Saturday, March 03, 2007

The Bloated Issue of Bloated Teach Unions

Being a mere observer of Chicago Public Schools and their union drama over the years, I could never get over the feeling that kids were being of held hostage. It's this duplicitous "We are educating the future, we are noble crusaders to teach the masses, we love our jobs, we are passionate about educating, now pay us more or we don't do it!".

Of course, talking like that puts you in a tricky position. I've tried writing a couple of different posts about this and different ways to navigate the fact that this is such a difficult issue because it's so multi-faceted. The issue is a blend of labor, education, tax payer dollars, and urban management all blended into one too hot to touch topic. Teacher's Unions wield a great deal of power. They have the advantage of saying "If you're not with us, you're against the better education of your children" and nobody, not even Da Mare himself, wants to be on the receiving end of that editorial come Monday morning. It takes a lot of guts to stand up to them.

I'm not sure whom, if anybody, would seriously give a critical look in how Teacher Unions operate and how they may be harmful to education in general. And then Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple and iPod iDol, gave it to teacher unions with both barrels:



"What kind of person could you get to run a small business if you told them that when they came in they couldn't get rid of people that they thought weren't any good?" he asked to loud applause during an education reform conference.

"Not really great ones because if you're really smart you go, 'I can't win.'"

[...]

"This unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers is off-the-charts crazy."


I just want to get it out in the open here and say, WHAT KOHONES! Wow. Who's this guy's taylor? Does he need special pants for those? I might just go out and buy an iPod nano now just because their CEO has got some serious guts. Apple is the number 2 provider of education computers in the country (next to Dell). He basically just told a large chunk of his customers that they're they biggest swine at the public trough. I've got a lot of respect for anybody who's willing to come out and drop a body slam like that, knowing full well that if there's one thing about teacher's unions, it's that they're fanatical about being teachers and will respond to criticizm in a fanatical way. And oh yes, yes they did.

Fanatical teacherism and the unfortunate framing of the debate as 'teachers vs. parents', I think there's something to be said for Balmer's comments, at least to the point where if we're going to be assigning blame for the poor (or just obscenely mediocre - depending on whom you're talking to) condition of our schools at the Mayor and the administration, some sort of accountability must be placed on CTU which is an undeniably a potent part of the structure of how the schools work.

Balmer's comments, however distasteful to the Education crowd, have merit. As the Mayor continues to push to change acknowledgement of CPS from a public service to a business model - most obvious change was the title of CPS's head honcho to 'CEO' - people like Jobs and other business streamliners are bound to start offering a critical voice as to what is ailing the school system.

That being said, it's an open invite. If you're a teacher and you've got some perspective that doesn't match, drop me an email with some thoughts, and I'd be happy to post them as a follow up. I don't want this to turn into a flaming crap storm of various levels of wingnuttery.

I think one of the primary things that gets missed in this talk is that Teacher Unions are essentially a product of Job's perspective in the first place. Tax payers expect that the schools produce political pressure for schools to perform. Political pressure results in weak teachers getting canned or of course, or just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Teachers largely unionized as a method of shielding themselves from political pressure, kind of a 'brick wall' to obscure the ability for the political pressure to hold them unfairly accountable for often impossible results. Unions create organizational firewalls of often laughable nature to protect their own.

I've come to the conclusion that's how they started. Good intentions all around, but over the years, be it the SEIU/Andy Stern influence or just City Hall giving inches which have amounted to miles over the years, I'm certain that teacher unions were never intended to be the cancer that they are today.

The origins of Job's comments wasn't talking about holding teachers unfairly accountable for their product, he was talking about how Unions make teachers (and to a greater extent - the schools) unfairly unaccountable to the tax payers resulting in a systemic tumor which taxes resources and otherwise obstructs good education. That of course brings up a fundamental discourse between parents, unions, and politicians - who should otherwise be all on the same page - ya know - for the children.

Hey you. Yes you! Teacher guy. I know you're bringing up the comment box right now ready to light into me to tell me about how "teachers can't be measured because there are too many variables including the nature of the students, the participation of the parents, and that in the end CTU is collection of well meaning individuals who want to do nothing more than educate your kids better". Save it. Like it or not, we don't pay parents to participate in their kids education. We pay you instead. If you want to complain about having the most mild expectations of your performance, then we don't need you. We need 9.00 an hour baby sitters. You're a professional. Act like it.

I'm aware that this isn't popular. With Red Line cheerleaders now going giggly Big Labor, (yay!, Daley is so corrupt let's cheer for different corruption!!), there will be an increasing desire for average tax payers to continue myopically blaming the Mayor for school woes (a portion of which, admittedly is legitimate), with little to no regard for getting into actual root causes in which at least a portion of the blame must be placed on CTU. Time to start passing the blame to the Union....for the children.

12 comments:

pathickey 9:55 AM  

Well crafted Dan and well articulated. Good teachers are too often frustrated and give up. The mediocrity or down-right atrocious teacher is insulated from all harm and the burden is heaped on the backs of gifted and the ethical.

