Larger Editorial: Defending Teacher Unions, the Most Misunderstood Organization in America

Blaming teacher unions for what’s wrong with public education is like blaming the coal miner’s union for the pollution a coal company causes. But yet, in everything from the worthless documentary Waiting for Superman—which faked an interest in probing what’s wrong with public education before taking the easy way out in blaming education unions—to the current fight for their life against the Republican Party, education unions all over America are being blamed for the very real problems in the faulty education system. There’s just one problem: they—along with teachers themselves—have nothing to do with it.

As someone who’s been a teacher and come from a line of them (mother’s a teacher, grandmother was one, etc.) I’d like to explain some of the charges against the unions and then tell the real problem.

“Our education system is failing because the education unions are holding them back.” Politicians say this but fail to specifically say how or in what way. Usually, the complaints are these…

Complaint: “If it wasn’t for the unions, we could fire all the bad teachers.”

You still can. If a teacher is really and truly bad, you can file all the proper paperwork and fire them from your school. You just have to have a reason and follow due process, something you should have to do for every job in America. What they’re really saying when they say this is fire all the expensive, veteran teachers from the classroom.

If a teacher has been teaching for 30 years they cost more than one just out of college. Then there are the ones that have been teaching 19 years and are within range of retirement, which is more expensive to provide than if they could just fire them for the flimsiest reason possible before they could retire. Basically, turning public education into one big Wal-Mart. Less jobs should be doing these shameful labor practices, not more.

Complaint: “Well we could at least pay the bad teachers less and the good teachers more without the unions making us pay everyone the same.”

Without the unions it wouldn’t be “pay the ‘good’ teachers more and the ‘bad’ teachers less,” it would be paying ALL teachers less. Without the strength of a union or collective bargaining, jobs have always paid non-unionized labor less. And anytime a politician has been able to, they’ve cut teacher wages, not increased them. Currently, AEA (the Alabama Education Association) has to fight for every penny it can get public schools to help pass a state education budget, and that includes teacher wages in a state that doesn’t really value them. My relatives have been teaching long enough to remember a time before the AEA, and teachers made such pitiful wages they could qualify for welfare. The benefits were equally laughable. Needless to say, they don’t want to go back to that.

Plus, what makes a teacher “bad” or “good” is impossible to determine. If you let the principals determine it at each school, they’ll favor their buddies and suck ups. If you go by SAT test scores for each teacher’s classroom—which many consider the “fairest” measurement—it’s still faulty because all teachers don’t begin the year with the same kids. A principal could stack the deck by giving one teacher lower performing kids than the others. We all know that all classes are not equal, and it’s usually very obvious which classes are favored.

Let’s say you’re a roofer and you built a house. Then the roof on that house caved in. You’d be a bad roofer, but the criteria for determining a good teacher is wildly subjective and dependent on external factors like how much a principal likes you, what kids you have, if they were even at grade level to begin with, if they could even read, what school you’re at, how much money that school spends on new equipment or what kind of discipline policies that school has, etc.

Complaint: “Well at least you would admit tenure is not good for schools, and encourages teachers to put in a lousy job performance.”

No I wouldn’t. I would say, again, that it protects veteran, more expensive teachers that might otherwise be fired before they could draw retirement to replaces them with younger, worse teachers that might not know their way around the same material. It’s about being cheaper, not necessarily better, and that’s not what’s best for the kids.

Also, it gives teachers more control over their own classrooms. For every veteran teacher I’ve seen phone it in after they’ve gotten tenure, I’ve seen three times as many more comfortable in their own classrooms. And that makes them more effective.

In the hyper political atmosphere of schools, scolding the wrong kid could realistically get you fired. Plus, the dirty secret is that schools don’t like hard teachers that really challenge their students. 9 times out of 10, when a principal is riding a teacher it’s not for being too lazy or incompetent, it’s for not passing enough kids or making their class too “hard.”

Complaint: Education unions are too political. That has nothing to do with teaching school.

This means they’re too Democrat. The National Education Association is the second largest national fundraiser for Democrats, and one of their biggest special interest groups. This is harder to defend except that it’s really easier. Teacher unions are political because everything is political.

No organization in this country doesn’t donate or promote certain political candidates over others. I don’t see why teacher unions shouldn’t donate to Democrat political candidates that support them but insurance companies should to Republican candidates. You could make a case that none of the largest political fundraisers in the United States—oil companies, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies—should be involved in politics but all of them are of course. Teachers and unions should have more of a say in politics than these other special interests because, you know, they’re doing actual government work.

