The Machine: The Truth Behind Teachers Unions

America's public education system is failing. We're spending more money on education but not getting better results for our children.

That's because the machine that runs the K-12 education system isn't designed to produce better schools. It's designed to produce more money for unions and more donations for politicians.

For decades, teachers' unions have been among our nation's largest political donors. As Reason Foundation's Lisa Snell has noted, the National Education Association (NEA) alone spent $40 million on the 2010 election cycle (source: http://reason.org/news/printer/big-ed...). As the country's largest teachers union, the NEA is only one cog in the infernal machine that robs parents of their tax dollars and students of their futures.

Students, teachers, parents, and hardworking Americans are all victims of this political machine--a system that takes money out of taxpayers' wallets and gives it to union bosses, who put it in the pockets of politicians.

Our kids deserve better.

"The Machine" is 4:17 minutes.

Written and narrated by Evan Coyne Maloney. Produced by the Moving Picture Institute in partnership with Reason TV.

Visit www.MovingPictureInstitute.org to learn more.

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  News & Politics

[HexTest]

There isn't a shred of evidence for this. Adjusted for inflation, we've TRIPLED per student spending since the 70's according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

And yet the results on the NAEP since that time frame have remained FLAT.

There is no correlation between higher per student spending and better test scores.

[dsb0251]

I think that we should end the public school monopoly and give vouchers and attach the money to the kids so they can go to the school of there choice and that would create competition between the schools because they want have the same guaranteed customers year after year

[shalcall]

Purely from a logical standpoint, don't you believe that if you offer teachers more money, you get better teachers? If teachers made on average, say 100k per year, don't you think some of the smarter students in college might choose teaching over say, becoming a lawyer or doctor?

[bottoson]

Does it matter? Public schools spend up to six times more money with little to show for it.

If it does matter, total aggregate weighting shows private schools outperform. Small differences showed when accounting for ethnicity, economic and social backgrounds. Average the two outcomes: roughly same results.

Your sources say more to "if you put more money into a system, teachers get paid more" than what schools purpose: education.

[rick debbout]

Quite right!

[ANIOLATORV]

1. They don't have billions of dollars

2. they aren't international

3. they're run by it;s members not a board of executives

[robodril1]

Unions are billion dollar corporations.

[rorywest]

I'm not basing my decisions off of what ReasonTV tells me; I listen to as many viewpoints as I can on an issue before drawing my own conclusions.

As for this issue it doesn't seem like either of us is going to budge. I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one.

[ANIOLATORV]

You need to get who runs ReasonTV, they're essentially Libertarians who believe everything to do with the government literally = evil.

Some small necessary sacrifices must be made and if some bad unions get away with it in the short term i would much rather have a union problem than a billion dollar corporation problem. Union stomping has hit most workers unions real hard for a long time and have lost power since the 80s leading to record low wages.

[rorywest]

I'm all in favor of the type of union you described, but unfortunately the way the system is set up in the United States unions are very easily corruptible. It's not even just the union bosses that get greedy, many times union bosses have to do all that just to keep their jobs. If a union boss doesn't expand the power of his union, he is deemed a failure, even if he did a very good job protecting workers' rights. Until something is changed, I cannot condone getting rid of private education.

[ANIOLATORV]

I'm not talking about SAT scores bloody hell they don't have that in Finland.

A real union is non-profit organisation built to give those without a say a voice. They're the same as a political party in a sense. If a union is run for profit and a boss gets greedy, then they deserve to be thrown in prison. Unions exist for reason, only if all private entities are nationalized would they be useless.

Counties with strong unions always have better production, look at Germany and parts of Europe

[rorywest]

You just brought up test scores as a way of saying that private schools are bad, you can't all of a sudden change your mind and say they don't matter.

Funny how you mention that corporations are unethical, as unions operate very similarly. Both a CEO and a union boss generally care about their own jobs first. They both maintain their jobs by expanding profits, either for the corporation or the union. Both lobby the government to gain more power. The only difference is how they are funded.