LaborPains.org

Here at Labor Pains, we often talk about the political clout of unions, how they funnel millions upon millions of dollars into elections, the vast majority of which goes to Democratic candidates. But it’s not often that a union makes a power play this blatant:

A government studies teacher at Washington Irving High School in Manhattan is making his first run for elective office by taking on an incumbent who angered the teachers’ union. Twenty-year veteran teacher Gregg Lundahl says he entered the Democratic primary because East Side Assemblyman Jonathan Bing introduced a bill this year to get rid of the “last hired, first fired” policy in the event of teacher layoffs.

That’s right: A union-backed, union-approved, union member is running for office in an effort to roll back reforms and maintain the status quo for teachers unions.

It’s one thing for teachers unions to donate money. The American Federation of Teachers, for example, has donated $27.7 million to political campaigns over the last two decades, $27.4 million of which went to Democrats. In other words, literally 99 percent of their political donations went to Democratic candidates. The National Education Association isn’t much better: They have donated $30.6 million in the same timeframe, $28.5 million of which went to Democrats. That’s “only” 93 percent; compared to the AFT, they’re paragons of bipartisanship.

Still, there’s a difference between funding a candidate and putting one of your own on the ballot. One wonders what the voters will make of this situation.

The recent kerfuffle over the Los Angeles Times releasing scads of data on LA’s teachers has provided some interesting insights into how defenders of teachers unions think. The head of the LA teachers union, for example, said he was “outraged” that the Times would publish data revealing which teachers were effective and which teachers weren’t making the grade. The head of the American Federation of Teachers, meanwhile, said she was “disturbed” that teachers might now be held accountable by the public at large.

The Times has now released the entire database, and reactions from teachers have been mixed. Though a few thanked the Times for revealing that they needed improvement, others dug in their heels. “Guilty as charged,” wrote Elizabeth Ellen Snyder, one of the teachers who was evaluated. “I am proud to be ‘less effective’ than some of my peers because I chose to teach to the emotional and academic needs of my students.”

This comment is, at best, ludicrous, and, at worst, an indicative insight into the mindset of bad teachers and the unions that protect them who think they are above being judged based on their performance. It’s possible that Ms. Snyder has been unfairly maligned, but if she were truly teaching to the academic needs of your students, she wouldn’t have been rated poorly. Second of all, while her commitment to the emotional well-being of your charges is admirable, she shouldn’t use it as a crutch to explain your poor performance. Finally, why couldn’t she follow the footsteps of your fellow teachers who said that their ranking showed they “have more room for improvement,” as Monica L. Petit did?

It’s easy to see why teachers unions are fighting tooth and nail against the implementation of value-added analyses; they don’t want to show how many of their members are as stubborn as Ms. Snyder. But don’t the parents of our children deserve to know the quality of education their kids are receiving?

In his New York Times column today, Tom Friedman takes note of a documentary on education reform hitting theaters this fall. Waiting for Superman is the name of the film, and it comes from the Academy Award-winning director of An Inconvenient Truth, Davis Guggenheim. A taste of Friedman’s column:

There is a movement stirring in this country around education. From the explosion of new charter schools to the new teachers’ union contract in D.C., which will richly reward public school teachers who get their students to improve faster and weed out those who don’t, Americans are finally taking their education crisis seriously. If you don’t want to stand on your head, then just go to a theater near you after Sept. 24 and watch the new documentary “Waiting for Superman.” You’ll see just what I’m talking about. …

It is intolerable that in America today a bouncing bingo ball should determine a kid’s educational future, especially when there are plenty of schools that work and even more that are getting better. This movie is about the people trying to change that. The film’s core thesis is that for too long our public school system was built to serve adults, not kids. For too long we underpaid and undervalued our teachers and compensated them instead by giving them union perks. Over decades, though, those perks accumulated to prevent reform in too many districts. The best ones are now reforming, and the worst are facing challenges from charters.

Guggenheim’s documentary is just the latest in a series of stinging looks at the way teachers unions have tried to stifle reforms across the country. Last month in the Weekly Standard, I looked at Waiting for Superman and a pair of other documentaries, The Lottery and The Cartel. It seems that public opinion is rapidly turning the obstructionist tactics of the teachers union.

Waiting for Superman doesn’t hit theaters nationwide until October, and, like many documentaries, it might have trouble finding a home in theaters, regardless of its impressive pedigree. If you’re interested in bringing the movie to your town, make sure to go to http://www.waitingforsuperman.com and “pledge” to see it. The more people who do so, the better chance the film will get wider distribution.

What have we been saying at the Center for Union Facts for years? Rules that prevent incompetent employees from being dismissed are bad, because employers need to have flexibility to fire underperforming individuals. It’s good for consumers, it’s good for businesses, and it’s good for the economy.

We’re glad to see that the United Federation of Teachers agrees! But we’re sad to see that they only think they should have the ability to fire poor workers and that nobody else should:

In a move of stunning hypocrisy, the United Federation of Teachers axed one of its longtime employees — for trying to unionize the powerful labor organization’s own workers, it was charged yesterday.

Jim Callaghan, a veteran writer for the teachers union, told The Post he was booted from his $100,000-a-year job just two months after he informed UFT President Michael Mulgrew that he was trying to unionize some of his co-workers. …

“I told him I want to have the same rights that teachers have,” said Callaghan, 63, of Staten Island. “He told me he didn’t want that, that he wanted to be able to fire whoever he wanted to.

“Stunning hypocrisy” is right. Given the evidence that there are few things more detrimental to the development of a child than having a bad teacher, it’s imperative that school districts be given wider latitude to get poor-performing educators out of the classroom and away from our kids — the same kind of latitude that Mulgrew covets for his massively bureaucratic organization.

