Tag Archives | teachers unions

redefinED blog stars: Michelle Rhee’s misread on vouchers, why teachers unions aren’t to blame and more

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On May 8, 2012 in General, Parental Choice, Progressives and ed reform, School Choice, Unionism

Editor’s note: This is our second installment of “blog stars,” a compilation of thoughtful material from other ed blogs. If I missed something good, by all means let me know at rmatus@stepupforstudents.org.

Jay P. Greene’s Blog: Much to Learn About Vouchers Rhee Still Has

Michelle Rhee’s faith in regulation is odd. The public school system is super-heavily regulated with laws and policies streaming down from the federal, state and local levels. Despite all of that, much of the system performs at a tragically poor level.  That of course is not to say that vouchers should have no regulation, but the right level of regulation is not “heavy.”

Rhee also places far too much weight on the results of standardized test and gives far too little deference to the judgment of parents. Parents make decisions about schools for a large variety of reasons- including things like school safety, peer groups and the availability of specialized programs. In addition to missing the whole point about school choices being multifaceted with parents best able to judge all the factors, individual test scores bounce around from year to year, they often take a temporary hit when a child transfers and adjusts to a new school.

The notion of having program administrators looking at the math and reading tests and deciding to cast children back to their ‘failing neighborhood school’ is very problematic. Pity the poor voucher program apparatchiks who have to drag children back to a public school where they had been continually bullied because they had the flu on testing day. Pity the children more. The subject of what to do about poorly performing private schools in a choice system is a complex topic and opinions vary widely. Rhee’s proposed solution however does not begin to capture this complexity. Full  post here.

The Blog, Huffington Post: Are Democrats Wrong to Blame Teachers Unions?

But why are teachers unions so much more successful than other unions? The answer is simple: public schools lack both competitors and paying customers, eliminating the checks and balances on union demands that exist in the private sector. A business whose unionized workers drive up costs without raising quality loses customers and may have to lay off workers or even shut down. Union success is thus self-regulating. But if, as a parent, you don’t like the way your local district runs its schools, you have nowhere else to turn — not without moving or paying for a private school. And as a taxpayer, if your local schools mismanage your tax dollars, you can’t send those dollars anywhere else. That’s why public schooling’s inflation-adjusted per-pupil spending has more than doubled in the past four decades despite stagnating or declining academic outcomes: revenues don’t depend on satisfying customers.

That’s not the unions’ fault. Continue Reading →

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Low-income parents vs. teachers unions on teacher layoff policies

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On April 19, 2012 in Parent empowerment, Unionism

Editor’s note: High-poverty schools and low-income families are hurt the most by last-in-first-out layoff policies for teachers. In Los Angeles, groups representing low-income parents filed suit against the practice – and so far, they’re winning. Berkeley law professor and redefinED host Stephen D. Sugarman writes in this post that low-income parents have the right to equitable treatment for their children.

Unions typically bargain for terms that protect current members and, if need be, give priority to members with more seniority than those with less. In hard times when an employer is downsizing, this “last in, first out” policy best serves the needs of longer-term union members who are most experienced and perhaps most economically dependent on holding onto a job they have done for some time. It also provides a routine practice that lies in contrast to what might be an employer’s desire to lay off those who are, say, the most expensive, the least productive, the most troublesome, or the most active union members. 

This “last in, first out” plan is typical in union contacts with public school districts. What it means when teachers have to be laid off is that the least experienced in the district are the first to be let go. These teachers are generally the most recently trained and the least expensive. It is also typically the case that they are disproportionately employed in schools that have had the hardest time attracting and retaining effective teachers, schools that almost invariably contain a disproportionate share of children from low-income families and children of color. These are often under-performing schools as well, although in some cases they might have recently put into effect a promising school improvement regime with the cooperation of the in-place local teaching team. 

