I'm full-time back from leave, which gives me an opportunity to make some points about Ed Sector’s Frozen Assets report (it really is a target-rich environment).  I’ll start with pensions, and if this hasn’t been blogged to death, I’ll add another later.  A lot of Americans in unions bargain the details of their pension plan with their employer. Teachers don't--pensions are covered by state law. You might bargain early retirement buyouts when the district is trying to cut staff, a supplemental program or retiree healthcare. But the legislature determines the basic value of the pension plan. This, for example, is the sum of the contract language between the UFT and New York City on teacher retirement issues. It is simply impossible, within the context of collective bargaining, to address the sort of benefit cuts Ed Sector is proposing (and they are cuts).

Teacher pensions were created as state programs in the immediate wake of the Great Depression, well before teachers achieved collective bargaining. Although I worry that Ed Sector doesn’t get the issues, there are real pension issues. I'm happy to talk about these issues all day long (I'm funny that way). But we really shouldn’t be doing this in the context of a discussion of collective bargaining. I'd think Ed Sector would, you know, as a research based organization, have already understood something as basic as this.