School Choice: The Phantom Menace, or A New Hope?
mrjimmyneutron“It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime… But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.” Anyone who pays for basic cable and occasionally watches it should recognize this classic from Office Space. This justification of underachievement was used by a fictional techie drone, but it can also serve as a cautionary measure about the dangers of taking unionization too far- and yes, I am applying this to teachers’ unions. Mr. Dugan, my purpose is not the same as your journalist friend Joe Klein’s; however, I don’t entirely disagree with the points he raised in his article “Why We’re Failing our Schools”. My purpose is to suggest a few ways in which teachers’ unions (of which I am a member) can win in the court of public opinion, because we are currently losing. When liberal columnists like Klein and politicians like President Obama attack teacher’s unions, you have to figure that something is amiss. What support will we have left if we remain tone deaf?
1. Charter Schools Are Not the Enemy. Talk about your punching bags- Dugan really went for the TKO against charter schools. “Filled with new teachers who can not find jobs in the public school sector… no respect for proper and insightful evaluation… a work force with no experience and no pride…” truly, these charter schools must be a barren wasteland. Bill Gates, however, does not think so. He has been among the most vocal advocates and financial supporters of the movement. As recently stated by Gates regarding his foundation’s economic support, “We will continue to invest in replicating the school models that worked the best. Almost all of these schools are charter schools. Educational innovation and overall improvement will go a lot faster if the charter school limits and funding rules are changed.”
On a personal note, my career as an educator began after switching from the business sector to teaching at an inner city charter school. I was in the middle of my certification and master’s program, and I had less than half a year’s substitute teaching experience when I joined the school. Several of my coworkers were also in the process of acquiring their certifications (this ended up being a major part of the reason why the school was eventually shut down.) And do you know what our inexperienced, lacking in pride staff did? We made AYP two years in a row,’04-’05 and ’05-’06. And by the way, we wrote our own curriculum, and we had tons of local flavor.
Anyway, we can agree to disagree on how much of a danger charter schools represent to our own livelihoods as teachers, but I don't see how anyone can honestly rationalize competition in education as being bad for society at large.
2. Tea Parties Are In. Pity Parties Are Out. As I stated before, our unions are dangerously tone-deaf, in a way oddly parallel to Wall Street. Stay with me here… Teachers in the tri-state area haven’t reported to work since last Tuesday. None of us have lost any vacation time due to this. Teachers will have off another week at the end of next month. Then we will have off for over two months beginning at the end of June. Can we agree to stop protesting that our hours are just as long as corporate America’s?
Put it another way: If you have a second job as a tutor, coach, bartender, fitness instructor, waiter or waitress, or librarian, then you are A) pretty much a regular teacher and B) able to do so because you do not work 60+ hour weeks like those who are still gainfully employed in business. Working a second job is also, yes, pretty much a necessity to stay in the middle class as a teacher, but lets not cry poor mouth in today’s climate. I have many reasons why I became a teacher, but self-sacrifice is not one of them. Priests and nuns have callings. If we want to be taken seriously as professionals, lets call teaching a profession, not a calling.
3. If We Want More $, Let’s Stop Talking Like Communists. Our spokespeople pounce on any mention of competition, merit-based, testing, evaluations. How does this make us sound to the general public? How does this all sound to you? Is there any other profession in capitalist America that is as scared of its own shadow as public school teaching? I honestly don’t see how one can profess to have Republican values and be a staunch supporter of all that teachers’ unions at their worst entail.
Our public school system is very good, but it is not the world’s best anymore, not by any conceivable measurement. There are too many reasons to possibly list here, and this post is too long already, but we do have to take an objective look in the mirror. Standards based testing may be abhorrent to our more idealistic teacher selves, but it makes sense in today’s society. Teaching to the test makes sense. If you were a driving instructor and you were paid to prepare teenagers for their driving tests, would you teach them how to drive around orange cones, because you love teaching how to drive around orange cones? Or would you take your driver out on the road, because that is what they are tested on now? Clearly, in order to hold on to your job, you would teach your student in a pragmatic manner how to drive on the open road to pass their license test. Why are we so different?
