Union

The initial impetus for this post comes from an article (which you can access by reading the title) about the role of the Teacher's Union in New York City. The article, by Steven Brill, details how the New York Federation of Teachers (NYFT) essentially wastes taxpayer money (I'm summarizing) because agreements worked out between the City of New York and the union has created a series of "rubber rooms" where teachers on probation wait until they either move on to a new job or they have a hearing on their "offense." If you haven't heard much about the New York City conundrum, it all came to a head with Mayor Michael Bloomberg's takeover of the city schools (because they were consistently "failing"). Appointing lawyer Joel Klein (who "understands" education because he taught for one year before going to Harvard law) to be his chancellor, they have battled the Teacher's Union about incompetent teachers, who Klein (and Brill, seemingly by how his argument is structured) are the number one reason that kids fail in the classroom. By the article's end, Brill is summoning the public to challenge the union (again, it seems) because these teachers who are in these rubber rooms (earning salary but doing nothing) are taking money away from "the children."

This brought a few thoughts to my head. I'm a former union rep, having served the Gresham-Barlow Education Association for the past two years. I have been a union defender of sorts since I joined my district, mainly because I worked in a school where there was no union, and that became a liability as a professional, since the principal had no checks on her authority. At the very least, I've found, a union can be a good check on an administration that either doesn't support a teacher (as in cases of academic freedom) or is trying to remove teachers for reasons other than competence issues.

Yet, I have seen how unions can be detrimental to the overall health of a system (not first hand). The issue at stake in NYC seems to be the protection of some incompetent teachers, and I do feel that the unions occasionally do this. The argument in favor of this is that by protecting those incompetent teachers, you guarantee protection of all the rest. It seems to have been an accepted norm, not only in NYC but also nationwide. To parents, this can be troubling. I know that as a parent myself that there are a few teachers coming down the road for my daughters that I don't want them having, and I know that if it weren't for union laws, those teachers would have been moved or dismissed. Since competition is so tight in this global marketplace, I'm unsure if the union mantra of protecting the guilty to protect the innocent can and should hold water anymore.

Additionally, local unions have been in hot water of late because of negotiating tactics in light of the recession. Most notably, North Clackamas District's union was blamed by teachers for not communicating that refusing a pay freeze could result in a loss of jobs for union members. When the North Clackamas district laid off 60 teachers (note: thanks to a union vote in North Clackamas, the district restored 43 of those jobs...news on the North Clackamas story can be accessed through http://www.kgw.com/education/localeducation/stories
/kgw_082309_education_north_clackamas_layoffs.10cccc7da.html ) Admittedly, I was nervous when my union adopted the same line in the spring, that they would not take a pay freeze until they got a guarantee that it would save jobs. While the issue did not come to a head in Gresham-Barlow as it did in North Clackamas, I was a little apprehensive about the strategy.

Yet, I examine this barrage against unions in the media and wonder still if they are being unfairly blamed for many of the ills of the educational system. I do find that Secretaries of Education, who were usually Superintendents, arrive in their positions with an adversarial attitude toward unions. I think that the idea of "competent teachers being the most significant factor in improving student achievement" can be misleading (and self-serving to a Joel Klein) because even superstar teachers face obstacles from their community, the media, parental involvement or lack of, or district support (technology...). Even in the North Clackamas situation, the blame being affixed to the union alone seems odd, because the district WAITED until the very end to announce it was laying off teachers as opposed to earlier in the summer (around the July 15th governor's economic forecast) or before the previous year was up. That fact seems to indicate the district could have known that it would be a media issue (especially in that district) and so sat on the lay offs for maximum impact. Maybe that makes them too devious, but it's worth questioning.

In all, I'm divided on the importance of unions in present day education. I'm not anti-union, and appreciative for all the work that my union does for me in protecting my rights as a teacher. But I can somewhat understand (especially if you read the New Yorker article) the animosity that unions create with parents and communities, and wonder if unions, as they presently exist, are really serving the way that they need to.