Let’s say you’re advising a business with varying quality and you want to improve performance. Would you ridicule the workers publicly, cut their pay and benefits, and say that they are the sole cause of the problem and that you want brighter younger replacements who will work overtime and weekends? No new CEO would adopt this as a strategy for success. Attacking your work force is not an effective way to improve quality, produce a better product, and attract top talent—a bright young replacement would notice the disrespect.
So why do people think attacking teachers is a route to education reform?
This week’s Sunday New York Times Magazine’s cover story by Stephen Brill attacks teacher unions for ruining public education. Brill’s main belief is that good teachers are all that matters, and his main culprit is tenure protections, which he views as protecting incompetent teachers (although no tenure provision prevents firing incompetent teachers—it just requires proof). The story is based on the belief that nonunion charter schools are better, using the single example of one school in Harlem.
Of course, teacher quality matters. But charter schools are no panacea. They have been studied to death, and the vast bulk of the evidence, even for programs funded by the pro-charter Gates Foundation, provides no evidence that charter schools are better. Brill’s tendentious article, boosting the Obama Administration’s education reforms that embrace charter schools, simply ignores the ever-growing evidence that charters make no measurable difference for students.
For example, the Rand Corporation finds that “across locations, there is little evidence that charter schools are producing, on average, achievement impacts that differ substantially from those of traditional public schools.”
An Upjohn Institute study found no improvement in Michigan student achievement in charter schools.
And a Stanford study found “17 percent provide superior education opportunities for their students. Nearly half of the charter schools nationwide have results that are no different from the local public school options and over a third, 37 percent, deliver learning results that are significantly worse than their student would have realized had they remained in traditional public schools.” These are not positive reports for charter-school zealots.
If the dream of education reformers is simply to get rid of unions, it will turn into a nightmare. Bright young hard-working teachers can’t run on sheer energy for long. And research tells us that teacher effectiveness, whether in charter schools or regular unionized ones, grows steadily with each year of experience. Success for younger teachers almost always requires mentoring from experienced teachers.
And if the beef against unions is that their wages, pensions, and benefits cost money—a key issue in the Harlem example—I have news for the reformers: Cutting wages and benefits is not a way to attract high quality workers. Young teachers will get old and also want pensions and good wages, and if they don’t get them, many will go work somewhere else.
The Ford Foundation is bucking the fad to simply blame teachers by funding projects that contribute to sensible, comprehensive reform. Improve teacher quality, yes—but also extend learning time with longer school days and school years, as most everyone agrees extending the school day and year are key to improving academic outcomes. Other pillars of real reform include stronger accountability beyond standardized tests, and adequate and stable funding beyond the unfair and discriminatory property tax system.
So sure, let’s have high-quality teachers. The reformers’ fantasy that success will magically occur simply by changing the form of school organization to charters is belied by plenty of data. Those interested in real reform should figure out how to work with teachers, not belittle and attack them.
21 Responses to Teacher-Union Bashing Is Simple-Minded
lisalita - May 24, 2010 at 8:38 am
This column avoids the real issues. The teachers’ unions have put the putative interests of teachers ahead of those of students. There are far too many inadequate teachers whose jobs are protected and far too many students receiving substandard education. The unions fight every proposal put forward in order to protect the jobs. It is cynical and immoral. No one says charter schools are a panacea, but clearly there needs to be choice and experimentation. Finally we have Democrats saying this and there is some hope for these kids. Talk to the parents, look at the videos of the school lotteries. These are heartbreaking. You need to see the hopeless situation of these children and families instead of citing a few studies and pontificating. And don’t get me started about politicians who oppose every reform measure, such as the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, while their children attend private schools.
blue_state_academic - May 24, 2010 at 9:31 am
If you get rid of teacher unions, what you will end up is schools filled with, as the author put it, “Bright young hard-working” TFA-type clones. They’ll all stay there for a couple of years, realize how hard the work is, and leave for greener pastures. Principals and other administrators will do nothing other than deal with the churn of employees.
firstyearttguy - May 24, 2010 at 9:36 am
Lisalita hits the nail on the head. Most of us who are parents recognize that teacher’s unions are dedicated to the well-being of the union and perhaps of teachers, but not students. While ‘union-bashing’ does little to improve education, anyone who watches the debates in education will be struck by how far the union goes to fight against proposals that will obviously benefit the students (and the better teachers): merit pay raises, firing of substandard teachers, school choice (which is important for both the sake of personal liberty as well as for the sake of improved educational opportunities), competition between schools (with underperforming schools closed in favor of superior ones), etc. On the college level we practice many of these types of proposals…. no one is stuck in a ‘bad college’ because of where they live… profs need to have a longer track record of productivity before achieving tenure than the teacher’s union wants for their teachers, professor’s raises are largely based on performance, and schools that can’t compete don’t survive long term (but most do survive). The college model could only help our failing schools, but the union only sees a threat to its power.
