The Apparent Unmotivated Idiocy of Labor Union Members, Especially Teachers
Steven Brill has a long essay in the New Yorker about the long process required to fire teachers in New York City. Now, any discussion of due process, whether in firings or criminal justice, inevitably can stack the deck by focusing on the guilty while ignoring those protected from arbitrary abuse by the process. Which Brill does of course.
But what I find most telling about Brill's account is that, like most stories about union rules and contracts, there is not really any serious discussion about WHY union members vote for such contracts. Is Brill arguing that the majority of teachers like having bad teachers among their numbers? Is he arguing that the majority of teachers approving the contracts care about children less than administrators? Actually, Brill says almost nothing about the motivation of teachers in the union in his whole piece.
Brill has a number of quotes from the teachers accused of malfeasance or incompetence, a quick quote from a union leader and none from the rest of the New York City teaching force. Somehow, the argument of these kinds of pieces is that charter school principals care about kids and the majority of teachers who continue to approve the contracts Brill complains about don't care.
If that's true, schools have a much more severe problem that the tiny minority of teachers who cost the system money trying to fire them. And a decent reporter would be probing why New York City teachers collectively hate the kids they teach.
But then, probing into that story on what the majority of teachers think might force Brill to interview outstanding public school teachers who might dangerously have articulate reasons for opposing too much arbitrary power in the hands of school administrators (think McCarthyism or, for more recent examples in many union-free states, pressure to teach creationism). And quoting such articulate good teachers would bypass the inevitable press story pitting anti-union "education reformers" against bad teachers/union hacks.
Now, some of those good teachers would also criticize the due process rules as too strong, but then you'd actually have a complicated story about the democratic debate of teachers within the schools of how to preserve and build a strong teaching profession, with sympathetic teachers on all sides of a complicated debate.
But Brill isn't interested in such a story but wanted to write a one-sided attack on the teachers unions and against protecting workers rights. But then this shouldn't be a surprise from someone who as an employer (former publisher of the American Lawyer) was described this way:
There probably is a good indepth story to be written about the "Rubber Rooms" described by Brill, but his story is sure not it.
The magazine New York Woman ran a story about the worst places for women to work, flatly stating that the story did not include jobs "inherently loathsome for men and for women, such as working in a subway booth, scrubbing floors or working for Steven Brill, the notoriously bullying editor of American Lawyer.
I've noticed that critics of organized labor intentionally pick on the exception and try to pass it off as the rule. They do that with all unions. I have a part time employee who works at my store...young guy, mid 20's. He works in a non-union shop and is very critical of unions saying they protect lazy, unproductive workers and management at his place pays them very fairly. I go on to point out the exception and the rule example to him then go on to point out that if it weren't for unions he wouldn't be getting paid nearly what he is.
But I am not surprised that union haters still try to damn organized labor by trying to say the rare exceptions are really the rule. Besides Brill rhymes with shill...'nuff said.
September 1, 2009 1:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
It doesn't matter, it is increasingly looking like the party is over.
If teachers' unions didn't want this type of thing to resound with the public at large, they should have done better P.R. in the past, rather than taking an "up yours" attitude towards their employers, as if their employers were "the man," capitalist corporations, and not the taxpaying public.
But it's too late now. Obama is set on disrputing a lot of those rules, he's given up on them, and he's doing an end run by dangling stimulus money that the states need:
From my link:
Public service employment is not the same thing as private employment, that's just the way it is, there has to be a realization that you are public servants. What public unions need to do is have enough of the public on their side or they won't get anywhere. Solidarity amongst themselves alone is finally backfiring on them.
I think it's a real pity how it all turned out, because the kind of testing involved is not ideal. They should have been out there selling themselves better long long ago, instead of the intrangiency that was so common.
September 1, 2009 1:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
You must be referring to the party, fun and games that teaching in New York City public schools is. I am interested that the party is nearly over. I remember, as a student, all the wild times the teachers had instead of teaching. But now that you tell me that the great Obama and his still greater education secretary Duncan. Duncan, who has never been a teacher, was the creator of the Chicago miracle radically tranforming Chicago education with the aid of doctored statistics. With this he has gone whole hog into union-busting. I'll give the relevant links below. I still remember how John Lindsay tried unsuccessfully to crush the Transit Workers and the Teachers union using the cry of "local control" instead of providing the funds necessary to improve schools. Obama may find the Teachers union and their allies have something to say yet about his increasingly pro-corporate, anti-worker policies. He may find his and Duncan's "party" nearly over as more people see through their phony-ness. But artappraiser for the record, I have witnessed "local control", "vouchers" , no child left behind, and now the phony Duncan-Obama charter school "game" and it still takes work and money not ponzi schemes and doctored statistics to educate our youth. In fairness, artappraiser, I am sure you would want the performance effectiveness of the great Duncan independently evaluated, say by some of the educators and education specialists in the references below and not simply by the corporate, anti-public school lot that seem to love him so very much.
