More Unions
Sara Mead responds a bit on the teachers' union issue, writing that "If you follow education policy and politics at the state and local level (where most of the decisions that really matter for kids are made), there's plenty of evidence of union power." No doubt true and I wouldn't want to be held out as an exponent of the obviously absurd view that the unions aren't a powerful voice on school issues. Similarly, the interests of incumbent teachers will sometimes align with the interests of schoolchildren and sometimes not, depending on what you're talking about.
I just think a lot of the rhetoric on this subject tends to get overheated. People sometimes talk about this as if there was a brilliant will-solve-all-our-problems school reform agenda just waiting to be implemented that's being stymied purely through the awesome might of the teachers' unions. That's just not the case. The policy questions here are genuinely different, lots of different actors have interests and priorities pulling in all sorts of directions, etc., etc., etc. In particular, I think people tend to dramatically underrate the extent of conflicts of interest among parents.
Obviously, everybody at least says they want "good schools." But education is a weird issue in that good things happening for some people could have a very averse impact on other people's interests. For example, if the District of Columbia's public schools opened this September and were suddenly and improbably the best in the nation that would have a giant and weird impact on everyone's property values. All of a sudden, DC would become a much more desirable place for upper-middle class parents to raise their children.
This could conceivably have a very deleterious impact on property values in Arlington and Montgomery Counties which have "near DC but with better public schools" as important elements of their appeal. It could also have a very deleterious impact on current renters in DC who might find ourselves swiftly priced out of the market. Incumbent DC homeowners would stand to make a lot of money. Would incumbent DC kids get better educations over the long run? It would depend on their parents' reactions to the real estate revolution. Are they renters who'll be forced by the boom to move elsewhere? Homeowners who take advantage of the opportunity to cash in and move elsewhere? Or will they stick around and attend the better schools.
All that's somewhat outlandish, of course, but like any outlandish thought-experiment it serves to illustrate the general point. If you own a home in an area thought to have good public schools it's against your interest to make bad schools elsewhere better. This, obviously, creates a structural impediment to improving schools.
This and related problems stem from the fact that K-12 education is at least in large part a positional good. Your kid's interest is primarily in getting a better education than his peers' rather than the best possible education in absolute terms.
Then within a school you have clashes. Should more resources go to the most talented students who can best take advantage of them, or should they go to the most troubled students who need the most help? Obviously, parents are going to reach different conclusions on this and non-parents will probably ignore the controversy.
These kinds of things are more-or-less intrinsic to the enterprise of American education policy and simply make it very difficult to improve things without it really being anyone's "fault" since we're hardly going to eradicate selfishness or a desire to give your kid an advantage over other peoples' kids.
So much of the debate about schools is done in code words relating to racism. I live in a suburban area of a city, and have done so for several years now. I haven't seen any interest at all expressed by my neighbors for improving the whole area's schools. In fact, one of the interests expressed often is the desire not to have our tax money wasted on "their" children.
One legitimate concern that gets far too little attention is ordinary personal safety. When I was a school boy 60 years or so ago, schools always had bullies. Those bullies lived to make other students miserable. But, the misery was rarely very bad from a physical safety aspect. Today is a far different story. Just as teachers seemed helpless to deal with bullying back then, they are even more helpless to deal with it today, but bullying today means robbery, physical and sexual assault, and even guns and knives. If we could just solve that one problem, so much of the rest could be more readily addressed. And, why is it so hard to solve that problem?
Hoppy in Sacramento
August 14, 2006 9:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you own a home in an area thought to have good public schools it's against your interest to make bad schools elsewhere better.
Unless of course the schools outside your district are so bad that you have good reason to fear kids from those bad schools will break into your house or shoot your kid for his ipod.
Or of course if you own a business and need a cashier who can count change properly but can't afford to pay people with college educations.
I think your argument is overly simplistic. There are tons of selfish reasons why people benefit from good schools outside their immediate school district. I think a lot of people see the benefits of a society where their neighbors' kids get a good education. That's why when people say things like "we need to disband the department of education" most people look at them like they are fucking nuts.
August 14, 2006 9:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
If there was a magic solution to make inner city schools good nobody would be against it. Even people in fancy neighborhoods.
"Good schools" is pretty much just a code word for schools with a desirable student population. If you have desirable students it isn't hard to have a good school. Disruptive or hard to teach students make it real hard to provide a good school experience. That isn't the teachers union's fault.
August 15, 2006 11:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
My dad's a teacher. Been one for thirty years. He's a Democrat, a liberal, but he doesn't like the teacher's unions. He thinks they lobby more for themselves than for students.
For example, tenure. It has become almost impossible to fire bad teachers. This is not just some talking point anecdote. My dad works with teachers who are incompetent, lazy, or detrimental. I had some of those teachers myself while in high school and I know who he's talking about. But they cannot be fired for being bad teachers. They can only be fired if they commit crimes or do something outrageous.
Schools need to get rid of bad teachers, and they also need to improve conditions for new teachers. For new teachers, the pay is low, they get the worst classes, and school districts are so frightened by potential lawsuits that they don't stick up for the teachers when students harass them (which is a problem at the high school level). So a lot of new teachers quit.
I still think public schools are great. But they could be better if teachers unions looked out for the students and not just number one.
August 17, 2006 2:57 AM | Reply | Permalink