LaborPains.org

I love every single sentence of this story. You simply must click through to read the whole thing. Some choice bits:

Cops booted an unruly group of city teachers union officials from a posh Albany eatery after they caused a ruckus over their dinner tab, the Daily News has learned.

Paul Egan, the union’s political and legislative director, set off the fracas – claiming the quail he was served, and finished, wasn’t large enough – sources said.

After being convinced by the fuzz to pay his tab, Egan then tried to figure out if he could stiff the working Joes who manned his party’s three tables:

Officers told Egan the dispute was a civil matter and ordered him to pay the bill – to which he followed up by asking if he was required to leave a tip, sources said.

Ah, union bosses. Friends of the working man! Perhaps the best part of this story is that Egan has actually done this before:

“He’s done this more than once, though he never got escorted out by the police before that I know of,” the source said.

The source recounted Egan loudly complaining during a Christmas-time lunch that he didn’t get enough meatloaf and mashed potatoes.

Photo via MissTessmacher.

We’re often told that to get better educational outcomes, we just need to spend more money. If we opened up the pocketbooks a little more, we’d see things turn around.

Unfortunately, throwing more money at the problem won’t solve anything. Until recently, the United States increased spending on education virtually every year on a per-student basis. As the American Enterprise Institute’s Rick Hess noted in the introduction to a Stretching the School Dollar, a collection of essays on education reform he edited, “Per-pupil spending today is roughly double (in inflation-adjusted terms) what it was in 1983.” Test scores, however, have stagnated.

You can see this dynamic at work in individual states. Consider Wyoming. Wyoming has the sixth-highest per-pupil spending rate on education of any state at $13,840. When cost of living is taken into account, Wyoming actually ranks first. We can all agree that Wyoming is spending a lot of money on education.

Yet Wyoming’s educational outcomes are, at best, average. They rank 27th in graduation rate, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). ACT Inc., which administers the ACT test, reports that only 17 percent of Wyoming students who took their college entrance exam met the benchmark for college readiness in English, math, reading and science. Education Week gave Wyoming a D-plus for K-12 achievement despite giving them an A for spending. We can all agree that Wyoming’s public schools are lacking when it comes to results.

Studies have shown that the most important in-class factor when it comes to student achievement isn’t higher spending or smaller class sizes or any of the other “reforms” that teachers unions argue for. No, the most important factor is teacher effectiveness. Having an effective teacher two to three years in a row can even overcome achievement gaps seen between races and economic gaps. Hoover’s Eric Hanushek estimates that replacing the bottom six to ten percent of teachers with competent educators would spring the United States into the top ranks of international testing.

I didn’t pick Wyoming at random: That state’s legislature is currently considering a parcel of education reform bills that would amend “tenure” — the cumbersome process of replacing an ineffective teacher that can take months and cost tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees — and allow administrators more leeway in getting rid of bad teachers. Wyoming has finally realized that throwing more money at America’s education problem isn’t the answer — getting bad teachers out of the classroom and good teachers into the classroom is.

Unfortunately, the Wyoming Education Association is pushing back, and legislators have inserted language into the bill that weakens it. Instead of being able to fire teachers for “any reason not specifically prohibited by law” — i.e., for racially or sexually discriminatory reasons — the law proposes that administrators must have “good or just cause” to fire a teacher. While that sounds reasonable, the fuzziness of the phrase “good or just cause” (and the lack of legal definition as to what constitutes “good or just cause”) means that there will still be months of hearings at great expense to school districts to get an ineffective teacher out of the classroom. In other words, not very much will have changed.

It’s time for Wyoming to step up for their kids. To learn more about what’s going on in the Cowboy State, check out our new webpage, StepUpWyoming.com.

Yesterday, the New Jersey Education Association breathlessly announced that they were holding a press conference today to announce a bold new plan that would streamline the process required to remove teachers from classrooms. Today, they revealed their plan. No, they’re not getting rid of tenure or making it easier to fire a bad teacher. Instead, they want to take tenure cases out of the courts and hand them to arbitrators.

Pardon me for being underwhelmed.

In theory, it’s not a terrible idea. The court system is by no means the ideal place to settle disputes between bosses who want to fire incompetent employees and incompetent employees who think that they deserve to have a job for life and shouldn’t be held accountable for their failures. In practice, however, arbitration is just as complicated, time-consuming, and expensive as using the court system. Remember the infamous “rubber rooms” in New York City? They came about because of the slow nature of arbitration proceedings. From the definitive New Yorker piece on rubber rooms:

When the bill for the arbitrator is added to the cost of the city’s lawyers and court reporters and the time spent in court by the principal and the assistant principal, Mohammed’s case will probably have cost the city and the state (which pays the arbitrator) about four hundred thousand dollars.

Nor is it by any means certain that, as a result of that investment, New York taxpayers will have to stop paying Mohammed’s salary, eighty-five thousand dollars a year. Arbitrators have so far proved reluctant to dismiss teachers for incompetence. Siegel, who is serving his second one-year term as an arbitrator and is paid fourteen hundred dollars for each day he works on a hearing, estimates that he has heard “maybe fifteen” cases. “Most of my decisions are compromises, such as fines,” he said. “So it’s hard to tell who won or lost.” Has he ever terminated anyone solely for incompetence? “I don’t think so,” he said. In fact, in the past two years arbitrators have terminated only two teachers for incompetence alone, and only six others in cases where, according to the Department of Education, the main charge was incompetence.

Klein’s explanation is that “most arbitrators are not inclined to dismiss a teacher, because they have to get approved again every year by the union, and the union keeps a scorecard.” (Weingarten denies that the union keeps a scorecard.)

This is the reform that the NJEA thinks is going to make all the difference in the world? The introduction of arbitrators? Either the NJEA is stupid or they think that we’re stupid. It’s no wonder that NJ Gov. Chris Christie has been running circles around them.

The leaders of teachers unions often say that they want to help kids. Somehow, they’re just looking out for the young ones by blocking reforms like merit pay and changes to tenure. And by putting $25 million in federal funding at risk because they don’t want to work a full week:

That announcement was made this afternoon by Grand Rapids school administrators, who said they failed to reach a labor agreement with the teachers union to implement turnaround plans in five troubled city schools.

The failure jeopardizes a $25 million federal school improvement grant available to the district, administrators said. The state had set today as a deadline for submitting turnaround plans.

Requiring teachers in those five schools to move to a 40-hour work week, up from 33.6 hours, was a main sticking point, board President Senita Lenear revealed today.

Teachers unions are doing it for the kids! That’s why they’re instituting “work to rule” in cities with labor strife across the country, right? Like in Detroit:

The president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers has instructed some teachers to stop writing lesson plans, stop grading students and to not attend parent-teacher conferences.

Or in Berkshire, Massachusetts:

The 600-member United Teachers of Pittsfield (UEP) voted on and are now under a “work to rule” provision in an effort the union hopes will jump-start negotiations, according to union president Scott Eldridge. Teachers who work to rule strictly follow the terms of the previous contract and don’t volunteer to provide extra help for students or work on school activities beyond what is required of them in that contract.

But hey, I guess we should just take Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, at her word when she says that “We are doing our part to help kids succeed.” Because nothing screams success like doing the bare minimum amount of work, right?

Cognitive dissonance is the holding of two diametrically opposed ideas at the same time and believing both of them equally. I think of this phrase often when confronted by the demands of teachers unions. On the one hand, the unions believe that teachers are incredibly important to the development of children — that they are dedicated educators who can change the lives of any child through their efforts.* On the other, unions resist methods to judge the efficacy of educators because, they claim, factors for success in school have little to do with what goes on in the classroom and everything to do with factors out of their members’ control: poverty, parental involvement, and other factors are more important, they claim.

In other words: Pay teachers more because they’re incredibly important, but don’t hold them accountable because they’re not really that important. This is textbook cognitive dissonance.

I again thought of that phrase while reading this satirical “apology” from a teacher who received a poor evaluation. He sarcastically complains

If the “complex rubrics” cost this guy his job, I wouldn’t shed a tear. Would you?

*For the record: I totally agree with this sentiment. A good teacher can work miracles.

Here’s an interesting essay from a teacher on the front lines. He’s a Republican teacher in New Jersey who is disgusted by the way union officials demand that teachers vote how they are told by union bosses. Writes the anonymous teacher:

I had the displeasure of being a NJEA member. Having been born to a father that was a Teamster and believing in unions all of my life, I was in for a rude awakening. After an election the union representatives at my school actually had the audacity to ask me, “Did you vote the way we wanted you to vote?”  It was understood that because I was a teacher I was a rubber stamp for the union team.  My response was, “Maybe I did, and maybe I didn’t.”  I was appalled at the openness with which they tried to sway my vote because I am a teacher. Not all teachers are Democrats. I worked with many teachers at this district who were closet Republicans.

You should read the whole thing.

I’m willing to consider the notion that teaching is a profession that is more likely to attract Democrats than Republicans. I am not willing, however, to buy into the idea that 93 percent of National Education Association members are Democrats. I find it even more ludicrous that the American Federation of Teachers thinks that 99 percent of its members’ dues deserve to go to Democratic candidates. Do these unions really think they are representing the makeup of their memberships?

The leadership of teachers unions don’t represent the rank and file. They act as little more than a conduit to funnel money to their friends and allies in Congress. It’s a ridiculous situation, and one that needs to stop.

That is the headline of an excellent new op-ed from Eric Hanushek, one of the leading proponents of school reform. He makes a point that people sometimes miss: School reformers focus on teachers unions because they are an unambiguous impediment to reform. But it’s hard to focus your scorn on teachers unions without coming across as opposed to teachers of all stripes. Reformers like Hanushek don’t hate teachers. They dislike what the teachers unions are doing. As he puts it,

The typical teacher is both hard-working and effective. But if we could replace the bottom 5%-10% of teachers with an average teacher—not a superstar—we could dramatically improve student achievement. The U.S. could move from below average in international comparisons to near the top.

Teachers unions say they don’t want bad teachers in the classrooms, but then they assert that we can’t adequately judge teachers and they act to defend them all. Thus unions defend teachers in “rubber rooms”— where they are sent after being accused of improper behavior or found to be extraordinarily ineffective—on the grounds that due process rights require such treatment.

Bad teachers need to be removed from classrooms. This isn’t an anti-teacher stance: It’s common sense. But teachers unions are, by design, required to defend teachers good and bad. Hence their resistance to efforts to introduce objective evaluation standards: Without a way to judge people, they can argue that it’s impossible to tell who’s good and who’s bad, therefore no one should be fired. It’s an ingenious gambit in its own perverse way.

Though many had hoped that fiery school reformer Michelle Rhee would remain at the head of Washington, D.C.’s public school system in the wake of her boss’s loss to Vince Gray in the Democratic mayoral primary, it is not to be. Effective the end of this month, Rhee is stepping down. She will be replaced by Kaya Henderson, a deputy who shares her vision for reform, on an interim basis.

It’s hard to say what this means for reform. Gray was elected with a ton of help from the Washington Teachers’ Union and American Federation of Teachers, and this move is almost certainly payback for that support. Where does reform go from here? Will Henderson be able to pursue reform with the same vigor as Rhee? Is this a warning to others who might pursue similar reforms in other struggling systems?

The other question is what will happen to Rhee. Will she take her talents to New Jersey, where Gov. Chris Christie is in constant conflict with the teachers union? Will she step into the Obama administration? Will she run for office herself? If you’re interested, you can follow Rhee on Twitter, on Facebook, or at her brand new website.