School vouchers is the only true touchstone for calling the clowns to task and 'that ain't gonna happen;; rather, taxpayers and parents will be treated to more shrill bullhorn cries 'What about the Children' from the very same hogs at the trough critics of public education wish to see find new careers.

If there was one Catholic Bishop ( due to the fact that - well at the moment anyway - Catholic schools fill the largest block of Double Tax Payers) with the set of grapes on him that Bishop Sheil and Cardinal Mundelein had on them, he would announce on Friday morning that every Catholic School in his diocese would close Monday and the public schools should welcome thousands of new tax-payers children. It's all about the children!

Anonymous,  10:03 AM  

Exactly. Like any god fearing conservative, I tend to believe that a school voucher system or something else that would bring free market education about would be the best thing to sort out education.

Of course, I don't want to turn schools into a sales pitch either. Career Ed Corp anyone?

pathickey 10:09 AM  

How about Professionals? !!!!! ( he posed - expecting a stunned and quizical response) The other white meat.

If you are a bad lawyer, get a new career;if you are a math challenged CPA; get right with the business end of a broom handle; if you are Malpractice poster boy for surgury, Jiffy Lube has a place for you! Seems to work for the Professions - a euphemism coughed up by bad teachers all the time anyway.

Jeff Trigg 11:43 AM  

The teachers' unions have too much power? Really? But on average two whole teachers are fired in the entire state of Illinois each year because of bad performance. It would just be awful if that doubled. Meanwhile, St. Rep. M. Smith (D-Canton) has introduced a bill that would lower the time until tenure downstate from 4 years to 3 years. Might as well model the entire state after Chicago's perfect government school system I guess.

Good post. Rep. Fritchey's House Bill 198 is a little bit of help upping the tuition tax credit to $1000 from $500.

Anonymous,  4:06 PM  

The problem I see with the teaching profession is that it is not treated like a real job. My own solutions...1. Make the college education of teachers more rigorous. I have a degree in another discipline and it was my opinion that people studying "education" didn't find a very challenging program and maybe weren't sharpest students,either. 2. Make teachers work year round (and yes, pay them accordingly). What kind of job gives you 4 months off during the year? They can work summer school, work on their own continuing education, learn organizational skills, etc. I'm also a proponent of reducing the "instructional" time each day, adding back more arts and recess, and including "homework/practice" time in school during the day and attending most of the year. I think this would help the students, the families AND the teachers. 3. I'm not sure you can judge very well the skill of the teacher through the test results of the students. However, you can monitor teachers in the classroom and see if they are doing an adequate job. Judging students like "products" produced by teachers is the wrong model. Being a teacher is more like conducting an orchestra. If the musicians won't practice or aren't even musicians, it's going to be hard to produce excellent music...but you ought to be able to spot a really bad conductor through observation, I think. Also, don't let school staff act like children. No more teacher award ceremonies, lunches, breakfasts, and a whole bunch of other childish actities that adults in the workforce don't participate in.

Extreme Wisdom 8:26 PM  

Dan,

In fact, it is "teachers v. parents" and too many parents are just too stupid to realize that fact.

Separating decent teachers from their unions for a moment, the unions are interested in pay, perks & pensions, and actually providing value to the student is not even an afterthought, it's directly antithetical to the unions goal (more money for less education).

This is why I've stated point blank that I don't give a damn about teachers

I realize that people have to eat, but if an educated populace is our goal, we should not only NOT care about "teachers" - but in that act of 'caring', we take our eyes off of the real goal - connected neurons in kids heads.

If our kids could be educated by chimps pressing buttons or by pills that unpacked content (Sci-fi scenarios to be sure) then "teachers" should go the way of the buggy whip.

Obviously, there will alway be a place for a talented conveyor of content. But as the thread here indicates, these people should be compensated as professionals in an open market of content providers, and not inside a corrupt monopoly of protected mediocrities and their overfed Administrator masters. (and the legislators they purchased)
___

It's great to see some one of your caliber posting here.

Anonymous,  8:54 PM  

I think you should put blame where it belongs, Mayor Daley and Arne "Herman Munster" Duncan. Management failure again and again. Daley took over the teachers union a while ago. Let's "Blame the Union" is old hat. Daley took over the CTA and ruined that. Daley has failed time after time and the taxpayer foots the bill. Now Mayor Daley's HDO employees are filing a lawsuit against the City. These are Mayor Daley's failures, let him pay for it. Dan, to many mouths under the Daley desk.

Anonymous,  5:01 PM  

We may be stuck with a unionized system but perhaps if there were more public reporting on individual teacher performance, there would be more pressure placed on school systems to get rid of those poor performers. Of course, teacher unions are terrified of making this information public and accessible.

If the performanc of each teacher's class each year, using standardized tests and other measures, were published in a format such that parents could
see how that teacher compares with other teachings in similar classrooms in the district and in the state, it would be far easier to identify poor performers and get rid of them.

