Matters of Policy & Politics: Chicago’s Mayor Gets Schooled | Bill Whalen And Michael Hartney | Hoover Institution

>> Bill Whelan: It's Thursday, March 2, 2023, and you're listening to matters of policy and politics, a Hoover Institution podcast devoted to governance and balance of power here in America and around the globe. I'm Bill Whelan, I'm the Virginia Hobbs Carpenter distinguished policy fellow in journalism here at the Hoover Institution.

I'm not the only fellow who does podcasts, however, if you don't believe me, go to our website and check it out yourself. Go to hoover.org, click on the tab at the top of the homepage. It says commentary. Go over to where it says multimedia and up will pop the podcast.

You can sign up for any or all of them if you want to. I also encourage you to sign up for our monthly pod blast, which delivers the best of our podcast to your inbox each month. My guest today is Michael Hartney. Michael is a Hoover Fellow and adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute and an assistant professor of political science at Boston College.

His scholarly expertise is in american politics and public policy, with a focus on state and local governments, interest groups, and k through twelve education, politics, and policy. Last year, the University of Chicago Press published Michael Hartney's first book. Its title is how policies make interest groups, governments, unions, and American education.

Book examines the origin power activities of America's teachers unions, and it details how state and local governments subsidize teachers unions political organizing efforts, enabling them to wield outsized influence in education policy-making. Michael, thanks for coming back on the podcast.

>> Michael T. Hartney: Thanks, Bill. It's great to be back with you.

 

>> Bill Whelan: So we wanted to talk today about teachers unions, and the timing here is outstanding because there was an election in Chicago on Tuesday night. I don't wanna call it a political earthquake, that is a very overused phrase in politics, much like wave. I get sick of hearing wave every two to four years.

Michael, I don't know about you, I was gonna tired of earthquake or not, but there was a, let's call it a serious seismic event in Chicago in this regard. The incumbent mayor, Lori Lightfoot, she finished third in the primary, only about 17% of the citywide vote. I believe it's the first time in 40 years that Chicago has kicked a incumbent mayor to the curb.

Jane Burnett in 1983 is the answer to that trivia question. Lightfoot's defeat is even more staggering considering she was the first African American woman mayor of Chicago, the first openly LGBTQ mayor of Chicago. She had a rather curious four year ride. She had to deal with the pandemic obviously.

She also had to deal with crime, which is pretty much her own doing in this election. Violent crime in Chicago is up about 40% since she took office. And so down she went. Michael, the results go as follows. And forgive me for filibustering here. The leading vote getter was a gentleman named Paul Vallis, who is a former Chicago public Schools CEO.

He's promised to have elected to keep school buildings open on nights and weekends. This is kind of his connection between education and crime. To put alternative high schools into empty or under rural buildings and also create more charter schools is a gentleman named Brandon Johnson, who's a Cook county commissioner endorsed by the California Teachers unions.

And I know you wanna explain a little bit more Johnson to us. Background on Chicago. Michael, Chicago is the nation's third largest school system. 635 schools, 332,000 kids. The winner, by the way, of this race, will be the last mayor to have control of Chicago public schools before district transitions to being governed by an elected school board.

So what we have here in short, Michael, is a marriage race that was driven by crime but actually turns out to be a pretty interesting referendum on education and the power teachers unions because you have one candidate, Mister Vallis, the frontrunner, who is not popular with the teachers unions.

And the second place finisher, surprise second place finisher is a guy who is completely embraced by the teachers unions. And with that, Michael, go.

>> Michael T. Hartney: Well I mean, I think I'd have to go back to the mayoral election in Washington DC, when Adrian Fenty, the incumbent African American mayor there, who had appointed Michelle Re, and you saw a lot of dramatic reforms in Washington, DC.

To think of a mayoral election that at least was influenced by education, I would agree with you that crime was probably first and foremost on voters minds. But when we think about this sort of stunning defeat of Lori Lightfoot, I mean, an incumbent mayor who doesn't even make the runoff, that's quite significant.

It really turns on the fact that Lightfoot had alienated all of the important constituencies in Chicago. I mean, most obviously, the police unions were not happy with her, but then neither were the teachers unions. Much like what we saw during the pandemic in say, San Francisco, where the mayor in San Francisco grew tired of the union's unwillingness to return to in person learning and the school board's fecklessness around making that happen.

Lightfoot eventually grew tired of the Chicago teachers union's unwillingness to broker a reasonable negotiation to get back to in person learning. And so if you're a democratic candidate and you lose public sector unions in a city like Chicago, it's gonna be tough sledding for you to win re-election.

So I think this was sort of in some ways, her fate was sealed. But of course, it was also complicated by the fact that it was such a crowded field, and so the african american vote, with Brandon Johnson also being another african american candidate, probably split there as well.

So some idiosyncratic factors. But I think it's certainly fair to say that education was a relevant issue, even if crime was the number one issue on folks minds.

>> Bill Whelan: Right, it was a nine candidates in that primary. She finished third, as I mentioned, with about 17%. A little bit of background on her relationship with the Chicago teachers unions.

And let's talk a bit about what's happened to Chicago, Michael. During her four years, she had to endure, first of all, a two week teacher strike in October 2019. That was over the issue of pay. She had to deal with a strike in early January 2022, primarily over Covid screening.

And between that, as you mentioned, she had a very public fight with the teachers union over return to in person learning. She wasn't just frustrated, she was angry. Boiled over to the point where she actually said in debate that the Chicago teachers union had brought in. The word she used was, quote, chaos to the city school system.

