Educators across Illinois are exercising their rights, with over 22,000 fewer school employees sending dues or fees to teachers unions than in 2017.

The Illinois Education Association and National Education Association filed federal reports showing how they spent money in 2020. Little was spent on what most assume is a teachers union’s central mission – representing teachers.

A teacher strike in Mendota, Illinois has lasted more than a week – but not all teachers in the small community may want to be on strike.

Educators across the state are exercising their rights, with 12,000 fewer public school employees sending dues or fees to teachers unions today than before the Janus v. AFSCME ruling.

This is the first anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling government employees cannot be forced to pay a union. In that year, about 20,000 workers from just three of Illinois’ public-sector unions have said “no” to union membership.

Government workers’ union dues are passed on to state and national affiliates, which spend millions of dollars on political activities and lobbying every year.

Members of the Illinois House of Representatives who voted for a government-union arbitration bill have received millions from government unions.

If people are forced to pay money to unions, they should at the very least have easy access to a detailed account of how their money is spent.

The Illinois Education Association, or IEA, has gotten even more wasteful, according to new LM-2 spending reports filed with the U.S. Department of Labor. IEA has a history of being a very wasteful union. In my review of union spending, I went through IEA operations spending – money that went into representation, politics and lobbying,...