UNSUNG HEROES

'The Simpsons' Finally Exposes Its Sweat Shop Production Conditions

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'The Simpsons' Controversial Opening Credit by Banksy Pulled Down

Teacher Unions Improve Student Achievement?

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According to anti-teacher pundits and demagogues, teachers unions are bad for students because collective bargaining agreements protect bad teachers and reward teachers for seniority rather than competence. However, ten states do not have contracts with their teachers (AL, AZ, AR, GA, LA, MS, NC, SC, TX, and VA). If the claims are true, we should expect these states to have better educational outcomes. In a recent blog posting from the Shankar Institute (reposted on Valerie Strauss’ WaPo blog, Answer Sheet), the evidence just isn’t there.
Average 2009 NAEP Score By State Teacher Contract Laws

States with binding teacher contracts
4th grade: Math 240.0 Reading 220.7
8th grade: Math 282.1 Reading 263.7

States without binding teacher contracts
4th grade: Math 237.7 Reading 217.5
8th grade: Math 281.2 Reading 259.5

Reprinted from PERFORMANCE-ENHANCING TEACHER CONTRACTS?

Some possible explanations: contracts, tenure, collective bargaining all contribute toward retaining more experienced teachers. Job security and due process rights encourage more open and honest discourse during meetings and collaboration which help foster more effective reform and school improvement.

The results of the Shankar study should, of course, be taken with a grain of salt. There were lots of variables there weren't controlled or at least disaggregated from their data. Most of the non-unionized states were from the South, with higher degrees of poverty and in many (but not all) cases lower levels of per pupil spending.

Nevertheless, if unions were the only problem, as many critics assert in their reductionist claims, then non-unionized states should have higher test scores, and they clearly do not.

Rotten Unions Protecting Rotten Apples

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Most teachers are not bad, but the constant harping about bad teachers has created a mass hysteria that our schools are filled with incompetent teachers who are crushing our children’s enthusiasm and causing them to fail or drop out. It has become so pervasive that I’m even hearing teachers echo it now.

The delusion that unions protect bad teachers is based on a gross mischaracterization and misunderstanding of tenure. While tenure does provide some job security, it does not guarantee job protection for life, especially not for really rotten teachers. The worst, of course, are the teachers who abuse children. Thankfully, these are rare and they are easily fired. Teachers who are lazy, incompetent, or who simply don’t care, are also relatively uncommon. The pay just isn’t that good and the demands are too high for most self-respecting shirkers. The job is so demanding, in fact, that most young teachers don’t last more than five years.

Tenured teachers can be fired for a number of reasons. Many districts are firing tenured teachers because of budget cuts and NCLB allows schools to fire their entire staffs if they fail to make Adequate Yearly Progress for four years in a row.

The main purpose of tenure is not to guarantee a job, but to protect academic freedom and free speech. Good schools foster ongoing collaboration between teachers, staff and administrators. True collaboration only works when people feel comfortable speaking freely and honestly. Tenure makes it much more difficult for administrators to fire teachers arbitrarily, vindictively, or because they disagree with them. Without this protection, teachers would be less likely to speak openly at faculty meetings and during collaboration.

What about teachers who are well-meaning, but just aren’t that good? Aren’t they a dead weight holding back schools that are trying to improve?

The short answer is that bad teachers can be fired, but it is the job of their bosses, the administrators, to collect the evidence and make a compelling case through the evaluation process, like in most jobs. Like other unionized jobs, the union provides legal and grievance support for members who believe they are being wrongly punished. Not surprisingly, in the highly contentious arena of education, there are often disagreements between teachers and administrators, personality conflicts, prejudices and power struggles. Occasionally an administrator attempts to subvert the evaluation process to get rid of teachers who are good at their jobs, but who annoy the administrator. Having union support under these circumstances is not only good for the teacher, but for students, too, as it helps keep a good teacher at the school. A bigger problem is that administrators rarely have the time to adequately observe and evaluate teachers. Thus, a teacher who truly isn’t doing a good job can easily slip through the cracks.