So, that is my pro-teacher’s union rant for the week. I’m not trying to be sarcastic here, I really do want our unions to succeed. If you like my ideas, thanks. If not, please don’t loudly attack my house at night, because my son goes to sleep at 8.
Reader Comments (7)
It is fitting that I will respond first. If Teaching is not a calling, then why are they called off when there are no children to teach. Teaching is an ehausting 24 hour preparation that must be done truly to be the best. It is reading and updating yourself on the current trends in the field and world news; it is the onus of having peers and the public constantly judge you for being a teacher; it is being mentally and physically prepared for the unexpected in the classroom as you perform three to five shows a day, 180 days a year for the students, and doing another song and dance with administrators who stress change as the catalyst for improvement. And yet all of us came through the same education system of America.
What are charter schools? Bill Gates and the choir will not say. The schools in Philadelphia show no better or just marginally better test results in the charter schools than the public schools. If you create two systems of education than how does that serve the students that are left behind. Charter schools are private schools that use public tax money (or private) to exist. If competition was so demanded, then why do we not use our private system, that is large and sustainable for many years, to create it. Vouchers is the best way to create that competition without losing the best public school employees. I do not demean teaching in private schools. Those teachers are just as determined to do right by their students. But it is not right to undermine a system of inclusion by separating students, dividing towns, and creating scores to determine the best teachers and schools.
Teachers are the only variable that doesn't change in this equation. When we have teachers that undermine their worth and their status in their economy because they are not paid or awarded on a scale like capitalist, they have abandoned each other and their inherent goodness of the profession. The teacher unions have only achieved their benefits, pension and salaries because they have united. Unions do not hire teachers. School districts hire teachers. If they are so bad, then it is the school districts obligation to the community to correct their hiring practices. Why do unions get blamed for bad workers?
If unions want to protect the dignity of the profession and its value in a society, then they have a right to do it. If you believe one teacher is worth more than another, then you believe that teachers are not worth anything. Teaching math is different than physical education. Teaching in the city is different than in the suburbs. Teaching special education is different than teaching advanced placement. I do not argue this. But it creates the same good; it is different, not worth more. It moves students from ignorance to enlightenment. If it is good, a teaching position can not be more good or less good. Ask Plato.
Unions were created because they stand together. Capitalists and the public can not figure out why unions do this at the individual risk when they could make more money by being in competition. Teachers can not fix all the ills of society, but they can teach and we all play an essential role in the development of youth.
Perhaps America is not failing because of teachers. Perhaps they are the last holdout of what America was when we believed in each other and would sacrifice for ideals of unity, freedom and improving the quality of life little by little and for everyone. Maybe Bill Gates would not be so isolated or rich if he learned that at Harvard.
Great post and I didn't think it was long at all. Well written argument with passion and insight. I appreciate the dialogue. It seems that the papers always address this issue and we should continue this argument for years. If there are any unions left!
An educator older and wiser than myself once cautioned me against being instinctively opposed to charter schools. I believe he was right, particularly back when charter schools seemed a reasonable alternative in the early part of the decade.
The real issue for me is the private sector's emphasis on the bottom line. In many communities that need real alternatives, there are few new, effective, widespread educational private options because such communities don't have the resources to design competition to a system that comes "free." That's not right or wrong, but because education is not terribly profitable to the private sector (other than to billionaire innovators) I suspect we are not going to see this great revolution in charter schools that its proponents are always trumpeting for political points.
I would welcome the opportunity to teach in an effective educational environment where schools compete with one another for students in the way that might improve education, but I imagine that such a society would have to care about education as an industry the way it does the production of its fast food, its automobiles, its alcohol beverages, and television programs. This is not the society in which we live right now. And that's not the fault of the public education system. It's the fault of a society that does not value education and subsequently gets the public education it deserves.
