candidates and causes.

Even if an employee decides to forgo union membership, they—willingly or not—remain part of the collective bargaining unit. So when contract time rolls around, the teacher must accept the terms of the union agreement. Why should a worker be dragged into a collective bargaining agreement? Those who don’t want to join a union should not be forced to be part of the collective bargaining unit. They should be free to negotiate their own contract without having to deal with a union. The idea of a “members-only” union is fair to both sides, but monopoly-obsessed union honchos invariably revile it.

Liability insurance is one of the few decent benefits offered by the teachers’ unions. However, teachers can instead join the Association of American Educators or Christian Educators Association International—professional organizations—and get better coverage at a much lower cost.

Terry Stoops, director of state affairs at Defending Education, sums up the situation: “The National Education Association has little interest in improving the lives of America’s public school educators. Instead, it’s committed to dispensing millions of dollars in membership dues to Democrats, while infiltrating classrooms and corrupting young minds with the grotesqueries of the far Left.”

Larry Sand is a retired 28-year classroom teacher who also served as the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network from 2006 to 2025. He now focuses on raising awareness about our failing education system.