LaborPains.org

Democrats took a severe beating last night, losing over 60 seats in the House of Representatives, and at least six Senate seats. Republicans also had momentous pick-ups among governors and state legislatures. Exit pollsters found that voters thought the government was too big and that they disliked Barack Obama’s agenda.

The results are very bad news for the country’s labor unions. Organized labor broke the bank this election season trying to stem the Republican tide. The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the largest public-sector union in the country, spent an astonishing $87.5 million to get Democrats elected, the biggest contribution in the race. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) donated another $44 million.

It made very little difference. Now comes the day after. Just how will America’s most lovable labor leaders try to rationalize their way out of this one? Some did better than others.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka:

“We did our job. No matter what demographic, you look at our membership, we had large margins for progressive candidates approaching 30, with Harry Reid it was higher. … I think [Democrats] are cognizant of what we did and if they aren’t they should pay heed to it.”

In other words, don’t blame us…or else.

SEIU President Mary Kay Henry:

“[W]e are looking to the new leaders elected tonight to show up in January ready to work for the American people — not for the agenda of the nameless, faceless corporations who poured hundreds of millions of dollars into our political process.”

I.e. please ignore the millions we pumped into campaigns.

United Food and Commercial Workers President Joe Hansen:

“In stark contrast to 2008, the election of 2010 will be remembered because the results were fueled not by hope, but by anger, frustration, and fear. … Empty and inflammatory rhetoric that derides health reform as ‘Obamacare’ and demonizes leaders as socialists will not right the imbalance in our economy or help working people make ends meet.”

In other words, we’re angry that you’re angry.

National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel:

“NEA stands ready to work with the new Congress to put students first and ensure that education is the engine that moves America forward. We will work with all policymakers to maximize the achievement, skills, opportunities and potential of all students, to make sure they are prepared to become creative and productive citizens in our democratic society and diverse world.”

Because the NEA is all about students, not teachers.

AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee:

“The loss of the U.S. House of Representatives is a real setback for working families. Washington Republicans have done nothing since the last election to curtail the Bush recession and bring down unemployment.”

It’s also a real setback for our wallets, which are feeling pretty empty this morning.

Whatever stages of grieving union leaders are at, soon the reality will set in.  With a Republican-controlled House, labor legislation will get very little traction over the next two years.

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.

It depends on what you mean by “work,” according to the American Enterprise Institute’s Rick Hess in a new, long piece for National Affairs. It’s an interesting, mildly wonky essay that is worth reading in full, but one point stands out: It’s hard to say whether or not school choice is working because we haven’t really implemented choice in ways that would allow it to work. More specifically, if we allowed school systems to run as a marketplace might — where failing schools lose dollars if kids are pulled out — instead of promising a steady level of funding despite failures, maybe we would see more success. As Hess puts it:

[R]eformers should foster genuine competition by arranging markets so that there are real consequences for competitive failure or success. One simple step would be to ensure that all of the dollars spent on students follow children when they change schools (the notion implicit in efforts to promote “weighted student funding” systems). Such a reform would entail stripping school districts of their hefty subsidies and of their monopolies over local school facilities. It would mean overhauling contracts and statutes that protect teacher jobs and seniority-driven pay scales — practices that leave school and district leaders without the tools needed to reward good teachers and penalize mediocrity. Real consequences for enrollment loss could help push educational leaders to start taking enrollment and parental preferences seriously when evaluating employees and doling out bonuses.

There’s more interesting stuff in here as well, especially regarding the way we talk about school reform. Instead of treating it like a regulatory matter (as we did with the airlines, the phone companies, etc.) we are treating it as a matter of “rights.” This, Hess argues, is a mistake — a mistake that you see echoes of in the recent ruling in Los Angeles that changes how tenure works. There, it was argued that firing teachers solely based on the amount of time that they’ve spent in the system was wrong because it gutted schools in poorer neighborhoods, thus denying the children there the right of a stable education, or some such. This “solution” dances around the real problem: tenure itself. Eliminating tenure, however, is a regulatory issue, not an issue of rights, which makes it hard to discuss due to the way the education reform debate has evolved.

Anyway, you should read the whole thing. Hess is one of the smartest education writers around, and his piece is sure to stir up some debate.

Not quite. Rapturous headlines are claiming that the system of seniority is as good as dead in the Los Angeles Unified School District, one of our nation’s most disastrous school systems. Writes the LA Times:

The Los Angeles Board of Education approved Tuesday what would be a landmark court settlement that radically limits the traditional practice of laying off teachers strictly on the basis of seniority. The agreement would cap the number of those dismissals at virtually all schools in the nation’s second-largest district.