Does this mean that, in times of economic downturn and curtailed school district budgets, high-needs schools end up with very few teachers and terrible student/teacher ratios? No. Union contracts and federal law require that student teacher ratios remain fairly comparable across the schools in a district. Instead, slightly more experienced teachers from within the district are meant to be shifted over to these teacher-short schools, either via transfer or after themselves being laid off and then re-hired. In theory, this could actually provide high need schools with more experienced teachers than they had before, and that could possibly be desirable for their students on the theory (generally supported by research) that brand-new teachers are generally less effective that those with three or more years of experience. 

But on the ground, it often works out quite differently. Continue Reading →

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Parent trigger founder: Teachers unions launched “sweep and destroy” mission to deny parents

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On March 28, 2012 in General, Parent empowerment, Parental Choice, Unionism

Two weeks ago, Gloria Romero, the former California state senator who wrote the original parent trigger law, wrote in this redefinED piece that the “status quo” killed the parent trigger bill in Florida. Today in this op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, Romero uses much tougher language – and singles out a specific foe - to describe the parent trigger battle in two California locales. Some excerpts:

In both Adelanto and Compton, parents trying to exercise their rights felt the full onslaught of a “sweep and destroy” mission launched by the California Teachers Assn. and its affiliates. What had taken weeks to build was destroyed in a few days of heavy-handed lobbying. Parents have reported being told outright lies about charter law and about their rights. Some parents reported that they were even threatened with deportation if they didn’t rescind their signatures …

A recent survey by California Common Cause revealed that the top lobbying force in the state in 2011 was the 300,000-plus membership of the California Teachers Assn. In other words, the massive teachers union is the top political force in the eighth-largest economy in the world. The union has made it clear that it wants to take the trigger out of the hands of mothers and fathers. Parents who attempt to lobby for their children now find themselves on a collision course with this powerful organization …

So what can we do to help parents actually see things clearly without biased interference? We need to direct attention to failing schools, so that parents understand the situation and understand that they are not alone. And when they send out cries for help, we should defend their right to occupy a political arena previously dominated by vested interests.

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In parent trigger debate, teachers unions sounded an awful lot like management

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On March 22, 2012 in General, Parent empowerment, Parental Choice, Unionism

I started teaching in the fall of 1977, and by the winter of 1978 I had become a union organizer. A law authorizing public employees to participate in collective bargaining had passed a few years earlier in the Florida legislature, and public educators were actively organizing themselves into unions.

Management was hostile toward our efforts. They asserted that unions would pit teacher against teacher, and teachers against management. They said collaboration was the key to improving our working conditions – not the adversarial relationships that are inherent in unions. They set up teacher advisory councils and said we didn’t need unions. They said we had input through the councils.

Management always uses these arguments to fight union organizers, which is why I wasn’t surprised they surfaced during the recent parent trigger debate in Florida. The parent trigger legislation is part of an effort by progressive Democrats to begin unionizing parents in school districts, and management is opposing their efforts. But it’s ironic that teachers unions are also opposing parent unions and using the same arguments management used against them in the 1970s. Continue Reading →

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Businesses, teachers unions benefit financially from status quo in education

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On March 21, 2012 in Charter Schools, Customization, Funding, General, Parent empowerment, Parental Choice, School Choice, Unionism

Editor’s note: Corporate greed! Profits! Privatization! Shout the same, alarming buzz words enough – as critics of education reform are doing – and it defines the debate. But as Doug Tuthill, a former teachers union president, argues in this post, businesses benefit more from the status quo in education than they will from expanded parental choice.

Public education would not exist without the products and services provided by for-profit corporations. Every year, for-profit corporations receive billions of tax dollars from school districts to build schools and supply them with desks, books, computers, pens, pencils, paper, calculators, buses, crayons, and power to turn on the lights. And yet school choice critics continue to assert that giving parents more schooling options is a plot by for-profit corporations to make more money.

I don’t buy it.

The profit margins of businesses providing goods and services to public education are greater under the current command-and-control system because the costs of sales and servicing contracts are lower when the customers are large, centrally controlled organizations.  My friend Jean Clements, who is the teachers union president in Hillsborough County, Florida, was the first person to explain this to me.

