Kristof’s Misplaced War on Teacher Unions

For years, conservatives have routinely denounced teacher unions as the biggest problem in education.  Not poverty or segregation, which four decades of research have consistently found to be the number one and number two predictors of low performance.  Instead, the democratically-elected representatives of America’s teachers are to blame.  For the right wing, these attacks have been wrong-headed but politically rational: teacher unions forcefully oppose the right’s pet ideas (including publicly funded private school vouchers), and work hard to elect liberal candidates who pledge to devote greater resources to public education.  More recently, however, we’ve seen the rise of the liberal critic, who oddly regurgitates right wing talking points on teacher unions.  Nicholas Kristof’s column in this morning’s New York Times  is a prime example.

Kristof outlines three complaints about teacher unions: they block the expansion of charter schools; they perpetuate a system in which poor and minority kids get the worst teachers; and they protect incompetent educators from termination. 

On charter schools, unions are often resistant, but with good reason.  As a landmark study from the generally pro-charter Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University found, only 17% of charter schools outperform regular public schools.   High-flying charter schools like KIPP are the exception, and rely on a model – self-selected students, high rates of attrition, generous funding from philanthropists, and super-human efforts by young teachers without families – that is not scalable generally to high poverty schools.

Kristof is absolutely right to decry the fact that poor and minority students who are most in need of great teachers typically get the worst, but this is a systemic problem in education that cuts across states with strong unions and states with weak ones.  The central reason that poor kids in high poverty schools get worse teachers is that educators who have options generally prefer to teach in middle-class schools, where they spend less time on classroom management, receive strong parental support, and have colleagues who help them perfect their craft.  The maldistribution of good teachers won’t be solved by killing off teacher unions; it will be solved when we take steps to reduce the economic segregation of our public schools, as some 65 school districts are currently seeking to do.

Kristof is closer to the mark when he complains that some teacher unions protect incompetent teachers from termination.  That’s a genuine problem but one that needs to be addressed with a scalpel rather than an ax.  As I note in my biography of one of the founding fathers of modern teacher unions, Albert Shanker, teacher tenure protections were created for a reason: to keep administrators from firing teachers with whom they had personality conflicts, or who were senior (and therefore more expensive), or were pregnant.  Several districts, led by Toledo Ohio, have implemented “peer review” programs, in which master teachers evaluate colleagues, and try to help them improve their craft, but in some cases recommend termination.  In peer review programs, incompetent teachers are fired at a higher rate than in districts where administrators are in charge, in part because fourth grade teachers pay the price of a school’s having a lousy third grade teacher. 

As Kristof notes, teachers matter a great deal in education, and having a good teacher can make a world of difference for a child.  But that’s exactly why it’s important that teachers have democratically elected leadership to push for decent wages and respect for the profession.  Indeed, the American South, where teacher unions are weak, consistently and significantly lags behind Northern states, which have strong unions.  Critics will correctly note that performance is linked in large measure to the higher economic status of Northerners, but that’s precisely the point: addressing poverty (though programs like pre-K) is far more productive than bashing unions. 

Oddly, at the very end of his column, Kristof stumbles across a central problem in American education completely unrelated to teacher unions: “Half a century after Brown v. Board of Education,” he asks, “isn’t it time to end our ‘separate but equal’ school systems?”  Of course, the solution in Brown was ending segregation, not crippling teacher unions.  Here’s hoping Kristof’s next column is about a topic which research suggests is actually fundamental, rather than peripheral, to fighting the achievement gap. 

Comments

[Travis]

Not to mention that teachers unions have protected studnets from the rights greatest issue (read hair-brained idea) creationism. If adminstrators ruled unchecked the christian rights takeover of many school districts would be brainwashing children with their un-science all over our country.

[Pete]

Thanks for helping keep this in perspective.

I find it puzzling why reformers want to spend so much energy fighting unions. The teachers can be a powerful force for reform, if approached correctly. I've always thought teachers are more interested in having a good classroom environment, being able to teach successfully, than they are in the wages and benefits issues that a smaller core of union leaders emphasize to play to their assumed "base." Administrators and reformers who lead with "we should fire all the bad teachers" only play into their hands. Why not start first with going directly to teachers and working on the classroom environment - start where there may be some possibility of agreement and building trust. Is this naive?

[Richard Kahlenberg]

Pete,
The research bears out your view that teachers care more about working conditions than salary. That's why efforts to lure good teachers to high poverty schools through financial bonuses have generally failed. Better to try to connect low income students to good teachers through economically integrated schools.
Rick