segads - May 24, 2010 at 9:49 am
The idea that teachers’ unions are fighting school reform is an unfortunate misunderstanding. Yes, they will fight those that blame teachers for all fo educations’ flaws, but I have found them to be strong supporters of change that involves discussion and collaboration among all interest groups — teachers, administrators, parents and community. Recently, our local union volunteered to teach admin and school board members exactly how to document information on underperforming (let’s say it — bad) teachers in order to remove them from teaching assignments. The offer was refused. It’s easier, of course, to paint all teachers with the same brush, and upbraid unions for daring to support reasonable pay, working conditionas and support for their clients.Personally, as a high school teacher, I would love a college model for my tenure and evaluation. Give me the free time, the work load, the authority and the resources of a college professor in my field (including paid sabbaticals to research, study and improve my content knowledge) — oh, yeah, and the pay — and I’ll happily submit to the same evaluations.Most college professors I know want nothing to do with secondary school — we work so much harder than they do!
jffoster - May 24, 2010 at 10:16 am
Segads (No 5), would your “love [or] a college model” for your tenure and evaluation include research and publication expectations?
7738373863 - May 24, 2010 at 11:26 am
Union busting will not answer to the present problem; union reform, in conjunction with school reform, will. Tenure right now is what its opponents think it is: _lifetime_ job security, to be vacated only for gross incompetence or mis-, mal-, or non-feasance. It should instead guarantee _continued_ employment, unless finances or other crises make retrenchment necessary. A teacher’s tenure should be subject to routine and systematic post-tenure review, augmented by the mandating of specific faculty development plans for those requiring them.Faculty development–and above all, continuing education practices–should be re-evaluated and restructured to require teachers to earn continuing education credits not just for showing up at the prescribed activities, but for participating in them and producing a tangible work product that is subject to supervisory evaluation and comment. The whole point of such reform is to breathe new life into the idea of learning communities in the world of K-12 education.In the world of higher education, learning communities consist of faculty who remain conversant with the new knowledge in their fields by reviewing and/or producing it, then disseminating it to their students, who learn it and, as they move through college and graduate school, begin, in their turn, to review and/or produce it. In the world of K-12 education, although we may have begun to answer the critiques of Paolo Freire and others like him, the fact remains that the static model of students as clients and teachers as purveyors–not producers–of knowledge works against any sense of shared endeavor, leaving students (and, complicitly, their parents) as ready to reject a serving of the knowledge being purveyed as they are to reject a serving of what is on offer in the school cafeteria, because both the teacher and the cafeteria worker are merely serving up a pre-produced (“canned”) product, not participating in its creation.Both teachers and students will function better than they do now if they buy in to the proposition that the work that they do is useful, valued, and part of a joint enterprise designed to move everyone forward and upward.
omordha - May 24, 2010 at 11:32 am
Tell me again why good teachers, in schools that provide choice to parents, need unions? Unionism is based on the idea that administrators are the boogie man, teachers are too frail to find schools that are a good fit, and that without unions teacher pay and benefits would suffer … unfortunately it is also based on the premise that the teacher is a “worker” and not a professional. Other professions (law, medicine engineering, etc.) do quite well without unions. It is time for the teaching to profession to step up and become true professionals with all of the risks and responsibilities associated with that term. Administrators should not be the enemy, they should be teachers who choose to take on that assignment for a time.
millersr - May 24, 2010 at 11:40 am
This topic, teacher unions, really strikes (bad word?) a negative chord with some people! I guess I’m of the belief that most institutions are products of some evolutionary (another bw?) process and are therefore not somehow inherently evil from the get-go. Yes, there are problems – but it is my observation that the vast majority of teachers DO care a great deal about the young people they teach as well as the quality of their work (to own my biases, I’ve actually only met teachers, I’ve never met a union). So maybe their comcern isn’t about reform per se, but about the “who/how” it will be carried out? So maybe “the map(read union) is not the territory” or as someone recently said, “those interested in real reform should figure out how to work with teachers, not belittle and attack them”.
lexalexander - May 24, 2010 at 1:46 pm
In a lot of states, including my own, teachers’ unions do not have collective-bargaining rights. And yet, states such as mine seem to suffer from the same problems as states in which unions do have collective-bargaining rights.Why is that, I wonder?