Four years ago, I asked Jean why her union refused to sell union memberships to private school teachers. Her answer? She would lose money. Jean said the membership revenue she would receive from teachers in small, non-district schools would not cover the costs of negotiating and servicing their collective bargaining contracts.

Large school districts allow teachers unions to spread their costs across a large number of members, which is why large districts are their preferred market. It’s also why unions are so opposed to public education occurring in schools not owned and managed by school districts.

I suspect the same economy-of-scale issues influencing Jean’s business decisions are also relevant for Dell, Pearson and Apple. Continue Reading →

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Not all bad apples spoil the whole bunch

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On March 7, 2012 in Charter Schools, Education reporting, General, School Choice, Teacher quality, Unionism

A year after I began work as an education reporter, I witnessed a classroom scene so shocking, it haunts me to this day. I asked a high school teacher in a typical, normal public school if I could sit in on his class, and he said sure. He flipped on the most boring documentary ever made – a decades-old snoozer on map making, if I remember right – and turned off the lights. Heads became one with desk tops. Eyes closed. And then the really bad thing happened.

The teacher – who was also a teachers union representative – sat back in his chair, put his feet up and unfurled a newspaper with a flick of his wrists.

In the aftermath, I had to tell myself: Don’t leap to strong conclusions. Don’t let this one crazy thing unnecessarily taint the full picture about teachers and teachers unions. And I don’t think I have. As an education reporter for many years, I saw plenty of awesome teachers in public schools and a handful of really bad ones. I saw teachers unions take positions on issues that jibed with the facts, and others that were just flat ridiculous. The world of education as I’ve come to know it is often complicated and gray, and sometimes it’s hard to tell good guys from bad. With so much hanging in the balance, we should all be careful before we decide whether an obviously rotten apple is a representative example or an anomaly, or whether a small string of them is unfortunate coincidence or troubling trend.

I was reminded of that teacher and his newspaper this past week because of two story lines that have been running simultaneously in the Tampa Bay Times. Continue Reading →

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Obama’s inconsistency on school choice

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On March 5, 2012 in Charter Schools, Customization, Education Research, General, Parent empowerment, Parental Choice, School Choice

The Obama administration’s refusal to embrace parental choice in education is difficult to understand given its health care stance and the overall public policy direction that Democrats have advocated and embraced for decades. The most recent example is the controversy over the access to contraception under Obamacare.

Initially, the administration asserted that a woman’s and family’s right to choose to use contraception trumped whatever objections religious affiliated employers had to its use. Churches themselves were exempt, but not hospitals they operate. These religious employers would have had to honor the family’s right to choose contraceptives and at zero cost for all their employees. The White House backed off somewhat from the directive in the face of an uproar, but instead ordered that insurance companies have to offer and pay for such coverage separately when the religiously affiliated organization opts not to offer it.

This recognition of the family’s rights on such a personal and potentially life changing decision as contraception oddly does not carry over to education, which in the 21st century is more life changing than ever. Education once was third behind a good work ethic and a strong back for many middle class jobs. Today, education is a must for a middle-class standard of living. Continue Reading →

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In Florida, a teachers union that doesn’t just say no

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On February 29, 2012 in General, Teacher quality, Unionism

Editor’s note: In one of yesterday’s posts, we noted how often school choice supporters are caricatured. But truth be told, we’re not alone. Teachers unions and their members are sometimes dismissed with unflattering generalizations too. Doug Tuthill, a former teachers union president himself, pauses today to spotlight a union right here in our backyard that defies the stereotype.

Jean Clements is the teachers union president in Hillsborough County, Florida, which is the eighth largest school district in the U.S. And she and her union, the Hillsborough Classroom Teachers Association, are unique in a way that deserves national attention – and national praise. While most teacher unions are resisting efforts to systemically improve public education, Jean and her constituents have partnered with their school district to embrace innovations that are taking on all kinds of sacred cows.

