Opinion: Why Public Schools are Bogged Down by a Single-Salary Schedule

Stan Greer, a Senior Research Associate at the National Institute for Labor Relations Research has had an article featured in the Washington Times. In it, he addresses the harms of the single-salary schedule in public schools and how unions have fought to protect it.

Here’s an excerpt:

By making it effectively impossible to implement key changes in school governance without the consent of teacher union officials who were already fiercely protective of the single salary schedule during the early 1960s and continue to be today,  monopoly-bargaining statutes kill hopes of implementing teacher pay systems that recognize the law of supply and demand in Big Labor-dominated states like New York, California and Illinois.

Meanwhile, school officials in Right to Work states like Texas and North Carolina are beating forced-unionism states in the interstate competition for “customers” – schoolchildren – and the federal tax dollars that accompany them. While this means that Right to Work states have less of an incentive to switch up teacher pay schemes, small-government states’ greater protections against union hijacking of government functions should still make them ground zero for reform.  

Stan Greer, The Washington Times

Read the full article by clicking here.