Posted on 06/21/2011 2:35:06 PM PDT by rhema
A review of Special Interest: Teachers Unions and American Public Schools, by Terry M. Moe (Brookings Institution Press, 2011), 513 pp., $34.95
Seldom has the raw power and unbridled selfishness of teacher unions been more on display than it is today in state capitols around the country. Teachers led the union riot that shut down Wisconsin's state government for more than two weeks, making legislators afraid to enter government buildings while angry mobs defaced public property and shouted threats against elected officials.
Terry Moe, a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution and author of numerous books and studies on education policy, has written a highly insightful book about teacher unions and their impact on education policy.
The sheer volume and quality of information in Special Interest: Teachers Unions and American Public Schools make it a major and timely contribution to the debate. As one reads about how teacher unions operate, it becomes increasingly difficult to tolerate this state of affairs.
The book begins by telling the hard truth about unions: "As the most powerful group in American education, they use their power to promote [their] special interests-in collective bargaining, in politics-and this often leads them in to do things that are not good for the children or the schools."
The unspoken question is why we, as a society, put up with this. One answer might be the slow process by which we all acquiesced to their control.
Public school unionism originated in the "progressive" belief that the nation needed to first centralize, and then professionalize, the delivery of education. The National Education Association (NEA) was originally designed to be a tool of administration, not unionization. It was set up to improve the quality of teaching. This centralization, however, made it much easier for unions to organize, and they gradually gained the power necessary to subvert, and then control, the entire system. Had the nation's schools remained decentralized and independent, they would not have been so easy to unionize.
Moe demolishes many of the myths surrounding teachers and their unions. The most important of these is the myth that teachers are unhappy with their unions and yearn to shed their yoke. Not quite. Teachers strongly support their unions. Whereas 55 percent of teachers agree "tenure and teacher organizations make it too hard to weed out mediocre and incompetent teachers," the same group opposes removal of tenure, by a 77-to-23 margin.
Are school boards a check on unions? No, they are easily captured and controlled by unions, Moe shows. Local control is an artifice, not a fact.
Are teachers underpaid? Not when you take benefits and staffing demands into account.
Does collective bargaining increase the cost of education without any appreciable benefit for the student? Yes.
Is there such a thing as "reform unionism," where leaders are willing to cede some ground for the benefit of the children? No. Reformist union leaders are quickly cashiered, and any concessions are overturned by their successors.
The book shows teacher unions are an inexorable force imposing their will on education policy at the federal, state, and local level. Reforms and reformers are blocked at every turn by a political juggernaut built over decades and intricately designed to block reform.
The only good news comes in the closing chapter, where the author talks about two powerful forces undermining union power. The first, described as endogenous, is an internal battle of shifting political alliances, primarily in the Democratic Party. The second is exogenous, and it comes in the form of radical disruption by technological advances in the delivery of education. The slow economy, which portends declining resources for the education bureaucracy, is a force multiplier for both of these phenomena.
The political discussion is informative, but the impact of digital learning, online education, and technology-driven delivery is far more fascinating. The changing political landscape and economics alone would not be enough to defeat the unions' grip on education, Moe states. On the other hand, he argues, "education technology is a tsunami that is only beginning to swell." It can't arrive soon enough.
This brings me to my only complaint regarding this valuable and informative book. After detailing the havoc visited upon American children and taxpayers by unions, Moe says the coming changes "will happen gradually," with "much of it coming over two (or three) decades." Decades?! Why not two or three years?
As deeply researched, well-written, and informative as this book is, it is missing a sense of outrage that many of us working in the trenches of school reform have been feeling and expressing for years. Why should another generation or two of children be forced to attend poor-quality schools when we know, from books like this one, what the underlying causes are? Where is the outrage? It is time to challenge the moral legitimacy of teachers union power as President Ronald Reagan challenged the now-defunct USSR.
There are, in fact, reasons for optimism. Moe writes "the most potent and direct way to undermine the teachers unions' power, for example, is to pass new laws prohibiting collective bargaining in the public schools." He says "this is unlikely to happen." He apparently penned that concession before Wisconsin's new governor did exactly that. Ohio and Idaho have followed suit. And Utah has just passed an aggressive digital learning bill, with money following the child to the online providers.
Moe has given us the data and facts we need to take on teacher unions in the most important political battle of our lifetimes. It's up to us to supply the outrage.