segads - May 24, 2010 at 2:31 pm
To jffoster — If given the same working conditions of college professors, I would be pleased to fulfill the same requirements for research and publication.To omordha — What a lovely idea! I would embrace the change. However, society probably would not. Let’s face it — a secondary teacher faces a much different task than doctors, lawyers and engineers. A doctor doesn’t have to diagnose, evaluate and individually treat over 30 adolescents in a 55-minute period (then repeat that 5 times in a day). Lawyers can focus on one client at a time; engineers, one project. A lawyer is expected to lose an occasional case. Doctors are not blamed for the obesity epidemic. Crumbling infrastructures are not placed at the feet of engineers.Yet, teachers are the scapegoats for the lackluster performance of American students on standardized, multiple choice tests. Do the parents provide an enriched environment of books, discussions, guidance in their homes? Are the young people intrinsically motivated to learn, or waiting for the immediate reward? Does the community value schools through adequate financing? The situation of teaching is unique.Without the union and its protections, my continued employment could be at the whim of a frustrated child, an angry parent, a school board member who hasn’t entered a public classroom since high school, a legislator anxious for votes… anything except my expertise. My student’s outcomes are dependent upon many factors beyond my control (true story — right before our state exams, one of the students had been at a rock concert until 3 in the morning and came in with no sleep and no breakfast — yet it’s the teacher who will be penalized for the poor scores). The union doesn’t prevent me from being fired — it just makes sure my working conditions and pay are reasonable and any potential professional problems are handled through due process.I don’t see administrators as my enemy. However, many are motivated more by politics than common sense. Many are so distant from the classroom that their romanticized view has clouded their vision. Some left the classroom for a hefty pay increase. In any case, the union isn’t anti-admin; it’s simply pro-teacher.
cbrod - May 24, 2010 at 4:17 pm
The first comment on this thread by Lisalita hits the mark — teacher unions exist to protect teachers, engage in collective bargaining for pay/benefits/working conditions and to make sure districts follow the contract in hiring, discipline, transfers, etc. Raising student achievement or reforming schools is not part of the union agenda unless it relates to the above. Obviously, that often puts the union agenda at odds with administrators, reformers and even parents. Just spend a day any public school and you’ll see this play out. Some unions — the NEA chapter in Denver, for instance — have been out front with pay-for-performance and charter experiments, but most hunker down and play defense. That said, Brill was attempting to be provactive by blaming the unions for more than they should be blamed for. But didn’t overstate the importance of teacher quality and accountability. You can debate how best to measure that, but union leaders need to get on board with the need for more development, training and support, or they will face the political consquences by both Democrats and Republicans.
goxewu - May 24, 2010 at 6:11 pm
How come teachers unions are ipso facto bad, but police and firefighters unions aren’t?Just asking.
wilkenslibrary - May 24, 2010 at 6:16 pm
I read the Brill article and waited in vain for some balance–for the paragraph about student involvement in education, about parent involvement in education, about education as a process involving thinking and learning and growing in understanding rather than test taking, about the differences between families who sign their children up for charter school lotteries and those who don’t, about charter schools’ ability to weed out underperforming or disruptive students or English language learners and send them back to the regular public schools, about dedicated teachers with many years of experience who leave the profession faced with students and parents who are increasingly confrontational about homework assignments or appropriate classroom behavior. Every summer, I overhear parents in the grocery store wondering how they are going to survive until school begins again. How do they expect the teachers to survive day after day with a room full of their children whom they, the parents, are sick and tired of after just a few days or weeks? I urge everyone who is tempted to union bash or teacher bash to spend several days–not an hour working with one student, but full days–in a classroom. Then come back with your observations and suggestions for reform. And maybe with some praise for our teachers who continue to educate our children in a horrifically unsupportive climate.
