The War On Teachers Part One: It's the money, Stupid - Pension Edition

 And then there are the pensions!

If salaries are the money front door in the war on teachers, pensions are the side entrance. One of the trade-offs for being paid so dismally is a promise of a stable retirement pension. If you work long enough, the story goes, you'll be able to stop working some day and not go hungry.

Your mileage may vary as different states have different rules, but California public school teachers pay a percentage of each paycheck into a separate retirement system--the California State Teachers' Retirement System--and drawing that pension significantly reduces any Social Security benefits earned from non-public school employment. For most of us, CalSTRS is the centerpiece of our retirement benefits.

As I've mentioned, I failed to follow the very good career advice given by my colleague Nick Deligencia: Give yourself a raise. Teachers do this by taking extra classes and working for a long time--both of which are really good things for our profession and for the kids we serve. A smarter and more stable workforce is a good thing.

You won't make a million bucks or anything, so do what you can.

For many of us, one of the good reasons to raise your pay is that it raises the pension you can receive when you retire. Pension critics and the public they disinform tend to fantasize enormous sums of cash rolling into the bank accounts of teachers who retire young and use their boatloads of pension funds to travel the world on yachts. Sadly, no.

The California State Teachers' Retirement System, commonly referred to as CalSTRS, states on its website that "Your CalSTRS retirement benefit will replace, on average, about 54% of your current salary," and that seems about right. 

Side note: Los Angeles police and firefighters can get up to 90%, and unlike teachers their overtime and extra pay counts to boost their final salaries. I'm not saying they don't deserve their pensions. I'm just saying nobody else is saying that, either.

My own pension, including a ten-year "defined benefit supplement" I earned by doing extra work is a bit over $4000 a month which, although not as much as it could have been, is not nothing. There's more than a little something left over after I pay income taxes and now medicare premiums, but no yacht for me.

So why all the hubbub over teacher pensions? 

Chad Aldeman is a reformster, to adopt Peter Greene's term. But Aldeman has a particular focus: He doesn't like teacher pensions. He says so over and over again. He is founding editor of something called "TeacherPensions.org," which is the spawn of reformster outfit Bellwether Education Partners. He's not the only anti-pension huckster out there, but an impressive number of them cite his work for support.

His criticism seems to be based on the fact that, unless you work for a pretty long time, you don't get a good return on your contributions. Which is basically true, and also a good thing. Again, a more experienced, stable workforce benefits students and the institution, and incentivizing teachers to remain in the classroom is a stabilizing influence. When the incentives disappear, teachers do, too. Look around. 

Aldeman likes to point out that much of today's pension expenditures by states and school districts go to teachers who aren't working anymore because they are, you know, retired. He cleverly blends teachers into "education employees," and connects statistics that sound ominous but really are vague and unconnected: "From 2001 to 2020, schools increased payrolls by 75% while their pension costs rose by 275%." 

"Payrolls" include what workers? Same or different pension systems? What schools where? And what are these costs you speak of? Did lots of people retire? Did more schools offer their employees a plan? Did schools hire lots of people (?) and you're counting future retirements? Did schools and states get ripped off on their management fees? Aldemen neglects to say.

However, he doesn't hesitate to offer solutions to the problems he posits. Shorter version of his four-part plan? Get rid of pensions. That's it. No promises, raises don't count, and employees assume the risk. Sounds pretty appetizing, right? Well, if not, Aldeman has a solution for that, too: let teachers opt out. Let them take a defined contribution plan or just the cash. 

Ultimately, Aldeman's "solutions" promote even greater teacher turnover by suppressing salaries and benefits, which of course is the point. To achieve this reformster paradise, he wants to drive a wedge between teachers who are retired or approaching retirement and youngsters who are left to worry that promises of a stable retirement might not be kept. It's a potent strategy.

Aldeman is a public policy guy who also works for something called the Edunomics Lab. I guess the pseudo-scientific name implies that he and the Lab know something about economics, but based on their work I can't confirm. 

The director at the Lab, Marguerite Roza, is also a policy hotshot who, per Diane Ravitch, "was for many years a fellow at the Center for Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington, a pro-school choice think tank" and "has been critical in her writings of class size reduction and has recommended saving money by cutting teachers’ pensions and benefits (which she called “Frozen Assets” in a 2007 paper of that name)." 

In spite of being part of the McCourt School of Public Policy at  Georgetown University, the Edunomics Lab primarily seems to be an advocacy squad on a mission to reform public school by destroying the village in order to save it.

For an excellent breakdown of Aldeman and his flimflam, here's a one-pager from advocacy group the National Public Pension Coalition. Here's Monique Morrissey, an actual economist from the Economic Policy Institute, taking down Aldeman and other pension critics for their deceptive tactics and bad-faith arguments. And finally, here's a study from the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education about why Aldeman and the pension-haters are wrong

So are these pension-haters just confused? Misinformed? No. They are coming through the side door in an effort to squeeze educational resources and, most important, make the teaching profession even more untenable than it already is. In other words...

If the Enemies of Public Schooling can degrade the profession sufficiently, we see exactly what we're seeing now: teachers leaving early, or in the middle, or not becoming teachers at all because who would? 

Defund. Degrade. Destabilize. It's a war.

Next: The War On Teachers Part Two: Working Conditions