Here are a plethora of references to the brilliant Arne Duncan:
http://www.examiner.com/x-3865-Chicago-Public-Education-Examiner~y2009m8d17-The-horror-of-Chicago-school-reform
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leonie-haimson/arne-duncan-has-become-a_b_260642.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leonie-haimson/arne-duncan-has-become-an_b_255802.html
http://gapersblock.com/mechanics/2009/09/01/the-quick-inflation-of-the-edu/
http://www.examiner.com/x-3865-Chicago-Public-Education-Examiner~y2009m8d24-Take-Arne-Duncans-phony-school-reform-money-and-run-fast
http://www.examiner.com/x-3865-Chicago-Public-Education-Examiner~y2009m8d30-Chicago-Arne-Duncan-presided-over-a-schools-grade-changing-scandal
http://www.catalyst-chicago.org/notebook/index.php/entry/368
http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/district-299/2009/08/federal-grand-jury-asks-whether-public-officials-clouted-students-into-chicagos-top-high-schools---.html
http://gapersblock.com/mechanics/2009/08/31/the-great-inflation/
http://gapersblock.com/mechanics/2009/08/24/obama-and-duncan-unanswered-qu/
http://michaelklonsky.blogspot.com/2009/09/inside-chicagos-school-renaissance.html
http://inthesenewtimes.com/2009/08/25/neoliberalism-charter-schools-and-the-chicago-model-obama-and-duncans-education-policy-like-bushs-only-worse/
http://www.sfschools.org/2009/08/critical-views-of-charter-schools-from.html
http://www.blacktino.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3468&Itemid=1
http://dbellel.blogspot.com/2009/08/click-to-play.html
http://www.pdamerica.org/articles/news/2009-08-25-10-20-58-news.php
http://edjustice.blogspot.com/2009/07/arne-duncan-and-chicago-schools.html
September 1, 2009 5:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
No I mean the "party" of treating the taxpayer and voter like they are adversaries that you are in a war with and must defeat, rather than a consituency you have to woo and convince about your methods being correct and good for them. I think it is indeed rather sad that this has gone the way of Arne Duncan, but I think many of the teachers unions should apportion a lot of blame to themselves that it got to this stage. For example, it took quite a few years of public disgust for them to even get to the stage of admitting that there are some bad teachers and that they have suggestions for dealing with them, before it was denial along the lines of "all teachers are excellent."
September 1, 2009 5:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am thinking about your response and will probably reply at greater length but the thought that comes to my mind immediately is that I see this long history of teachers and public schools under attack going back to the mid-sixties at least. As soon as the teachers had a strong enough union to demand respectable salaries (not so generous, but respectable) a very concerted attack on them and other public employees union began. That has now been joined by a general attack (via the vouchers "idea" ) on public schools. In my opinion, the public schools (in NYC particularly) were one of America's greatest institution, the true melting pot where all us children of immigrants becam Americans, learned our great national achievements and our national narrative. But "breaking" the schools and the unions have increasingly become one of the major goals of the pro-corporate, anti-public sector; and with the growth in power of the gated communities for the more wealthy it has become a focus point for the class warfare waged against workers, the poor, minorities, disadvantaged, and the great middle class. Now I am not sure what PR role the unions might take; clearly having administrators and politicians decide who is effective and who is not does not work and is not fair. (I think the police unions for example will let OCCASSIONALLY a review board look at egregious police actions but no police review board that I know reviews how EFFECTIVE particular policemen are.) The same problem exists for teachers. Yes there are bad teachers; even egregiously bad. Most are not great; some are. So what. That is the norm in all professions. Students learn (maybe different things than the curriculum) by being exposed to poor teachers. Of course utterly incompetent and uncaring teachers are bad all around. If this were truly the target, I do not believe the issue would be so politicized. But the subtext is the real point. Are the reviews for constructive purposes or to break up teachers power and in particular to bring down cost. You seem like you relish the attacks by the phony, dishonest, self-promoting Arne Duncan. If you care about education then I think you are making a mistake. I am sure the unions have not been perfect in response to the threat, but I think the issue is harder than you make it appear.
