Econ_May_05_2018

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The Economist May 5th 2018 25
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FROM a block away, the striking teachers
camped out around Arizona’s capitol at
first looked like a solid sea of red, the col-
our of their T -shirts and tents. On closer in-
spection, they distinguished themselves
the way the teachers have always distin-
guished their classrooms—with hand-
made signs. Leah Falcon (“Arizona exports:
Cotton, copper, teachers”), who teaches
middle-school maths, said she was “fight-
ing becausemy kids deserve better than 34
students in a class.” Megan Marohn (“Ari-
zona Spending per Student: $9,000. Per In-
mate: $24,000”) is a classroom aide and
lifelong Republican who frets that Arizo-
na’s Republican legislature and governor
“put the value of corporations above stu-
dents”. Jay Bertelsen (“Christian Non-Un-
ion Conservative Teacher Fighting for
Funding”) has taught computer science
outside Tucson for 25 years; his children
qualify for Arizona’s state-subsidised
health care for poor families.
Grievances such as these have motivat-
ed teacher strikes in five states. They look
likely to continue—galvanising public-sec-
tor workers in states where Democrats
hope to make gains in this autumn’s mid-
termelections.
The strikes began on February 22nd,
when teachers in West Virginia walked
out. Twoweeks later the state’s Republican
governor gave them a 5% pay rise—bring-
ing the average high-school teacher’s sala-
increase until 2024 has left teachers non-
plussed. Joe Thomas, whoheads theArizo-
na Education Association, the state’s main
teachers’ association, wants not just more
money but a new dedicated revenue
stream. That is a hard sell inArizona, home
to waves of tax refugees from California
and pensioners reluctant to spend their
fixed incomes on other people’s children.
North Carolina may be the next do-
mino; teachers there plan to demonstrate
in the capital onMay16th, when the state’s
legislature convenes. As inmost of the oth-
er strike states, unions in North Carolina
have weak collective bargaining powers.
Some suggest that this explains low levels
of pay; if stateswere forced to bargainwith
teachers’ unions, they would pay them
more. But a new paper from Agustina Pa-
glayan, a political scientist at the Universi-
ty of San Diego, suggests that this formula-
tion is the wrong way round. Teachers
gained good collective-bargaining rights in
states that already paid them relatively
well. Collective bargaining did not lead to
increased salaries or funding.
The result, paradoxically, is that states
where teaching unions are weaker now
have more politically active teachers. Ms
Marohn, one of the demonstrators in
Phoenix, says that when parents ask her
mother, also a teacher, what they can do to
help, she tells them to vote. That should
worry Republicans. There are 3.2m public-
school teachers in America. Giving them a
financial reason to head to the polls could
spell trouble for some Republicans run-
ning in states with teacher unrest. Arizona,
NorthCarolina andColorado are all battle-
ground states. Republicans had also fan-
cied that they could flip the West Virginia
Senate seat held by Joe Manchin, a conser-
vative Democrat. For want of more chalk
could the Senate be lost. 7
ry to just under $48,000. Kentucky’s legis-
lature approved a sizeable increase after
teachers there walked out. A threatened
strike in Oklahoma prompted legislators
to boost education funding and teacher
salaries (the teachers struck for nine days
anyway). Last week teachers in Colorado
and Arizona walked out to protest against
lowsalaries and stagnant funding.
Those conditions are widespread. The
average American teacher earns less than
60% of what a similarly educated profes-
sional makes. In inflation-adjusted terms,
teachers’ salaries have fallen by 1.6% over
the past two decades. But the acute crisis in
public education dates back to the reces-
sion of 2008, which hit many states’ prop-
erty-dependent tax receipts.
Most states cut school funding; in some,
it has yet to return to its level before 2008.
In inflation-adjusted terms, teacher sala-
ries are almost 5% lower than they were a
decade ago, even as teachers’ retirement
contributions and health-insurance premi-
ums have gone up. Some teachers even
pay from their own pockets for classroom
supplies that state funding fails to cover.
And some states have continued to cut
taxes and education spending. According
to Michael Hansen of the Brookings Insti-
tution, school funding in Arizona remains
35%belowpre-recession levels. So the offer
fromDoug Ducey, Arizona’s governor, of a
20% salary increase by 2020 and a funding
Striking teachers
Pedagogic protest
PHOENIX
Behind the teacher strikes that have roiledfive states, and look likely to continue
United States
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