...to kill a Mockingbird

The Show-Me Institute Blog has a really interesting insight into the Teacher Pay bill that died briefly (and is currently being pulled from its shallow grave). The language (providing tax credits for donations made into a scholarship fund) stripped from the bill was a seemingly fatal blow for the millions of dollars in raises to public school teachers. If you’re not familiar with the politics of the issue, it goes a little like this: teachers unions in the state (and nationally) are diametrically opposed to tuition tax credits or any options/choice the state may offer to kids who default to the public schools and keep them in business, so to speak. The teachers unions in Missouri have been pushing this essential pay-raise package for teachers (and now nurses and bus drivers), and when it made it into an Omnibus education bill in the house this week, it came with the same language of scholarship tax credit for special needs children they’ve been working overtime to kill.

Here is what the Show-Me Institute writes about this conundrum:


Somebody had the great idea of attaching the Special Needs Tax Credit bill to the teacher pay bill — which is a pretty brilliant idea, in my opinion. If the teachers' unions support increased teacher pay (with no merit pay, of course ... that would just be too crazy for us to pay good teachers what they deserve), and the school choice advocates support tax credits for autistic children, why not combine both provisions?

It turns out, though, that that was the deal-breaker.

From the Post-Dispatch’s coverage:

When the scholarship program was inserted into the teacher pay bill last week, two large teacher groups dropped their support for it. A lobbyist for the Missouri National Education Association said his group was "passionately opposed."

What a shock.

Who are the teachers' unions looking out for? The teachers, the students, or their own institutional power? The unions decided that they would rather prevent teachers — the people they reportedly represent — from earning pay raises so that they could ensure that no infinitesimal limit to their power could take root in a tax credit bill designed to help autistic children who aren’t being served by the public schools.

I’m sorry, students and teachers of Missouri, that there are people out there working so hard to prevent improvements in the state's education system.

Unfortunately, that assessment seems right on target given what went down.