 

>> Michael T. Hartney: Yeah and this goes back a long way, all the way to the tenure of former Mayor Rahm Emanuel. There's a great documentary out in fact, I'd recommend to listeners called local one, that covers the sort of rise of the modern militant wing of the Chicago teachers union.

And this occurred when Karen Lewis became president. And sort of the internal politics of the union are quite interesting because under Lewis leadership and under subsequent leaders, after Lewis tenure, the union has really gone away from simply trying to negotiate for bread and butter issues like better pay and better benefits.

I mean, they're asking for that, but they've also really become sort of a catch all progressive political organization with roots in sort of democratic socialism. Their agenda is much broader. It's not your grandfather's labor union. It's not Samuel Gompers just asking for more. It's wanting to really revolutionize not just education, but public policy in Chicago.

And that matters a great deal. The chaos that Lightfoot's referring to here of course is much like what we saw in Los Angeles and other cities where the teachers unions have moved in this direction of being more than just about bread and butter issues. You saw the union in Chicago, in Los Angeles saying, look, part of our calculus on whether we're going to agree to reopen schools, whether we're going to agree as labor to return to the classroom is not just predicated on the pay increase that you offer us, but, you know, you're hearing things like Medicare for all and what are you going to do for parental leave and these broader issues that most folks would say don't have a lot to do with sort of the day to day functioning of the schools and the occupational interests of the teachers themselves.

 

>> Bill Whelan: Right, so a city like Chicago, Michael, it adds the mayor, is actually a very strong office. We think of Richard Dalia. If you go back to that 1983 primary where the incumbent mayor, Jane Byrne loses, she loses in part because Daley's son is also on the ballot, and he takes away.

Votes and when he finishes third. But unlike Los Angeles, where constitutionally, the mayor's office is not a strong office, this is a strong office. And yet we have seen the teachers union really chip away at a mayor, made her look weak and contributed. How did the teachers union gain power in Chicago?

In other words, how did they create the potency they have right now? Was it very slow and measured over time? Was there willingness on the part of political leaders? How did they pull this off?

>> Michael T. Hartney: I mean, you have to look at it as a symbiotic relationship between elected officials, both in Springfield, but also over the years in Chicago, in which the campaign support the political muscle that's provided by all of the employees in the system, is a very valuable chip in advancing one's political career.

And until recently, Chicago was one of just two cities, I think, the other being Milwaukee, that actually required all of its teachers to live in the boundaries of the city. And that matters because unlike a lot of places where the teachers may live outside of the city, they're all going to be.

I mean, they all won't necessarily turn out to vote, but they're all certainly eligible to vote in city elections because they all live in the city. So to some extent, it's the attractiveness of the coalition bloc, if you're an aspiring politician. And in Chicago, I was gonna say on the democratic side, but in Chicago, it's almost always on the democratic side.

 

>> Bill Whelan: Right.

>> Michael T. Hartney: But then you sort of have kind of this come to Jesus moment when you actually get elected to office and you realize just how far they're going to push you. So you might sort of have a reasonable or a cozy relationship when you get into office.

But then political executives, in some ways, they have to be thinking about broader constituencies, especially when they wanna mount a reelection campaign. And school closures for a year are not popular, strikes are not popular. And so there's a natural tendency for someone like a Lightfoot to grow tired of the union always saying, more, more, more.

So I think this is just kind of a cyclical thing, and we're going to continue to see it. What will be interesting, of course, is if Vallas is to win, he'll obviously come into office not with sort of any mandate to do the bidding of the teachers union, but he's walking into a perfect storm.

In some ways, it's a. It's almost a way of looking at it as who wants this job? Because unlike his predecessors, you referenced him being appointed in 1995 as the CEO of Chicago schools. And that was really a foundational moment, because it was the end or it was a signaling of strong mayoral control over the school system, as the mayor could just hand pick the superintendent.

And while they have a school board, it's appointed by the mayor, and its powers are quite limited. Valus is walking into a situation, should he be the winner, where he's going to have to deal with an elected school board of 20 something members that will all have their own narrow parochial interests in their little districts.

And there's no reason to think that the teachers union won't be the most dominant player in deciding who those school board members are. So it's really, in many ways, quite an unenviable position to be taking over the mayor's office, at least on the issue of education. And we could also say probably for crime, given what's been going on in Chicago, too.

 

>> Bill Whelan: Right, so I assume Chicago teachers union will do what they can to turn out every vote they can in April in the runoff to get Brandon Johnson over the threshold. But tell me, Michael, who is Brandon Johnson?

>> Michael T. Hartney: So Brandon Johnson is actually a former deputy political director for the Chicago teachers union.

Yeah. Fancy way of saying lobbyist. This isn't unprecedented in American politics. You know, you could go in the 1990s, for example, the long serving, executive director of the Alabama Education association, one of the strongest teachers unions in the country back then, was the democratic nominee for governor. So there's a pattern of drawing talent out of particularly the large unions, like a Chicago teachers union, to run for office.

So it's not unprecedented. But what is quite unprecedented is if you kind of follow the money here, there's been a lot of reporting recently that suggests that the Chicago teachers union has been making loans from members dues directly over to its political action committee to fund Johnson's campaign.

So this is still to be adjudicated. And the state election boards that see to it that everything is on the up and up, even in Chicago, in theory, are looking into this. So but I think there are implications there because not all teachers in Chicago presumably would want their dues going to support Brandon Johnson.

