[analog31]

In my state, the legislature broke the public sector unions a few years ago (while sparing the police and firefighters unions). There has been a wave of retirements -- pretty much any K-12 teacher who can afford to retire or leave the profession is doing so. In some schools, there are no teachers left who are older than 50. I know a few of these people, and we are losing the best teachers, not the worst.

Two other non-union teaching gigs are preschool and college, and in both of those areas, the age distribution of teachers drops off precipitously at around 25 for preschool and 35 for college. My interpretation is that teaching has ceased to be a career. Disclaimer: I taught an engineering course at the nearby Big Ten university, but with no intention of doing it for more than one semester.

The teachers union doubtlessly protected the bad apples, but it also protected the good apples from things like wage erosion, gradually increasing workload, and getting blamed for outcomes that they can't control.

And I'm sure that education is in need of massive reform, but any reform will now have to be done with nobody interested in becoming a teacher.

[pc86]

I'm sure in no small part that is due to the fact that often teacher pensions are based on the last several quarters/years of pay, and without a teacher's union pumping up teachers' salaries based strictly on age and tenure as opposed to skill, it was get out now or risk a lower pension payment in the future.

[analog31]

From the people I talked to, it was mostly about morale and the work environment, but certainly, the erosion of wages and job security increased the economic risk of being a teacher. I'm not sure the numbers work out for giving up 15 years of salary in the hope of having a slightly higher pension.

I think that an unusual problem for public sector employees is that their wages are public knowledge, and as a result, are a target of resentment.

Going forward, I expect to see more of a relationship between pay and skill. As I said, the best teachers are the ones who are leaving.

Granted, I'm not wholeheartedly pro union, but I see some areas where unions have served a vital role with no obvious replacement. One is to function as a labor movement in general. The unions weren't perfect at it, but as the unions have been effectively defeated, nobody else has stepped up to speak for workers.

The other has been to make certain occupations -- such as teaching -- worth the risk of pursuing as a career, by providing a trustworthy career roadmap. Other countries provide such a roadmap through government oversight of education -- perhaps the state functions as a union in countries with more pro-labor governments. But our governments haven't stepped up to serve that role. Again, the teachers union wasn't perfect (most teachers believed that it needed to be reformed), but nobody has figured out an alternative way to make teaching career-worthy, or how to make schools work if teaching ceases to be a career.