luther_blissett - May 25, 2010 at 2:59 am
Wow. Lawyers, doctors, engineers? Really? The fact that there are relatively few positions in those professions didn’t cross your mind? That to get one of those relatively rare openings, one must be exceptionally competitive? And that such competitiveness means that American doctors, lawyers, and engineers can demand absurd amounts of money (salaries that their counterparts in the rest of free world might find absurd too)? And that they have no need for unions?Sure, make teaching as competetive and well-paid as law or medicine. Where are you going to find enough teachers? Where are you going to find the money to pay these people, when we can supposedly not afford the rather meager salaries and benefits packages we offer now? Unions exist to protect workers. To damn them for protecting workers is absurd. To claim that teachers — and teachers unions consist of teachers, on the whole — are only out for themselves is absurd. Waiters and bartenders often make more than teachers. Most of the people who teach your kids do so because at some point in their lives, they were excited by teaching. That they want a decent salary and benefits, that they resist continually taking on more work for the same pay, that they resist demands for increased performance without increased support, that they refuse to do all the giving while administrators, bureaucrats, and politicians do none of the giving — well, that’s called common sense, to me. Teachers have families of their own, you know. And the canard about tenure making it difficult to fire teachers is ridiculous. I only taught in public schools for a few years, and I saw many tenured teachers in unionized districts get shit-canned. Administrators also can simply make life so miserable for the tenured teachers — terrible classes, terrible service — that they leave of their own free will. No, no: it’s always the same. Teaching is a privilege, is a passion. It’s not work. It’s not labor. It’s charity. And to make any demands as a teacher is like the Salvation Army jinglers demanding cavier and cigars at Christmas time, right? More than charity, teaching is a gift — to the teachers, who should be thankful to be teachers. Nevermind that I’m in a classroom for seven hours every day, and that I comment on writing for another two or three hours every weekday or that I grade homework and plan lessons for three to five hours every day on the weekend. Nevermind that my summers consist of professional development, certification programs, continuing education, and my own personal lesson planning (and I have a Masters of Teaching, a Masters of Arts, and a Doctorate already). Or, as number 13 above reminded me, I think of the words of one student’s parents when I called home: “I can’t control her. I can’t get her to do anything. But I’m not being paid to deal with her. That’s your job, and apparently you don’t know how to do it.”
bmurfin - May 25, 2010 at 8:19 am
I have been a secondary teacher for twelve years and a teacher educator for twenty years and I wholeheartedly agree with Teresa Ghilarducci’s views. I’d like to add a few other concerns. First of all, a huge amount of taxpayer money is being used to pressure schools and we can’t be certain of the long-term effects on school systems. Secondly, there seems to be a strong bias in the mainstream media, and opposing voices and views to the teacher bashing of the “Race to the Top” program are not being heard outside of education publications. I have posted the rest of my comment on my blog at the following link: http://sciedweb.blogspot.com/2010/05/education-is-not-race.html
22097984 - May 25, 2010 at 10:07 am
Bashing or not bashing teachers’ unions ignores the issue. The problem is that the quality of education we achieve for our students is poor. The obvious solution is to allow parents more choice regarding where/when/how they educate their children. I would like to see a voucher model in which parents can send their child to schools of their choice. If the unions are the problem, they will die out in a competitive market. If the unions are a help to the students, they will become more common. You want to see real reform? Let poor kids in DC go to the same schools G. W. Bush’s and now B Obama’s kids go to. You’ll see change like you have never seen change.
luther_blissett - May 25, 2010 at 10:40 am
I’ll support vouchers for education once I also get vouchers for any other goods or services for which my tax dollars pay. I’d rather monitor my own consumption of media, so I’ll take a voucher for the FCC. I walk everywhere, so I’ll take a voucher for all the money going to roads. I oppose any and all violence, so I’ll take a voucher for the military. And bank bailouts and farm subsidies, I’ll definitely take my chunk of those in cash.
22097984 - May 25, 2010 at 12:16 pm
luther (above 17): You do get vouchers or voucher like items (such as a subsidy) for many of the things you consumer. College education gives vouchers in the form of subsidized education and directed scholarships. Similarly, you get subsidized access to roads (your example). If you are poor, you get a direct voucher for food (food stamps) housing (Section 8 Housing VOUCHER!). The bigger issue is that those calling for vouchers argue that what we have is an inefficient subsidy for public education with no subsidy for private education…A voucher would even the playing field if you like. We do this for college education, housing, transportation and media (I think that is all the examples above), so why not primary education? Would it work? I have no idea but I would certainly like to try. The evidence from Milwaukee (DC as well) does not seem very convincing. While the parents self report they are much happier with the schools, the performance of the students does not clearly demonstrate improved testing. The evidence from the experimental schools such as Cristo Rey seems more promising, but is less structured for clear hypothesis testing. (Milwaukee had more requests for funding than was available and a random allocation meathod was used to decide who got the voucher…so a pretty good natural test structure was there.) Arguing teachers unions cause the poor performance in schools seems largely tangental to the issue of poor education of the kids. What, specific policy the country use to educate the least well educated and largely least well off in the country. A growing number of people seem to argue the problem is a union of teachers. I would like to see us try using different school structures….including that dirty word…religious schools. I will ignore the illogalness of wanting a voucher for goods you do not provide. The issue at hand is that we (as a society) subsidize education. Someone is proposing a better way (or at least a different way) to set up the subsidy. That is a seperate issue from the question should we subsidize the item at all (regardless of the good being roads, education, media or military spending). If the proposal is to do away with public education completely, I am certainly willing to have that talk as well. FYI: I support getting rid of all of the subsidies you listed…including public education!
