6 ms·

Teachers unions are not the reason many schools suck

28 points by rtaycher 16y ago

RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
Single page: http://www.slate.com/id/2285650/pagenum/all/#p2 http://www.slate.com/id/2285650/pagenum/all/#p2
pjkundert 16y ago
Yes, there exist schools whose suckage isn't due to teacher's unions.
ryandvm 16y ago
An honest question: Why do highly skilled professionals like teachers require union representation whereas computer professionals do not?
- dreamux 16y ago
  There are a surplus of qualified teachers, in Canada at least I know of several people with teaching degrees and none of them can find work because the only time a spot opens up is if someone dies or retires. The software industry is in desperate need of people by comparison.
- a688 16y ago
  An honest question: Why do computer professionals not exercise their rights to prevent abuse (unfair firings, increased work hours without compensation, demeaning bosses) like some teachers? Edit: Also where do you get "require" from. Not all teachers belong to a union? Did you read the article at all?
  - tomjen3 16y ago
    Whom would you rather be oppressed by: an employer you can quit from, or a guild you can't? Besides the end game of unions are what happened in Detroit.
    - beedogs 16y ago
      You're using one specific industry and one specific example to paint every single union with the same brush. Bravo.
      - gloob 16y ago
        It's generally accepted that the singular of "anecdote" is "proof".
      - tomjen3 16y ago
        I could use the PROSA versus CSC example (which is actually the IT-workers union against a computer service company) which is going on right now. CSC is trying to get rid of 22-months notices before firing any employee, the union has given notice of strike. But thats a Danish dispute which I doubt many here is familiar with, hence the Detroit example. And it is hardly "one specific" example: its multiple agreements with multiple companies.
  - viggity 16y ago
    If I were to be abused by my workplace, I'd vote with my feet and leave. I'd rather work in a system where the quality of my work determines my wages and not my seniority or how many masters degrees I've obtained. I'd rather work in a system that doesn't strong arm my employer into paying benefits they can't afford. I don't know about you, but I'm not worried about my 401k being there in 40 years, but I'd be really scared if I had a municipal pension.
    - zarify 16y ago
      I feel I should speak up about this one as a teacher (admittedly Australian however) and a supporter of teachers unions. Let's assume we are in a performance based pay system. How do we measure performance? Is it average student grades? If so, then do we pay teachers who work in affluent areas more because every effort is afforded the students (tutoring etc)? Do we pay teachers who choose to work in more challenging schools less (and more likely have lower grades but possibly greater impact on students' lives with their successes)? What do we do with teachers hand picking elite classes to improve their perceived performance? It already happens even without performance pay? Or it could just be the luck of the draw. Sometimes I end up with difficult student groups simply because of a timetabling issue. Less pay? There are other metrics for teacher performance that have been proposed, and all the ones I have heard have been very flawed. Just to touch on the abuse bit at the start, if there was one employer in your town (as there effectively is in many rural areas when it comes to schools), should you relocate because of abuse you have received? (or indeed at all? Who doesn't deserve to feel safe from abuse in their workplace?)
      - yummyfajitas 16y ago
        This is a solved problem. The solution is Value Added Modeling. This has been known for many years, but unfortunately it doesn't fit within a soundbite. You build a statistical predictor of student performance, then you pay teachers proportional to Actual Performance - Predicted Performance. If teachers pick elite classes to improve their performance, the bar is raised. If their class has a predicted score of 80%, then the teacher needs an actual score of 90% to get a bonus. Conversely, if you get a class of low quality students, the predicted score might be 20%. To get the bonus, you need to achieve 30%. The only incentives you have are hand pick classes of students that you can improve. If you are great at moving students from the 50'th percentile to the 60'th percentile, but suck with other student groups, your incentive is to get a class of students in the 50'th percentile.
  - ryandvm 16y ago
    Because if it means my pay is going to be related to how long I've been doing the job (as opposed to how good I am at it) then I'm not interested.
  - viggity 16y ago
    A lot of states (Wisconsin and Iowa included) force teachers to pay at least some union dues, even if they aren't a member of the union
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    Also where do you get "require" from. Not all teachers belong to a union? Many states require non-union employees to pay the union. I believe DC does as well. Your only choices are to be taxed by the union with voting rights or be taxed by the union without voting rights.
- argv_empty 16y ago
  Being a popular target for funding cuts and working a lot more (off-the-clock) hours than people typically seem aware of puts them in a weak bargaining position to begin with.
