Melissa Cropper, president of the Ohio Federation of Teachers, joined the America's Work Force Union Podcast to discuss three interconnected issues facing Ohio educators.
Cropper addressed the AFT's new national survey of approximately 2,000 K-12 members. It found that two-thirds of teachers rate their stress level at a 7 or higher on a 10-point scale, 31 percent are considering leaving the profession and only 36 percent would recommend becoming a teacher to their children.
Cropper also discussed the Ohio University faculty contract dispute, which started after the university filed a lawsuit challenging the election results and has now lasted over 400 days. During that time, faculty have gone two years without a cost-of-living increase and workloads have increased due to cuts in support staff.
The Ohio governor's race was her final topic. Cropper contrasted the positions of Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and Democratic candidate Amy Acton. Ramaswamy has proposed eliminating teachers’ unions, described school funding as a silly accounting debate and received more than $30 million from a private donor who supports school choice. Acton’s husband is a public school teacher and has already met with state educators to discuss her education policy, Cropper said.
The American Federation of Teachers released a national survey of approximately 2,000 K-12 members that OFT President Melissa Cropper described as consistent with prior years’ data but worse than previously seen. Two-thirds of teachers rate their current stress level at a 7 or higher on a 10-point scale. Thirty-one percent say they are considering leaving the profession. Only 36 percent say they would recommend their own children consider teaching as a profession.
Cropper said those numbers are not just a measure of teacher well-being but also a predictor of what is happening to the profession. When teachers leave, and fewer new people enter the profession, positions go unfilled, retirees are not replaced and the educational pipeline begins to break down. The teaching shortage will become a national crisis if the structural causes are not addressed, she said.
Two of those structural causes are wages and funding, she said. Teacher wages are not keeping pace with inflation, which is the same pressure facing workers across most sectors. But the combination is especially acute for teachers. They are stretched thin while also watching their students arrive without adequate food or school supplies because their families cannot afford them. Teachers are filling that gap out of their own pockets, Cropper said. They are buying snacks and keeping food on hand in their classrooms. They are purchasing classroom supplies because school budgets are underfunded. Cropper said this is the direct result of inadequate school funding and the spillover of broader economic pressures on Ohio families.
The AFT survey also found that book bans and AI are adding layers of stress on top of the financial and workload pressures. One English teacher reported having no books other than textbooks in her classroom due to book bans. Another said book bans are hindering learning. Cropper said the broader wave of restrictions on what teachers can and cannot do in classrooms — what materials they can use, what topics they can address — has significantly elevated the profession's stress level by creating constant uncertainty about professional conduct.
AI is a separate and rapidly evolving challenge, she said. Twenty-eight percent of surveyed teachers said AI is hurting students’ critical thinking skills. Cropper said teachers are trying to figure out how to use AI in their professional practice while also helping students navigate a technology that is already part of their daily lives. The goal is to make AI a productive tool rather than a replacement for student thinking — to preserve the critical thinking skills that education is designed to develop, while not pretending the technology does not exist. Cropper described it as trying to address two problems at once with no established roadmap for either.
The Ohio University faculty union election was an overwhelming vote in favor of representation. The university's response was to file a lawsuit challenging the election results and to use the litigation as grounds to refuse to bargain on certain items. The result is a contract fight that has now passed 400 days, during which faculty have not received any cost-of-living increase. In the same period, support staff cuts at the university have increased the workload on faculty without any corresponding change in compensation.
The university needs to stop treating faculty pay as a line item to minimize and start treating it as an investment, Cropper said. Students choose a university for the quality of education they can receive, and that education depends on the quality of the faculty. If the university continues to underpay faculty who have built careers and lives in Athens, Ohio, those faculty will eventually face a choice they do not want to make.
A recent rally at Ohio University drew approximately 250 people. A significant portion of the crowd was students who showed up to support their professors. They described professors who are present beyond classroom hours, answer questions about assignments and show up when students need help. They described the faculty as the reason they chose Ohio University. Faculty members who spoke described careers built on loyalty to the institution and to the community. But that loyalty has limits when the institution does not reciprocate, they said.
Next, Cropper addressed the November race to be the next governor of Ohio. Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has made it clear he wants to eliminate teachers’ unions. She said that the position should concern every union member in Ohio, regardless of industry, because an attack on one union is a warning signal for all unions. But for educators specifically, Ramaswamy's policy positions compound the threat.
He has described school funding as a silly accounting debate, a characterization Cropper said dismisses a funding system that Ohio schools have been fighting to reform for decades. He supports merit pay, which she said has been tried, does not work and would require money that is not available. He has proposed eliminating state income taxes, revenue that funds not just schools but police, fire, libraries and a range of other public services. And he has received more than $30 million in campaign contributions from Jeffrey Yass, a Pennsylvania-based private school choice advocate, which, Cropper said, clearly signals where his education priorities lie.
She also noted that Ramaswamy keeps presenting what he describes as innovative education ideas — including an emphasis on standards — while appearing unaware that Ohio already has extensive state-level academic standards governing what happens in every classroom. The characterization that teachers need external standards imposed on them rather than already operating within a detailed standards framework reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how public education actually works, Cropper said.
Democratic candidate Dr. Amy Acton presents a different picture. Her husband is a public school teacher. She has spent two and a half years building a ground game across Ohio, attending events in communities throughout the state. She has already consulted educators on policy matters. Cropper said the choice is not close from the perspective of public school teachers, and she is doing everything she can to help get Acton elected.
More information on the Ohio Federation of Teachers is available at oft-aft.org. The full AFT national survey is available at aft.org.
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