Bashing Teachers Unions--An All Too Easy Out

For anyone who has even given this blog a cursory glance will know that I am no big fan of teachers unions, but not for reasons that some people might think. Teachers unions, particularly some local unions are great, serving the function they should serve, helping protect the workplace rights and conditions of their members. So long as the union sticks to that role and the professional development of their members, while they don't have my support for economic reasons, they at least will not see me standing in their way.

However, I do have a problem with teachers unions when they claim to be "thinking of the students" and "have only their students interests as heart." What rubbish and that is where I start having a problem and will begin to bash teachers unions. When push comes to shove, the unions have to protect their members and for that I do not blame them, but to try and spin the public into thinking that they care about kids is ridiculous and hypocritical to boot. The unions cannot serve two masters, they can't serve the teachers and the students at the same time.

The other facet of teachers union behavior that chafes me to no end is the argument that teachers are underpaid. While there may be arguments that teachers are well paid or at least paid equivalent compared to the rest of the labor force, I tend to think that given the prominence of teachers in the lives of our children that teachers should be paid more. The problem with the unions is that they complain about poor salaries, yet they have the responsibility, nay--the privilege, of renegotiating their contracts every few years, but never seem to really push for better pay. In the end, it is not the better pay they want, it is the issue of not getting better pay that they need.

Those are my primary reasons why I bash the unions from time to time. Ezra Klein wonders why others bash the unions.

When talking about education, particularly in DC, Klein writes: Something is wrong here. It isn't the unions. But it's very convenient for lefty types to blame the unions. This shows, among other things, that they are forward-looking, and free from organized labor's influence, and generally an independent thinker and analyst.

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By repeatedly ascribing blame to the teacher's unions, these pundits deflect attention from the endemic, root problems, and refocus on more discrete, and demonizable, culprits. This gives conservatives an easy way out of conversations on education reform, even as they lack an actual solution.

I don't think that teachers unions are solely to blame for the condition of public schools and in particular the DC school system, although they should shoulder a fair amount of blame. The DC teachers union corruption scandal is s symptom of a larger problem, one in which the welfare of the adults in education has taken precedence over the interests of the students. I don' think outright corruption is rampant in DC schools (although there may be more than just the unions), but I do believe that incompetence in the middle and lower levels of management is the norm rather than the exception.

As Chancellor Michelle Rhee is sure to find out, in a system where there are more bureaucrats than teachers, you are bound to find people and practices that are not only inefficient, but criminally incompetent as well. Rhee has promised to focus on teacher development and the leadership skills of principals, which will, no doubt, go a long way to improve the lot of students in the DC schools. But Rhee also needs to wield a heavy axe in the school administration building and I would think that cutting the administrative staff by 50 percent would be a good target-if for no other reason than to cut the budget and put the fear into the remaining staff.

Teachers unions may get an unfair share of the blame when it comes to poor schools. But if we realize and understand the goals of the teachers unions in the educational system, that of expanding their membership and their political power, we can easily see how to overcome their obstinacy. Unions, particularly union leadership as you move up the organizational ladder, are not without significant blame in blocking the efforts to improve schools, but they are only one group. Much more attention needs to be paid to the entire cadre of adults involved in education, from the classroom to the executive board room, we must understand their motivations--only then can we truly start to make education about the kids.