September 1, 2009 7:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm going to have to part company with you on this one, Art Appraiser. Any time the public thinks of itself as an employer it thinks the same as any other type of employer. The public wants to pay as little as possible for as much as possible, as do the stockholders of any corporation. It instructs its Board of Directors (Board of Education, School Board) to save as much money as possible and holds them accountable if they don't.
When the "neighbors" who teach the kids (assuming they can afford to live in the same neighborhood as the kids do) raise the issue of pay for service, they're reminded that they're public servants and of the nobility of that calling. Nobody much notices the closeness of servant and slave in the history of the language.
I have no horse in this race...I don't teach in a public institution, and I've no children in public school...no children period. Come to think of it, why should I have to pay anything to teach my neighbor's kids? That's almost like asking me to pay something for a public option in health care...ridiculous.
N.B This is not meant to suggest that every teacher is a good teacher. If everyone was, than "good" would be "ordinary". But without the union, they're powerless against their public employers, and there's something inequitable about that.
September 1, 2009 7:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
When is the last time you heard a teacher acknowledge, in the context of a discussion about teacher pay, that he or she worked at least nine weeks per year less than people in other jobs?
September 1, 2009 11:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
In many districts they couldn't acknowledge this without lying. I say many, not all, because there are 13,506 school district governments in the United States each with their own set of criteria and professional practice standards.
Here's some of the things many of those teachers are doing when the students are out for the summer.
1. They're attending graduate school summer sessions at their own expense in order to maintain their credentials. In many states a teacher has a minimum number of years to get a masters degree. Even after the Master's degree is obtained continuing education credits are part of the evaluation of teachers and are required.
2. They're taking workshops on updates of requirements from everything to mainstreaming students with learning disabilities to issues of sexual harrassment.
3. They're attending conferences, sometimes paid for, sometimes not, on current trends in their disciplines. Sometimes attendance is voluntary, sometimes not.
4. They're doing some incredibly ordinary things--taking inventory of supplies, checking the condition of classroom necessities, texts, maps, charts, graphs, and the like: filling out the forms for replacing them, and if some of them don't fit in under school budget, paying for them out of pocket. If you don't believe this, the simplest way to confirm it is to look at the United States Tax Form 1040. I know of no other profession where members, not self-employed, can deduct supplies they purchase out of their own pocket for use in their classrooms. Elementary and Secondary School Teachers can.
5. And this is the shameful part--they're moonlighting at other jobs...frequently commuting long distances so there are less chances their students will see them working in order to make ends meet and working jobs with take them out of the "professional" class. I've been especially sensitive to this one since I was in school, and heading out to buy new pants for the fall semester, I was waited upon my my chemistry teacher, Mr. Gjesdahl.
You didn't ask about the hours of work, though I suspect that might be in the back of your mind...faculty generally arrive one hour before and leave two to three hours after their students.
The end result...the work year of the teacher contains probably the same number of hours, if not more, than most of the parents of their students.
September 2, 2009 7:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
This sounds like a list of bullet points from the union.
I have known many teachers, and while some of them invest their summers in what you describe, most of them have most of their summers OFF.
September 2, 2009 4:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
If I thought there was the ghost's chance of your being amenable to reason I'd try to prove this to you. But because I have my doubts. I'll simply stand by what I said.
September 2, 2009 8:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
I love your argument style. It consists largely of an assumption of the pose of superior knowledge, smeared with few snotty dropshots.
The fact remains, as I state above, that most of the teachers I know have had most of their summers OFF over the course of their career.
September 2, 2009 11:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
I found this article when looking for similar stories to the one I posted. It is so refreshing to know that people still believe in the "little guy". Great blog!
http://www.examiner.com/x-19969-Cleveland-Green-Parenting-Examiner~y2009m9d1-Labor-day-information-and-history
September 1, 2009 3:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here's the problem: there may be perfectly legitimate reasons why the system evolved to the way it has. And those reasons may have been warranted. But the fact remains that at this point, it is utterly unsustainable. Does Brill only present one side of the story? Fine. But what is the other side when a teacher who was obviously drinking in front of her kids is put back in front of the kids to teach before eventually being forced out? What can possibly excuse a teacher reading aloud a memo complaining about her performance to her studetns? And if those things are objectionable, why would you ever want to keep that person in the system one day longer than necessary?
Brill's point isn't that there aren't great teachers. Obviously there are. He would probably say a great many teachers are great in NYC. But at a time of economic slowdown, what in God's name is the city doing paying people NOT to teach? For something as essential as teaching, where every piece of data says that the teacher is the critical variable in the school environment that affects performance, the burden should very well be on the teacher to prove that they can teach, NOT the other way around. Otherwise, what we've built isn't an engine for student acheivement--it's an engine for teacher protection. If that's what you want, fine--but understand that that's what you're advocating. We're essentially paying money into a sinkhole to protect at least a few people who have absolutely no right to be teaching because they can't do it, irrespective of whether they want to or not. That's the allocation of resources you're advocating.
