Discussion on Union Labor and Public Education (With No Real Connection to Renewable Energy)
My friend Cameron sent me a piece on union labor and public education, which spawned this conversation that some readers may find interesting (though it has nothing to do with clean energy).
Cameron: Imagine if all elementary schools were well-staffed with well-qualified and well-paid teachers of critical thinking and facilitators of creativity, and imagine if everyone who wanted to do so went to university, and got degrees in their chosen field (selected with effective guidance testing), and imagine if all had access to the best nutrition and healthcare, and sound financial advice… we’d be one kick-ass society in less than a generation!
Craig: We disagree on a few things (which is totally cool, btw). E.g., I don’t think that anyone is well served by the teacher’s unions. The net result is that it’s practically impossible to root out bad teachers — of which (trust me on this) there are many. When the budget cuts came to the California schools, guess whose jobs were preserved? Those with ability? No, those with seniority, regardless of the quality of their work. The overall quality of teachers went down even further.
Cameron: I agree that it’s ok that we disagree. We don’t disagree there, though – I do think unions in all workplaces are absolutely indispensable to collective bargaining (which I consider a basic human right), but I don’t agree at all with the enforcement of tenure exclusive of qualifications and performance. Experience should be a factor, but not decisively determinant. However, one also needs to be very careful about exactly how performance is judged as well.
Craig: Yes, and this is particularly difficult in the case of teaching. Are the best teachers the ones whose kids get the best test scores? Of course not. Are they the ones on their best behavior when they’re being observed by their peers? Even more laughable. It’s tricky business.
Cameron: I think one-on-one assesments of students’ critical thinking and imagination on the subject in question would be best. That would not be cheap.
Craig: Nor objective/quantifiable. It really is a very difficult task. But I’m quite certain that inserting the force of a labor union whose influence will make it more difficult to promote excellence and remove incompetence is not the way to a better education for our kids.
Cameron: I understand your position. However, certainly history and present experience show that free market and private enterprise ventures cannot be relied upon to perform better than public schools for all children.
Charter schools have a nasty habit of excluding challenging children, and private schools accept only those who can pay the high costs.
How would you reconcile your position with the collective bargaining rights of all workers, and still regain the high universal standards and excellent results we saw in the 60’s and 70’s?
Craig: I’m not sure. Maybe I don’t support the rights to collective bargaining in all circumstances.
I was thinking about this the other day. I sure am glad that my employees didn’t unionize when my marketing services company was at its zenith; I dodged a major bullet there. I paid people a fair wage, treated them well, gave them Christmas bonuses, healthcare, etc. But when someone turned out to be a bonehead, I fired them before they could do more damage. Had I not been able to do that, the entire value proposition to our clients would have suffered dramatically.
Now translate that into public education, and that’s what you have: a diminution of the quality of the product because the protection from ineptitude is reduced or eliminated altogether.
Cameron: I think your crucial point here is that you “paid people a fair wage, treated them well” – and in this I believe you were very often the exception as compared to that industry as a whole. As you know, our teachers are rather poorly paid, especially considering the intrinsic value of their job to society. This is mostly a result of round after round of budget cuts heaped on the backs of those to whom politicians are least accountable, which are in turn the result of massive tax breaks and loopholes granted to corporations and property owners (as well as a significant funneling off of funds that used to be dedicated to schools). However, it’s also due to a failure of districts to make sure that teachers’ pay keeps up with inflation even in times of sufficient revenue, and to make sure that schools are well equipped in the first instance so teachers don’t have to pay out of pocket for classroom materials.
It’s a tough nut to crack, and I don’t think it’s receiving near the attention it deserves. Depending on how you count it, we here in California (who used to be the envy of the world when it came to education from K12 through University) are now either 46th or 48th in per-pupil spending among the states of the union. We now spend more on (increasingly privatized) prisons than on schools – a trend that will accelerate if we fail to stop it.
As a chemistry and physics teacher who saw many competent science teachers in my 33 years of teaching at the high schoollevel, I can say emphatically that I saw more than a few incompetent teachers as well. The incompetence was IMO due to inadequate preparation in the discipline they were assigned to teach. The classic example is the biology teacher that can’t find a job in biology but did have a course in chemistry. Chemistry teachers with full certification are difficult to find. The qualified chemistry and physics teachers tend to be siphoned off by industry. Better pay for science and math teachers would help and has been demonstrated in a number of school districts. Houston TX comes to mind. But, there are smart chemistry and physics people who are not cut out to be teachers. No amount of money is going to make a good teacher out someone who can’t manage a classroom of adolescents effectively. I don’t think that is something that can be taught. It can be improved with practice but protecting the incompetent with union rules is not in the best interests of students. L
I totally agree. My daughter has had some really terrible teachers over the years, but most of those were proficient in the actual subject matter.
Btw, it’s for this reason that I personally make a much better tutor than classroom teacher. I don’t have the “chops” to handle roomful of young people — many of whom really don’t want to be there. Good teaching is an art-form for which I have the highest respect.
Cameron: Your comment at the end about the trade-off between education and prisons is excellent. It’s very clear that our society has not internalized the old adage: “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”
Of course, I heartily share your respect for good teachers and for the great challenge they daily rise to meet. I also agree firmly that our society has lost sight of the pervasive and insidious costs of ignorance.
That pupil/prisoner trade-off – combined with the burning need to facilitate and enhance the global-class ability of our youth to transition to a competent and prosperous adulthood and make a place for themselves – is why the challenge is so vital to resolve.
My suggestion would be, first, to entirely replace the current haphazard and shoestring local/federal funding system with a national revenue stream from a small, flat percentage of tax on corporate revenue, individual revenue,
Second, combine this new revenue stream with similar percentages of existing property tax and new rent surcharges that would be paid by all child-rearing adults in the nation.
Then, finally, use that combined revenue to design and implement a national public education strategy and system, from preschool through university, that encompasses all the results-based best practices from the most successful (judged by the standards of critical thinking and imaginative students as well as subject knowledge) of all the best performing schools across the nation and – especially – worldwide.
Designers of the system must be eager to learn from all those that are succeeding brilliantly at stimulating the interest and imagination of students – whether or not that success is within our borders.
I disagree about the need or value of a one size fits all national education system. It needs to be tailored to the region and in some cases the individual school district.
For example, introductory chemistry should be tailored to the awareness and needs of the students. In Florida where I am presently located, I can see a need to include phosphate mining and its chemistry and environmental consequences in the curriculum. That is not a need in Wisconsin where I spend the summer. But, use of phosphate fertilizer on lawns leads talgae blooms on our lakes. Copper mining in northern Wisconsin creates a need for extensive copper chemistry in those districts.
The “No child left behind” and national curriculum standards have made it impossible to tailor the curriculum to the needs of the districts. Golden teachable moments are lost because of the need to teach to the test. L