I quickly tire when hearing about unions, failing schools, underpaid teachers, standardized testing, etc. Working in education, I hear tirades about these things all the time, typically from people who claim to have all the easy answers and have never led a class or faced educational and economic hardship. Apparently we're all experts because we suffered through the public school system. The resulting surplus of brassy opinions results in a gross oversimplification of the problems facing our education system. "Easy" solutions are shot from the gut, and the serious policy discussion this issue deserves is stillborn.
This issue was not resolved in Wisconsin. It will likely not be resolved during this year's budget fight. So we go to sleep tonight pretty much where we left off—students in the same situations they were yesterday, now with more disenfranchised teachers and no political will to competently analyze how our education goals fit into our budget problems.
Awesome.
Having seen this scenario play out countless times, I struggled to avoid following the recent drama in Wisconsin as it unfolded. Now the sordid affair has passed, I've caught up with the information, and I don't feel good about any of it. Everyone involved seemed to do everything they could to avoid proving their point. I was particularly disappointed in the inability of unions to demonstrate why their position was better suited to improving education and increasing student performance.
To be sure, I sympathize with the unions in Wisconsin, but not because I think they're vital for public education to continue. Opponents of Governor Walker's plan rightfully felt as though they'd been stabbed in the back. Walker's attack on the unions was unexpected, unfair, and ineffective in addressing this year's budget deficit--his primary argument for removing teacher's bargaining rights. After all, the teachers had already agreed to no pay raises this year and the removal of bargaining rights won't affect the budget until next year. Adding insult to injury, Walker's final numbers don't seem to be adding up.
All that aside, union supporters missed a golden opportunity. With the nation's attention, and public sentiments working in their favor, unions failed to make a direct connection between their current role and positive student or teacher performance. Instead they relied on the idea that unions’ lengthy and prominent existence are enough to warrant their upkeep. This was the worst possible message the unions could have chosen given the economic climate.
The episode in Wisconsin was prefaced by weeks of national attention on the budget deficit. National politicians--including President Obama in his State of the Union Speech--had been doing the groundwork for the coming budget proposal, which was sure to bruise and bloody members of both parties. Americans were told that nothing was off limits and painful spending cuts would affect everyone. Given that primer, the unions' "we deserve this" argument fell flatter than it might have otherwise.
In this "anything goes" situation, any cause that can't link itself to the greater public interest is more likely to be victimized in the budget. Even with universal values like education and worker's rights on the line, Wisconsin teachers were unable to gain popular support in the quantities necessary to scare Republican lawmakers into dropping their offensive. This is certainly unfortunate for the teachers, but it also exposed a potentially fatal flaw in the larger defense of unions, which are now under attack in many states across the country.
Modeled Behavior, Reihan Salam, Slate, and Matt Yglesias (all blogs you should be following!) did some excellent writing about education and the economics behind teacher and student performance. Gotham Schools, however, had a widely underreported article that, in my opinion, did the most damage to the union's lackluster messaging. Gotham highlighted a new study indicating that teacher behavior and student grades do not change, even when teacher pay is based on student performance. That leaves union supporters--and not just ones in Wisconsin--in a strange position. They fight to maintain a variety of monetary benefits for teachers, but New York's experience shows that giving teachers more of these benefits did not improve any of the targeted performance areas.
If we actually care about improving our children's educations, what are we supposed to think about this? Why, given this information, do unions deserve to be removed from the budgetary chopping block? While I'm certainly sympathetic to the fact that teachers don’t make much money, I’m less inclined to believe that their benefits and salary are deserving of protection if they can’t explain to me how they are performing better than they would under different conditions.
To be sure, I sympathize with the unions in Wisconsin, but not because I think they're vital for public education to continue. Opponents of Governor Walker's plan rightfully felt as though they'd been stabbed in the back. Walker's attack on the unions was unexpected, unfair, and ineffective in addressing this year's budget deficit--his primary argument for removing teacher's bargaining rights. After all, the teachers had already agreed to no pay raises this year and the removal of bargaining rights won't affect the budget until next year. Adding insult to injury, Walker's final numbers don't seem to be adding up.
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| Students protested Governor Walker's assault on teachers unions. |
The episode in Wisconsin was prefaced by weeks of national attention on the budget deficit. National politicians--including President Obama in his State of the Union Speech--had been doing the groundwork for the coming budget proposal, which was sure to bruise and bloody members of both parties. Americans were told that nothing was off limits and painful spending cuts would affect everyone. Given that primer, the unions' "we deserve this" argument fell flatter than it might have otherwise.
In this "anything goes" situation, any cause that can't link itself to the greater public interest is more likely to be victimized in the budget. Even with universal values like education and worker's rights on the line, Wisconsin teachers were unable to gain popular support in the quantities necessary to scare Republican lawmakers into dropping their offensive. This is certainly unfortunate for the teachers, but it also exposed a potentially fatal flaw in the larger defense of unions, which are now under attack in many states across the country.
Modeled Behavior, Reihan Salam, Slate, and Matt Yglesias (all blogs you should be following!) did some excellent writing about education and the economics behind teacher and student performance. Gotham Schools, however, had a widely underreported article that, in my opinion, did the most damage to the union's lackluster messaging. Gotham highlighted a new study indicating that teacher behavior and student grades do not change, even when teacher pay is based on student performance. That leaves union supporters--and not just ones in Wisconsin--in a strange position. They fight to maintain a variety of monetary benefits for teachers, but New York's experience shows that giving teachers more of these benefits did not improve any of the targeted performance areas.
If we actually care about improving our children's educations, what are we supposed to think about this? Why, given this information, do unions deserve to be removed from the budgetary chopping block? While I'm certainly sympathetic to the fact that teachers don’t make much money, I’m less inclined to believe that their benefits and salary are deserving of protection if they can’t explain to me how they are performing better than they would under different conditions.
This issue was not resolved in Wisconsin. It will likely not be resolved during this year's budget fight. So we go to sleep tonight pretty much where we left off—students in the same situations they were yesterday, now with more disenfranchised teachers and no political will to competently analyze how our education goals fit into our budget problems.
Awesome.