"Standards based testing may be abhorrent to our more idealistic teacher selves, but it makes sense in today’s society. Teaching to the test makes sense."
I disagree profoundly. Standardized testing as designed by NCLB requires that schools teach to a test that, at least in the state where I teach, does not hold students accountable for the test. Only persons who do not teach could think that schools could be held accountable in an accurate way under such circumstances. Furthermore, it is my personal opinion that the current status of our standardized testing is more like the cone driving test of which you speak and hardly the road test you imagine. This is because testing assesses skills alone and not content, and skills are only part of the educated person's life. This is why many educators I know are so cynical about testing. True, I have become a better teacher because of testing, and so I am grateful for NCLB in that sense. But I will not teach to the test alone. Not with its current criteria. I am a better and smarter educator than that, and I owe my students more than that, too.
Well, there is so much here to comment on I almost don't know where to begin. Neutron brings a very measured approach to this topic which I think is a good contrast and debate spark when compared to the more passionate voices on this blog. There is truth in what Neutron says about the court of public opinion against teachers and I commend him for his ability to see beyond the limited perspective of his daily job. The subject of testing, merit pay, school choice often comes up in the news cycle especially before upcoming elections. And always the public consensus largely seems to have little sympathy with the plight of the teacher. As CJ points out in his comments on Dugan's post and as Neutron writes here, most see a teaching job as a pretty good gig where a person may not get the salary or the respect they might like, but they do have incredible job security, benefits and up until recently a pension that most private sector employees won't ever come close to. So it shouldn't be shocking to teachers that most are deaf to educator's cries of unfair working conditions when the media continually reports on failing schools. Furthermore, teachers' unions are naive if they just expect public opinion to someday suddenly be on their side. Like Roche says, our society's value for education is declining and therefore so are our schools. The point is that for teachers this battle isn't only going to be fought in the contract negotiations; it's a battle of the public's hearts and minds. It isn't a coincidence that the New Jersey teachers unions actually spends a lot of advertising money to promote their services and their state's public schools are consistently ranked in the nation's top ten.
I also agree with Neutron's point that competition is not something to be feared. In a free, democratic system, competition almost always brings about improvements. I think we should expect disagreement in how successful schools are measured since public education is such a complex endeavor, but this complexity doesn't mean we shouldn't try at all. I can't think of any other profession, business, calling or whatever you want to call it where having more than one option has been a bad thing. Look at our higher education system or our healthcare which are still some of the best in the world, there are so many colleges or hospitals to choose from and most have managed to find their niche and be successful. Why should we expect that our cookie cutter, one school fits all model should work for younger students when it doesn't work for adults in any other service sector?
The problem with endorsing more competitive education models is that it will expose weaker teachers. This is what the unions are afraid of. I disagree with Dugan's conjecture that all teachers are of equal worth. Anyone who has been a teacher or a student knows that this is completely illogical. Yes almost all teacher's have worth, and certainly there are different strengths among the broad section of individuals who are educators, but let's face reality. Sometimes people make the wrong career choice. And sometimes this poor career choice happens to be in education. To ignore this because of blind idealism is to do a disservice to students' learning and the respect owed to teacher's who are good at what they do.
Maybe instead of accepting union dues from everyone who walks through the door with little or no questions asked, teachers' unions should enact their own quality controls. Other unions in skilled labor trades do this to support their mission to provide their customers with the best service available. Is it so far-fetched that the teachers' unions could take some of their money and put it towards their own teacher training programs? Why is this solely the financial burden of already cash strapped school districts? Perhaps if teachers' unions could identify and remedy their weaker members, they'd have better educators on the whole and a better bargaining position when contract time comes around.