This isn't necessarily something they voted on. And, yeah, so, I mean, he's certainly going to be doing their bidding if he is elected to office.

>> Bill Whelan: That was my next question. If he is elected to office, what exactly is their bidding?

>> Michael T. Hartney: Well, I mean, he'll push his-

 

>> Bill Whelan: I mean, obviously things like salaries and work hours and conditions, classroom sizes, things like that. But what would they really want out of him?

>> Michael T. Hartney: Well, he's very simpatico with them on their broader, more progressive agenda for the city. He's fully aligned with the notions of restorative justice and the opposite of sort of tough discipline policies in schools, which I actually think, we don't have good polling data on this, but I suspect cuts both ways.

While there are, you know, progressive teacher union members who are in favor of those more lax discipline policies, I think there are also a lot of teachers, particularly teachers, that they might want to recruit into the system that are a lot more concerned with classroom management and being able to go to school and teach in safety and deliver instruction without disruption in their classrooms.

So I'm not necessarily convinced that the full policy prescription that Johnson will go after is gonna be popular with every rank and file teacher, but it's certainly popular with those who hold power in the union right now. And Vallas, who got 34%, he's leading vote getter.

>> Bill Whelan: If he wins, what does he do?

 

>> Michael T. Hartney: I think he's going to push for as much charter schooling as possible. Maybe we'll return to some of these very contentious debates in Chicago about school closures, because anyone who looks at the data can see quite clearly that Chicago has had, much like LA, a massive decline in student enrollment.

And it's not just a pandemic era decline, it's a secular decline. And some of that, yes, has to do with birth rates, but some of it has to do with disillusionment in the education that the city is offering. And yet, of course, the teachers unions and candidates like Brandon Johnson are arguing for more resources to go into schools and not funding schools based on how many students choose to attend a given neighborhood school.

So the chickens are gonna come home to roost at some point. You can't keep pouring resources into a district that's losing students. And I think Vallas will be much more realistic about that. But that will invariably bring on fights that have to do with. With school closures. And that's what got Rahm Emanuel in such hot water with the Chicago teachers union.

And also, you know, to be fair, with many community activists and regular voters, who, for them, understandably, losing a school in your community is a big deal. It's a lot better to have a school, even in their perspective, that has folks in the building, than an empty, hollowed out place where bad things can happen after school hours.

But fiscally, it just doesn't make a lot of sense. And if you look back, say to what happened in Washington, DC. That was the undoing of Michelle Rhee in many ways. If you look at Newark, New Jersey, when Chris Christie got involved there with Cory Booker. Again, the school closure issue always rears its head.

But these large urban districts at some point have to have a serious conversation about the decline of enrollment relative to resources.

>> Bill Whelan: Thank you for mentioning Los Angeles. That shift to Los Angeles, home of the second largest school district, Chicago being third, LA being Two, I'm gonna read to you, Michael, some words recently written by the Los Angeles Times.

This is not me editorializing. This is exactly verbatim what the LA Times wrote. Quote, when LA school superintendent Alberto Carvalho tried to extend the academic year, the teachers union stopped him. But his predecessor, Austin Beutner, wanted more live Zoom teaching. During the pandemic, the union also stopped him.

And when the district was preparing to reopen campuses for in person learning, the union demanded the teachers first have the opportunity to be fully immunized against COVID-19. Michael, what they're referring to is united teachers. Los Angeles is about a 35,000 member union of teachers, counselors, librarians, and nurses.

They seem to be very hard nosed to be polite about it.

>> Michael T. Hartney: Well, and everything you just said, is that not the opposite of essential workers? I mean, the notion that during a once in a lifetime pandemic, when all hands needed to be on deck to do what could be done to mitigate student learning loss, and sort of what's at the center of your negotiating strategy is a unwillingness or a demand to bargain over working a couple of extra days for which you would be paid, by the way.

And these days that were proposed by the previous superintendent, were going to be voluntary in nature. So, you know, if that's your starting point for negotiation, it's a pretty good indicator of just how out of the mainstream the union's policy positions are. Again, this was a union that during the pandemic was saying Medicare for all, was saying every sort of progressive wish list under the sun is our starting point for negotiating school reopenings.

 

>> Bill Whelan: Yeah, I think you could argue, Michael, to the extent that UTLA, United Teachers Los Angeles engages in these flexes, you might call them, this goes back to January 2019 and what happened in LA. January 2019. Teachers there went on strike for six days. And it's interesting question to me, Michael, as to whether or not they're winning the battle and winning the war in this regard.

They may have lost that battle in this regard. They did get concessions on class sizes when that strike was ended, but they didn't get higher pay and they didn't get better benefits. So you can argue that maybe they lost that battle, but the question would be, are they winning the war?

Because again, we recite all of these conditions they laid out during the pandemic, these absolutes they had to have. So that shows me that they are hard nosed in their negotiating and they feel like they have the upper hand. Now, maybe they feel politically they have the upper hand.

Maybe they feel morally in terms of public opinion, they have the upper hand.

>> Michael T. Hartney: Well, there's always in these sorts of negotiations. And you're right. In the 2019 case, they did not win some big pay increase. It was more around personnel and class size, which goes, by the way, it's worth saying to a larger problem in american education right now, which is that we've invested in teacher quantity, not teacher quality.

The number of hires, not just of teachers, but of staff, ancillary staff paraprofessionals, is through the roof, despite the fact that enrollments are down. Well, if you hire more people and you have a set pool of money to pay, it's going to mean less money for raises for teachers.

