Unions and the Decline of Public Education

The American Spectator reports:

Think of public schooling as a game of Monopoly in which one of the players, the unions, owns 90 percent of the properties (9 out of 10 American students attend public schools). The other players, taxpayers, have some cash and a few properties of their own, but they can't make it around the board without paying ever-increasing union rents-just as, in real life, taxpayers must continue funding public schools no matter how much they cost. They can survive for a while, of course, and while they do the unions reap handsome rewards. Eventually, though, the taxpayers run out of money. Game over.

In the board game, we'd call the unions the "winners." In reality, their victory is Pyrrhic. They've been so successful in protecting their members' jobs (including those of the mediocre and inept), raising salaries and benefits, and reducing workloads (by inducing more hiring to lower the student/teacher ratio), that they have precipitated budget crises all over the country, derailing their own gravy train.

Article well worth your time.