It's not impossible to fire teachers, it's just difficult.
A little public pressure goes a long way to push lazy principals and school bureaucracies into getting rid of their poor performers. But it can be done.

Remember, many school districts don't fire lazy, even corrupt principals when they could do so.
If the principals were held accountable for actually making the effort to fire nonperforming teachers, we might see progress in accountability.

Anonymous,  8:00 AM  

There is too much emphasis on "Costs", not enough on the "Value" delivered to our students and by inference to the Parents and the Country itself.

To maximize the value of the Education Function to the students, their families and others resident, we must invoke as few constraints as possible. In other words we should not restrict the pool of resources available for instruction of our children. We owe it to everybody involved, indeed to the country itself to prepare this and succeeding generations with the ability to compete in the world economy.

What has happened, at least from my point of view, is that the system we call Public Education has generally failed. It has become a closed shop interested in continued employment and continuing raises.

We find Administrators, realizing the paucity of persons with degrees, let alone advanced degrees in the subject matter being taught defending faculties on the basis of so called "Content Mastery" -- techniques I remember from my graduate assistant days as staying one chapter ahead of the student. (Later I was on the faculty of the Defense Intelligence School.)

Districts practice grade inflation. Colleges are forced to remediate entering freshmen. I call your Board's attention to the web site www.wheresthemath.com and the analysis of a University of Washington professor to the effect on his students of the Fuzzy Math movement.

By every known measure with other nations, from the NEA to the President's Advisory Commission on Science and Technology, we are falling behind in our schools

Worse, the Illinois State Board of Education has abetted teachers by dumbing down the standardized tests and confused the parents by norming up the results.

At the state level, reform is shrugged aside. Legislators prefer the meal tickets offered by the unions.

Not to long ago, I spoke at the Madigan Flying Budget Circus, which went around the State telling people there was no more money. (As it happens the Speaker chose not to include the rainshower of revenue caused by the Bush tax cuts. It was this largesse that provided the governor to act as though he were Johnny Appleseed, spreading grants as he danced around the State.) .

The grandmothers who kept the faith in Education are dying off and we are left with two and three generations for whom education is neither an economic nor a social good. Early school leavers, graduates badly served are the beginnings of a permanent underclass -- a threat to our Republic which as prized interclass mobility founded upon the functioning family and adequate literacy and numeracy.

That is where we are today, sliding down the razor blade of our existence.

And the call is for more of the same -- more money for underqualified teachers, continuing barriers to entry in the instructional field.

The State is gundecking the call for more money. It is purposefully relying on -- as it has in the past -- regression analyses to propose more money be provided to the schools.

In essence the Augenblick and Myers regression analyses keep saying more money will do it. Their work omits teacher qualifications and subject matter mastery as variables. As I used to say in my acting days: "don't applaud, throw money."

Mr. Martire keeps telling us that full Competitive Choice won't work. He does this with a straight face and without the slightest bit of justification. What we have now doesn't work. In San Francisco, in Milwaukee, in Florida and other places they are starting to use vouchers and choice. Charter schools (you published a short letter of mine on this) and vouchers are the answer.

But in order to maximize the value of Education, Competitive Choice has to extend to all schools which get accreditation and organize and hire teaching staff who can be certified. Bring the family back into play. I posit that schools will spring to life, organized privately or already in existence. Marva Collins redux.

The more qualified competition the better -- indeed the lower the cost per student, the greater the rewards per teacher. the better the outcome. I find it bitterly humorous that the unions insist that they would be left with the dregs in the public school -- as if they had no way to improve themselves.

Yellow Dog Democrat 9:40 AM  

It doesn't take cajones to blame teacher's unions. That's conservative America's favorite pasttime.

But does anyone really believe that if it weren't for teacher's unions and teacher tenure, Steve Jobs would quit his post at Apple and go teach high school math classes?

Give me a friggin' hypocritical break. Dang right when it comes to teacher quality, it's about the money. Sure, it's also about work conditions, continuing education, and professional autonomy, but mostly, it's about the money.

Unknown 10:00 AM  


It doesn't take cajones to blame teacher's unions. That's conservative America's favorite pasttime.


Yeah because Steve Jobs is just the face of the conservative soul.

pathickey 10:00 AM  

Chapter and Verse, YDD, Chapter and Verse!

Tell you what YDD -Stop by Leo sometime and you and I can take a stroll over to 'Our Lady of Calumet' and have a look see at that old - $$$$$$$$$$$$$ and Quality is Job #1. Calumet sure ain't New Trier and certainly ain't Leo and only a short strech of the legs.

Imagine If there were school Choice - but Choice is only a euphemism for a woman's right o kill her living but as yet unborn child. Chapter and Verse, YDD, Chapter and Verse.


Truthful James said it all Full Competitive School Choice - Vouchers is the only way. Real school choice works.

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