A more nuanced answer should take into account that a well-meaning teacher might benefit from and desire professional development opportunities to help him improve. With shrinking budgets and growing demands on administrators and teachers, this is seldom happening. One should also ask what we mean by “bad” teacher. I have worked with teachers who were unreliable, disorganized and annoying as colleagues, and not particularly effective with their classroom instruction, but who were fantastic mentors and advocates for their students. I would argue that a teacher like this should not be tossed away like a broken appliance, but respected for the good they bring to the school and supported in the development of those skills they are lacking.

Those Crazy French Workers

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Strikes continue in France, despite violent attacks by the police. Workers and students have set up blockades in the oil sector, creating fuel shortages throughout the country. The current protests are in response to Sarkozy’s pension cuts.

To Americans, French workers may seem like spoiled brats with their regular large scale strikes and protests. After all, they get to retire much earlier than we do (even with the proposed changes to retirement). They get free healthcare and longer vacations. Mothers get paid maternity leave and the government provides domestic help for new mothers.

What we tend to forget is that French workers have all those great benefits because they have been so willing to strike. Work stoppages, work to rule, sabotage and other types of concerted and well-organized direct action hurt the bosses’ bottom line. When well-planned and executed, direct action can also win public support. Currently, the French workers do have public support, as the public generally opposes the cuts. Most importantly, though, the action must hurt the boss enough that he is willing to back down or negotiate with the workers.

We also tend not to hear that the strikes and protests in France are often wild cat, without the full support of the mainstream unions. In the current case, the unions have mounted little or no protest to the extreme violence that the French government has meted out to protesting workers and students, particularly at the oil blockades.

The media tend to portray what’s happening in France as an aberration in an otherwise peaceful series of take-backs and austerity measures being imposed on citizens throughout Europe. In reality, the strikes in France are just the most developed and overt examples of growing worker opposition throughout the continent.

In the U.S., austerity is being imposed without much resistance. We have been told that times are tough and we all must tighten our belts and most Americans seem to accept that. Yet the richest 1% are still the richest 1%, and they always will be because they use situations like this to further consolidate their wealth. They have been tightening other people’s belts by firing workers, closing shop, resisting tax increases for themselves, demanding cuts in services for the poor while preserving their subsidies and demanding government bailouts.

Because police repression in France has failed to quash the protests, Sarkozy is relying more than ever on collaborationist unions to help him suppress the unrest. Union representatives are publicly declaring that opposition to the cuts is futile and they are attempting to undermine the strikes. This is not unlike America, where both the NEA and AFT spend more time and resources finding ways to make NCLB, RTTT, Common Core Standards and Charter Schools palatable to their members than they do organizing members and the public to resist them.

Unions, in general, have been under attack lately. Instead of fighting back, educating the public, demonstrating their usefulness, they have essentially gone into hiding, damage control, or buried their heads in the sand. While our unions may be collaborationist, our right to collective bargaining has ensured that we have relatively good pay and benefits, tenure and free speech protections, and job security. To the unemployed and marginally employed, we seem like the spoiled French workers and make an easy target for their frustration and anger.

We should not allow the ruling elite to control this discourse. They are the ones responsible for the economic crisis, not teachers or other unionized workers. We cannot allow them to put the blame on us. If our unions are too lame to mount an effective campaign against this, then we, as workers, need to do it.

Direct Action gets the goods.

Collaborationist Union Leader Backs Selling Out

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“Despite Image, Collaborationist Union Leader Backs Selling Out,” should be the title of the recent NYT piece on AFT leader, Randi Weingarten. The article says, “She has shrewdly recognized that teachers’ unions need to be part of the reform,” and suggests that “. . .Randi has to know that teacher unionism itself is in jeopardy, perhaps even in mortal jeopardy.”
As president of the AFT, she has embraced tying teacher evaluations to student test scores. In Washington, DC, she helped negotiate a contract that made it easier to fire teachers. She supported a Colorado law that stripped tenure rights from teachers.

Backpedaling and giving in will not make the assault on public education go away. Organizing, education, and public outreach might.

Teacher unionism may be moribund. If it goes, we will have only ourselves to blame for not fighting back.