Or this: Brill notes that only 1.8% of NY Teachers are rated unsatisfactory. We have almost no data to stack up the rest of the 97.2% of teachers to understand in that mix, who is mediocre, who is good, and who is great. Teaching isn't like making a widget and its not even like police and fire. Its not made up of repetitive processes. Instead, its entirely skill-based, and in the vast majority of skill-based professions, you have gradations of performance. The true tragedy of large city school districts is that you don't have the capability to overturn your staff with the flexibility you need to at least get rid of the bottom 5 or 10% of the bell curve. Without that flexibility, you basically have to assume that some kids, by the luck of the draw, are going to get taught by mediocre teachers by definition. You create zero incentives for constantly moving the bar for teacher quality.
At the end of the day, as a liberal Democrat, I'm perfectly comfortable by saying that as much as possible, I want the interests of children and teachers to be aligned. However, there are times when those interests absolutely cannot be aligned. There are times when the "middle ground" is just muddled garbage. Do teachers need to be paid more? Absolutely. Do there need to be more supports in place for teachers to have continuing education? Without question. But should districts have the power to fire bad teachers? Without question. If you don't believe that, then public education is no longer for the kids. It's essentially a social welfare scheme for the teachers. And that's unforgivable.
September 1, 2009 6:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
The problem is not just that Brill's piece is one-sided. It's that if you don't try to understand the motivation of the good teachers who vote for the contract in question, you aren't even trying to get a solution that works for both "reformers" and teachers. The right solution is ultimately the one that gets the bad teachers out of the classrooms and protects the interests of the good teachers, who see themselves as protecting the interests of good teaching themselves.
But since Brill didn't even try to figure out what the good teachers want and why they support the present system, however flawed, there is not analysis of alternative approaches that might address the problem outside of promoting a war on the teachers unions.
Which is why the article is so useless except as propaganda for union busters. FOr those actually interested in improving education, it's just fodder for conflict and failure.
September 1, 2009 6:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think you're right--the solution is to get bad teachers out and protect good teachers. I don't think Steven Brill would disagree with that one bit. I just think you're expecting too much out of his article. His job was to merely point out the insanity of how to actually get a bad teacher out of the classroom. That's all. For what its worth, I think it was effective at showing how incredibly dysfunctional that piece of the puzzle is, and how broken it is. Is the article a shot across the bow for union negotiations? Absolutely. But in some sense, the situation Brill presents is inherently indefensible. It's an example of good intentions run horribly amok.
I think what I was reacting to was something of a progressive reaction to Brill's article defending the union. I think teachers' unions by and large have been terrific institutions and have really protected the rights of teachers. But surely they, like districts, like principals, like everyone else in the system, aren't perfect. At the most basic level, surely progressives can state that while teachers deserve some workplace protections, those protections should not extend to being paid for being incompetent, right? If not, what principles are we standing on?
September 1, 2009 7:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Also, Brill has replied to some comments on his article at TAPPED. Here's what he said:
"Thanks for your thoughtful comments about my article. I should add that I tried hard -- with repeated requests -- to get all of the teachers in the Rubber Room whom I interviewed to allow me to see the files related to their cases, including the materials they submitted in their own defense. But they refused, except for those whose cases I reported on, including one whom I said might be innocent and whom I spotlighted as an "award-winning" teacher. The basic issue, though, may be, as one of Joel Klein's deputies put it,whether we want to apply the principles of the criminal justice system that we cherish ("better that ten guilty men go free than one innocent man be imprisoned") to the process of deciding whether teachers should be teaching our children and/or remain on the taxpayers' payroll ("better that 100 incompetent teachers stay paid than one competent teacher be unfairly fired). As you point out, there has to be a better way."
I would say that Brill's central contention for teachers is that the function they are performing is too important and sacred for us to use the axioms of the justice system. Societally, if forced to choose between two extremes, I would argue the kids benefit if we didn't have a system that guarded against the competent teacher getting fired. That might be a bit of a lightning rod statement, but in urban public education, I would rather make a mistake and know for sure that I have the ability to weed out bad teachers than the other way around. The plight of the kids who have to deal with the incompetents in the classroom in a world where we are already being defined as having a system that abjectly fails to provide a globally competitive education for those most in need defines the answer for me.
September 1, 2009 7:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
How do you think the good teachers can be motivated to allow the firing of the bad ones by voting for contracts that would make this possible?
