For reasons that I couldn't at first identify, I struggled to take a side on last month's battles over collective bargaining in Wisconsin. It wasn't clear what a truly progressive position on the firestorm would be. I found myself pulled in both directions. Then I read a post by Whitney Tilson that helped me clarify my thoughts on the situation:
I have mixed feelings about what's happening in WI. On the one hand, I think that the public sector unions in many states became so politically powerful that they were, in effect, negotiating with themselves and were thus able to get pay and, more importantly, long term pension and healthcare benefits that will bankrupt many states and municipalities. These deals will have to be renegotiated... That said, I think what Gov. Walker is trying to do in WI is going way too far -- to the point where it's mostly politically motivated union busting... If Gov. Scott's motives are so pure and high-minded -- he claims that he's just trying to address a budget crisis -- then why did he give a $140 million tax cut to his corporate supporters?
I knew that I wasn't particularly fired up about the situation in Wisconsin for a reason, and Tilson helped me understand that reticence. Like most American progressives, I'm reflexively pro-union. I know that workers need a voice to advocate for their interests when negotiating with their employers (public or private). I also believe that teachers are criminally underpaid (on the order of two or three times too little). I find the Republican Party's strategy -- cut taxes and then declare that we have no money for the lower and middle classes -- both logically and politically insane.
But I also know that teachers unions, in their current iteration, have lost their way. While teaching first grade in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, I saw the local union repeatedly step in to prevent the dismissal of incompetent, unqualified teachers. As a progressive, as a teacher whose students averaged more than two years of reading growth during my first year in the classroom, this made me apoplectic. This is particularly unjust because our schools are deeply segregated along socioeconomic lines. Our nation's worst teachers are clustered in our poorest neighborhoods, serving our neediest students -- and they have the same tenure protections as our best teachers (I'll bet you can guess which communities they're clustered in...). Until teachers unions show themselves willing to work on serious reforms to address this national injustice, many progressives will struggle to get fired up to defend them. In George Parker's (the former president of the Washington Teachers Union) words, "to improve education in this country, union presidents are going to have to get in front of reform."
(I should note that these aren't casually developed, armchair quarterback positions. I hold graduate degrees in government and education, and I've published arguments for all of these positions in a variety of venues.)
This tension has been dormant on the Left for a long time. John Dewey, one of American progressivism's guiding intellects, was an early advocate (and founder) of several unions for educators (e.g. the AFT and AAUP). This is why union leaders proudly tout Dewey as a fellow traveler. In a 1933 speech titled "The Crisis in Education," he worried that teachers would be victimized in an era of "increasing responsibilities" and "decreasing resources." Here, and elsewhere, Dewey argued that teachers work warranted more resources and better working conditions. From his mouth to my ears.
Of course, it's not quite that simple. Dewey also believed that the United States was in desperate need of a unified national educational program to build a "Great" American community. In Liberalism and Social Action, "Toward a National System of Education," and The Public and Its Problems, Dewey argued that educational centralization would help to level the playing field between wealthy and impoverished school districts. This meant more standardization of expectations (if not curriculum), and it prioritized educational outcomes instead of sanctifying specific means for pursuing them. It goes without saying that this is considerably less congenial to unions who decry government intrusion into classrooms.
Dewey believed that this latter process could be (and should be) driven by teachers own expertise. Still, he made it clear that education was, above all, a means for making our country more just. Teachers should be agents for change, particularly in America's underserved communities. In an essay titled "Nationalizing Education," he wrote:
Since our democracy means the substitution of equal opportunity for all the old-world ideal of unequal opportunity for different classes and the limitation of the individual by the class to which he belongs, to nationalize our education is to make the public school an energetic and willing instrument in developing initiative, courage, power and personal ability in each individual. So I appeal to teachers in the face of every hysterical wave of emotion, and of every subtle appeal of sinister class interest, to remember that they above all others are the consecrated servants of the democratic ideas in which alone this country is truly a distinctive nation.
As one of the original American pragmatists, Dewey spent his career reflecting on his political positions and adjusting them when necessary to better serve democratic ideals. In that spirit, then, it's time for a reevaluation of our education policies. If most teachers unions are unwilling to accept even basic accountability programs for the nation's teachers, are they living up to America's highest ideals? Are they providing all children with an equal chance to succeed? Meanwhile, we should also ask if we are paying teachers enough to demand that they demonstrate excellence as instructors? Are we giving them enough day-to-day support? If not, Dewey's words should weigh heavy on our shoulders -- progressives and conservatives alike.
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Michelle Rhee: Why StudentsFirst Supports Teachers' Right to Collective Bargaining
Teachers are paid more than they actually should be getting. The occupation requires little in the way of skill or intelligence. The education paths are generally subsidized. It is not a rewarding career. So people who would make more money avoid it. The most skilled individuals are teaching specific fields at universities. They are not doing first year english at some high school. Primary and secondary education is an area that limits itself as to quality of labor and the value of labor reflects that.
i do love the "reflexively pro-union" part. All that shows is that you are unthinking. That is not really something to be proud of. Intelligent people reach their own conclusions and do not rely on their political team to make up their mind for them. I guess that it is no surprise that you are a teacher though; it is a profession that seems to attract the most ignorant and least able people.
Unions are entities seeking specific benefits for one party at the expense of others. They are no different than any other corporation (unions are corporations). Past benefits provide no present value or obligation to protect the corporation either (GM is not important to the US or Detroit solely because it had value at one time).
Very sorry to hear about your injury. I hope and pray you have a quick recovery. Not sure what the hold up on my other comment is. I hope you continue to post articles.
