LaborPains.org

The Albany Times Union has a must-read report today that demonstrates just how difficult it is to fire a misbehaving educator in New York state. How difficult? Teachers who were late 101 times, downloaded porn on their work computers, and beat students all remained on the job after a costly appeals process. The problem is so bad that many districts don’t even bring cases because of the cost:

according to a state Education Department database obtained by the Times Union through a Freedom of Information request, it appears to be nearly impossible for a school district to fire a tenured public school teacher. The reason is twofold: job protection for unionized teachers is strong and the process for firing bad teachers — called a 3020-a hearing — is so drawn out and costly that most districts can’t afford it. …

Though it has been well-documented that the cases drag on for years and can cost a district hundreds of thousands of dollars — they last an average of 502 days and cost $216,588 — the database shows that 3020-a hearings rarely result in termination. Of the more than 2,000 cases brought in the last five years, just 167 teachers were fired, the vast majority in New York City. Only 38 cases brought by schools districts upstate and on Long Island ended in termination, though a number are still undecided because it takes so long for a case to be completed. Statewide, 593 cases were simply settled and another 164 were withdrawn or consolidated.

Even though the New York City Department of Education employs about half as many teachers as the rest of the districts in the state, it brought twice as many 3020-a cases. The NYCDOE employs 70,000 full-time teachers and brought 1,356 such cases in the last five years, according to the database. On Long Island and in upstate, where there are a combined 132,000 teachers, districts brought just 731 cases.

Emphasis added, because it’s important point out that, over a five year period, only 38 of 132,000 teachers in upstate New York (i.e., teachers outside of New York City) were fired for any reason whatsoever. When people complain about union work rules serving as an impediment to reform, this is the kind of nonsense they’re talking about.

The head of the National Education Association recently told an interviewer that efforts to pay better teachers more money is “naive and shortsighted.” When asked for his solution, he opined: “what do we do about pay? There isn’t enough money there. The pie that’s available to distribute to teachers, it’s going to have to be bigger.”

Ah yes. The typical union solution: spend more money! He also criticized proponents of merit pay for implicitly wanting to keep ineffective teachers in the classroom — a pretty rich criticism for a guy who runs an organization dedicated to keeping ineffective teachers on the job.

But let’s look at the NEA’s proposed solution. If we spend more money on teachers, will the problem of ineffective educators protected by tenure and an endless appeals process just go away? It’s hard to see how: Over the last 50 years, adjusting for inflation and enrollment increases, spending on education has roughly tripled. Pouring more and more money into a broken system doesn’t seem to have done us much good.

Meanwhile, there’s no doubt that better teachers in classrooms result in better outcomes for students. Eric Hanushek, of Stanford University, has found that eliminating the bottom five to ten percent of teachers would lead to in-class gains capable of vaulting America to the top of the global rankings. On an individual level, Hanushek has found that a good teacher can be worth as much as $400,000 in increased individual student earnings over the course of their career.

Is merit pay necessarily the best way to attract better teachers into the classroom? That’s the bottom line here. It would undoubtedly make the profession more enticing to those who are motivated by working in a professional environment. As it is, the unions want to treat teachers like interchangeable cogs, paid more for earning seniority or master’s degrees (neither of which has an impact on teacher excellence) while ignoring the advancement of students. As Terry Moe puts it in Special Interest, this “bears no resemblance to the way doctors, lawyers, business managers, and other professionals are paid” and “undermines the productivity of schools: by paying good teachers and bad teachers the same, wasting huge amounts of money on criteria that are irrelevant to student performance, and restricting what teachers do in the workplace.”

Is merit pay “naive”? Here’s a better question: Was Einstein right when he said that doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different outcome (i.e., pouring more money into the black hole that is our education system) is the definition of insanity?

(Photo via Wet Napkin)

In a rare moment of candor, the Connecticut chapter of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) accidentally let anyone with an Internet see how they feel about “parent trigger” laws, and how they intend to fight them. From the Courant:

Lawmakers and parent advocates who played a crucial role in the passage last year of parent empowerment legislation reacted with outrage and concern Thursday to a PowerPoint presentation by a teachers union. …

Titled “How Connecticut Diffused The Parent Trigger,” it outlined how the union pressured state legislators to kill the bill, dragged the Connecticut Education Association “along kicking and screaming” to a compromise, and ultimately “stopped the parent trigger and turned it into a vehicle for collaborative success.”