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    Education is a popular target for funding cuts simply because it makes up more than 1/3 of local government spending. Local governments spend more on education than they spend on police, fire, prisons, roads and health care put together. http://usgovernmentspending.com/piechart_2009_US_total http://usgovernmentspending.com/piechart_2009_US_total Teachers work fewer hours than the average professional, which includes time spent working at home. http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf
- cletus 16y ago
  It depends on the country. For many (most?) countries, the education system is dominated by state-run schools. This typically means that there will be one very large employer and possibly several much smaller employers (ie private schools). In this scenario, the very large employer wields a disproportionate amount of power. I guess it's analagous to a monopoly or near-monopoly: the very fact that you are so dominant means rules apply to you that otherwise wouldn't to protect the market--competition itself--from breaking down. Unions are probably the mechanism for keeping the government, as that large dominant employer, honest. The problem is the reverse is also a problem: now the government and the private schools face a monopoly in the form of the teacher's union. That monopoly can--and does--extract unreasonable concessions [1]. An important aspect of unions is collective bargaining (pay, conditions, etc). This is a somewhat controversial topic that tends to divide down political lines. Collective bargaining sprang up in the Industrial Revolution and in periods like the Great Depression to protect workers from essentially bidding themselves down. [1]: http://reason.com/archives/2006/10/01/how-to-fire-an-incompetent-tea http://reason.com/archives/2006/10/01/how-to-fire-an-incompe...
- daniel-cussen 16y ago
  Highly credentialed != highly skilled.
dreamux 16y ago
I'm slightly biased here because I will almost certainly never need a union to protect my job or interests (I'm well educated, with in-demand skills, and I'm mobile). But it really bothers me how unions produce such inefficiencies in specific industries. Teachers and autoworkers being the biggest have crippled the ability of their respective industries to innovate and compete globally. While this may protect the livelihood of current workers, it hinders the ability of future workers to compete and earn a living. Like national debt its one generation fucking over the next... PS - I'm young and pissed with the general recklessness of baby boomers.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  The problem with this theory is in schools and regions without teacher's unions, as the article notes, there isn't an improvement. The fundamental problem is that as a whole there is neither some better performing nor cheaper workforce that is being blocked access to teaching today.
- jrwoodruff 16y ago
  I'm with you on the boomers, but you can't just blame unions here. You also have to blame the executives that caved to their ridiculous demands with no consideration of the long-term consequences. Yes, the union would strike, but so what. That's how battles are fought, and the execs didn't want to fight. If you haven't, read Lee Iacoca's autobiography: http://www.amazon.com/Iacocca-Autobiography-Lee/dp/0553251473 http://www.amazon.com/Iacocca-Autobiography-Lee/dp/055325147... He wrote it in 1984, but everything he says applies to the 2008/2009 collapse of the auto industry. For that matter, go back a little further and read John DeLorean's On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors. It's pretty amazing how long these poorly run companies managed to trip along, and these books make it pretty clear it's not just the unions to blame.
- rjbond3rd 16y ago
  Poor engineering in the auto industry was not caused by unions. The unions are basically assemblers -- how does the assembly line create engineering problems? I have no love for unions but what you say is way off-base. Anyway, if you want to look at excessive compensation and benefits in the auto industry, look a little higher. And at any rate, they only got what they negotiated, so if you want to blame anyone, blame management for poor negotiating, poor planning and just generally screwing up. Finally, if unions ruined the auto industry, why is Ford doing well relative to GM and Chrysler? I drive a foreign car at the moment, but my next car will be a Ford because they did not take bailout money, and they make excellent, reliable cars (nowadays).
nhebb 16y ago
I think this is a bit of a straw man. I haven't met anyone that believes that teachers unions are the problem. Schools face many problems, and the inability of school districts to fire lousy performers is just one of them. Teenage pregnancy is fast rising as one of the major problems in urban school districts, but I don't foresee any politicians campaigning on a "kids these days need to stop fucking" platform.
- teuobk 16y ago
  Maybe not in quite those words, but there certainly have been politicians who have made abstinence-only sex-ed a part of their platform.
- dpatru 16y ago
  Once a person can reproduce, that person should be able to live independently and support himself/herself. The current educational system keeps fifteen-year-old men and women couped up together in a "school" and treats them as children, giving them no real responsibility and no chance to be independent. The problem is not that teenagers are fulfilling their biological purpose and starting families. The problem is that teenagers are forced to remain in a state of infantilism and not encouraged to take on adult responsibilities.
yummyfajitas 16y ago
tl;dr Many schools suck because they are full of low quality students. Rhee made some improvements, but no improvements to teachers can compensate for low quality students.