Thoughts and Prayers!
You seem to care a good deal about teaching, and hope you will be able to return to it soon.
Look, I don't know where people get this idea about "unions," but they're not this monolithic mass wielding equal power and influence at any given moment, in any give location. When I taught, I didn't even know who my union rep was. In my several years in teacher preparation, going in and out of dozens of elementary schools, not once have I seen a union rep or heard any discussion of union matters. So to say that unions are hindering reform demonstrates a rather dim view of the teaching profession.
You've also unfairly homogenized educator positions on accountability, which are much more nuanced than you've allowed. Teachers are certainly not anti-accountability, per se, and the specific and highly localized organizations protecting their interests are not either. They are, however, resistant to a certain strain of "accountability," which in its predominant iteration suggests bowing to the almighty test score and ridding professional judgment in favor of scripted curriculum.
“Unions provide working people -- from teachers to steelworkers, nurses, janitors and firefighters -- with a vehicle to raise their standard of living and to press for the conditions they need to do their jobs well.” RW
“Collective bargaining is a vehicle to improve services” RW
“teachers and their unions are using the collective bargaining process in ways that help kids, boost the teaching profession and promote the public good.”
Randi Weingarten President, American Federation of Teachers
So what your saying is the, nearly $100,000,000 the teachers union collect in dues per week is a total waste of taxpayers money. Why didn't you say this to the people that commented on your article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shaun-johnson/the-same-stories-over-and_b_837405.html
Is this what you were referring to when you mentioned- dismantling unions?
So instead of boycott on Testing, we should boycott Teachers Unions?
Do you teach this at Towson University?
As a political machine, unions work in ways that do not necessarily translate the same way across the thousands of districts in this country. There are state and local groups that do very different things than the big national groups and have very different relationships with their professionals. Frankly, I don't "teach" about unions. It's not a real concern of mine, but it's the pre-service teachers and their charges that I care about. Look, as a progressive Democrat, we owe a great deal to unionized labor, especially in education. But to pit reform against these national unions is really a dumb thing to do.
I liked his article. Starts off talking about the protest in the Great State of Wisconsin. “Like most American progressives, I'm reflexively pro-union.”, (Agreed-upon) I didn't flinch, not one cell in my body reacted to the headlines, “collective-bargaining under attack”. I don't care if every tea-bagger in the country came out carrying a protest sign. I'd be on the other side of the street carrying a sign that said, “over my dead body” or “live free or die”.
Are unions perfect? No, what large organization is? I do think they need a wake-up call. I feel that with parent-teacher collaboration, the power of collective-bargaining and the unions bankroll we could accomplish almost anything.
Then he summarizes with not only a reminder of the people brought about unions but also their thinking or logic behind original union principles. Think of the people protesting in other countries for freedom. I have to give credit to our founding fathers. When I look back in time to the start of our country I have to take a long grateful pause at unions. Democracy: Formed by Founding Fathers, Forged by Unions.
'Old school' education is just that: Old. Traditional, boring, it's what a lot us grew up with. And, truth be known, something a lot of us probably just plain hated. Education shouldn't have to hurt, and it shouldn't have to cost a lot of money, either. But, you have what is essentially a jobs program that has grown up around the entire process over the years, requiring millions in annual outlays for material costs and salaries and benefits and insurance and transportation etc. etc. Doesn't have to be that way. And, in the future, I don't think it will be. Many American homes today have a computer, and internet access. Concievably, every American kid could be home-schooled. Or, at least, laptop-schooled, or a combination of in-school classwork, and more intensive computer use outside the classroom in connection with classwork. That's right, homework, and lots of it, because bluntly put, in a classroom with 30-60 kids(Detroit), a teacher is still a human being, and can only communicate with one kid at a time. Then there's the noise floor. Then there's the 55-minute class duration. Then there's other things. And, when it's all said and done, you're playing a lot of musical chairs. The classroom of the future could be a lot of permanent computer cubicles, good basic experience for moving on to a lot of jobs, where they'll be looking at the same thing. The object, though, is to provide the student a good working and learning environment, where there's some adult supervision, and easy, ready access to instructional materials.
How to meet the challenges of the future, without socking it to the taxpayers, without wasting the students' time, without taking the interests of a labor organization over that of the real needs and challenges of 21st century instruction? By making hard, shrewd decisions about what 'school' even means, and what the objectives are, of a solid K-12 education that'll prepare today's students for tomorrow's worksite, or the college classroom, which is also becoming virtualized, as we speak, or has become that way already.
Time waits for no man, take some souvenir pictures, put on the 3-D glasses, and make it happen.
In your last paragraph you start to get to the real generalities that must be tackled with specific brainstorming events. Try this, Each educational bargaining unit elects a representative to oversee an internal commission that looks at what we want from education, who around the world is achieving those aspects, then designing programs to adapt those policies to our needs. Big concept. By engaging the most creative representatives from each bargaining unit, ideas on how to reward and advance excellence will come forth. And we also need to offer professional development to individuals who are stuck in their inadequate methods. I hear that there are countries that respect their teachers and also put up the student performance to justify it. We will have to find a way or continue this divisive battle. Will we be constructive or destructive.
I have to thank our governor for throwing us facedown in the mud. His upheaval forces us to rigorously review our values and resist the oncoming oligarchy.
That would be NEW YORK CITY again, right?
How about we hear from SOME OTHER STATE? How about some unions in other cities that are NOT New York?
I read an article today in the Christian Science Monitor on school turnarounds. We do not have evidence that these efforts are working in anymore than a tiny number of instances.