Obama may make parents a stronger player in education

This from the Providence Journal:

Last summer, presidential candidate Barack Obama addressed the National Education Association’s annual convention, by way of video stream projected onto
a big screen. A YouTube version of the speech, with reaction shots of the massive audience of teachers union delegates, was posted soon after the July 5 event. It’s still up, if you’re curious. It has surprises. It gave me some hope.

The National Education Association, together with its smaller sister organization, the American Federation of Teachers, represents arguably the single largest Democratic voting bloc in the country. Historically, Democratic candidates have fawned over the NEA without reservation.

The Clintons drove me nuts with their tight relations with the teachers unions. I understand that politicians have to get enough votes to be elected before they can be the marvelous leaders they claim they will be. But again, historically the Democratic pols, especially in heavily unionized states, woo the union votes and later find themselves doing the unions’ bidding even if it ill-serves the kids.

Obama began his July speech with a list of education problems. He lamented that 6 million kids read below grade level, and that only 20 percent of our students are prepared to take college-level math, English and science. I wondered who he held responsible for those statistics. Then he said, “I’m tired of hearing teachers blamed for our problems.” Ah. That produced the first big happy roar of the crowd.

Predictably, he said he would fix “the broken promises of No Child Left Behind.” Another giant roar. And after endorsing the goals of that federal law, he declared that forcing school staff to accomplish those ambitious goals “without the resources they need is wrong.” The crowd went nuts.

But then, without changing his tone of voice, he enthusiastically endorsed charter schools. The crowd was eerily silent, and stayed that way as he proudly proclaimed his career-long support of public-school choice.

No one clued him in that allowing parents to choose their kid’s school is not a favorite idea among union delegates?

And then, without apology, he swore that he would support allowing districts to “reward” teachers who take on extra responsibilities, or work in hard-to-serve areas, or perform consistently well in the classroom. He doesn’t use the words, but this is none other than union-loathed “merit pay.” The assembly outright booed the man. Loudly. He responded by saying “I know this wasn’t necessarily the most popular part of my speech last year, but I said it then, and I’m saying it again today, because it is what I believe.” ...

...Unions first took hold in the United States because they were the only countervailing force to monstrous practices of America’s growing Big-Business. Only by banding together could workers unions force management to the bargaining table. There, unions won such rights as we take for granted now — the 40-hour work week, safety regulations and fair treatment of the 50-year-old whom management wants to replace with a young buck.

But now, in public education, there is no real countervailing force to the unions. The taxpayers have some representation at the bargaining table, but kids and parents have none. Families will never have the kind of monolithic power that can fight in contract negotiations because they’ll never become a bureaucracy in their own right. Nor should they have to. But more than anything, a well-established union is a bureaucracy. Teachers unions came into being to stop the exploitation of teachers, but grew into private businesses whose main concern is to support themselves. And bureaucracies that outlive their usefulness fight like piranhas to stay alive.

So Obama wooed the teachers, but did not woo the union bureaucracy...

Unions: Harmony or Strife?

This from Del Stover at American School (the American School Board Journal):

When striking teachers display a giant inflatable rat outside a school—and name their new mascot after the superintendent—it’s clear that relations between school leaders and the teachers union are not good. Another clue: Teachers are spitting on cars crossing the picket line.

Name calling, rumor mongering, nails spread across the driveway of a teacher who chose not to strike, intransigence at the bargaining table—school officials saw it all during last year’s bitter, four-week strike in Richmond Heights, Ohio. “It got particularly nasty,” recalls Superintendent Walter Calinger. “The methodology was to attack unmercifully. Don’t worry about the truth of the matter. Attack. Attack. Attack.”

Thankfully, most school boards never confront such brass-knuckled tactics when dealing with their union. Last school year, there were only a score of teacher strikes, hardly a noteworthy figure given the nation’s nearly 15,000 school systems. If anything, the numbers suggest the National Education Association (NEA) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) have decided to forsake militancy in favor of singing “Kumbaya” with school boards.

Not ready to buy that? Then let’s try another explanation: Decades of contract talks have resolved the most divisive labor-management issues, and no-strike laws in many states are keeping teachers at the bargaining table. A new generation of teachers is less interested in bread-and-butter issues and more focused on educational and professional matters. And the standards movement, coupled with inadequate school funding and a growing at-risk student population, has given teachers and school boards even more incentive to make common cause.

Today, the relationship between the school board and the union generally can be described as mature and well-established. But it’s seldom comfortable—or predictable. Thus we see the union in Denver collaborating with the school board in a partnership on performance pay that would have been inconceivable a few years ago.

Meanwhile, in Quincy, Mass., we watched the teachers’ union go on strike in defiance of state law—the first teacher walkout in a decade in that state.

At the national level, the unions have a clear agenda. Union political strategists are planning to put millions of dollars into the upcoming national elections, and lobbyists are working the halls of Congress in hopes of a major rewrite of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). And there has been an aggressive effort to bolster the unions’ membership rolls by targeting teachers in right-to-work states, higher education faculty, school nurses, and paraprofessionals. In the last few years, the NEA’s membership has grown by 400,000; the AFT is up 200,000.

There’s a lot going on—and good reason to pay attention, say education policy experts. “They are the most powerful organized force in the politics of education, period,” says Terry Moe, a professor of political science at Stanford University.

“They have a huge impact on education policy, on the way the schools are organized, and on what school boards can and cannot do.” ...