It may seem a stretch to attempt a school choice angle for Labor Day weekend, given teachers unions are the snag to school choice expansion. But I’ll give it a shot.

The school choice advocates I know believe parents have a right to educate their children as they see fit, and that school choice levels the playing field so more parents can more fully exercise that right. I haven’t seen any survey results to be sure, but I can’t see any reason why union members, outside of teachers unions, would disagree.

Now and then, some unions have dared air that position publicly. A few years ago, an impressive list of unions in New York lined up for Gov. Cuomo’s proposal for tax credit scholarships. In the 1990s, the Teamsters in Pennsylvania went all in for vouchers. In the 1970s, the legendary Cesar Chavez backed a private “freedom school” in the farmworker town of Blythe, California – and foresaw an education system that was (once again) grounded in pluralism.

“Gradually,” Chavez said, “we’re going to see an awful lot of alternative schools to public education.”

Closer to home, hundreds of public school district employees in Florida, including many teachers, use private school choice scholarships for their children. At last count, more than 1,400 had secured a Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, which are available to lower-income families (and administered by non-profits such as Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog.)

Again, I don’t have hard data. But I know from talking to dozens of those parents that many are union members. Some had no idea about “controversy” with “vouchers.” They just knew the scholarships helped their children.

One of them, a bus driver, secured a scholarship after her daughter got into a fight in her district school and then, despite no other blemishes on her record, faced re-assignment to an alternative school for disruptive students. Another, a teacher, got a scholarship because her son, a former foster child, needed a smaller school with more structure and attention than his district school could give him. I don’t know any parent who wouldn’t sympathize with either mom.

Yet another scholarship parent was not just a teacher and union member, but a member of her union’s executive board. She said she valued school choice but, for obvious reasons, had to keep her views to herself. Luckily, she said, the issue of school choice never came up with her union because it had bigger fish to fry – like corralling better pay.

Sounds like the right priorities to me.

Happy Labor Day!

Rick Scott will be inaugurated as Florida’s 45th governor in just eight days, following one of the nation’s closest gubernatorial races, and it is worth reflecting on what drove the Florida Education Association to call it “the most important election of our lifetime.” Those who think efforts to reduce tenure and increase merit pay are what will break the unions are missing the most important business ingredient here – market share.

FEA’s preferred candidate for governor, state CFO Alex Sink, lost by only 1.2 percentage points in a Republican landslide that saw the other four statewide Democrats lose by an average of 19 points. In the campaign’s final hectic days, a get-out-the-vote memo to members from my friend Jeff Wright, FEA’s director of public policy advocacy, helped explain the passion. He felt the same pressures I faced when I was a union president. To be a viable business, the union must maintain its membership base. Fewer members means less money and less clout.

“FEA is the only organization that has consistently fought back on stupid policies that do harm to students and to the people we represent,” Jeff wrote. “If we are no longer strong due to reduction in the number of people served by public schools, then they can do what they want with the education budgets of today.”

The flip side is that, when I was a union president, I knew that battles over tenure were great for business. That’s because teacher unions are in the business of selling protection, and anything that causes teachers to experience more job-related fear or insecurity increases union membership. I could never say so publicly, but the elimination of tenure would mean the union contract would be the only protection teachers had. That’s amounts to a full employment act for unions. (more…)