- 2arrs2ells 16y ago
  That is a terrible summary of the article. The author's actual point is "Michelle Rhee's war on teachers' unions was a sideshow that distracted from the more important effort to give more low-income students a chance to attend middle-class public schools."
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    And what is the difference between low income and middle class schools? There are two significant ones - teacher quality and student quality. If the difference is teacher quality, then Michelle Rhee's war on low quality teachers was on point and exactly what was needed. The article disputes this. Thus, it must be student quality.
    - 2arrs2ells 16y ago
      The article doesn't actually dispute that the difference is teacher quality. The article just claims that teacher quality can be improved without doing battle with teacher unions. There's a nationwide struggle to get high quality teachers into low income schools that I don't think anyone on either side of the ed reform debate would deny. Additionally, as a teacher in a low-income school, I'd argue very strongly that you should replace "student quality" with "student attitudes." The latter doesn't suggest that poor kids can't learn.
      - yummyfajitas 16y ago
        I don't agree that the article thinks teacher quality is the difference. Here is what the article says about altering teacher quality: Most education researchers, though, recognize that Rhee's simple vision of heroic teachers saving American education is a fantasy... If the ability to fire bad teachers and pay great teachers more were the key missing ingredient in education reform, why haven't charter schools, 88% of which are nonunionized and have that flexibility, lit the education world on fire? New York didn't get ahead by firing bad teachers. On student quality: Rhee knew that attracting more middle-class students of all races into public schools would strengthen the schools for all students. In one interview, she recounted Warren Buffett's advice to her that the nation's education problems would be solved if private schools were made illegal and students were randomly assigned. In D.C., the goal of making all schools majority middle class is not immediately possible, given that 63 percent of the city's students are low-income, but Rhee could have made significant progress in many schools for three reasons. I won't replace "student quality" with "student attitudes" because I don't know if the relevant factor is attitude.
marknutter 16y ago
Let's not forget that Rhee was only at it for 3 years. The kind of reform she's aiming for will probably take decades to implement.
- 2arrs2ells 16y ago
  Additionally, I think Rhee saw herself as the "Bad Cop" that DC needed to make the unpopular decisions, shake things up, and pave the way for a "Good Cop"^ to come in and build the system up in a more positive way. Rhee certainly wanted to stay longer than she did - but she had to know that she couldn't keep alienating folks and keep her job. ^Kaya Henderson, the interim chancellor, may very well be this "Good Cop."
yxhuvud 16y ago
That peer review system that was mentioned seemed nice. I wonder about how well it works.
- 2arrs2ells 16y ago
  Not sure, but more info on DC's (non-peer) eval system here: http://dcps.dc.gov/DCPS/In+the+Classroom/Ensuring+Teacher+Success/IMPACT+(Performance+Assessment) http://dcps.dc.gov/DCPS/In+the+Classroom/Ensuring+Teacher+Su...
dpatru 16y ago
Unions are based on the idea that fungible "workers" need to unite against "management" to avoid being replaced with workers who will accept lower compensation. The primary interest of unions is to preserve for their members jobs that pay above-market compensation. The presence of teachers' unions means that teachers see teaching as an industrial factory job in a mature field where no more innovation is possible. Students in such a world are the products of the factory. They come into the school system at 5 years of age as unprocessed raw material and they exit 12 years later as high-school graduates, ready to take on a job. This whole mindset is wrong. The industrial-factory model of schools should be abolished. People, whether young (students) or old (teachers), are not fungible. They should not be viewed as factors in factory. They are not.
- panarky 16y ago
  This is a politically charged issue about union-busting that's not particularly relevant for HN. And since the article written by a political operative [1, 2], it's no surprise that he either avoids the main issue or fails to support his arguments with much evidence. [1] http://tcf.org/about/fellows/richard-d.-kahlenberg-senior-fellow http://tcf.org/about/fellows/richard-d.-kahlenberg-senior-fe... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_Foundation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_Foundation
js2 16y ago
For those who haven't seen it: http://www.mckinsey.com/App_Media/Reports/SSO/Worlds_School_Systems_Final.pdf http://www.mckinsey.com/App_Media/Reports/SSO/Worlds_School_... The experiences of these top school systems suggests that three things matter most: 1) getting the right people to become teachers, 2) developing them into effective instructors and, 3) ensuring that the system is able to deliver the best possible instruction for every child.
- cheez 16y ago
  Well then, the solution is obviously to throw more money at the problem! In the US, you spend $20K per student. I think part of the solution in the US is to tear down the whole system, go local and market-based.
  - krschultz 16y ago