So that's the direction the union's gone. And I think in some ways it relates to the fact that a teachers like smaller class sizes. It's also politically easier to sell that it's about the kids, it's what's popular. But I think something else is going on in LA, which is worth thinking about.

And it contrasts with Chicago, at least from the numbers I've looked at, which is that turnout in the teacher in the election for the president of the teachers union in Los Angeles was below 30%. Actually, ironically enough, very similar to the turnout in the Chicago mayor's election. But the turnout in the union election in Chicago was significantly higher.

I think I looked the other day that 16 17,000 votes out of 21,000 teachers. So I haven't drilled down into that too much. But I think it's worth at least being aware of, because when you see the union in LA lobbying for X, Y and Z, one wonders how much fidelity their agenda has to what is popular among all teachers in LA, given the low rates of turnout in those elections.

I'm not saying it's unpopular, but it certainly gives cause for wondering. The union talks a lot about democracy, but those aren't turnout numbers that I'd be particularly proud of in those elections.

>> Bill Whelan: So one challenge with UTLA in Los Angeles, Michael, is one of membership. They have lost about twelve and a half percent, I should say.

Actually, about twelve and a half percent of eligible workers have opted out of joining that union. And that's because the Supreme Court's barred mandatory membership in public employees unions. Let's shift now and talk a little bit about that. June the 27th of this year is the fifth anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling in Janus versus the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

The court ruling that the concept of mandatory membership dues was unconstitutional as it violated the First Amendment, as it forced individuals to support the union's political speech. Tell us a bit about the impact we're now five years after Janus.

>> Michael T. Hartney: Yeah, so I think folks were surprised in the first year or two looking at numbers of public sector union members and we didn't see any sort of precipitous drop.

There were a couple states, Wisconsin had huge drops, Michigan had huge drops. But those really predated Janus and hinged on other legislative actions that were taken to weaken union power in those states. But when it comes to Janus in particular, I think a few things are going on.

One is generational. So where the union is now facing a challenge is when a new teacher is hired into the district. And the calculus looks a lot different when you sit down with HR as a new employee and you're told, your salary will look like x if you're a union member and it will look like y if you're not.

And that thousand dollars right there is pretty dramatic, especially on a very modest starting salary for a teacher in these districts. But on the other hand, for veteran teachers who've already seen that money going out of their paycheck, there's a lot, I think it's less sort of apparent to them.

They've gotten used to the lighter paycheck over the years. And I think there was a certain level of defiance. The court is doing this and we're going to stand up to it. But I think you're finally starting to see some drop off, particularly among the new hires. But where I think this story is really interesting is we've already talked about this a little bit, but the fact that you have several of these large teachers unions continuing to be more than a union that is not just focusing on bread and butter issues of salary and benefits and sort of focusing on this large panoply of political issues that may or may not align with what a lot of their prospective members might want.

Well, before Janus, it didn't really matter if teachers unions went off the reservation and wanted to engage in this sort of kabuki theater of progressive politics because they already knew that teachers that were hired into the district were going to either have to be members or pay them dues.

But the calculus looks a lot different post Janus. So in some sense, it surprises me, given the membership losses you've seen. I mean, they've not been crazy in Los Angeles, but they've lost members that they're not trying to return to a focus on bread and butter issues alone for members, because that would seem to be the safest path to retaining members going forward.

But we'll have to see how that unfolds.

>> Bill Whelan: Have you seen any impact on the likes of the California Teachers Association, which I would argue is probably the most powerful lobby in California and that they have the issue of education? But secondly, because they have union dues, they have a political war chest.

It's a replenishable stream, and they put that to use.

>> Michael T. Hartney: Not significantly. I mean, the state, for example, going back to that symbiotic relationship, their democratic friends in the state legislature, soon after Janus was handed down from the court, the state passed a law that literally requires all local school districts to put time on the faculty meeting for new hires for the union to do its dog and pony show.

You know, that's not as nice of a perk as just saying all teachers have to pay to the union, but the state's doing what it can to make sure that the union is able to continue on. And the other thing Thing I would say is that their political power or their power to continue to grow membership, even if they're losing members as a percentage, that is sort of the percentage of eligible teachers who are members.

So long as they can convince the state to increase hires of school staff, they'll increase their raw number of members. So that's why it's so important for them. Perhaps that helps explain in some ways why they've been so focused on bargaining for more employees than necessarily simply bargaining for higher salaries for a smaller number of employees.

Because if the fraction of folks you can convince to become members is going to dip a bit, it's better to just have more school employees because you're going to get more union members.

>> Bill Whelan: Yeah, and one thing I point out about California and the CTA, sure, they put money into legislative races, but look, the state is a two to one Democratic and voter registration.

So, unless you're dealing with unusually competitive districts, it's pretty much easy, easy investment of the union. It's been a while since we've had a real knock them down, drag them out ballot fight involving education, such as teacher tenure, which we had in 2005, school choice, which had a couple of times.

So, that would be one test of union's potency. Question for you, Michael. I don't know if you've looked at any surveys on teachers or not, but getting back to California politics for a minute, there was a rule of thumb, especially when you do initiative politics. You do an ad.

You want to showcase people who wear the, the white hats in society. So, you tried out a firefighter and an educator, those are the good people. Are there any signs you've seen from polling, indications? Given the pandemic, given the lockdown, given the fights over reopening, has the image of teachers or teachers unions taken a hit?

