Special Interest: Teacher Unions and America's Public Schools

Matthew Ladner:

Terry Moe has spent years carefully researching this new book on the education unions. I look forward to seeing Terry's research, which informed his taking of the teacher unions to the woodshed in a debate a couple of years ago. Terry's opening statement was very powerful:

What we are saying is that the unions are and have long been major obstacles to real reform in the system. And we're hardly alone in saying this. If you read "Newsweek," "Time Magazine," the "Washington Post," lots of other well respected publications, they're all saying the same thing: that the teachers unions are standing in the way of progress. So look. Let me start with an obvious example. The teachers unions have fought for all sorts of protections in labor contracts and in state laws that make it virtually impossible to get bad teachers out of the classroom. On average, it takes two years, $200,000, and 15% of the principal's total time to get one bad teacher out of the classroom. As a result, principals don't even try. They give 99% of teachers -- no joke -- satisfactory evaluations. The bad teachers just stay in the classroom. Well, if we figure that maybe 5% of the teachers, that's a conservative estimate, are bad teachers nationwide, that means that 2.5 million kids are stuck in classrooms with teachers who aren't teaching them anything. This is devastating. And the unions are largely responsible for that.

They're also responsible for seniority provisions in these labor contracts that among other things often allow senior teachers to stake a claim to desirable jobs, even if they're not good teachers and even if they're a bad fit for that school. The seniority rules often require districts to lay off junior people before senior people. It's happening all around the country now. And some of these junior people are some of the best teachers in the district. And some of the senior people that are being saved are the worst. Okay. So just ask yourself, would anyone in his right mind organize schools in this way, if all they cared about was what's best for kids? And the answer is no. But this is the way our schools are actually organized. And it's due largely to the power of the unions.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at April 16, 2011 2:27 AM
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