I disagree. The most potent and direct way to undermine the teachers union's power is to go to a total voucher system, for everyone, not just poor minorities.
I do agree that technology advances is a real game-changer; but, putting parents in charge of their own chilren's education is the real way to change education.
Getting America's children out of the union shops that we still, mistakenly, refer to as schools is paramount if we care about the children's futures and the country's future. Once you free parents to spend education dollars for their own children, they will be more careful about where the money goes. Also, innovation will blossom.
The other benefit, which mayors and governors should be thinking about, is that this will be a cheaper way for states and municipalities to provide education. Vouchers to the parents for their children, and they are out of the business of having to "bargain" with union thugs, and provide lifelong benefits to the employees. It is a more free-market type of situation where the educators will be in charge of their own health care and retirement funds.
*
I teach. I am not in a union.
GET RID OF TEACHERS UNIONS!
Instead, enact tort reform against parents suing teachers/schools for non-criminal conduct.
Parents can sue you for “touching”, “intimidating”, or “insulting” your child. A parent tried to sue me for saying that “society projects the image that a black male can only get a job as a rapper or athlete” in my classroom, and a parent of a black student threatened to sue me! I told her to get a lawyer that is stupid enough to try that in court, and I never saw her again.
...the exposure of the rat slush fund and dismantling of the present day Democratic Party.
The best single act toward improving education in the United States would be to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education. And their SWAT team with it.
It is TIME to DownSize DC!
As a college teacher, I can tell you that education and unionism have incompatible goals and that education suffers dramatically under any form of collective enterprise, be it the union organization of teachers, the standardization of curriculum, or the centralization of school board authorities.
And while I agree 100% that technology and unsustainable union demands do not bode well for the future of educational unionism, I fear that the general population from which teachers unions seek support will remain positive in their support of union demands and continue to support political agendas friendly to educational unionism.
The most immediate way to bring the union to their knees is state legislative initiative to pass right to work laws that prohibit compulsory membership, dues checkoffs and other union security mechanisms that protect this educational cancer. If unions are so great, let them make it on their own.
ping
“Are teachers underpaid? Not when you take benefits and staffing demands into account.”
Teachers unions usually acquiesce to relatively modest salary increases because voters are alert to them. Obscene pensions and benefits are felt many years later and are easy to sneak in under the radar.
An even easier way is to remove the exemption from RICO laws that unions enjoy. Unions should not get a free pass on racketeering and extortion.
Heck, everyone knows that educated children are every bit as important to the NEA as quality autos are to the UAW.
An attack on the teachers unions can’t come too soon. They have our children in their grasp and given another generation or two, they will have the majority of voters indoctrinated. The teachers unions are a giant, rich, fat target for anyone wanting to name isolate and destroy them. My only fear is that our centralized planners in Washington already know that and have been infiltrating for 70 years. They will die on that hill to protect them. Denationalization {deunionization} of education could be the saving of America.
“The most potent and direct way to undermine the teachers union’s power is to go to a total voucher system, for everyone, not just poor minorities.”
I don’t like the way the targeted vouchers are being bandied about; taxpayers deserve school choice at least as much as those who contribute the least.
Here in NJ, a lot of untenured teachers have been let go, and they’ve started chipping away at the tenured ones with the least seniority, because the heavy hitters won’t grant concessions. Here in NJ the fall isn’t coming; it is already underway, thank God.
Wait until vouchers catch on.
Voucher proponents are missing a golden opportunity. With state budgets in the dumps, the argument should be made that vouchers would save the state money:
fewer buildings to maintain.
fewer schools to build.
fewer bus routes.
fewer employees.
And then theres the net outcome of a 5K voucher. If a state averages 10K per student, a 5K voucher gives the state a 5K surplus.
No way fossil,
Dept of education swat teams fanning out across the land storming the homes of those who default on their student loans. To shoot their Labrador retrievers.
I can see it now
They cannot fall fast enough or hard enough IMO.
If you did not see this, you should:
title:Video: SWAT team raids house over … unpaid student loans
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2731760/posts
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Now this is illuminating:
U.S. Department of Education Office of Inspector General
http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oig/ireports.html
THIS is where the insanity originated.
Look at the list of Investigations they have performed.....
UMMMMH UMMMMH MMMH!
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