8 Delusions About Education

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Like most parents, I want my child to get the best education possible. Like many parents, I am scared, but not for the usual, reasons like bad teachers, low standards, lack of accountability, greedy unions, or a system broken beyond repair. These are gross exaggerations. What I fear is that the fun and innocence of childhood is being traded in for the false promises of rigor and accountability. Many kindergartens have replaced story-time and recess with rote test-taking drills. Elementary schools are eliminating science to make room for more test prep. Middle schools have eliminated shop classes because they aren’t academically rigorous. Over the past 30 years, we have fundamentally altered public education because we were told it wasn’t working. We were told that testing would improve school accountability and student achievement, yet increasing numbers of schools are failing. If we want to see real improvements in education, we need to first cut through the lies and delusions that dominate the debate.

Delusion #1: Schools today are in crisis—Public Education is Broken:
Teaching standards today are more rigorous than ever. Teachers are much better prepared for working with diverse populations. The consensus in education has shifted from one that supported tracking students into advanced or remedial courses based on socioeconomic status (SES) and race to one that promotes equity for all students. So where did we get the idea that public education is so terribly broken?

In 1983, President Reagan’s Commission on Excellence in Education published “A Nation at Risk,” which falsely claimed that our schools were so terrible that it threatened national security. This myth, that the education system is broken, has been perpetuated ever since by politicians of both persuasions and their corporate supporters, terrifying parents, who worry that their children will languish intellectually, and taxpayers, who fear that today’s poorly educated students will be tomorrow’s incompetent doctors and police. Education bashing has become the baby-kissing of the new millennium. Everyone wants to be the “education” candidate, the hero who saves our children.

The problem with “A Nation at Risk” is that it wasn’t true. In 1990, Sandia National Laboratory wrote “Perspectives on education in America,” which concluded there was no crisis. Bush Sr. immediately suppressed the report, as it conflicted with his education agenda. According to the report, average SAT scores went up or held steady for every student subgroup from 1975 to 1988. Reading held steady or improved among all groups from 1971 to 1988. Every year from 1970 to 1988, the number of 22 year-olds with bachelor degrees increased. In 1988, the U.S. led all developed nations in bachelor degrees earned. Students scoring 3 or higher on AP tests rose from 10.2% in 2000 to 14.8% in 2006, while the number attempting AP tests rose from 15.9% in 2000 to 24.2% in 2006.
Delusion #2: Bad Schools and Teachers Cause the Achievement Gap
Public education is not in crisis, but a class-based achievement gap does persist. Middle class students consistently outscore lower income students on standardized tests and graduate at higher rates. However, the achievement gap is already firmly in place before children have even started school. Burkam and Lee examined average cognitive scores of children entering kindergarten and found that kids in the highest income group scored 60% higher than those in the lowest income group. Hart and Risely found similar class-based differences in language development and IQ among children as young as three.

Class can have an enormous impact on how we raise our children and influence school readiness. Hart and Risely found dramatic class differences in the number and complexity of words spoken to young children. By the time they have reached kindergarten, children from families on welfare may have heard 32 million fewer words than children from professional families.

Poverty contributes to a host of physical and cognitive problems that can diminish academic achievement. Poor children are more likely to suffer low birth weights and malnutrition, which can lead to disabilities. Iron-deficiency anemia, which impairs cognitive ability, is twice as common among poor children. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 10% of poor students have dangerous levels of lead in their blood, which can lead to decreased intelligence. Lack of healthcare causes poor children to be absent as much as 40% more often than middle class kids, according to education researcher Richard Rothstein. In a study of Baltimore school children, high school drop-outs averaged 27.6 absences per year, while graduates averaged only 11.8. Poor children move more due to financial insecurity. According to the Educational Testing Service, 41% of students who changed schools frequently were below grade level in reading and 33% were below grade level in math, compared to 26% and 17%, respectively, for those who remained at the same schools.

Delusion #3: No Child Left behind will ensure that all children are succeeding by 2014
This slogan sounds great, but it is impossible to deliver. Instead of improving schools, NCLB is having the opposite effect: increasing numbers of schools are failing. The state of California projected that by the 2013-2014 school year, when all students are supposed to be proficient, 99% of California schools will be failing. The reasons for this paradox are built into the rules of NCLB which require that all subgroups (e.g., ethnicity, socio-economic status, special education, English Language Learners) must meet their Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) each year. If any one group fails, the entire school fails.