    Where did you pull that number? I went to high school in the state with the absolute highest spending per student (New Jersey) in one of the school districts that spent so much money per student we lost all state funding because the local taxes were paying so much, and we only were spending $8-9k per student.
    - cheez 16y ago
      I believe New York now admits to spending about $17K, which is not $20K (which I heard on TV last night). On average, it seems that it was around $10K 5 years ago. This would be a respectable amount IF the results, on average, were good. But they are not.
shou4577 16y ago
I think a lot of people have problems with teachers unions because they think of teaching like any other job. It's not - here are the important differences: Pay raises. It's a fantastic idea for a company to increase the pay of individuals based on performance. If individuals do well, the company does well and makes more money, and can therefore afford to pay the employees more, so this reward system is great. In schools, there is no profit. So if teachers do better, their students perform better, and the teachers should get paid more. But they don't, since this has not brought any more money into the school. In fact, if schools are doing well they are less likely to have their budgets increased, since people will see no need to increase the budget of something that is functioning well. This fixed-budget kind of thing is the root of the difference between the education system and private enterprise. In a business, if you are not making enough money (that is, if you have a spending problem), you cut back on things: often you may lay off employees. You will have fewer employees now, but since your business isn't doing well you probably have less work to do, so it can even out. Or, if it doesn't even out, your business closes down. Neither of these is true of education. Except for rare cases, it is unthinkable to close down a school. Obviously closing would bad for students and education in general, so it is avoided. More importantly, workload doesn't flex as easily in schools. That is, if you run into budget problems and have to cut teachers, the other teachers must work harder to pick up their slack, since the student body population remains unchanged. Thus it is in the interest of both the teachers and the students to keep budgetary layoffs to an absolute minimum. So what do you do with a tight budget? Who knows? Removing teachers decreases the effectiveness of education severely. So does the numerous other things I've seen schools do - stop providing textbooks, make the quality of food go down, shorten the school day, remove planning time of teachers, stop giving teachers their own offices, stop plowing the parking lot, etc. In other words, make schools suck in every way possible. I don't have a good solution for this, beyond the obvious "spend more on education". Personally, I think this is our best bet, but that money would have to come from somewhere else, and people are not willing to pay more taxes for it.
- cheez 16y ago
  Students doing well should not be an unexpected outcome.
- 16y ago
TomOfTTB 16y ago
The only real evidence they present is the Stanford study that found charter schools don't perform better than regular public schools. So their argument is that unions can't be the problem because charter schools don't have them and are doing just as bad. But that's a straw man. Charter schools allow for better management they don't guarantee it. So in the first few decades of a charter school system there will be a lot of bad ideas and a lot of good ideas. But the bad ideas will throw off the average. But the bottom line is at least the well managed charter schools can take steps to correct problems where as regular public schools can't because of union rules. Which is why some Charter schools do dramatically better.
- krschultz 16y ago
  You can't say that is why they do better. Maybe that is why they do better. In my experience with charter schools (tech magnet schools in NYC, Delware charter schools) entry is competitive. Of course charter schools will do better if their students start out smarter. And in other cases, it is at least elective. If your parents care enough about your education to sign you up for a charter school, aren't you already more likely to do well in school than the kids with parents who don't care that much?
hsmyers 16y ago
If you examine a school in terms of those who teach and those who don't excluding service personnel then you should quickly be able to understand who catches the money when they 'throw money' at the problem. In the long ago, even the principle taught classes--- same boat, everybody rows. Now the less useful (useless?) level of bureaucracy begins well down from the top of your typical school and extends all of the way up. Since demonization has already been going on for years, instead of attending to the real problem, Union busting (note that no one calls it that) is being pushed as the necessary silver bullet without regard to other problems (maybe even the real problem...) Now that many school systems can't afford textbooks (at least not one per student) removing teachers doesn't seem like a useful addition to the solution set.
iskander 16y ago
"Chancellor Joel Klein terminated only three teachers for incompetence between 2008 and 2010." This seems dishonest given how hard he tried-- only to be thwarted by a union which always closes ranks. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/31/090831fa_fact_brill http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/31/090831fa_fact_... http://gothamist.com/2011/01/30/joel_klein_easier_to_prosecute_a_ki.php http://gothamist.com/2011/01/30/joel_klein_easier_to_prosecu...

