This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, November 23rd, 2018. I'm Caleb Brown.

There's no question that public school teachers got angry in 2018 over teacher pay over school choice and

over pensions but what does compensation data tell us about the

justifications for those protests Victor Riches is president of the Goldwater Institute. We spoke at the State Policy Network annual meeting in October.

I have my suspicions about this, but a lot of the teacher protests that seemed to have just

sprung up in several states that struck me as sort of a pre-reaction to the Janus decision.

That is, you know, we know this is not gonna go our way.

Let us make some, take some pains now, take some effort now to translate the current

level of political power that unions possess and turn that into electoral gains in November of 2018.

So to the extent that's true, and I don't know that it is. It's just a suspicion on my part.

What do the data tell us about teacher compensation and about the degree to which they may be justified in this extreme outpouring of anger about what they're getting paid.

Sure, well it's interesting and I do think your suspicions are correct.

The Red Fred movement clearly is a union play.

It was

on the on ostensibly, on the capital

and the march was ostensibly,

or primarily at least for higher teacher pay.

It was interesting because I've had a number of people ask me,

well what do you think of the Red for Red Movement out there?

And you have to give them credit to get that many people to go out and march on the capital, but the reality is they're marching on the wrong place.

At least in Arizona, the legislature and the governor do not set teacher pay.

It's the school districts themselves that set teacher pay.

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