What If Charter School Teachers Don't Think a Non-Union Workplace is so Great?
A lot of school reformers argue that one of the wonders of charter schools is that they escape teacher union rules to better serve student needs (which of course explains why non-union states like Mississippi lead the nation in excellent schools). But even the premise that lack of unions improves the teaching environment is challenged by teachers, including increasingly by those at charter schools themselves.
In New York City this week, teachers at one of the supposedly star charter schools in the city, KIPP AMP Charter School in Brooklyn, informed the co-principals that they were organizing themselves into a union. In a letter to management, the teachers argued why unionization is critical for improving the teaching environment at the school:
[A] strong and committed staff is the first step to student achievement. Unionization, the teachers believe, will help create the conditions for recruiting and retaining such a staff.As one teacher noted, "We organized to make sure teachers had a voice, and could speak their minds on educational matters without fearing for their job."
Actually, the KIPP AMP teachers were following the past unionization of two or the other three KIPP charter schools in the city, while the whole highly sucessful Green Dot Public Schools,charter system is already unionized. One point worth making is that while some rightwing advocates of charter schools think such independent schools are incompatible with unionization, obviously a lot of teachers and the success of some unionized charter schools argue quite the opposite.
Oh yeah, the relatively stress-free, conflict-free unionization of the KIPP school in Brooklyn is due to the fact that public employees in New York State are covered by card check rules as in the Employee Free Choice Act. Having collected authorization cards from a majority of teachers, the union will now be certified by the state without the management having a chance to fire the leaders of the union drive and completely poison the work environment. And somehow, even the rightwing opponents of charter school unionization aren't producing examples of geography teachers knee-capping science teachers to force them to sign union cards.
For more reactions to the unionization success at KIPP, see this post at Edwize.
Thank you, Nathan, for posting this story. I am so sick of hearing nothing but right wing anti-union rhetoric in the MSM.
My sister and both my parents are/were public school teachers. I know from their experience what collective bargaining means for teachers.
And I know from my father's experience on the negotiating team (and subsequent retribution by administrators) who the good guys usually are in these disputes.
-- ARG
January 16, 2009 10:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
Of course unions are good for charter school teachers. More pay for less work due to collusion in wage negotiations.
And of course they'll say it's about the children.
Hell, Pat Robertson says that.
But don't fool yourself into thinking that the teachers actually give a damn about anyone but themselves any more than the rest of us.
January 16, 2009 11:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
The Adam Smith idea is people acting in their enlightened self-interest, which certainly includes workers. Their argument is happier workers mean better results, since the conditions will attract the best-qualified employees. Sure works in my business, where the highest-paid orchestras attract the best players, and sell the most tickets at concerts, and have the most satisfied audiences.
Why collective bargaining is "collusion" and management and board meetings are not escapes me. It is a lucky thing for schools that human populations always include people that feel called to teach. That is why the profession has the large number of young people choosing the years of training for a job that at its highest level almost makes it up to professional scale. Like nursing, there is a deep drive to help, which expresses itself in a significant portion of the population.
So can the sneering about the most human thing we can do, teach.
January 16, 2009 11:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
Do you even know any teachers? Have you spoken with any, at real length, in real depth, about what their mission (yes, mission - it's much more than a job) means to them?
Because if you had, I suspect you'd be floored by how little even unionized teachers make compared to almost any other profession with similar entry and maintenance requirements. Not to mention the heaps of abuse they get from the likes of you on an ongoing basis, for no reason connected to reality whatsoever.
January 16, 2009 11:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
I come from several generations of teachers and professors. I can tell you (as was evidenced by my hand-me-down clothes and our over-used old cars) that teachers clearly give more of a damn about their students than their wallets. Your cynicism is obviously rooted in ignorance and not experience.
I can not think of any profession more noble (with the possible exception of pediatric medicine) than elementary education. Our generation is already lost. Teaching the next generation not to f*(&k things up as bad as we did is the highest calling.
*disclaimer - I'm an overpaid gummint engineer, not a teacher. Would that I were smart or honorable enough...
January 16, 2009 12:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, if the teachers at charter schools care so little about students, then I guess all the charter schools are screwed to begin with. Abandon hope.
But then I'd guess not, since the flip side is the view that the principals and administration are just power-aggrandizing prima donnas looking to use each school as a stepping stone to their next gig, which is probably just as inaccurate.
What makes sense is an equilibrium where everyone comes together to work issues out together, you know through some kind of bargain, you know, done collectively. What's that know as-- oh yeah, collective bargaining which is done by unions.
January 16, 2009 12:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Invariably, when the topic of unionization arises in connection with teachers and schools, financial conservatives trot out the usual negative biases more closely related to corporate/industrial businesses. These people seem to believe that free market principles, which have gotten us into the financial mess we're in today, can also be applied to schools.
