A conservative organization has released a new study on Act 10 and its effects on teachers in Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty looked at the effects of Act 10 five years after it became law.
“We heard that Act 10 would gut the public school system and bring in all these inexperienced teachers,” said WILL vice president of policy CJ Szafir.
“We concluded for a variety of factors for the education workforce that Act 10 did not cause the education workforce to change significantly.”
The WILL study found that while teacher salaries have declined since Act 10 was implemented, it’s not clear if that was solely due to Act 10. The signature legislation of Governor Scott Walker’s first term reduced union rights for most public employees, including teachers.
“This so-called report is mere propaganda bought and paid for by the same groups that pushed nearly $1 billion in cuts to our neighborhood public schools over the past five years,” said a statement from Wisconsin Education Association Council President Betsy Kippers. “Clearly the authors of this report are more concerned with fixing the numbers to create a virtual reality than they are about our students — and they certainly haven’t spent any time in public schools to see reality for themselves.”