|
Contributor
Ray
Haynes
Mr.
Haynes is an Assembly member representing Riverside and
Temecula.
He serves on the Appropriations and Budget Committees. [go to
Assembly Member Haynes
website at California Assembly][go to Haynes index]
 They
Protest Too Much
The howling is deafening…
[Ray
Haynes] 1/20/05
The
most interesting proposals in last week’s state of the State
speech by Governor Schwarzenegger were the merit pay for teachers
and the idea for
changing how public employee pensions are handled. Both ideas have raised the
ire of the public employee unions, and neither is likely to move very far in
the California Legislature.
Merit pay
for teachers is a very simple idea. Our school system should
reward the
good teachers. Currently state law mandates
that each school district adopt a “single salary schedule”,
and that pay increases can only be granted on the basis of education
and length of service. That means that every teacher, no matter
how good or how bad, gets a raise by hanging around a school
district and taking a few classes at college, even if none of
their students ever learn a thing.
There is
no reason why the state has to have a law dictating how a school
district
determines the salary of its teachers in
the first place. The Schwarzenegger proposal is simply to give
an extra financial reward for doing a good job. His idea doesn’t
even require the removal of a bad teacher, he just says pay the
good ones more than the bad ones.
The teacher’s union is howling mad at that proposal.
Why? Because they know that in order to reward a good teacher,
the school district is going to have to test students to see
how much the students have learned. If a school district can
use test scores to reward the good teachers, that district will
also have the information to determine the bad teachers. Good
teachers don’t need a union’s help to get and keep
their jobs. Bad teachers do. Good teachers won’t see a
need for the union, and that is what has got the unions worried.
Schwarzenegger’s proposal for merit pay will help good
teachers, improve student learning, and restore parent’s
confidence in the schools. It will also undercut the power of
the unions in schools, which is exactly why the unions, and their
Democrat hirelings in the Legislature, won’t enact the
proposals.
His second
proposal—basically to give every state employee
a 401(k) retirement plan funded by the state is also drawing
the unions’ fire. Today, California Public Employee Retirement
System (CalPERS) Board and the California State Teachers’ Retirement
System (CalSTRS) Board control the retirements of the teachers
and public employees, and the unions control the boards. CalPERS
has over $180 billion in assets, and is one of the largest institutional
investors in the world. There are recent revelations that CalPERS
has awarded multi-million dollar contracts of questionable value
to donors connected politically to Democrats and has used its
power in the stock market to press a union agenda on Wall Street.
In addition, bad investments decisions by CalPERS has cost the
state billions in pension payments, and nearly bankrupted the
system.
If individual
employees controlled their own pension plan, three bad things
(from the
union’s perspective) would occur.
First, the union couldn’t use CalPERS to influence Wall
Street, severely diminishing the political power of the unions.
Second, the employee would no longer need the union to protect
his or her retirement, making state and local employees less
dependent on the union leaders. Finally, the employee would be
able to keep the money he or she invested in the pension upon
the employee’s death, making the employee’s families
wealthier. The wealthier a family is, the more they dislike union
leaders.
In both proposals, taxpayers, students, teachers and state
employees would be better off. Union leaders would be worse off,
in that they would lose power, control and wealth. Look for these
leaders to fight Governor Schwarzenegger to the death, no matter
how bad it is for their members. CRO
§
|