Surely self-interest, a well-developed sense of being put-upon, and resulting the reluctance to undergo meaningful public review can motivate a good teacher as well as a bad one, and these factors must be at least as important as fear of McCarthyism or ID.
September 1, 2009 11:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
After three decades of an increasingly militant strategy by the professional educator class to deny review of their members' professional conduct by the public, while at the same time urging that teachers be treated as professionals on a par with CPAs physicians, attorneys, and engineers, the time has come to separate the wheat from the chaff.
In my estimation, the pile of chaff is not one-fortieth the size of the pile of wheat, but about one-fourth.
It is a fact that in the US, new teachers are drawn disproportionately from the ranks of the least generally competent college graduates. I think John Silber once said, "the bottom quarter." That may be a slight exaggeration.
Pay certainly needs to rise to attract more generally competent people to teach, and that probably means paying more to the underperformers interim. Statutory tenure also needs to be abolished; teachers need to know they have to prove it every year.
But most importantly, the performance of teachers requires meaningful review, which is rare today. The review needs to focus not just on teachers' knowledge of educational theory and specific subject matter, the adequacy of lesson plans, how well the prescribed bases in the curriculum get touched, and measurable student outcomes, but also on elements of personal style.
Teachers, especially teachers of the very young, turn the students off with toxic personal styles. Kids will not perform for people whom they feel are incompetent, but it goes beyond that. Too many teachers display a dispirited, depressed personal style that is a resounding turn-off for kids. Too many teachers display a disconcerting rictus to both students and parents while reciting lines of script they haven't changed for 15 years. Finally, too many teachers are passive-aggressive, hectoring, and just plain mean.
In my stepdaughter's career in grades 7-12, it was a relief to find a teacher or member of the school administration with whom one could envision a having meaningful conversation outside of school (but I did find at least one each school year).
It is no wonder that schools have become social voids, that teachers' unions and school administrators (often former teachers who congratulate themselves for getting out of the classroom) don't care, and that school boards are often too busy trying to please the local Realtor oligarchs by maintaining property values to realize what's going on.
September 1, 2009 11:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
I generally try not to respond to comments consisting of nothing but unsupported assertion after unsupported assertion. But occasionally I see a paragraph which contains a factual error which cannot be ignored. The emphasis in the quote above is mine. Here's the error. NONE of those professions have their professional conduct or competency reviewed by the "public". In each case the profession is self-governing. In most, the guild (i.e. The American Bar Association) has more power over its members than any mere union. So I'm all in favor of giving teachers the same authority to govern themselves that Doctors, Lawyers, Certified Public Accountants (whose professional organization does the certifying) and the others you mention have.
September 2, 2009 7:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
You are plainly and simply WRONG-O when you make the following "unsupported assertion after unsupported assertion:"
"NONE of those professions have their professional conduct or competency reviewed by the "public". In each case the profession is self-governing. In most, the guild (i.e. The American Bar Association) has more power over its members than any mere union. So I'm all in favor of giving teachers the same authority to govern themselves that Doctors, Lawyers, Certified Public Accountants (whose professional organization does the certifying) and the others you mention have."
In every state that I know of, the government has an Engineer's Board, consisting of engineers and members of the public, who supervise the issuance of engineer's licenses, enforce the practice standards in the public interest, review engineering misconduct, and discipline those needing discipline.
I will repeat this assertion with regard to the practice of public accountancy and medicine.
Attorneys face even tighter regulation in the public interest by (1) local grievance committees, again including public members; (2) the courts in which they practice; and (3) the state bar (the weakest link, it's true).
In summary, you don't deny that the teachers have been working like the devil for thirty years to avoid public review, you just spout demonstrably false BS that the others professions don't undergo it as if that were a defense, or even a reply.
September 2, 2009 4:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
The point is to bust up the teacher's union... one of the strongest left standing.
I also love it so when the public attempts to crap all over teachers for the failings of the education system in genreral and individual students in particular. Its a societal issue, not an educational one, and points to lack of discipline. Restore descipline in schools and test scores will improve... until then, our education system will remain substandard.
Bottom line: You can lead a horse to a text book, but you can't make him read it.
September 2, 2009 11:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
make that "textbook"
September 2, 2009 11:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
For what it's worth, teachers in union states also get pressure not to cover evolution or to teach creationism, and unfortunately they respond to that pressure. Strong unions certainly do help when this comes up, but that depends on the willingness of teachers to push back against the pressure, pressure which is often quite subtle.
September 2, 2009 2:19 PM | Reply | Permalink