28 points by rtaycher 16y ago

RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago

Single page: http://www.slate.com/id/2285650/pagenum/all/#p2 http://www.slate.com/id/2285650/pagenum/all/#p2

pjkundert 16y ago

Yes, there exist schools whose suckage isn't due to teacher's unions.

ryandvm 16y ago

An honest question: Why do highly skilled professionals like teachers require union representation whereas computer professionals do not?

dreamux 16y ago
There are a surplus of qualified teachers, in Canada at least I know of several people with teaching degrees and none of them can find work because the only time a spot opens up is if someone dies or retires. The software industry is in desperate need of people by comparison.
a688 16y ago
An honest question: Why do computer professionals not exercise their rights to prevent abuse (unfair firings, increased work hours without compensation, demeaning bosses) like some teachers? Edit: Also where do you get "require" from. Not all teachers belong to a union? Did you read the article at all?
- tomjen3 16y ago
  Whom would you rather be oppressed by: an employer you can quit from, or a guild you can't? Besides the end game of unions are what happened in Detroit.
  - beedogs 16y ago
    You're using one specific industry and one specific example to paint every single union with the same brush. Bravo.
    - gloob 16y ago
      It's generally accepted that the singular of "anecdote" is "proof".
    - tomjen3 16y ago
      I could use the PROSA versus CSC example (which is actually the IT-workers union against a computer service company) which is going on right now. CSC is trying to get rid of 22-months notices before firing any employee, the union has given notice of strike. But thats a Danish dispute which I doubt many here is familiar with, hence the Detroit example. And it is hardly "one specific" example: its multiple agreements with multiple companies.
- viggity 16y ago
  If I were to be abused by my workplace, I'd vote with my feet and leave. I'd rather work in a system where the quality of my work determines my wages and not my seniority or how many masters degrees I've obtained. I'd rather work in a system that doesn't strong arm my employer into paying benefits they can't afford. I don't know about you, but I'm not worried about my 401k being there in 40 years, but I'd be really scared if I had a municipal pension.
  - zarify 16y ago
    I feel I should speak up about this one as a teacher (admittedly Australian however) and a supporter of teachers unions. Let's assume we are in a performance based pay system. How do we measure performance? Is it average student grades? If so, then do we pay teachers who work in affluent areas more because every effort is afforded the students (tutoring etc)? Do we pay teachers who choose to work in more challenging schools less (and more likely have lower grades but possibly greater impact on students' lives with their successes)? What do we do with teachers hand picking elite classes to improve their perceived performance? It already happens even without performance pay? Or it could just be the luck of the draw. Sometimes I end up with difficult student groups simply because of a timetabling issue. Less pay? There are other metrics for teacher performance that have been proposed, and all the ones I have heard have been very flawed. Just to touch on the abuse bit at the start, if there was one employer in your town (as there effectively is in many rural areas when it comes to schools), should you relocate because of abuse you have received? (or indeed at all? Who doesn't deserve to feel safe from abuse in their workplace?)
    - yummyfajitas 16y ago
      This is a solved problem. The solution is Value Added Modeling. This has been known for many years, but unfortunately it doesn't fit within a soundbite. You build a statistical predictor of student performance, then you pay teachers proportional to Actual Performance - Predicted Performance. If teachers pick elite classes to improve their performance, the bar is raised. If their class has a predicted score of 80%, then the teacher needs an actual score of 90% to get a bonus. Conversely, if you get a class of low quality students, the predicted score might be 20%. To get the bonus, you need to achieve 30%. The only incentives you have are hand pick classes of students that you can improve. If you are great at moving students from the 50'th percentile to the 60'th percentile, but suck with other student groups, your incentive is to get a class of students in the 50'th percentile.
- ryandvm 16y ago
  Because if it means my pay is going to be related to how long I've been doing the job (as opposed to how good I am at it) then I'm not interested.
- viggity 16y ago
  A lot of states (Wisconsin and Iowa included) force teachers to pay at least some union dues, even if they aren't a member of the union
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  Also where do you get "require" from. Not all teachers belong to a union? Many states require non-union employees to pay the union. I believe DC does as well. Your only choices are to be taxed by the union with voting rights or be taxed by the union without voting rights.
argv_empty 16y ago
Being a popular target for funding cuts and working a lot more (off-the-clock) hours than people typically seem aware of puts them in a weak bargaining position to begin with.
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  Education is a popular target for funding cuts simply because it makes up more than 1/3 of local government spending. Local governments spend more on education than they spend on police, fire, prisons, roads and health care put together. http://usgovernmentspending.com/piechart_2009_US_total http://usgovernmentspending.com/piechart_2009_US_total Teachers work fewer hours than the average professional, which includes time spent working at home. http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf
cletus 16y ago
It depends on the country. For many (most?) countries, the education system is dominated by state-run schools. This typically means that there will be one very large employer and possibly several much smaller employers (ie private schools). In this scenario, the very large employer wields a disproportionate amount of power. I guess it's analagous to a monopoly or near-monopoly: the very fact that you are so dominant means rules apply to you that otherwise wouldn't to protect the market--competition itself--from breaking down. Unions are probably the mechanism for keeping the government, as that large dominant employer, honest. The problem is the reverse is also a problem: now the government and the private schools face a monopoly in the form of the teacher's union. That monopoly can--and does--extract unreasonable concessions [1]. An important aspect of unions is collective bargaining (pay, conditions, etc). This is a somewhat controversial topic that tends to divide down political lines. Collective bargaining sprang up in the Industrial Revolution and in periods like the Great Depression to protect workers from essentially bidding themselves down. [1]: http://reason.com/archives/2006/10/01/how-to-fire-an-incompetent-tea http://reason.com/archives/2006/10/01/how-to-fire-an-incompe...
daniel-cussen 16y ago
Highly credentialed != highly skilled.