Let's get one thing straight: children are not products and schools are not for-profit businesses. Teachers seek a profession that requires years of extensive and expensive training to prepare children for life; workers seek a job that requires a set of skills to produce a product or service.
I know from personal experience what can happen to a teacher when the school's director and/or board of directors use the corporate business model to run a school: children become sources of revenue, parents become consumers, and teachers are treated as members of a "sales" team.
Four years ago, I was "terminated" from a teaching position at a new public charter school in California. The director, whose prior professional training was in starting up software development companies (i.e. marketing the company to investors and hiring entry-level production workers) decided I didn't fit into his "team" for reasons known only to him.
While he refused to reveal cause for my termination, even while giving a sworn deposition, I believe it was because I didn't share the director's "philosophy" of shielding parents and school board members from "negative" news about the school's safely law violations, laws that protect children from fire, vermin and sex offenders.
Shortly after the school board became aware of these safety issues and the director's duplicity, he, too, was terminated and given a golden parachute. I was given two-weeks pay and forced to file an expensive lawsuit to restore my credibility as a teacher.
If I had had the protection of a teacher's union, I would still be teaching today. Instead, I was terminated while under contract, bringing my teaching career came to an abrupt and bitter end.
Today I am a union steward at a retail supermarket, fighting to protect the rights of workers in any profession or trade.
January 16, 2009 5:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
What, teachers who want to do the best job they can without undue interference from administrators? Fire them all!
What will be interesting about this is that industrial studies have shown time and again that you get the highest efficiency from unionized establishments where workers and management pull together, and the line workers don't have to worry that suggesting major changes in work organization will cost them their jobs.
January 16, 2009 11:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not suggesting that teachers are evil, or bad people, or that they don't care about their students.
But the post (and especially the comments) are a bit disingenuous. Are teachers paid relatively little? Perhaps. Do they care about their students? Perhaps.
But describing teachers organizing into a union as an act done in furtherance of the school's, or the students', interests is flat out silly! It's done to advance the teachers' interests (not that there's anything wrong with that!), after all, even good people can want to be paid more.
I'm not criticizing the teachers, only the implication that this is a good move for the students. It's like saying that oil companies are doing price fixing for the good of their customers. Not really ever going to be accurate.
January 16, 2009 12:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Except your wrong-- most organizers among teachers will tell you that a point of resistance by teachers themselves to unions is their fear that unionization might hurt their students.
Teachers care deeply about their students and a trigger point for unionization is often management actions that they think will hurt their students. Yes, they may unionize to increase their own wages as well, but don't assume the teachers are liars when they say they see unionization as a tool to defend their students' interests, not just their own.
January 16, 2009 1:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
To clarify, I meant that many teachers initially may resist unionization given fears (stoked by the media and rightwing activists) that unions will hurt their students. It is often when their day-to-day reality shows that unfettered power by the administration is the real danger to their students that they switch to strong support for unionization.
January 16, 2009 1:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
In fact, you stepped in it and now that you realize it, you're trying to back away and hope no one noticed.
Fail.
January 16, 2009 2:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Really? Ah, the proper position of argumentation is to dig in and never clarify, possibly insult anyone else who tries to interpret it the wrong way instead of noting there was an ambiguity?
Since over 3 million teachers are in unions, the most unionized profession in the nation, it is obvious that the pro-union argument has overwhelmingly prevailed.
Gotcha internet commentators are kind of sad but I guess it's a living.
January 16, 2009 2:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not backing away, just trying to prevent my original post being reinterpreted as some sort of strawman.
Unions are a bad tool for improving student outcomes. They're a decent tool for improving teacher outcomes, at the expense of taxpayers and (possibly) students.
January 21, 2009 1:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nate said:
I would agree, but say that this characature is closer to the truth than the "lazy greedy teacher" meme.
The problem is this: in public schools, the chief administrators (superintendents) are typically hired directly by the school boards. And the school boards are populated by... POLITICIANS. These politicians think they know how to run schools, but really they know (mostly) how to get elected (and re-elected).
The details vary from place to place, but this is typically the fundamental problem, which leads to the fact that teachers really DO know better than their bosses what's best for their students.
And a union (or "collective bargaining unit" -- where I'm from it is illegal for teachers to be in an actual union, or to go on strike) helps protect individual teachers from the inappropriate influence that board members and specific administrators inevitably wish to exert.
-- ARG
January 16, 2009 3:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's the biggest line of BS I've read in a long time. It's not just BS, it's artful lying. Unions create committed staff? How can anyone read this with a straight face? The quickest way to get any lazy staff is to unionize it. The threat of being fired for poor performance will get your staff commitment any time.
Notice he didn't say poor academic performance in Mississippi's 'private' schools. Mississippi's poor education ranking is a result of the demographic similarity it shares with DC. And DC's schools, in addition to being unionized, have the highest per pupil spending in the country. And their graduates don't even know 'dis' or 'dat' from 'da hood'.
January 16, 2009 4:39 PM | Reply | Permalink