 

>> Michael T. Hartney: I think it's very much a story of red and blue here. In fact, I was just looking at data from Gallup's long running survey that goes back to the 1970s that asks about Americans trust in different institutions in our society, from the military to police to our public schools.

And we right now are sitting at the largest divergence between Democrats and Republicans in terms of trust in our public education system. Historic lows for Republicans, and if not historic, quite near highs for Democrats. And I think that tells you something. I mean, what I see in the data are what I kind of call a very angry 30%, angry 30% of parents, which is enough to make noise, which is enough to create some of these new education advocacy groups that have moved from the pandemic issues to embracing school choice and pushing for more of a seat for parents at the table, not just unions.

But what remains to be seen is if that 30% is enough to move the needle. I suspect that in a state like California, it's not. Perhaps, maybe in some pockets of the state that are a little more red. They certainly aren't red, they're not deep blue. You may see some success in recruiting parent friendly or union skeptical candidates to school boards, but I've just wrapped up looking at the numbers for 2022 in the local school board elections in California.

And despite a significant effort from parent groups to get their candidates elected and to counterbalance union power, teachers unions did very well in 2022, so far as I can tell, on par with their historic win rates of about seven out of every ten competitive local school board elections where they make an endorsement.

So I don't think teachers unions are paying a huge price, and I certainly think that teachers remain popular. I think part of that is that a lot of voters in these local elections, they look and they say, the such and such education association or teachers association is endorsing this candidate.

And a lot of them think of it as a good governance group. They don't necessarily understand that it's a labor union linked to the strongest political powerhouse in the state of California, in Sacramento. And I think some of that leads to an advantage for the union in these elections and an ability for them to buffer what otherwise might be some criticism.

 

>> Bill Whelan: Yeah, I'd also be curious, Michael, see polling on teachers themselves, their attitudes, their leanings and so forth. A generation ago, I don't think teachers would have struck in the middle of a school year. But yet we've seen it in Los Angeles and Chicago, other cities in America where they walked out and left kids hanging for a week or so.

And this, to me, suggests something of a sea change. Now, maybe this is the unions driving things, not teachers themselves, but the teachers are out there on the picket lines screaming and shouting, wanting change.

>> Michael T. Hartney: Yeah, I think there's an opportunity for conservatives here. I mean, I'm not pollyannaish, and I'm not suggesting that by offering a couple bullet point ideas that suddenly teachers are going to move into the Republican aisle.

But I'd like to see more Republican state executives, more leaders. I fully embrace all of the efforts to enact choice. I think that's great. But I also think they should learn from what, say, Governor DeSantis has been doing in Florida, which is, despite kind of the rhetoric down there, that he's making enemies out of teachers and teachers unions.

He's also been out on the stump pushing for and enacting teacher pay increases because we know that since the great Recession, teacher salaries in the United States, after accounting for inflation, have been pretty stagnant. So, I think there is a lane there for Republicans, that if they kinda put their heads down and say, look, we embrace choice, we're not for kinda this woke nonsense in education.

The Bill Bennett playbook, the three R's, we wanna focus on reading, writing, and arithmetic. Do that, but also come out and say, kind of a teacher's bill of rights, if you will. We support higher pay, higher starting pay in particular. We're four discipline policies that allow you to control your classroom and not feel threatened by a student who's gonna hit you and be back in the class a few minutes later.

I think if Republicans bring some of that onto their agenda, they will make inroads with a lot of teachers who are either independents or lean Republican.

>> Bill Whelan: Let's talk about DeSantis. He may or may not run for president. He, to me, Michael, he sure looks like a presidential candidate in a couple of regards.

He, he is out promoting a book right now. He is gonna be here in California on Sunday I think in Orange County to attend a local county fundraiser. He's been in Texas, other places making the rounds with the book, but this is what you do in a buildup to run.

It's worth mentioning in this regard, let me clarify before we go further. The Hoover Institution doesn't endorse candidates, we are a .org, we stay out of these things, so this is not a DeSantis endorsement, we're just talking about him in this regard. He may run for president, and there's an opportunity for education to really come forward in this election in this regard.

Federal elections generally don't get into education in America. I think you have to go back, Michael, to maybe George Bush in 2000 with no Child Left behind who showcased education. But there was kind of a friendly approach to education, kinda touchy feely. And indeed, his first year in office, that was his big achievement.

It was bringing Democrats and Republicans together to get no child left behind passed. But here in DeSantis, you have a guy who has done battle with the education establishment. And you're right, you read about this in other states, it gets into some very ugly shorthand through some media outlets about how he wants to do this and that to teachers.

One thing that caught my attention is there is a bill right now in Florida, it's called the teachers bill of rights in Florida. Let me read the highlights of this, Michael, and get your thoughts. This Florida bill would a, prohibit any union representing public employees from having its dues and assessments deducted by the public employee's employer.

B, it will require employees to submit a form acknowledging that Florida is a right to work state and union participation is optional. C, it would require school unions to annually notify members of the cost of membership ship. D, it would prohibit the distribution of union materials at the workplace.

E, union bosses would not be paid higher wages than union members. And then finally. Effort would ban union work while on the clock for taxpayer funded work. This sounds like pretty potent stuff if you're running in Iowa and New Hampshire. But I'm just kind of curious, when you go back to the state of Florida, how much of this is really an issue in Florida?

