Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI)
It is an article of faith among teachers unions that one of the central reasons for their existence is to advocate for their students, a statement that often gets jeered by right-wing critics, who incessantly bleat that unions stand in the way of a better education for their children.
One has to wonder how those right-wing critics, who applauded Gov. Scott Walker and his acolytes in the Wisconsin legislature for their union busting bill passed in March, will be able to reconcile their "unions hurt education" meme with this little bit of educational research:
Wisconsin has the dubious distinction of reducing state aid per student this school year the most of 24 states studied by an independent, Washington-based think tank, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
According to a preliminary study released Sept. 1 by the nonprofit research organization, the dollar change in spending from the last fiscal year to this year dropped $635 per student under Gov. Scott Walker's budget that took effect July 1. New York was in second place, cutting state school aid $585 per student. California was third at $484.
The study only reports on the 24 states where current-year data is available. Those states educate about two-thirds of the nation's K-12 students.
Nobody could have predicted ...
Wait, check that: A lot of us predicted it. When you weaken the state's most forceful advocates for public education, you can dismantle it with minimal hassle. And that's exactly what Wisconsin has done this school year, as our own Mark Andersen outlined late last month.
In a telling quote from Mark's post, a local administrator essentially bragged that the union-busting bill would make budget balancing easy, since you could always reduce the district contribution to employee health care. After all, he reasoned, the law did not include a cap on employee contributions. How fortunate for the district.
When Walker and his minions were concocting this scheme early in the year, teachers unions and other allies warned this would lead to Wisconsin balancing its books on the backs of teachers and students. Decried as alarmists, it has taken less than six months for us to see exactly how right those union advocates were.
There may be no more compelling argument for continuing the recall movement to next year, when both Gov. Walker and the class of 2010 will be eligible.