The other argument some teachers make against competition in the education field is the idea that capitalism almost always has victims. Somehow in poor areas or in places where management is too focused on the bottom line, students will be left behind and then what could have we done? News flash! This is already happening. Students in poor urban areas usually have lower performing schools than their counter parts in the suburbs. In fact, good school districts are the reason why most parents move to the suburbs. So how much more could competition hurt this cycle. I'd rather see new education models at least tried, even if they eventually fail, than to continue using one that hasn't produced acceptable results in decades. Yes, some students might be left behind, but the least the public education can do for them is try to offer alternatives then to continue to make excuses and accept failing systems.
The other problem I have with the "evil bottom line" argument is that the alternative usually becomes "throw money at the problem regardless of the bottom line." Yes, profit for profit's sake is probably a bad idea in public education, but without some accountability schools districts turn into wasteful, bureaucracies. How many times do we walk in to a school and see misplaced or unused resources? Computers not being used because the district didn't plan to hire long term tech support? Thousands of dollars thrown at "new, time consuming initiatives" and guest speakers who say the right trendy educational buzz words when there aren't enough text books or schedule instructional time for the students in the classroom down the hall. This kind of waste wouldn't last very long in the private sector where investor funds can't be taken for granted because they aren't built into the tax code. Maybe a hybrid, non-profit model that's balanced between serving the public good while maintaining a a viable fiscal strategy would be better for America's students.
Finally, I think the real problem people have with discussion of choice and testing is that their really is no perfect test. Roche is right to point out that No Child Left Behind has made better teachers but is certainly not the be all and end all. Standardized tests are only a quantitative measure of student progress and as such are only half the coin. To measure the other half of a valuable school, the state education departments would have to include a qualitative study. This could include surveys and interviews of students, teachers and administrators, examinations of art and music programs and extra curricular activities. In other words, much more fuzzy data that would take a lot more time and money to analyze than a couple scan tron tests throughout the school year, which is why qualitative assessments will probably never be used. I think it is this quandary that really gets to most educator's resistance to change. How can an outsider truly measure what a teacher does? They're not there everyday. They can't see the unmeasurable results of a teacher's labor. Why would the teachers' union allow its members to be rewarded and punished based on an incomplete measure of performance? To answer these questions, a public debate has to be had as to what the real purpose of our education system is. Is it to simply teach skills, to fill students head's with facts, or something more? I don't have the answer to this debate but I think it is one worth having.
The idea of "school choice" is insulting on so many levels. The only people who have choice in public education are people with money. We can look at the impact that teachers and unions have on education, but, in reality, money defines educational opportunity on every level. I know that I don't really have a true choice in my daughter's education. I have been repeatedly told by people that if I want my daughter to have the education that she needs that I should move. Because of my occupation and my financial limitations, this is not a possibility. I have been told that Marple has a great program for her or that Goshen will be a better fit for her. If public education is meant to provide an equal education for all, why is it always defined by where you live?
Until there is an equitable distribution of funds in public education, there will never be a real change in America's public school system. I have never heard of the need for a charter school in Lower Merion or Radnor. People argue with me all of the time that it is only fair that people who live in these areas are entitled to the schools that they can collectively provide. Than why do the people in these areas usually pay lower property taxes? My father, who lives in Darby, pays higher property taxes than I do in Springfield. Marple pays lower property taxes than Springfield. I am sure that each of us who own a home and have children tried to buy into the best school district possible. Also, who among us would not change jobs to be in a better paying district? Most of us would. There is a reason I'm 5th in seniority at our work and I have only been there 11 years. People go where the money is.
I know that public education is a broken institution, but to think that union reform or charter schools are going to make a dent in repairing it is wishful thinking. Until we make real change in how schools are funded and until teachers have a more equitable salary system, people are going to continue to chase the money. Public education will always reflect our society's values, and we obviously don't like to share.
Very interesting topic, and one that hits close to home.
What I will add, as an aside, is that my wife's union is up for contract renewal at the end of this year. She teaches in a pretty affluent area, but one that was still hit moderately by the recession. There is already talk amoungst her more vocal union colleagues that they should still fight for a higher raise in the renegotiation. My wife is a realist and knows that in this economy they will get murdered in the court of public opinion if they fight for anything more than a small merit raise. It will be very interesting to follow in the coming months...