 

>> Michael T. Hartney: I think this is the governor trying to say, and if you listen to him when he talks about the teachers unions in the United States, he says, look, this is a partisan interest group, two ways about it. They may be officially nonpartisan, but if you look at their donations, they're 90% going to democrats, and it's been that way for decades.

And his point is very simple. If you're a partisan private interest group, in his view, the state shouldn't be doing you any favors to make you a more formidable interest group. Now, in the abstract, that seems quite uncontroversial. I don't think anyone say on the political left that opposes charter schools would be in favor of school districts subsidizing charter school advocacy groups to make their lobbying job easier and to make them more of an effective advocate in education politics debates.

But that's what weve done when it comes to teachers unions in this country for 30 years through a variety of policies. And ill just pick one that you mentioned. The governor says, look, local school districts are government public entities. Why should they be in the business of collecting dues and PAC donations for a private interest group through payroll deduction?

And you could say, well, the teachers deciding to do that, but that's a tremendous advantage for a private interest group that's trying to put its thumb on the scale in these public policy debates. And the governor says, no, I have no problem. If you want to join a teachers union, if you want to be active in these debates, you have every constitutional right to do that.

But the taxpayer is not gonna make that job easier for you, just as it doesn't for any other organization. So there's that issue on the one hand. I think the other issue is that there's a little bit of calling out the teachers union here in terms of their proclivity to say that they are in the vanguard of protecting democracy.

You'll oftentimes hear the unions couch what they do as enhancing, quote, workplace democracy, giving employees more of a voice. But then why is it the case that in almost every state around the country, including Florida, that has collective bargaining, that once a collective bargaining agent is chosen, once teachers vote in a union, how come it's the case that that certification of that union government giving it that privilege to negotiate exists then in perpetuity.

I mean, even members of Congress have to go back before the voters every two years. So I think Scott Walker did this in Wisconsin, and it was extremely controversial. But if you step back, all the governor did in Wisconsin was say, every year you need to go back to your members and make sure they want to be represented by you.

So when DeSantis, you know, says, we're going to make sure that if we're going to allow a local teachers union to have that special seat at the table and negotiate with the school board, we're going to make sure that a big majority of teachers want that. That seems to be very small d democratic to me.

So I find there to be a lot of irony here in people embracing the mantle of democracy. It seems much more to me that like much of politics, it's a, it's a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles, but it's really about interests.

>> Bill Whelan: Thank you.

You just described Randi Weingarten, who, for those not familiar, she is the President of the American Federation of Teachers. And if you're a newshound, you probably saw her on Tuesday of this week. She was on the steps of the Supreme Court, Michael. She was about two steps shy of being hysterical, and she was just screaming and yelling about the court considering student loans, just almost spinning out of control.

And getting back to DeSantis, if you are making a calculation that in part teachers unions and labor are gonna be a convenient foil for her, you want to capture what Weingarten said and turn it into a one minute ad as to what is wrong with unions in America.

But what would possess her, Michael, to go to the steps of Supreme Court and engage in that kind of performance art?

>> Michael T. Hartney: Look, this is the interest group universe that we're in right now. And to be fair, it's something that's true on both the right and the left.

And I'll give you three examples that I've been using. Look at the NRA, look at the ACLU, and look at the teachers union. Historically, these were three interest groups that were kind of these single issue interest groups. The union focused on education. The NRA was just about members of Congress voting records on guns, and the ACLU was a very balanced defender of free speech civil liberties group.

But in this partisan era of polarization, what you've seen is that these groups are really just now part of a larger ecosystem of left and right interest groups. And so I think the calculus there is that Weingarten, you know, that's what it means to be the democratic party today.

I mean, the teachers unit is a policy demanding group that thinks it can do better politically when it's firmly ensconced as an ally in that broader progressive movement on the left. That's the calculus it's making. It doesn't work out so well for them, though. Them, though, when you have a flip in governing power and you move to a trifecta where, say, a state had been controlled for Democrats or split power for a long time, and then suddenly Republicans take power, because expectedly, we would think Republicans would come in and say, okay, you're very clear about who you support politically.

We're going to do what we can to limit your. Your effectiveness. On the Weingarten thing, though, I can't help but just note and how opponents that want to sort of paint a picture of where they stand opposite to her would be very wise to come in and say, look, the particulars of student loans.

Putting that aside, wouldn't it have been a very different universe if Randy Weingarten had shown that sort of passion for trying to reopen schools a year and a half ago?

>> Bill Whelan: Right, no, that's well put. Ron DeSantis may or may not run for president. Somebody who has declared his candidacy, though, is one Donald J Trump.

You might remember him, Michael. He's a former president, United States, and Mr Trump has a school plan out. But what's interesting about it, Michael, is it doesn't really get much into unions as DeSantis interests are. It's really anti-woke-ism. Trump calls for cutting federal funding for any school or program that includes, quote, critical race theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content onto our children.

He also promises to, quote, keep men out of womens sports. So here is education, but as a culture warrior.

>> Michael T. Hartney: Here's the problem. No matter what position one has on the issues that you just laid out, we already know from no Child Left behind just how difficult it is for the federal government through the levers that it has to drill down and affect change inside the school building.

If we could barely do it. When it came to trying to make sure every fourth and 8th grader was tested and proficient in math and reading, just to collect the data and do the testing, that was a huge obstacle to get local school districts on board with that.

The idea that you're gonna have the federal government being able to get into the weeds on those sort of issues of curriculum is a bit fanciful. To the extent that conservatives want to push back on what they perceive as biased instruction or what they are uncomfortable with in terms of, say, teaching around sexuality and public health in schools.

