LaborPains.org

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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An inquisitive reporter in Providence, RI, recently did some digging and discovered a small fortune sitting inside the State House. That small fortune goes by the name of Stephen Iannazzi, a 25-year-old college dropout who’s apparently qualified for an $88,112 salaried position at the State House.

Iannazzi isn’t just any college dropout. As the Providence Journal’s Edward Achorn reveals, Iannazzi is the well-connected son of a labor union leader who employs the son of a state senator. Got that?

Well, here’s Achorn’s research to help you follow the money train that young Stephen Iannazzi is riding on the taxpayers’ dime:

Donald Iannazzi, the business manager for Local 1033, the Laborers International Union affiliate that employs 30-year-old lawyer Charles Ruggerio. Charles is the son of Senator Ruggerio.

While Stephen’s qualifications may be on the thin side, his family’s political connections are not.

His father Donald received an annual salary of $212,658, plus $53,212 in “other compensation,” in 2009, according to Local’s 990-filing with the IRS as an organization exempt from paying federal tax. (Senator Ruggerio enjoys a $190,246-a-year compensation package from an arm of the Laborers International Union.)

The family’s employment in state offices and the mayor of Providence’s offices fans out from there.

According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Rhode Islanders earned $42,579 per capita in 2010.  It’d be interesting to see Governor Lincoln Chaffee and state leaders justify Stephen Iannazzi’s unjustifiable salary to the people of Rhode Island who are earning a lot less than $88,000.

As the old saying goes, “It’s not who you know, it’s what labor union you’re connected to.”

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.

Photo credit: Bill McBain

Don’t expect the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to turn a profit any time soon. Thanks to a multi-billion dollar contract that the financially challenged (to put it mildly) agency negotiated with its biggest labor union, the USPS is poised to keep on delivering losses as routinely as it delivers mail.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) thinks the agency’s contract with the American Postal Workers Union, originally intended to save USPS $3.8 billion over 4 ½ years,  will do exactly the opposite. From Bloomberg:

“This contract falls short,” Issa said at a hearing about the Postal Service’s labor costs. “We have deep concerns that some of the provisions of the contract may in fact be the wrong direction, to less flexibility, less ability to trim the workforce and less ability to in the future make the kinds of investments we need to make.”

In other words, the agency won’t be in the black for the foreseeable future.

Adding to USPS’ financial woes, Bloomberg reports that the agency indicates it will “run out of cash unless Congress permits it to delay a $5.5 billion payment, due Sept. 30, for health benefits for future retirees.” And here’s the kicker: “The labor costs include payments for those benefits.”

Despite this grim financial forecast for USPS, Postmaster General Patrick Donohue told the oversight committee that his budget-busting negotiations with the postal workers union represent, in his mind at least, “a responsible agreement.”

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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.

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.