Delusion #4: Obama is dismantling NCLB
Obama wants to modify NCLB, not end it. He wants to include graduation rates, attendance and learning climate when judging schools. He also wants to replace the provision that every child must reach proficiency with the goal that all students graduate from high school “prepared” for college. Schools and students will still compete with each other. There will continue to be winners, losers and high stakes exams. “Proficiency” and “progress” will be just as elusive. Nothing will be put into place to help low income families. In addition to keeping NCLB, he has introduced Race to the Top (RTTT), which provides $4.3 billion in competitive grants to states that facilitate the creation of charter and for-profit schools and that evaluate teachers based on their students’ test scores.

Delusion #5: Testing & Standards Improve Schools & Make Teachers Accountable
Accountability is a red herring, a distraction from the most serious problems affecting public education: underfunding and poverty. It also a big giveaway to test publishers. While testing makes these companies a lot of money, it does nothing to improve accountability or quality. At best, a good test tells us what a student knows, not how she learned it. More importantly, test scores correlate more strongly with social class than any other variable, including teacher quality, curriculum or school structure. 76% of schools with low pass rates on the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE) had at least 50% of their students receiving free or reduced lunches. Similarly, 66% of California high schools with low graduation rates had at least 40% of their students on free or reduced lunch, while 80% of high schools with high graduation rates had less than 20% of their students on free or reduced lunch. A more effective means of improving test scores and student achievement would be to improve familial financial security.

Teachers are already held accountable. They are evaluated regularly by administrators and, if judged poorly, can be fired or required to undergo professional development. In California, these evaluations are based on state standards that are among the toughest in the U.S. They assess much more than student achievement, like how well teachers communicate with parents and students, create safe and effective learning environments, and meet the needs of diverse students. A good teacher does all these things, but may still have high failure rates on standardized exams if working with economically disadvantaged students.

Delusion #6: The problem with Public Education is that it is run by the government
This statement is the most honest criticism made by opponents of public education. Public schools are free and one of the few areas of the economy under direct community control. Parents and employees have considerably more influence over how their schools are run than they do over their local Walmart or McDonalds, at least they did before NCLB. By bashing public education, critics hope to weaken unions and divert public funds to private, for-profit education businesses. Multibillion dollar foundations like Gates, Broad and Walton Family Foundations have pumped millions into the creation of charter schools. Gates even provided funding to states to hire consultants to write RTTT grants to help them to create more charter schools. Charter school organizers make $400,000 per year (compared with teachers, who make $30-80,000 per year).

Big Government is a compelling target, particularly when accused of trampling individual rights and freedom. However, for the wealthy, every attack on big government is an opportunity to lower their tax liability and increase their personal wealth. Tax cuts for the wealthy often lead to education cuts. However, even without tax cuts, the wealthy benefit when money is diverted from social programs like education, that benefit everyone, to entitlements like farm or oil subsidies, that benefit a small, elite group. Furthermore, when government programs are made to seem inept and wasteful, the corporate alternative starts to look appealing, facilitating the transfer of wealth from tax payers to private business.

Delusion 7: Charter Schools are More Effective Than Traditional Public Schools
Charter schools perform no better than traditional public schools and often do much worse. In 2004, the U.S. department of education found that 4th graders in charter schools did significantly worse in reading and math than those in public school. Charter schools also tend to be much more segregated. Nearly 80% of Latino and 70% of black charter school students are in schools that are over 90% minority, nearly double the rate in traditional public schools. In 2007, public school enrollment was 47% white, 22% black, 21% Hispanic and 3% Asian. Private, religious school enrollment was 73% white, 9% black, 12% Hispanic, 3% Asian, while private, secular school enrollment was: 69% white, 11% black, 9% Hispanic, and 6% Asian. Poor students make up 40% of public schools, but only 17% of private religious and 10% of private secular schools.