dreamux 16y ago

I'm slightly biased here because I will almost certainly never need a union to protect my job or interests (I'm well educated, with in-demand skills, and I'm mobile). But it really bothers me how unions produce such inefficiencies in specific industries. Teachers and autoworkers being the biggest have crippled the ability of their respective industries to innovate and compete globally. While this may protect the livelihood of current workers, it hinders the ability of future workers to compete and earn a living. Like national debt its one generation fucking over the next... PS - I'm young and pissed with the general recklessness of baby boomers.

kenjackson 16y ago
The problem with this theory is in schools and regions without teacher's unions, as the article notes, there isn't an improvement. The fundamental problem is that as a whole there is neither some better performing nor cheaper workforce that is being blocked access to teaching today.
jrwoodruff 16y ago
I'm with you on the boomers, but you can't just blame unions here. You also have to blame the executives that caved to their ridiculous demands with no consideration of the long-term consequences. Yes, the union would strike, but so what. That's how battles are fought, and the execs didn't want to fight. If you haven't, read Lee Iacoca's autobiography: http://www.amazon.com/Iacocca-Autobiography-Lee/dp/0553251473 http://www.amazon.com/Iacocca-Autobiography-Lee/dp/055325147... He wrote it in 1984, but everything he says applies to the 2008/2009 collapse of the auto industry. For that matter, go back a little further and read John DeLorean's On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors. It's pretty amazing how long these poorly run companies managed to trip along, and these books make it pretty clear it's not just the unions to blame.
rjbond3rd 16y ago
Poor engineering in the auto industry was not caused by unions. The unions are basically assemblers -- how does the assembly line create engineering problems? I have no love for unions but what you say is way off-base. Anyway, if you want to look at excessive compensation and benefits in the auto industry, look a little higher. And at any rate, they only got what they negotiated, so if you want to blame anyone, blame management for poor negotiating, poor planning and just generally screwing up. Finally, if unions ruined the auto industry, why is Ford doing well relative to GM and Chrysler? I drive a foreign car at the moment, but my next car will be a Ford because they did not take bailout money, and they make excellent, reliable cars (nowadays).

nhebb 16y ago

I think this is a bit of a straw man. I haven't met anyone that believes that teachers unions are the problem. Schools face many problems, and the inability of school districts to fire lousy performers is just one of them. Teenage pregnancy is fast rising as one of the major problems in urban school districts, but I don't foresee any politicians campaigning on a "kids these days need to stop fucking" platform.

teuobk 16y ago
Maybe not in quite those words, but there certainly have been politicians who have made abstinence-only sex-ed a part of their platform.
dpatru 16y ago
Once a person can reproduce, that person should be able to live independently and support himself/herself. The current educational system keeps fifteen-year-old men and women couped up together in a "school" and treats them as children, giving them no real responsibility and no chance to be independent. The problem is not that teenagers are fulfilling their biological purpose and starting families. The problem is that teenagers are forced to remain in a state of infantilism and not encouraged to take on adult responsibilities.

yummyfajitas 16y ago

tl;dr Many schools suck because they are full of low quality students. Rhee made some improvements, but no improvements to teachers can compensate for low quality students.