Hey, that’s great! What are the details?

The agreement does not scrap seniority as a factor in layoffs. Rather, layoffs based on seniority would be distributed evenly among district schools. No school would lose a disproportionate number of instructors.

This marks a significant change because inexperienced teachers tend to be clustered in schools in low-income neighborhoods, putting those campuses at a disadvantage during every budget crisis. [My emphasis]

Oh. So this “landmark court settlement” doesn’t really get rid of tenure at all. It just spreads layoffs around the district more evenly. Well, at least now maybe they can get rid of teachers based on how well they perform, right?

Like virtually every other district in the state, L.A. Unified does not consider job performance in layoff decisions.

Huh. The bottom line is this:

Under the plan, teachers with fewer than two years’ experience would still be vulnerable. On the other hand, veteran teachers at some campuses could be laid off even as younger teachers at other schools are spared.

I really fail to see how this is some sort of landmark triumph against the evil of seniority. On the one hand it’s good that a successful, young teacher at one school might get saved because an older teacher is laid off elsewhere. But what about the less-young, still-successful teachers at these other, better schools who are still lacking in seniority? Why should they be sacrificed just because their less-successful colleague has more years within the district?

I suppose this is an improvement upon the current regime, which is just a joke. But is this really a great success? We need to get rid of seniority entirely: Workers don’t deserve to hold on to their job just because they’ve managed to keep breathing for decades.

Randi Weingarten has been making the rounds over the last couple of weeks, traveling the country in search of editorial boards and townhalls to talk to. Being a charming individual, she invariably comes off as reasonable; the standard response usually sounds something like this one from William McKenzie at the Dallas Morning News:

Before we get into details here, let me say that I found Weingarten an open, smart and energetic leader. Readers of this blog would know that I probably wouldn’t qualify as a teacher’s union guy, so I say that as someone who’s usually opposed to her in some fundamental ways. But she lacked the in-your-face quality that too many folks have in big debates, whether in education, foreign policy or health care. She’s informed, passionate and engaging. But she’s not dismissive, condescending or arrogant. Or at least that’s my reading, and, to me, that style goes a long way in today’s super-charged world.

McKenzie’s response isn’t terribly surprising. In person, Weingarten can come across as likable and passionate about education. It’s simply too bad that her actions have failed to match her rhetoric. On the one hand she talks about the need for reform, as she does in her pan of Waiting for Superman; on the other, she lambastes the LA Times for daring to release information about teacher effectiveness. On the one hand she charms William McKenzie; on the other, she fails to do anything while an AFT-affiliated teachers union in New York City fights to keep unemployed teachers on the payroll at a cost of $100+ million dollars to the city’s taxpayers. On the one hand, she admits that there are bad teachers; on the other, efforts to hold them accountable, as Washington, D.C., recently did, are met with threats of lawsuits.

I’ve brought Weingarten’s actions up before, but they’re worth highlighting again. Teachers unions aren’t going to be reliable partners for reform until their leadership begins to couple their big talk with big actions. I wouldn’t hold my breath on this happening anytime soon: Teachers unions have no real incentive to clear poor teachers out of the classroom, since they pay the same dues as everyone else. Unions would rather have small class sizes with more teachers (and, hence, more dues revenue to spend on election campaigns) than larger class sizes with fewer, better, more highly paid teachers.

There was a minor dustup over at the Huffington Post when Davis Guggenheim (the director of the pro-education reform documentary Waiting for “Superman”) was criticized by Dan Brown (not the author of The Da Vinci Code, but a schoolteacher) for offering gauzy platitudes instead of actual suggestions for reform.

Wrote Brown:

Guggenheim presents his teacher bona fides by mentioning his first documentary, The First Year, which followed rookie teachers. He opens and closes with a personal, emotionally-charged narrative that informs his above-reproach talking point (Teachers are very, very important). The essay, though, is light on the actual steps we need to take to recruit, develop, and retain a new generation of great teachers. …

His recommendations are so vague that many would-be reformers can and are using the same language to promote untested, potentially dangerous initiatives.

That’s fair, to a point. The problem is, every time someone suggests actual, concrete reforms, teachers unions tend to lose their minds. Consider what happened when the District of Columbia tried to utilize the IMPACT evaluation system to judge which teachers were “effective” and which teachers were “ineffective”: union head George Parker promptly threatened to file a class action lawsuit.

