In a recent Detroit Free Press article, Doug Pratt of the Michigan Education Association argued that school employees have become victims of considerable budget cuts. Expressing confidence that Gov-elect Rick Snyder will make decisions based on data, Pratt adds, "When you set the rhetoric aside, the data is (sic) on our side."
MEA spokespersons and allies have repeated the "employee concessions" claim so often that it's joined alligators-in-sewers as popular myth. While some particular groups of school employees have indeed made real concessions, the data do not show that this is the case for state school employees overall (the vast majority of which are unionized). Even as the number of students statewide has declined, for each of the past several years, taxpayers have nevertheless been paying more for school employee compensation.
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