That's something that's gonna have to be done at the state level, and you've seen Governor DeSantis pursuing that in multiple ways in Florida. So I don't really see that going very far at the federal level makes for good political talking points in a republican primary, though perhaps.

>> Bill Whelan: It does.

But if you're a school union, teachers' union, Michael, you have a choice here. And the choice at all times is how do you wanna use your ammo? Do you want to use your ammo engaging in something like critical race theory, or do you want to use your ammo when it comes to issues of teachers pay and classroom conditions reopening?

And I think your notice is rather leading question, but this, to me, is really an interesting question for teachers users moving forward. We get into these culture issues. They're complicated, they're messy, and I don't know, always easy for teachers cracks to explain.

>> Michael T. Hartney: Yeah, so it's all gonna come down to the framing here.

And the unions wanna frame this as an issue, and you already see them making an effort to do that in Florida as an issue of free speech, of an issue of book banning. I mean, book banning has a very negative connotation. So if they can make the issue about book banning, rather than a much broader debate over, well, how should we be teaching American history?

Or how should we be teaching African-American history if we're gonna have a specialized class on that? Should there be balance or should it be ideological? That's a debate they don't wanna have. Because I think from the polling data I've seen at the high school level, the vast majority of parents in both political parties wanna see it all taught, okay?

But at the level of kindergarten or elementary school, parents of all political stripes don't want any discussion of sexuality in the classroom, heterosexuality, homosexuality, they just don't want it being discussed. And the polling data on that is crystal clear. So the unions are gonna do what they can to make sure that's not how the issue is framed.

And conservatives like Governor DeSantis are gonna try to, in these debates, remind, the media isn't gonna necessarily cover it fairly. But they're gonna try to remind voters that what their bill really is about is about taking a position that's consistent with what 70% of the public feels, that for the most part, schools should be teaching the basics and graduating kids ready for college and career, not engaging in sort of political struggle sessions.

But it'll come down to the framing.

>> Bill Whelan: So tell us what the future looks like for school choice and charter schools, two hot buttons for teachers unions.

>> Michael T. Hartney: Well, the choice issue is really shaping up right now to be one in which proponents can lay claim to a lot of victories.

I mean, you're seeing it happen on almost daily basis around the country in red states. Right? But the problem here is that historically, at least on the charter school side of things, that the most successful charter schools, and the places that have the most charter market share, are usually located in blue states, or at least in blue cities, even if they're in red states.

And so the politics in those places, like a Los Angeles, are not great right now for choice, because not everywhere, I mean, you've seen, let me give two examples where maybe it's a little bit different. Like in Illinois, you've seen the governor there kind of back off on a very modest private school choice scholarship program that exists.

The newly elected governor in Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, during the campaign said, look, I'm not gonna oppose choice. There was a moment where choice was becoming popular with parents after the pandemic. But I think that the issue really is that as we see all of these bills enacted in red states, its not a bad thing.

But the question then is wheres the supply gonna come from? I mean, I'm not convinced. And we just had former governor Daniels of Indiana out here at Hoover virtually during national school choice week to talk about this issue. And the governor was really onto something when he pointed out, look, he was very proud of his record in Indiana, they enacted a very robust private school choice bill.

But what he acknowledged that was a lot slower to come to fruition than he had hoped was the sort of field of dreams. If you build it, if you pass choice legislation, will you see a lot of new private schools come into the marketplace to absorb and take these students who are now qualified for choice programs?

And unfortunately, we don't have a good understanding of how to make that happen. We haven't come up with good policy solutions to create more supply. We figured out how to pass choice laws, education savings accounts are an exciting new option to give families direct money from the government to use on educating their kids.

And that can be done in micro schooling. It can be done through tutoring, all sorts of things. But we need more providers, and I don't think we've cracked that nut yet.

>> Bill Whelan: So we've touched on Chicago. We've talked on Los Angeles. You mentioned Washington, DC a while ago.

Give our listeners one city to look at in terms of kinda the future clash between government and teachers unions over who essentially calls the shots.

>> Michael T. Hartney: I'm gonna go to Chicago. I mean, I'm just gonna go back there because, two things have happened. We already touched on one.

But some of these stuff is really under the radar. Given that the crime problem is sucking up all the oxygen in the room out there, I don't think people really appreciate what it means to shift back to an elected school board. I mean, the research is quite mixed on whether mayoral takeovers really are game changers.

But what we do know is that historically, when you ensconce the power of the school system in the mayor's office, you create a single line of accountability with a great deal of visibility. And when it comes to issues like corruption, in terms of fiscal management, mayoral control has a much better record in cleaning that up than does a very parochial minded local elected school board.

Add to that one other thing, which is that the legislature in Illinois, recently,I think this was a year and a half ago or maybe two years ago, they enhanced the power of the Chicago Teachers Union in collective bargaining. Long ago in '95, they had kind of scaled back and said, okay, you can't bargain these issues, but you can bargain these issues.

They've now gone all in. So you've had two things happen. You've given the union more power over the breadth of collective bargaining, and you've returned a governance structure that is going to be more amenable to the union being powerful. So if you think the CTU's been powerful before, I don't think you've seen anything yet.

So, godspeed to whoever takes over that city in the mayor's office, and particularly the superintendent. Because I think they're gonna see, maybe to link back to LA since we were doing that LA Chicago thing today, they're gonna see a lot of what the superintendent in LA has had to see, which is LA isn't Miami.