softshellcrab - May 25, 2010 at 4:43 pm
Teachers unions are a bad thing. All public employee unions should be outlawed. They contribute to teachers being very overpaid. Typical 10-year teachers in my area, with a masters degree (which they all seem to obtain, often at questionable schools that cater to the teachers seeking a masters, such as “online” schools), make about $65,000 in most of the suburbs, for an 8-9 month contract, with tenure and getting home at 4:00 pm every day. Very hard to get fired, also. And it does not matter at all if they bother to teach well or not.
luther_blissett - May 25, 2010 at 9:03 pm
softshellcrab, let’s take a look at some real data, shall we? Check out http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/teacher-pay-around-the-world/What we learn is that (a) American K-12 teachers spend more time teaching that teachers in *any* of the other thirty nations analyzed; (b) after 15 years of teaching with minimum degrees, a primary school teacher in America makes an average of $43,000 dollars. A Masters degree is not bouncing that average up $22,000 to your figure of $65,000.
marka - June 1, 2010 at 5:39 pm
cbrod has hit the nail squarely on the head – bravo! And I say this as the product of inner-city LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District), and as a former union member, both a factory job private union, and a public employment union.I fault union management, not union members, for this. Union management pushes seniority & benefits even when many union members are willing to forego these for the betterment of societal goals — like educating students, especially the disadvantaged, who can get the most benefit out of a public education. And unions do indeed protect incompetent or dangerous workers, much to my chagrin — while you can ‘fire’ a teacher ‘for cause’ the proof threshold is high & expensive, and a union member is almost always reinstated by an arbitrator, no matter the ’cause.’ Hence, schools rarely even try to ‘fire’ a senior teacher, much less actually succeed.I haven’t tracked the more recent performance of union management in other states, but have had to endure it here in Oregon for 3 decades. In the ’80s, there was a legitimate claim that teachers were underpaid and overburdened — the public, thru its then relatively non-partisan legislature – responded by increasing pay. Briefly, schools performed better for students, parents, teachers, administrators, and the public. But by the 21st century, union management has – collectively – gutted public education, so that only senior teachers & their unions now benefit, at the expense of students, parents, administrators, and taxpayers. What were seen as modest pay increases in the ’80s and beyond were actually much larger back-door promises that have ballooned since – health care premiums paid in full, employee/teacher share of benefits now paid in full by the public, and the pension promises now threatening to bankrupt the state: the usual buy now pay later formula that has become disastrous in at least 2 arenas – health care and education.Now, our schools underperform, and we can’t get experienced teachers into disadvantaged schools to teach disadvantaged children — that’s because the union contracts allow senior teachers to choose schools, and they generallly choose cushier schools in the ritzier neighborhoods, leaving newbie teachers to the lions’ dens that are found in our poorer neighborhoods. No wonder our new teachers are leaving in droves. And at least in Oregon, even if you try to fire a teacher, the arbitrator will reinstate, so that most schools simply ‘pass the trash’ — only recently has the Oregon legislature banned schools passing child molesters & sexual harassers on to the next school. It is common practice to try and move around ‘unmotivated’ teachers, but the lock of seniority zealously guarded by union management prevails. Oregon schools have become laughing stocks around the country, and our once deservedly proud public schools are now sacrified at the altar of unions & their management, not always supported by rank&file teachers. Our state doesn’t even try for the Obama federal $$, but instead argues that Oregon taxpayers simply should pay even more, while teachers shouldn’t have to hold tight on raises, even though fellow private taxpayers have lost jobs & income. Our unions have a lock on the Democratic party, such that ‘market’ forces don’t operate anymore — the thumb is on the scale & there has to be an overwhelming public outcry before any reforms are attempted.I’ll consider a better opinion of unions – as opposed to individual rank & file teachers – when I see any flexibility or concern for the greater good – instead of public sacrifice for private individual benefit: just more & more $ for ‘education’ which then goes not to more services for students, but to increased pension & health $$, and raises for seniority (but not new teachers!). Our most recent taxes for education basicallly went to pay for these raises, and not for better classrooms. When our children – especiallly the underprivileged – actually get a better education, not just mediocre or worse – is the time when unions will begin to earn back the decent reputation they had 3 decades ago.