It’s pretty basic economics: When an organization grows too large to live within its means, it has to either a.) contract to a sustainable level, or b.) find new sources of revenue. Consider, for example, school districts: They have massively expanded the number of teachers in recent years — despite increases of only 22% in enrollment between 1990 and 2007, the number of teachers has risen 44% — and given their employees incredibly rich benefits (the average health care plan for a teacher costs Milwaukee $23,000, for example). And this doesn’t even begin to take into account pension plans and other retirement benefits.

In other words, school districts have promised too much money to too many people. They — and we, the citizens who fund them — simply don’t have the money to sustain this kind of largesse. So the school districts should shrink, right?

Wrong! Just as unions were being forced to think about making some minor concessions — like, say, giving up the Viagra in their health care plans — the federal government came along and bailed them out. Instead of having needed layoffs or reductions in benefits, the feds pumped billions of dollars into the system. The result?

In some cases, unions have prevented state and local governments from making needed cuts in their budgets. For example, earlier this year the Milwaukee School Board announced that it was laying off 428 teachers due to budget shortfalls. The average Milwaukee teacher receives only $56,000 per year in salary, but also gets a generous $40,000 in benefits, including a health care plan that costs $26,000 per family, compared to $14,500 for private employees. The school board sought to cut costs and to keep the teachers by implementing cuts in benefits. A proposed health care plan would have instituted co-pays expected to yield $47.2 million in savings, more than enough to save every teacher’s job. The union refused to bargain, instead opting for layoffs.

Why opt for layoffs when you know that your cronies on Capitol Hill and in the White House will just bail you out and keep the money flowing? Why make concessions when the feds will step in any time you run into a little bit of trouble? It’s impossible to bargain with unions when they have the unlimited backing of the federal government and legislators in their pocked who don’t care a whit about running up the national deficit.

A pair of political races in Florida are a microcosm of the battle being waged for the soul of our nation’s public school system. Sensing that he was on the verge of losing the Republican nomination for Senate, Charlie Crist opted to veto SB6 — a bill that would have brought massive reforms to Florida’s school systems — throwing his lot in with teachers unions and others opposed to reform. His opponent, Marco Rubio, has made that veto a central part of his campaign and raised $4.5 million in campaign funds last quarter.

The Republican candidate for governor, meanwhile, is promising that SB6 will not only return, it’ll be stronger than before. Bill McCollum announced his education platform last week, and it’s a doozy:

Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill McCollum announced his education platform Friday, saying he wants to make it easier to fire teachers by eliminating tenure and base their pay raises on classroom performance instead of seniority.

McCollum would also increase standards for teachers in the state’s voluntary pre-kindergarten program for 4 year olds, expand a program that gives corporations tax breaks for providing private school scholarships for low-income students and require most high school students to take at least one course online.

Politicians are finally starting to realize that tenure is a real and serious problem for our nation’s schools. Florida has become an interesting petri dish; it will be fascinating to see if Rubio and McCollum are able to translate their ideas for education reform into support from the public.

A new study from Mike Antonucci shows just where union dues are going: To fight against school reforms that will improve the quality of education for our nation’s children. Perhaps unsurprisingly, more money was spent per-teacher in Oregon ($357) and Colorado ($174) than anywhere else. I say unsurprisingly since there were a raft of reforms in both of these states that the higher ups in unions were committed to fighting (television time doesn’t come cheap, you know). More than $19 million in union dues were spent in just those two states by the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers to influence the political process.

Antonucci also lists some of the front groups that labor unions use to spread their messages. They donate money to left-leaning nonprofits like Media Matters, Americans United for Change, Center for American Progress, and other organizations dedicated to keep unions in power and in control of our nation’s schools.

Anyone who doubts the efficacy of these campaigns should read Antonucci’s take on South Dakota’s proposition 10:

In the smaller states, NEA’s political reach is perhaps best illustrated by the campaign against Measure 10 in South Dakota, a state not normally considered a union stronghold. The November 2008 initiative would have banned the use of tax money for campaigns or lobbying and restricted political contributions by government contractors.

NEA contributed $1.1 million to air TV ads against the measure. That amount of money goes a long way in a media market so small. NEA’s state affiliate, the South Dakota Education Association, has only 5,600 active members and could never have appropriated such a sum on its own. It would have required an additional assessment of almost $200 per member. Measure 10 was defeated, prompting its committee chairman to say, “We’ll be able to prepare accordingly next time knowing that the real opposition to ethics reform in South Dakota is NEA union officials back east.”

Campaigns like these are where union dues are going. You should really read Antonucci’s whole piece to see just how deep the problem runs.

Photo courtesy Cayusa.

There’s a fascinating and informative column at Slate today that explains how teacher tenure has evolved into the reform-killing obstruction that we know today. As Bryan Caplan explains, though tenure began as a way to protect teachers from being replaced for political reasons or at the whim of powerful families, it has become a guarantee of a job for life:

Until the early 20th century, teachers had few protections. According to anecdote, they were fired for flunking the children of powerful parents, holding unpopular views, or simply getting old. Politicians sometimes replaced teachers as part of the infamous spoils system. … [Today] most teachers are fired for misconduct rather than simple incompetence. The New York City School District, which employs more than 80,000 teachers terminated 25 tenured teachers during the 2008-09 school year. Just two of the firings were based solely on incompetence. Less than one-half of the districts surveyed in one study reported dismissing a teacher for poor performance in the previous five years.

Emphasis mine, because it’s pretty shocking, when you think about it. New York City’s schools aren’t exactly paragons of educational achievement, yet only two teachers in ’08-’09 were fired for not being good at their jobs. That is a crazy figure. And we have teacher tenure to blame for it.