Teacher unions favor Democrats because Republicans aren’t friendly to unions (they favor the cobra to union’s mongoose: corporations, which is why the top two donors to Democrats are the AFL-CIO and the NEA, both unions) and they aren’t really friendly to public education. For years, their idea of improving public schools is by destroying them. They favor private school vouchers and charter schools to take all the smartest or wealthiest kids out of a public school. That takes the money each school gets for that kid with them, boosting that school’s dropout/illiteracy rate, and lowering that public school’s SAT test scores. All of which determine how much federal money a school gets, thus making sure each public school gets more underfunded and worse.

Complaint: “Even if everything you’re saying is true” and it is “we just can’t pay for all the unionized teachers anymore”

First off, that argument is admitting wages and benefits would be slashed if you dismantled the unions. And secondly, politicians can afford unionized teachers, but they won’t be able to give as large a corporate tax cut to their campaign contributors.

All over the country, Republican Governors and state legislatures—Florida, Ohio, the infamous Wisconsin Governor—are cutting teacher pay to fund corporate tax cuts. “Reallocating” (a polished turd version of the word steal) what should be teacher retirement and benefits to “balance a budget” that they promptly unbalance by giving away these funds in corporate tax cuts. [For its part, the AEA has fought a Republican takeover of teacher retirement and benefits (something that didn’t work out too well for the private sector’s 401k’s during the economic crash of 2008) for years. Needless to say Wall Street might not care as much about teachers in rural Alabama—they make a profit whether you do or not—as actual retired teachers that currently make up the retirement board.]

Republicans say “Those tax cuts create jobs,” but that’s rarely a given in a 2011 global economy where corporations and wealthy individuals aren’t guaranteed to spend that money in the United States, possibly taking that tax cut and creating jobs…in China. Since education is one of the few industries you can’t outsource and are a basic government service, those jobs have to be the priority. It also doesn’t hurt that they’re better jobs. If the tax cuts are used to create 12,000 a year jobs—the actual amount I made when I worked at Wal-Mart—that qualify you for welfare, then decent paying teaching jobs with benefits have to take precedent.

The math is pretty simple. Republican campaigns are funded largely by corporate money. That’s not knocking them necessarily, that’s just the truth. 7 of the 10 largest campaign fundraisers in 2010 were corporations and they all donated to Republicans. The three that weren’t corporations were unions and they all donated to Democrats. So when Republicans get a chance to cut education, they do to provide tax cuts to their fundraisers. When Democrats get a chance to please their fundraisers—teacher unions—they give teachers a raise and close some corporate tax loopholes to do it.

Some teachers have said “Well why don’t we just get rid of our unions, and Republicans won’t have a reason to go after us?” Because as an individual teacher with no collective bargaining power, no real money to donate to campaigns, and no presence in the state house you won’t be of any use to them. They’ll put the squeeze on you anyway, and even more so without political muscle to stop them.

Now don’t get me wrong, public education does have some very real problems in it. It’s just that in their rush to scapegoat teacher unions no one is talking about them.

Instead of tenure ruining the schools, it’s bad government policies like the universally hated No Child Left Behind—which should be thrown in a trash can tomorrow—as well as the general thinking that a bad teacher is one that can’t get their student on grade level, even if that student didn’t begin the year being able to read, write, or do basic math. If a fifth grade teacher finds out one of their students is nowhere near fifth grade level, but holds them back a year, it’s that teacher who is seen as the problem. Teachers pass kids they know can’t do the work because they’ll be fired if they don’t by principals that will be fired by superintendants that will be fired by state superintendants that will be fired by department of education honchos, etc. It goes all the way up to the federal level where certain schools are given more money if they reach certain goals, and one of those goals is less kids failing a grade.

Instead of teachers being too expensive, the fat is in school administration. There are unnecessary and redundant layers of school administration. All of them cushy, high paying jobs making double to triple an individual teacher’s salary. I’m not just talking principal salaries, because in education, for every job you see is three you don’t: special education coordinators, central office clerks, bus shop supervisors, assistant superintendants, speech coordinators, counseling supervisors, etc. The actual list is endless, and if a county has more than one school system in it, all of these jobs exist in multiple systems for a single county. Problem is that school administration is the last thing to get cut when it comes time to pull out the scissors.

Instead of teachers being either wonderful or terrible, all studies done on this topic say the number one factor for a child’s success in the classroom is parental involvement. Teachers in 2011 have never had less discipline over their classroom—it’s not their fault, they just can’t truly do anything to a kid but yell at them, and sometimes not even that—so it’s up to parents to tell their kids to behave at school. NOT hope a principal spanks their kid or a teacher embarrasses them so they can file a lawsuit against the school. It’s also up to them to care one way or the other if their child can read or does their homework. A teacher can only assign it and hope the kid brings it in the next day. We can’t truly make them do it if they refuse or give them an F if they don’t because we can’t fail them. If you don’t care if your child can read, why would your child care?

Ultimately, people are right to say education unions are holding teachers back. They’re holding them back from poverty. And you can’t put kids first by putting teachers last.