Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Republicans in the state’s legislature rammed through Act 10, which directly attacked union rights for public workers, in 2011. Now that some time has passed, we know the law’s effects on schools—and they’re bad, for teachers and students. Teacher pay and benefits have dropped, with teachers losing out on an average $10,843 in compensation per year, according to a new report from the Center for American Progress. And Wisconsin schools lost out on experienced teachers, something that study after study has shown makes a difference in the classroom (though nothing makes as much difference as class and poverty):
- The percentage of teachers who left the profession spiked to 10.5 percent after the 2010-11 school year, up from 6.4 percent in the year before Act 10 was implemented. Exit rates have remained higher than before, with 8.8 percent of teachers leaving after the 2015-16 school year— the most recent school year for which data are available.
- The percentage of teachers with less than five years of experience increased from 19.6 percent in the 2010-11 school year to 24.1 percent in the 2015-16 school year.
- Average teaching experience decreased from 14.6 years in the 2010-11 school year to 13.9 in the 2011-12 school year, which is where it remained in the 2015-16 school year.
And recent research seems to bear out the negative effect on students that could be predicted from those effects on teachers:
[Florida State University doctoral student Jason] Baron finds that Act 10 resulted in a decline in average high school test scores in math and science by .15 to .18 standard deviations. Baron notes that the magnitude of the decline in student performance is nearly the same magnitude of the increase in test scores that studies have found come from a reduction in class size of eight students. Importantly, he finds that the decline in student performance is entirely driven by test scores falling further behind at schools that are already in the lowest half of the distribution of test scores. At these low-performing schools, test scores fell by an average of .3 standard deviations after Act 10’s implementation, with a larger effect in the second year after the law’s implementation than in the first. High-performing schools had no significant increase in test scores.
So Act 10 didn’t hurt students randomly—it disproportionately hurt disadvantaged students. Which probably makes Scott Walker pretty happy, but that’s because he’s terrible, just like that result.
● Here’s a happier education story: After having its ass kicked by Massachusetts voters in 2016, "New York's wealthiest charter group" is struggling to figure out what's next.
● From the ACLU:
North Carolina has mounted a direct assault on the state’s only farmworkers union, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), which works tirelessly to protect those workers. A new state law, sponsored and supported by legislators who have a financial interest in suppressing farmworker organizing, would make it all but impossible for the union to operate effectively in the state. Together with a coalition of civil rights groups, including the Southern Poverty Law Center and the North Carolina Justice Center, the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit alleging that the law violates farmworkers’ constitutional and civil rights. We have also asked the court for a preliminary injunction, which would suspend the law’s operation during the course of the litigation.
● Montgomery County, Maryland, has passed a $15 an hour minimum wage, to be gradually phased in:
It’s a meaningful victory for the Fight for $15, the union-inspired campaign to raise wages nationally. Montgomery is the most populous county in the state, with a larger population than the nearby cities of Washington, D.C., or Baltimore. It’s also a bellwether for Maryland politics, where organizing has begun already ahead of the 2018 statewide elections, including organizing aimed at improving Maryland’s wage laws.
“The difference that $15 an hour will make for so many working families cannot be underestimated. And the entire county will benefit as more workers will be able to move off publicly funded programs and spend more on local businesses,” Jaime Contreras, vice president of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 32BJ, told In These Times over email.
● Facing Wisconsin-style attack, Iowans stick to the union.
● Relieving racial resentment in our unions:
An electrical workers local in San Francisco found itself in a mortifying situation: one of its members was outed as an active white supremacist. Wireman John Ramondetta had traveled to Charlottesville this August to march alongside Nazis and the KKK.
“For the membership as a whole there is disappointment, embarrassment, and disgust,” said Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 6 Business Manager John Doherty. “The overriding theme is 'We're being tied to this guy!' He doesn't reflect our values.”
● The cause and consequences of the retail apocalypse.
The real reason so many companies are sick, as Bloomberg explained in a recent feature, has to do with debt. Private equity firms purchased numerous chain retailers over the past decade, loading them up with unsustainable debt payments as part of a disastrous business strategy.
Billions of dollars of this debt comes due in the next few years. “If today is considered a retail apocalypse,” Bloomberg reported, “then what’s coming next could truly be scary.” Eight million American retail workers could see their careers evaporate, not due to technological disruption but a predatory financial scheme. The masters of the universe who devised it, meanwhile, will likely walk away enriched, and policymakers must reckon with how they enabled the carnage.
● Staff at the gaming site IGN walked off the job over sexual harassment concerns.
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● Workers Independent News: