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With the Indiana House passing right-to-work legislation, and the expected quick approval from the Senate and Gov. Mitch Daniels, Indiana might be the first, but possibly not the only state to trim back union influence this year. Other states including Minnesota and Rhode Island, to name a few, have joined the trend to scale back union influence in one way or another.

Minnesota’s 2012 legislative session began on Jan. 24, and interest in right-to-work legislation is already heating up. The Pioneer Press reports State Sen. Dave Thompson (R) plans to introduce legislation in the coming weeks, and the conservative think tank Center of the American Experiment released a report claiming if the state had prohibited closed union shops when the majority of other right-to-work states had, then on average Minnesota workers would have made from $2,260 to $3,072 more in 2008.

Providence Eye Witness News reports that Rhode Island State Sen. Nicholas Kettle (R) has plans to introduce a right-to-work bill for teachers. The current laws mandate public school teachers must pay union dues or agency fees as a condition of employment. “The National Education Association uses questionable tactics when dealing with our legislature… harming the reputation of many fine teachers and placing our children at the bottom of our priority list,” said Kettle.

While these bills may not find the same success as Indiana, they are sure to face the same critics – unions. In response to Kettle’s legislation in Rhode Island, NEA government relations director  Pat Crowley said, “The results are always the same: more profits for the 1%, more work for the 99%.” This is a bizarre response considering that giving teachers the option to opt out of union membership doesn’t create profits for anyone (though it would take money away from union leaders). If anything it could reduce the cost to the tax payer (the 99%).

Teacher unions around the country are taking the gloves off and aggressively attacking officials trying to reform the education system by reigning in costs and holding educators accountable through teacher evaluations.

While good teachers have nothing to fear – and may even receive a bonus – unions are standing up for bad teachers by making sure that they don’t have to undergo any scrutiny whatsoever.

Up North, Massachusetts’s largest teachers union plans to circumvent the democratic process and go to the courts. The Massachusetts Teachers Association has filed a lawsuit against the state for allowing a ballot initiative that may breakup the union’s monopoly, making a teacher’s performance, rather than years of service, the primary factor in deciding who should be laid off.

In the Empire State, United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew has rescinded his invitation to New York City education officials for training sessions on the new teacher evaluation system. This has only increased tensions between the union and Mayor Michael Bloomberg in the city’s effort to hold bad teachers accountable.

A proposed constitutional amendment in Missouri would prohibit tenure for teachers in that state. Under the amendment, districts would be required to use local performance standards for employment decisions that consider student performance, a notion that supporters argue would improve education. Under the proposal, school districts receiving public funding could not enter into new contracts with teachers for a period lasting more than three years.

The Louisiana Federation of Teachers and Louisiana Association of Educators both blasted Gov. Bobby Jindal’s proposal to expand the school voucher system and significantly change how teacher pay increases and tenure are applied.

“The coalition of the status quo will always say we need more time and more money,” Jindal’s communication director Kyle Plotkin said. “When we’re wasting almost a billion dollars on failing public schools, we don’t have any more time to waste.”

There is no reason for unions to protect bad teachers at the expense of good ones, other than maintaining an overinflated base from which to collect dues. Maybe if bad teachers focused more on teaching, rather than keeping their jobs through arcane labor agreements, unions wouldn’t be in this predicament.

Photo Credit: Ralph Alswang

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg made a strong stand against the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) in his State of the City address on Thursday.  With the city standing to lose up to $60 million in education grants due to the UFT’s resistance to teacher evaluations, Bloomberg wants to bypass the union with a bold plan.

Reforming the evaluation system has been a top priority for many districts since it is one of several prerequisites to receive federally sponsored Race to the Top funds. The union had agreed to work towards a new evaluation system, but UFT President Michael Mulgrew refused to give principals full authority to remove ineffective teachers and stalled existing disciplinary cases by failing to select arbitrators.

Rather than working with the union to develop a new evaluation system, which could possibly help replace 10 percent of teachers, the city will create school-based committees to evaluate teachers on merit and replace up to 50 percent of the current faculty if necessary. Under the new evaluation system teachers with a “highly effective” rating for two years in a row would receive a $20,000 raise per year. Not only would the new system help retain current exemplary teachers, but also in order to attract more high-quality teachers the city would pay up to $25,000 off student loans for college graduates who finish in the top quartile of their class to become teachers in New York.

In addition to evaluation reforms, Bloomberg also wants to close down ineffective schools and open 100 new schools, 50 of which would be charter schools, within two years. Twelve new career and technical schools would also open with extra money from private sources given to schools that have shown success graduating minority men.

Mayor Bloomberg appears to have an ally in Governor Cuomo, who also took a hard line against the teachers union in his State of the State address. Evaluation reform is one of the best ways to get rid of bad teachers, which with union interference is otherwise often impossible. It is incredibly encouraging to see Bloomberg and Cuomo take such a bold step towards desperately needed education reforms and away from malignant teachers unions.

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.

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