Teachers unions continue to publicly insist that their demands for ever greater spending on public schools are to help “the children.” Privately, they tell many of their own members who are skeptical of the evidence that more spending boosts outcomes that at least they continue to raise teacher pay and benefits for “the adults” in the system.

But now, there are signs that the ability of unions to extract more taxpayer resources for the system isn’t doing enough to keep their own members happy.

A new report from the American Enterprise Institute notes that nearly half of all teachers plan to quit, due to school climate and safety. Around 40 percent of teachers say they now face physical violence from students. Higher wages alone won’t address the disciplinary and hidebound union contracts that make it difficult to retain teachers.

Robert Pondiscio, a former 5th-grade public school teacher who testified before Congress last week, warned that “higher pay does not make a hard job easier to perform. It lifts no burden off a teacher’s shoulders, nor does it add hours to a teacher’s day.”

Rather, what would make the job of teachers easier and more fulfilling would be greater school choice that would tie teacher pay to improving student performance.

“Most importantly,” Pondiscio writes that more school choice would not only improve the lot of teachers, but it would also be “giving disadvantaged kids the opportunity to learn in the kinds of safe and orderly schools that well-off kids and their parents take for granted.”

That should be the real goal of public education, not the search for ever-bigger bureaucratic budgets.