For the uninitiated, “parent trigger” laws allow parents to vote in favor of having a school turned over to enact various changes, up to and including closing the school or turning it over to a charter operator. Teachers unions don’t like the laws, as they reduce the union’s power and might lead to a reduction in their ranks, but they don’t want to come off as entirely antagonistic to reform. So what do they do? They obfuscate the issue and defeat legislators who won’t bend to their will. To wit:

The Connecticut law calls for parents to hold the majority of seats on school governance councils. If their school hasn’t made progress for three consecutive years under federal No Child Left Behind guidelines, they can vote to recommend changes, including the reconstitution of schools.

The PowerPoint presentation also pointed out that the governance councils “are advisory and do not have true governing authority.” …

Under the heading of “Karma,” the presentation also noted that state Rep. Jason Bartlett, the original parent trigger bill’s chief legislative proponent, lost his 2010 re-election bid. Also, the presentation noted, state Rep. Andrew Fleischmann, co-chair of the legislature’s education committee, lost his bid for the House majority leader’s position and fractured his relationship with the legislature’s Black and Puerto Rican Caucus on education issues as a result of the union’s efforts.

Emphasis mine. Needless to say, the PowerPoint presentation that precipitated this outcry was promptly removed from the AFT’s website. We can’t let people know what’s really going on, can we?

Photo via Curtis Gregory Perry’s Flickr account.

For Immediate Release
July 8, 2011
Center for Union Facts
For More Information, Contact:
Sonny Bunch, 202-463-7106

Center for Union Facts Applauds Utah’s Move Towards Merit Pay,
Asks “What Is the Utah Education Association Afraid Of?”

State Teachers Union Planning Rallies to Oppose Paying Teachers More Based on Merit

Washington D.C.— Today, the Center for Union Facts applauded the Ogden School District for pushing for the gradual introduction of merit pay in the school district, and questioned why the state’s teachers unions were so scared by the idea of paying their members according to the quality of their work.

“Merit pay is one of the best ways to attract a higher class of candidates to the education profession,” said Sarah Longwell, the Communications Director of the Center for Union Facts. “Studies have shown that teacher quality is the most important in-class factor when it comes to student success. Instead of paying people simply for sticking around or getting a masters’ degree, we should pay people based on their talent and how well they educate our kids. In no other profession is pay tied less directly to success than in education.”

Longwell also questioned plans by the Utah Education Association to hold a rally next week protesting the move.

“What is the Utah Education Association afraid of?” Longwell asked. “Why are the unions worried about their members making more money if they perform more admirably? Teachers unions always say they’re interested in helping children, but it’s hard to see how encouraging mediocrity in the classroom is good for our kids,” Longwell added.

For more information or to schedule an interview with a CUF representative contact Sonny Bunch at 202-463-7106.

The Center for Union Facts is a non-profit organization supported by foundations, businesses, union members, and the general public. We are dedicated to showing Americans the facts about today’s union leadership.

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Teachers unions are obviously getting nervous about education reform. In an effort to get in front of the movement and lead it instead of standing athwart history, yelling “stop” (and getting trampled for the effort), both the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA) have released plans that they claim are good-faith efforts at “reform.”

“As more states and districts seek to improve teacher evaluation, the risk is that reform is done to teachers rather than with them,” said the head of the NEA in a statement accompanying the organization’s “Proposed Policy Statement on Teacher Evaluation and Accountability.” In a similar document released earlier this year, Randi Weingarten, the head of the AFT, released recommendations for “a procedure for teacher discipline that could be utilized as a framework for processing fairly and expeditiously allegations of teacher wrongdoing.”

Though both the AFT and the NEA proposals touch on issues of tenure, they are dealing with two entirely different subjects. The AFT is proposing a system that will, after a 100-day process replete with multiple hearings and meetings, allow for the termination of teachers guilty of “wrongdoing such as criminal offenses in the classroom, abusive practices toward students, and discrimination.” It quite explicitly ignores “allegations of teacher effectiveness.” The NEA proposal, on the other hand, is (supposedly) designed to improve the process of getting incompetent teachers out of the classroom.

These proposals come in reaction to nightmarish stories of dismissals that take years and cost school districts hundreds of thousands of dollars. Are they superior to the status quo?

Short answer? No, not at all. Longer answer? See below.

(more…)

Education reformers breathlessly announced a new deal in Illinois that received sign off from both politicians and the state’s biggest teachers unions. What does this bill do?