Teacher unions came into being in the early 1960s to protect teachers from management decisions, most notably in the areas of employee evaluations and compensation.  Consequently, teachers’ collective bargaining contracts today prescribe evaluation procedures that render evaluations irrelevant except in the most extreme cases, and standardized pay scales that treat every teacher the same, regardless of their effectiveness.  So, naturally,  eyebrows were raised across the country when Jean and her HCTA colleagues partnered with the Hillsborough school district to win a $100 million Gates Foundation grant to reinvent the district’s employee evaluation and compensation systems.

This wasn’t the only time Jean went out on a limb. Continue Reading →

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The Quiet Audacity of Michigan

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On November 28, 2011 in Customization, General, Private Schools, School Choice

I spent the Thanksgiving holiday in my home state of Michigan, where labor and public employee unions exhibit outsized-influence in the public square. If you want to know just how much influence, ask recalled Representative Paul Scott. But for all the union supremacy that could sound alarms on any expansion of school choice in the Wolverine State, the sweep of several education measures hasn’t drawn national headlines the way other reforms have in neighboring Midwestern states.

The policy debates within the state have tended to focus on the proposed increase of the cap on the number of charter schools, but this overlooks other bills that could have a profound effect on the number of quality educational options as well as on the way school boards govern public education.

One notable effort would expand dual enrollment in Michigan’s colleges and universities to high school students in private institutions, removing the requirement that those students would have to enroll first in a public school and calling for the state to pick up the tuition bill. But just as importantly, school districts would have to extend their information and counseling services on college enrollment options to private school students who want to participate.

This would clear what the Michigan Catholic Conference has called the “unnecessary hurdles” to all students who want an early start on their postsecondary studies, and the conference clearly has the urban poor at Catholic high schools in mind. A spokesman for the Michigan Education Association, however, has called the proposal a back-door voucher, and the Michigan School Boards Association wants to know what’s going to happen to its share of the state School Aid Fund.

The union and the school boards largely stayed silent on the plan until the bills passed their last committee by a 2-to-1 margin, mostly along party lines. This Democratic and union opposition adds to other legislative efforts in Michigan that could rightfully be labeled progressive, such as a move requiring public schools to open their doors to students from other districts as long as they have seats. Few outside the state have taken notice, but each initiative rethinks the way we govern public education through artificial boundaries.

Requiring districts to guide private school students on their dual-enrollment options would begin to redefine the governing role of school boards as answerable to parents, who become the primary customers here. Eliminating the boundaries dividing school districts can enable a student in Detroit to access an education in, say, Grosse Pointe, making the system truly public.

Teachers aren’t marching on Lansing yet, but Michigan is bringing audacity to a reform effort that rethinks the way we deliver a public education.

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Andy Rotherham occupies educational inequality

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On November 17, 2011 in Education and Public Policy, General, Unionism

This column from Andy Rotherham appearing today on Time.com is so well worth reading that it’s hard to edit it down to a few excerpts. It’s the most prescient and fair-minded argument on where to direct our “Occupy” anger in the cause for social and economic justice, ending with a plea to the Occupy Wall Street movement to “demand the kind of radical change we need to create a school system that lives up to our values rather than mocking them.”

On economic inequality: “… when it comes to giving Americans equal opportunity, our schools are demonstrably failing at their task. Today zip codes remain a better predictor of school quality and subsequent opportunities than smarts or hard work. When you think about it, that’s a lot more offensive to our values than a lightly regulated banking system.”

On ideas to foster equal opportunity: “… our politicians are too skittish to take on special interests or too wrapped up in ideology to acknowledge that no single solution — for instance, school choice, ending the federal role in education or just addressing poverty — will fix our education system.”

On the teacher union embrace of the Occupy movement, what Rotherham calls “a sad irony”: “The unions are hardly the only cause of our educational problems, but they’re not doing enough to fix them. In ways large and small, they defend practices and policies — things like how teacher pay is factored into the amount of money that is allotted to individual schools — that disadvantage low-income students. Can the Occupy movement square this circle? We’ll see.”

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