In Miami, the superintendent's cult of personality, tenure, their success in raising student achievement, really went a long way, I think, to drive support in the business community and among the public, and the union was nothing like it is in LA and Miami. So I think we're gonna see that in Chicago.

 

>> Bill Whelan: I would point you, Michael, to another California city, and that would be San Francisco. And I mentioned that because, as you alluded to, Chicago is about to transition to its schools being governed by an elected school board. San Francisco has a board of education, and there was a recall election there in February, 2022.

Three members of that board got tossed. People were upset with them in part because of COVID, but also because the school board was spending its time renaming schools and so forth, and voters just thought, the hell with this. It does beg a question if Chicago has a recall law or not?

 

>> Michael T. Hartney: I don't think so.

>> Bill Whelan: I don't think so either. But maybe what you'll see, though, is the point is if you do have a governor elected school board, maybe that puts more pressure on the education establishment because you have, if you will, just a sort of a more intimate connection between voters and school officials.

In other words, it's not the mayor, you're actually going to members of the board.

>> Michael T. Hartney: Yeah, I mean, the trick with these urban school boards is that, especially, I mean, creating a 20-member school board? The problem is that it's really hard. Like what you said in San Francisco is right.

I mean, the board went way too far. The mayor was Calling them out for not being serious about reopening schools. And the electorate was able to toss, in liberal San Francisco, they tossed out two lefty school or three super lefty school board members. But the issue with these large boards is that think about how accountability works in that setup.

If they run on staggered terms, which they do, and you've got 20 something members, you're talking like it's going to take a decade of organized political effort to try to unseat them. That's just too high a bar. I mean, even for the US Congress, you're able to toss the bums out of office every two years if they do something the public doesn't like, so yeah.

 

>> Bill Whelan: Well, there's one other issue, too, If I'm running for that school board, I need money to run my campaign. Where am I going to turn to for money matters?

>> Michael T. Hartney: Probably in the big districts you're going to turn to the teachers unions. But what matters in the typical American school district, of course, is boots on the ground, and that's another thing.

Turnout is so low in these elections that it's unfortunate because when you, when you have these referenda like you do in Chicago, or when you ask the public, not referendum, but when you ask the public whether they support elected school boards, everybody's like, of course, that's democracy. But then when you look at whether they turn out in these elections, they don't.

So, you know, it's a bit of a challenge convincing people that sometimes it's in their own interest to turn power over to a mayor that has appointment authority. But I think in the long run, it's shown to promote and enhance accountability in these systems.

>> Bill Whelan: So the future of unions having outsized influence, teacher unions having outsized influence in American politics, Michael, does it continue or are we seeing the pendulum starting to shift in the other direction?

 

>> Michael T. Hartney: I think it continues. The biggest threat to them is not the defeat from some other interest group, these parents unions or parents rights groups. The threat is this decline in enrollment. And so during the pandemic, states had hold harmless funding provisions like in California, wherever it didn't really matter if you were bleeding students and losing revenue because the state came in and saved you.

Well, the question is, after all that federal Covid relief, money dries up and it will. Districts that have made commitments and don't have the student enrollment either because of exodus, because the schools aren't performing well, or just demographic changes, that's where the unions are really going to have to have a come to Jesus moment.

And they're going to have to decide, all right, are we going to narrowly focus on bread and butter issues and maybe tolerate smaller workforce sizes for steady pay, or are we going to continue to engage in this dalliance with this broader progressive agenda? I dont think that's gonna work when theyre losing enrollment share, so thats what to watch.

 

>> Bill Whelan: Okay, finally, tell us, what are you working on these days, Michael?

>> Michael T. Hartney: Im working on a longer term project. Im working on a book on the pandemic. I dont have a working title yet, but most recently was thinking about it in the terms of something like a quote, they're not yours to control, that they're being schools.

And the book's gonna provide a lot of evidence that most of the decision making during the pandemic about when and where and how schools reopen were driven by political science and not public health science. So that's longer term and then shorter term. I've got an interesting project on teacher union endorsements in school board elections.

I've written a lot on this, but this is new. This project finds evidence that teacher union endorsements of incumbents is tied to teacher salary increases in the year before the election, but has a much smaller to no relationship with student academic improvement in the district before the election.

So goes to that question that Randy Weingarten is always talking about, which is what teacher unions advocate for, focused on teachers or students. And she likes to say that they're one and the same, be providing some empirical evidence to suggest maybe that's not the case.

>> Bill Whelan: Very good, Michael, sure enjoyed the conversation.

I think the one thing about this conversation about education, unions, it's not going away anytime soon, is it?

>> Michael T. Hartney: That's for sure, great to be with you, Bill.

>> Bill Whelan: Thanks, my pleasure. You've been listening to matters of policy and politics, a Hoover institution podcast, devoted to governance and balance of power here in America and around the world.

If you've been enjoying this podcast, please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to our show. And if you wouldn't mind, please spread the word. Get your friends to have a listen. The Hoover Institution has Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter feeds. Our Twitter handle is @Hooverinst, that's spelled @Hoover I-N-S-T.

I mentioned our website, hoover.org, at the beginning of the broadcast. While you're there, sign up for the Hoover Daily Report, delivers the best work of Michael Hartney and Hoover's fellowship to your inbox weekdays. For the Hoover Institution, this is Bill Whelan. We'll be back soon with another installment of Matters of Policy and Politics.

We'll be talking about California matters with my colleague, Leo Ohanian. Until then, take care. Thanks for listening.

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