Delusion #8: Teachers unions protect bad teachers and block parental choice.
This delusion implies that there are great numbers of rotten teachers in need of discipline or dismissal, which is simply untrue. Unions do provide legal services for members accused of misconduct. It is important to note that in the contentious school environment, there are often frivolous accusations made against teachers, who are entitled to representation and defense. Most unions provide peer evaluation and support to help struggling teachers grow professionally. Unions also support beginning teacher mentor programs and professional development, both of which have declined dramatically due to budget cuts, not union obstructionism. Unions support tenure because it is a necessary prerequisite for authentic collaboration between teachers and administrators. Schools cannot function without open, honest input and criticism by those who work with children. Without tenure, teachers can be fired because administrators do not agree with their comments or criticism.

A second problem with this delusion is the assumption that parents get to choose how their taxes are used. Teachers are highly trained professionals who know how to do their job. Can you imagine if people demanded “choice” for their police, fire and public health protection? Parents do have the choice to have their children excused from NCLB testing, and SHOULD, as a form of civil disobedience. If enough parents do this, the charade will have to end.

Organizing Gets the Goods

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The National Education Association (NEA) is spending $15 million to get pro-education candidates elected in November, while the California Teachers Association (CTA) routinely outspends all other state lobbyists. Figures like these make good fodder for anti-teacher rants by conservatives, but they also anger teachers. As an organizer for a local that is affiliated with both the CTA and NEA, I often find myself talking to irate members who are frustrated with the top down paternalism of our state and national organizations, particularly with respect to how our dues are spent. For all the money CTA funneled into political campaigns, the California legislature still cut $17 billion from education over the past two years, fired teachers and increased class sizes. Politics is a losing game for unions. Candidates are fickle, unreliable allies of working Americans. They are wealthier than us, with substantially different financial interests. When forced to make tough budget decisions, they side with business, not labor.

Take Jerry Brown, who the CTA is lavishly supporting for governor in California. His billionaire opponent, Meg Whitman, is clearly an enemy of public education and unions, but can teachers and parents count on Brown? The answer is no. As Mayor of Oakland he appointed three additional members to the Oakland school board and tried to impose his own hand-picked superintendent in a power grab that angered teachers and parents alike. He created two charter schools, the Oakland Military Academy (OMI), and the Oakland School of the Arts (OSA), neither of which performed better than Oakland’s traditional public high schools despite the fact that he personally raised $12 million for the schools, allowing them to spend almost twice as much per student as Oakland’s traditional schools. Not surprisingly, the military school serves predominantly lower income students, while the art school serves a mostly middle class clientele. In general, Brown has been a strong supporter of charter schools, while giving little indication he has the stomach for helping traditional public schools. Indeed, as mayor, he diverted city staff members to charter school duty, even moving the City Manager’s office from City Hall to OMI headquarters at the Oakland Army base.

I’m not interested in telling anyone how (or if) to vote. If you want to vote for the lesser evil, more power to you. My argument is that my union’s vast resources should not be given to a lesser evil who may or may not make some favorable decisions. A union’s strength does not come from buying politicians. It comes from mobilizing its members to fight for better working conditions and a better society. They accomplish this most effectively through organizing and educating their members and the public around critical issues of common interest. One example is health care. With insurance rates increasing 25-40% annually, workers are being forced to pay more out of pocket, a de facto pay cut that worsens each year. Lack of healthcare causes poor children to be absent as much as 40% more often than middle class kids. This can have a profound impact on academic success. In one study of Baltimore teenagers, high school drop-outs averaged 27.6 absences per year, while graduates averaged only 11.8. A single payer system should improve attendance and graduation rates by ensuring that everyone has health coverage. It reduces uncertainty in school budgeting and prevents insurance companies from holding employee pay hostage. Countries with universal coverage have higher life expectancies, lower infant mortality and healthier citizens at a fraction of what we spend. Yet insurance giants have spent millions to convince us the opposite is true. Instead of buying politicians who might vote for single payer, unions should educate members and organize them to fight for it.

There is power in a union, but it comes from its members, not politicians. Lobbyists may be effective for corporate America, but for the rest of us, organizing gets the goods.