2arrs2ells 16y ago
That is a terrible summary of the article. The author's actual point is "Michelle Rhee's war on teachers' unions was a sideshow that distracted from the more important effort to give more low-income students a chance to attend middle-class public schools."
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  And what is the difference between low income and middle class schools? There are two significant ones - teacher quality and student quality. If the difference is teacher quality, then Michelle Rhee's war on low quality teachers was on point and exactly what was needed. The article disputes this. Thus, it must be student quality.
  - 2arrs2ells 16y ago
    The article doesn't actually dispute that the difference is teacher quality. The article just claims that teacher quality can be improved without doing battle with teacher unions. There's a nationwide struggle to get high quality teachers into low income schools that I don't think anyone on either side of the ed reform debate would deny. Additionally, as a teacher in a low-income school, I'd argue very strongly that you should replace "student quality" with "student attitudes." The latter doesn't suggest that poor kids can't learn.
    - yummyfajitas 16y ago
      I don't agree that the article thinks teacher quality is the difference. Here is what the article says about altering teacher quality: Most education researchers, though, recognize that Rhee's simple vision of heroic teachers saving American education is a fantasy... If the ability to fire bad teachers and pay great teachers more were the key missing ingredient in education reform, why haven't charter schools, 88% of which are nonunionized and have that flexibility, lit the education world on fire? New York didn't get ahead by firing bad teachers. On student quality: Rhee knew that attracting more middle-class students of all races into public schools would strengthen the schools for all students. In one interview, she recounted Warren Buffett's advice to her that the nation's education problems would be solved if private schools were made illegal and students were randomly assigned. In D.C., the goal of making all schools majority middle class is not immediately possible, given that 63 percent of the city's students are low-income, but Rhee could have made significant progress in many schools for three reasons. I won't replace "student quality" with "student attitudes" because I don't know if the relevant factor is attitude.

marknutter 16y ago

Let's not forget that Rhee was only at it for 3 years. The kind of reform she's aiming for will probably take decades to implement.

2arrs2ells 16y ago
Additionally, I think Rhee saw herself as the "Bad Cop" that DC needed to make the unpopular decisions, shake things up, and pave the way for a "Good Cop"^ to come in and build the system up in a more positive way. Rhee certainly wanted to stay longer than she did - but she had to know that she couldn't keep alienating folks and keep her job. ^Kaya Henderson, the interim chancellor, may very well be this "Good Cop."

yxhuvud 16y ago

That peer review system that was mentioned seemed nice. I wonder about how well it works.

2arrs2ells 16y ago
Not sure, but more info on DC's (non-peer) eval system here: http://dcps.dc.gov/DCPS/In+the+Classroom/Ensuring+Teacher+Success/IMPACT+(Performance+Assessment) http://dcps.dc.gov/DCPS/In+the+Classroom/Ensuring+Teacher+Su...

dpatru 16y ago

Unions are based on the idea that fungible "workers" need to unite against "management" to avoid being replaced with workers who will accept lower compensation. The primary interest of unions is to preserve for their members jobs that pay above-market compensation. The presence of teachers' unions means that teachers see teaching as an industrial factory job in a mature field where no more innovation is possible. Students in such a world are the products of the factory. They come into the school system at 5 years of age as unprocessed raw material and they exit 12 years later as high-school graduates, ready to take on a job. This whole mindset is wrong. The industrial-factory model of schools should be abolished. People, whether young (students) or old (teachers), are not fungible. They should not be viewed as factors in factory. They are not.

panarky 16y ago
This is a politically charged issue about union-busting that's not particularly relevant for HN. And since the article written by a political operative [1, 2], it's no surprise that he either avoids the main issue or fails to support his arguments with much evidence. [1] http://tcf.org/about/fellows/richard-d.-kahlenberg-senior-fellow http://tcf.org/about/fellows/richard-d.-kahlenberg-senior-fe... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_Foundation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_Foundation

js2 16y ago

For those who haven't seen it: http://www.mckinsey.com/App_Media/Reports/SSO/Worlds_School_Systems_Final.pdf http://www.mckinsey.com/App_Media/Reports/SSO/Worlds_School_... The experiences of these top school systems suggests that three things matter most: 1) getting the right people to become teachers, 2) developing them into effective instructors and, 3) ensuring that the system is able to deliver the best possible instruction for every child.

