 friends elected and enemies defeated.
The teacher unions are in the astounding position of being able to determine who sits on local school boards, and thus with whom they will be bargaining.
Almost all of this firepower is employed to the benefit of Democrats, whose constituencies already incline them to favor policies the teacher unions want-more spending, higher taxes, higher public employment, more regulations, more job protections, more restrictions on competition, more collective bargaining-and who, with union backing and pressure, can usually be counted on for support.
Within Congress and the state legislatures, the teacher unions are aggressive, omnipresent participants. This is often true even in right-to-work states. They monitor all relevant legislation, propose bills, carry out background research on issues, attend committee hearings, keep scorecards on legislators, and bring their formidable power to bear in getting legislators to vote their way. On education, teacher unions are the 500-pound gorillas of legislative politics.
On occasion, they also use the initiative process to put their own bills on the ballot for a direct popular vote. Here, they can use their financial resources to bankroll signature-gathering and media blitzes, and they can unleash an army of volunteers during the campaign. No other organizations are so well suited to initiative politics, and the unions have gone this route when legislatures have failed to give them what they wanted. A good example: California’s Proposition 98, which was successfully promoted by the California Teachers Association in 1989, and since then has required the state to spend at least 40 percent of its annual budget on the public schools.
The teacher unions also exercise their power in administrative arenas. The national and state departments of education, in particular, oversee countless education programs, distribute billions of dollars, and have substantial discretion in deciding what the details of education policy will be and how the money will be spent. Within these departments, officials regard the unions as key “stakeholders” who have legitimate, ongoing roles to play in shaping public decisions. The opportunities for union influence are everywhere and virtually unobservable to outsiders unfamiliar with the byzantine world of government bureaucracy.
Often the unions pursue their policy objectives by combining legislative and administrative power. An important example can be found in their recent drive for teacher “professionalism.” This is a goal with obvious political appeal. Who could be against professionalism? The reality, however, is that they are active on this issue because their fundamental interests are at stake. By pushing for stricter licensing, credentialing, and certification requirements and for regulatory boards controlled or influenced by the unions themselves, they are attempting to control entry into their field and thus to limit supply and put upward pressure on salaries. This is a classic political strategy that other occupations, from doctors and lawyers to cosmetologists and plumbers, have long used with great success. The teacher unions just want to do the same.
The Politics of Blocking
Much of what the teacher unions do in politics is not about winning the policies they want. It is about blocking the policies they don’t want-a strategy that the American political system, built around multiple checks and balances, is designed to facilitate. Because blocking is relatively easy, the unions are usually powerful enough to stop reforms they consider a threat to their interests, and thus to protect a status quo that benefits them. In a time of widespread pressure for improvement in public education, this is the way the teacher unions put their power to most effective use. They use it to prevent change.
Consider the movement for school choice, which represents the most far-reaching movement for change in American education. From the unions’ standpoint, it is irrelevant whether choice is a promising reform. The overriding fact is that ch