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Unions: Blocking the door to progress
January 06, 2004Normally it is not very healthy to come out criticizing unions so allow us to preface our remarks by specifying that the object of our ire is not the membership but the leadership.
It has become one of the defense mechanisms in union culture to portray a criticism of, say, the teachers union as a criticism of the teachers themselves. Nothing could be further from the truth. Unfortunately, it is also in union culture to elect to leadership positions the most tenacious and obnoxious 800-pound gorilla, someone who will defend "hard-won rights" rather than shine a light on them.
So while the membership of the union might be made of hard-working teachers who care about children, chances are very good that the union leadership considers its sole job to be winning "rights" and favorable "work rules."
Herbert London shines a light on some of these onerous work rules in a recent column, in which he likens the union rules in the New York City school system to Alice and Wonderland. Kiss reality goodbye!
One of the worst aspects of union culture is the defense of incompetence (and incompetents). This only serves to turn the teaching profession into a gravy train. London writes:
A principal must issue “failing job ratings to an incompetent tenured teacher for at least two years” before he can be fired. In fact, the paperwork is so time consuming, most principals prefer to cut a deal so that “failing teachers” can be transplanted to other schools, “a practice called ‘passing the lemon’.”
We could go off on a tangent about lawyers and regulations, but the bottom line is that the red tape only protects the worst element of the teaching population.
An intangible element of failing schools is the culture of low expectations on the part of the people who work there. One of the best ways to turn around a failing school is to not only get a Principal who can lead and accepts no excuses for failure, but to fill it with a teaching staff who can get the job done, a staff who believes it can be done. Unfortunately, the union has other ideas.
Although the schools chancellor has the authority to close a failing school and open a new one in the same building, he is obliged to hire half of the senior teachers from the failing school even though they may have been part of the original problem.
Why is it that incompetent teachers can't seem to get hired at private schools? Why do these same folks "get a pass" when it comes to teaching in big-city schools? Why is seniority the only aspect which is rewarded in the unionized teaching profession? Why is competence overlooked?
Simply because the free market has been banished from the premises.
The union rules strictly forbid the application of free market principles. All teachers – good and bad – have the same lock-step salary scale. Whether students perform well or poorly; whether math teachers who are in demand or gym teachers who are not, teachers’ salaries conform to a fixed formula. Welcome to socialism’s nirvana.
And what happens to good teachers who consistently see the most incompetent ones championed and defended, while making the same pay? One begins to feel like a chump, and it is a sure recipe for burnout. The Lowest Common Denominator strikes again, serving only to encourage the profession's best to achieve mediocrity, or even worse, to find a more rewarding career.
While it is true that in a free market, there is no guarantee of success, the market has its own internal checks and balances. These work in a million different ways to ensure that the good, the strong, and the effective are most likely to succeed. And best yet, no one party holds the reins. The laws of supply and demand serve to make sure that where the need is greatest, there will be higher pay.
Yet when school systems try to give higher pay for greater need (which is the way the rest of the world works), they slam head-first into the union's rules.
When the schools’ chancellor Joel Klein proposed a $25,000 bonus as an incentive for outstanding principals to transfer to low performing schools, the union refused to accept these terms. Salary incentives defy the fixed income formula. Union rules rule.
So why do unions block the door to progress? It's simple, really.
Because they can.
Two points about unions (I'm not a union official, nor do I play one on the net, but I am a public school teacher).
1. The single most important function of a union, period, is protecting the due process rights of its members. Any union that did not protect those rights wouldn't be worth the paper my dues are printed on. I do not want my union to roll over when it comes to incompetency hearings, even on teachers that I know are incompetent, because it means they could roll over when a vindictive prinicpal sets his sights on me. (I'm pretty sure I'm not incompetent.)
2. What we have here in Milwaukee is certainly worth a look. We've negotiated a program we call Teacher Evaluation And Mentoring (TEAM) (you can read about it in a Bob Chase column here), which seeks to identify and help the incompetent teachers without resorting to arbitration, lawsuits, or other unpleasantness. Teachers can be referred into the program by administratiors, colleagues, or even themselves.
Since implementation in 1998, 261 teachers have been referred and 117 enrolled in the program: 50 resigned or retired before completing the process; 48 completed it succussfully and are now better teachers; 5 left for other reasons; and 14 are currently in it.
Most importantly, though, teachers maintain their due process rights, and they are not made to feel victimized or demonized, even if they are bad teachers. And many do turn it around.
This is an example of what unions can and do do around the country that works to improve the educational environment for our children.
The situation we're in now in our current contract talks (Milwaukee teachers have been working without one since June) is that the union wants to talk, at the bargaining table, about educational issues: class size, professional development, the achievement gap, our poor graduation rate, and such. But the district negotiators have one item on their agenda: slashing teacher benefits.
Who's blocking the door now?
Jay Bullock January 10, 2004 10:16 AMJay, thanks for the information and the link. My whole point about teacher unions is that they are a very powerful force to be reckoned with, and have wielded power in the past like a club. It is when the teacher unions act like labor unions, I wonder if they remember when they used to be professional organizations, dedicated to furthering the profession, and not benefits.
The TEAM program sounds like it is a step in the right direction.
ceb January 10, 2004 02:05 PM