The Teacher Pay Equalization Scam
Yesterday, I asked where the $450 million estimate for the cost of equalizing teacher pay statewide came from. Today's Tennessean reveals that it comes from the Tennessee Education Association - the statewide teachers' union - and the figure isn't just for meeting the court's mandate.

The figure includes the union's longstanding TEA agenda of increasing state spending on teachers' salaries.

The TEA-backed plan involvies finding "$400 million or so to raise salaries for rich and poor districts," reportsThe Tennessean. The TEA plan "would bring Tennessee minimum teacher salaries even with the Southeast regional average."

In other words, a court ruling that merely says the state must pay teachers equally across the state is already being hijacked by a union to force up salaries generally. The lawsuit plaintiffs claimed the issue was fairness. Now we know the real issue was what it always is: taking more tax money from you and giving it to the teachers' union.

A sidebar to the Tennessean reveals that the TEA is opposed to any plan that ties teacher salaries to cost-of-living data, even though using cost-of-living data would be sensible and any plan that doesn't use such data will not truly be "fair." Amazing. But of course the union would be opposed to using cost-of-living data because it would result in less money for teachers in low-cost rural areas.