Better late than never. I'm merely going to go back to the original arguments established by Neutron.
1. Charter Schools- Overall, still unsure about their existence. I can see their value in a large, insanely depleted area like Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, etc. but in almost all suburbs, they have far too many problems. Just to be clear, anyone who believes the few educational problems that exist in their communities are comparable to large urban, decaying systems is absolutely insane. One should not even begin to discuss the idea of education as a generalized system and compare the large urban institution to any school systems elsewhere. There is no comparison! This is a big part of the problem. We discuss education in such broad terms, when there is arguably more diversity within the system than any other field. I'm offended by that I'm an educator first and a high school English teacher second. My job is not the same as a science middle school teacher or 1st grade special ed. teacher, even though they all have great value. Plus, each community is extremely unique, and therefore has unique problems. So, based on this premise, charter schools could help address the needs of a diverse community. The problem in smaller communities outside of cities is the diversity though. Instituting a charter school in many communities would only divide the community racially, economically, etc. If this happens, the ultimate foundation of education- equal education for all- is completely lost. Also, until I see strong, indisputable numbers of dramatic reform, I'm not going to funnel away money from the public system into a still dubious, developing system with such dangerous ramifications.
2. From September to June, I work insanely hard. And for that time, I get paid a decent salary and I have wonderful benefits. However, I knew going into my job that I would never get paid the same as my friends who went into the private/business sector. They work extremely hard as well, but their professions are not nearly as valuable and essential as mine is. The growth, success, and inherent principles of our democracy are established first and last in education. These are not merely ideals, but proven realities established in our courts, our economy, our politics, and our daily lives. Teachers, of private, parochial, and public settings, are the most patriotic of individuals there are.
As far as having off for the summer goes, or getting off for snow days, these are not our choices. This is a system of education that has been in place for a very long time, and the efforts to change it are not just from teachers' unions. Most parents in summer vacation areas adamantly oppose year-round schooling, and most districts and local politicians and states refuse to pay the additional cost that come with it. There is actually a growing number of teachers who are advocating for change, but why would anyone listen to them?
3. As far as pay, I should be paid for my experience, my education, and my professionalism, and, on occasion, my effectiveness as a teacher, which is evaluated by a number of different criteria. However, these aspects of my profession are not genuinely appreciated, and never will be because logistically, it is impossible. It is foolish to compare the assessment of teachers to other professions. Businessmen and women usually work near their boss and can be observed on a frequent basis, in addition to interacting and collaborating with their managers, so their skills and capabilities can be appreciated. There is no feasible way to accurately and genuinely judge all teachers by the students' test numbers. It just isn't possible, and if you can't figure why on your own, then you shouldn't be discussing education to begin with. Not even in the private sector would this concept be tolerated because no individual would be willing to work for a company that assesses their employees on such flawed practices.
I think the greatest reason for such outrage from teachers, which are often voiced by their unions, is that teaching, unlike most other professions, is run by people who have nothing to do with the educational institution what so ever. At best, they taught for four or five years and then took the path of avarice and stature towards administration and politics. We are controlled by textbook companies, testing services, politicians, and local school boards who have no more than abstract concepts of what it means to actually transfer knowledge, understanding, and constructive thinking to a group of reluctant participants. The union is merely protecting its members from these naive individuals and I happy for it.
The only consistency of this piece and its ensuing responses is the awareness that our system is broken, and for that, I commend your addressing of this subject. I can only hope more people will listen and work together to resolve these problems for all our sakes.
Thanks for the lunch!
Well the word "Union" itself a problematic one. When some say union they member try to protect the member of union and organization rather than working towards the growth. The mindset that the the "teacher union" bring is pessimistic rater your organization should set some goal towards spreading +ves of "Charter Schools " and it should reflect in organization name and goal.
Be optimistic rather pessimistic, i always failed but have +Ve i will win someday and constantly working towards it
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