• It changes how teachers receive tenure. Instead of simply receiving tenure after several years of service, teachers can now get tenure by receiving “excellent” ratings for three years in a row, or by receiving satisfactory evaluations for four years.
• Requires a strike in Chicago to be approved by 75% of members instead of a simple majority.
• Requiring that layoffs be decided by teacher quality instead of length of service. Length of service will still serve as a tiebreaker.

And…that’s it.

Now, let’s be clear: This is better than the situation Illinois schools were faced with before. The elimination of “last in, first out” layoff procedures in particular is a great thing. There also appears to be a provision that might allow state superintendents to revoke the teachers license of any teacher who receives two unsatisfactory evaluations in a seven year period (we’ll see if that makes it into the final language of the bill).

But Chicago teachers will still be allowed to go on strike if, say, the city pushes for longer days. And teachers will still be able to get tenure in an amount of time that is only modestly longer than they could previously. Tenure will remain a problem, one that wraps school systems up in endless streams of red tape if they want to get rid of an incompetent educator.

Is this really good enough?

Photo via Flickr user mammal.

There is an interesting story in the Washington Post about the District of Columbia’s teacher evaluation system, known as “IMPACT.” The Washington Teachers’ Union hates IMPACT, as it allows administrators to more ably determine which teachers are succeeding and which teachers are failing — and gives schools a tool to get rid of the failing teachers.

What’s interesting about the Post piece is a conversation between a teacher and his evaluator at the end of the story. It neatly encapsulates the way that teachers unions and their members entirely miss the point of evaluation systems:

Bethel gave him the final score, which was low. If the trend continued, Harris realized, he could lose his job.

“It’s just — I don’t feel that I’m putting in ‘minimally effective’ effort at all,” he said.

For Bethel, this was most excruciating part of the job. He began shutting off his computer.

“This does not measure your effort,” he said, packing his bag. “But I do see your effort, Mr. Harris.”

“So — what is this measuring?” Harris asked.

“It’s measuring the effectiveness of that effort,” Bethel said. “This is not a reflection of your passion for education, your love for students. Not at all.”

Teachers unions often make the argument that their members are working as hard as they can and they shouldn’t be held accountable for their successes and failures — they should just get an “A For Effort” and continue moving up the pay scale and seniority ladder. This mentality has failed: Prior to the implementation of IMPACT, almost every Washington, D.C. teacher received a satisfactory rating and very few were fired for performance. What did that get our nation’s capital? Abysmal graduation rates and children who couldn’t read or do math. Giving effort is commendable, but getting results is what matters.

The American Federation of Teachers has been trying to make a difficult pivot for quite some time. Understanding that public sentiment against union excesses and the protection of bad teachers is on the rise, they have tried to paint themselves as reformers while also disputing the fact that “teacher tenure” is a codeword for “job for life.” So it was with some interest that I saw the head of the AFT, Randi Weingarten, make the following admission:

[Teacher tenure] has effectively become in some places a job for life, which is wrong.

(Of course, Weingarten and her union still aren’t in favor of scrapping tenure. They just want to amend it, slightly decreasing the amount of time it takes to fire a bad teacher.)

Back to my point: It’s interesting to see Weingarten finally admit that tenure is, indeed, effectively a “job for life.” Because for years now, she has adamantly and vehemently denied that was the case. Let’s go to the videotape!

“So tenure is, you know, let me do a little bit of myth busting here. One, tenure is not a job for life. What tenure is, is that … you get a hearing before you get fired.” Randi Weingarten, MSNBC, 1/13/2011

“It’s been repeated so often that many people think it’s true. Bad teachers cannot be fired because they have an ironclad fortress called tenure. It’s simply not so. Teachers do not and should not have a job for life. It’s a red herring to say that tenure keeps bad teachers in the classroom.” Randi Weingarten, CBS News Sunday Morning, 10/3/2010

“Tenure is, is simply — tenure is not supposed to be a job for life. All tenure is supposed to be is that if somebody is told that they’re not good, they have a hearing. That’s all it’s supposed to be.” Randi Weingarten, CNN, 3/12/2010

“There are some folks who think tenure means a job for life, which it does not mean.” Randi Weingarten, New York Post, 6/24/2009.

We’re glad that Weingarten has reversed her longstanding position that tenure is not an effective guarantee of a job for life. We just wish that she would join us in working to abolish the problem, not amend it. We need to get bad teachers out of the classroom, and quickly. Tenure and half-hearted measures of tenure “reform” stop that from happening.