cheez 16y ago
Well then, the solution is obviously to throw more money at the problem! In the US, you spend $20K per student. I think part of the solution in the US is to tear down the whole system, go local and market-based.
- krschultz 16y ago
  Where did you pull that number? I went to high school in the state with the absolute highest spending per student (New Jersey) in one of the school districts that spent so much money per student we lost all state funding because the local taxes were paying so much, and we only were spending $8-9k per student.
  - cheez 16y ago
    I believe New York now admits to spending about $17K, which is not $20K (which I heard on TV last night). On average, it seems that it was around $10K 5 years ago. This would be a respectable amount IF the results, on average, were good. But they are not.

shou4577 16y ago

I think a lot of people have problems with teachers unions because they think of teaching like any other job. It's not - here are the important differences: Pay raises. It's a fantastic idea for a company to increase the pay of individuals based on performance. If individuals do well, the company does well and makes more money, and can therefore afford to pay the employees more, so this reward system is great. In schools, there is no profit. So if teachers do better, their students perform better, and the teachers should get paid more. But they don't, since this has not brought any more money into the school. In fact, if schools are doing well they are less likely to have their budgets increased, since people will see no need to increase the budget of something that is functioning well. This fixed-budget kind of thing is the root of the difference between the education system and private enterprise. In a business, if you are not making enough money (that is, if you have a spending problem), you cut back on things: often you may lay off employees. You will have fewer employees now, but since your business isn't doing well you probably have less work to do, so it can even out. Or, if it doesn't even out, your business closes down. Neither of these is true of education. Except for rare cases, it is unthinkable to close down a school. Obviously closing would bad for students and education in general, so it is avoided. More importantly, workload doesn't flex as easily in schools. That is, if you run into budget problems and have to cut teachers, the other teachers must work harder to pick up their slack, since the student body population remains unchanged. Thus it is in the interest of both the teachers and the students to keep budgetary layoffs to an absolute minimum. So what do you do with a tight budget? Who knows? Removing teachers decreases the effectiveness of education severely. So does the numerous other things I've seen schools do - stop providing textbooks, make the quality of food go down, shorten the school day, remove planning time of teachers, stop giving teachers their own offices, stop plowing the parking lot, etc. In other words, make schools suck in every way possible. I don't have a good solution for this, beyond the obvious "spend more on education". Personally, I think this is our best bet, but that money would have to come from somewhere else, and people are not willing to pay more taxes for it.

cheez 16y ago
Students doing well should not be an unexpected outcome.
16y ago

TomOfTTB 16y ago

The only real evidence they present is the Stanford study that found charter schools don't perform better than regular public schools. So their argument is that unions can't be the problem because charter schools don't have them and are doing just as bad. But that's a straw man. Charter schools allow for better management they don't guarantee it. So in the first few decades of a charter school system there will be a lot of bad ideas and a lot of good ideas. But the bad ideas will throw off the average. But the bottom line is at least the well managed charter schools can take steps to correct problems where as regular public schools can't because of union rules. Which is why some Charter schools do dramatically better.

krschultz 16y ago
You can't say that is why they do better. Maybe that is why they do better. In my experience with charter schools (tech magnet schools in NYC, Delware charter schools) entry is competitive. Of course charter schools will do better if their students start out smarter. And in other cases, it is at least elective. If your parents care enough about your education to sign you up for a charter school, aren't you already more likely to do well in school than the kids with parents who don't care that much?

hsmyers 16y ago

If you examine a school in terms of those who teach and those who don't excluding service personnel then you should quickly be able to understand who catches the money when they 'throw money' at the problem. In the long ago, even the principle taught classes--- same boat, everybody rows. Now the less useful (useless?) level of bureaucracy begins well down from the top of your typical school and extends all of the way up. Since demonization has already been going on for years, instead of attending to the real problem, Union busting (note that no one calls it that) is being pushed as the necessary silver bullet without regard to other problems (maybe even the real problem...) Now that many school systems can't afford textbooks (at least not one per student) removing teachers doesn't seem like a useful addition to the solution set.

iskander 16y ago

"Chancellor Joel Klein terminated only three teachers for incompetence between 2008 and 2010." This seems dishonest given how hard he tried-- only to be thwarted by a union which always closes ranks. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/31/090831fa_fact_brill http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/31/090831fa_fact_... http://gothamist.com/2011/01/30/joel_klein_easier_to_prosecute_a_ki.php http://gothamist.com/2011/01/30/joel_klein_easier_to_prosecu...