Or consider what happened when the Los Angeles Times performed a value-added analysis of teachers in the LA Unified School District and then made those results available to the public: The head of the AFT, Randi Weingarten, lambasted the paper for letting people know the quality of the their childrens’ teachers and the United Teachers of Los Angeles reacted by boycotting the newspaper and forming a picket line outside of its offices.

My point is a simple one: Why ask for concrete proposals if you’re going to fight every single one that’s offered? That’s what teachers unions and their leaders like Weingarten do; they make hazy proclamations about being in favor of reform and helping schools improve, yet when a school system or a reformer actually offers concrete reforms, they squeal like stuck pigs.

It was announced earlier this summer that 241 teachers were fired as a result of the DC Public School’s new IMPACT evaluation system. There was some confusion over how many of those teachers let go were actually deemed “ineffective”; the Washington Post’s Bill Turque has the breakdown:

In addition to the 75 teachers with “ineffective” scores, there are an additional 51.5 (there’s a part timer, I assume) “minimally effective” educators who were excessed — forced out by enrollment or program changes at their schools — and could not find other spots by Aug. 13.

So, at the end of the day, IMPACT led to 126.5 teacher firings.

So that’s a little more than half the number first thrown out by DC’s chancellor, Michelle Rhee. Of course, the Washington Teachers’ Union isn’t going to take this lying down – how dare someone suggest that teachers be held accountable for their performance! Hence the threatened lawsuits and appeals to the grievance process by WTU head George Parker.

Elsewhere in the Post, AEI’s Rick Hess was quoted as saying “Michelle could have been less divisive, but that would have required dialing back her efforts and her timetable.” According to Hess, “Too many superintendents move so slowly that, at the end of a six- or eight-year tenure, they accomplished only a fraction of what Michelle has thus far done.”

And there’s some question as to what will happen if Rhee leaves Washington in the event of an Adrian Fenty loss in next week’s mayoral election:

One vision of life after Rhee in D.C. schools holds that a switch in leadership would imperil progress. Gray has said he wants a chancellor who will continue to improve schools while closing rifts between the District and its teachers. But Rhee supporters question how much tension or pushback he would tolerate to continue the reform movement.

These supporters also say her departure would undermine a nascent but discernible growth in parent confidence in the school system, especially among young families. Enrollment has stabilized after decades of decline. Any new chancellor would need at least two full school years to assemble a team and produce real evidence of effectiveness. That would bring the city to the cusp of another mayoral election cycle.

Regardless of who the chancellor is this time next year, let’s hope that their focus remains squarely on improving the District’s public schools and pursuing reform.

If you follow teachers unions long enough, one of the odder things you’ll notice is that almost as often as a teachers union sues for firing lousy employees, they sue for hiring other employees. We see the latest example of that in Detroit this morning, where the Detroit Federation of Teachers has sued to block the hiring of new teachers at 50-some Detroit schools. From the Detroit News:

Detroit Public Schools’ teachers union filed suit Wednesday, claiming the district didn’t comply with the collective bargaining agreement when hiring teachers this summer for priority schools.

The allegations of contract violations could impact the staffing choices particularly at 40 low-performing schools that had significant staff shake-ups this summer in effort to comply with state education reforms. The union is also challenging the hiring of the 20 to 30 Teach for America candidates. …

Johnson said the district hired teachers from outside the district for slots that should have been filled by qualified union teachers who were laid off. He also contends union leaders were not part of the selection committee, as agreed upon, and instead allowed the principals to make the hiring decisions. As a result, qualified teachers who wanted to remain at the priority schools were not hired back, Johnson said.

Emphasis mine. What you see here is the union pushing back because they want the waltz to continue. “The Dance of the Lemons” is a phrase you can expect to hear more of in the coming months; it refers to the practice of shuffling bad teachers from school to school due to the difficulty it takes to fire a poor educator. The LA Weekly had a good summary of the practice earlier this year:

Caprice Young, founder of the nonprofit California Charter Schools Association, was LAUSD school board president until 2003. She saw, behind closed doors, what the public can’t: the “dance of the lemons,” a term that broadly describes controversial tactics LAUSD utilizes to cope with tenured teachers who can’t teach but, under the current system, cannot be fired. Those tactics include not only paying them to leave, but quietly transferring bad teachers to other, unsuspecting schools or repeatedly and fruitlessly “retraining” them while they continue to teach, sometimes harming the educations of thousands of children.

This is why teachers sue so often when outsiders like excited, young grads from the Teach for America program are hired. Those spots should go to the problem educators, the union feels. They should go to teachers who don’t do a very good job and have been bounced from their previous school. Hopefully the music will stop soon.