e is that the teacher unions’ greatest power is not the ability to get what they want, but rather the ability to stifle reforms that threaten their interests. School choice is not the only reform they oppose-for union interests are deeply rooted in the status quo, and most changes of any consequence create problems for them. The result is that, as our nation has struggled to improve its public schools, the teacher unions have emerged as the fiercest, most powerful defenders of the status quo, and the single greatest obstacle to the reform of American education.
For reform to succeed, something concrete must be done to remove the education system from the unions’ grip. This won’t be easy, because the unions can (and regularly do) use their power to “persuade” reformers to turn their sights elsewhere. Most Democrats, in particular, would be committing political suicide by trying to alter the unions’ current role in public education, and they will resist any efforts to do so. In a political system of checks and balances, this alone will be enough to block most reform proposals most of the time.
If the future holds a solution to the problem of union power, it will probably develop as a by-product of the school-choice movement. The best bet is that, despite union opposition, school choice in various forms will gradually spread. As it does, the unions will be faced with an increasingly competitive environment. Children and resources will begin to flow to nonunion schools, and unions will find themselves with fewer members, less money, and a growing number of schools and teachers that are outside the traditional system and difficult to organize. Competition spells trouble for unions. It undermines their organizational strength-and with it, their political power.
Whether choice and competition will ultimately win out remains to be seen. In the meantime, the teacher unions will reign as the preeminent power in American education, and they will continue to give us public schools in their own image.
-Terry M. Moe is a professor of political science at Stanford University, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and the author of Schools, Vouchers, and the American Public (Brookings, 2001).
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