Teacher Unions are Dead! Long Live Teacher Unions!

Abstract

The American media has unloaded on teacher unions this year like never before. Two powerful documentary films--Waiting for Superman and The Lottery--have portrayed unions as shameless defenders of status quo that sacrifices needs of poor children to protection of incompetent adults. The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and Time have published cover stories that make compelling cases for an end to teacher policies--seniority in staffing, tenure, token evaluations--long defended by American Federation of Teachers, National Education Association, and their affiliates. Former Washington, D.C., schools chancellor Michelle Rhee was hero to advocates of urban education reform (and an antihero to many public educators) largely on basis of tough contract she negotiated that calls for tough teacher evaluations and an end to tenure. But last summer, as school reformers were celebrating D.C. contract, AFT and local Washington Teachers Union, its former leaders imprisoned on corruption charges, quietly spent, by some accounts, $1 million to defeat Rhee's political patron, Mayor Adrian Fenty, in September primary. The winner was Vincent Gray, more mainstream, prolabor Democrat. Are nation's teacher unions on defensive and in decline? Or are they so strong, so deeply engrained in fabric of American public education that their tremendous influence is likely to endure? The answer to both questions, it seems, is yes. Frustrated with Unions The nation is clearly frustrated in face of mounting evidence that unions' determined defense of seniority and other industrial-era labor practices is slowing efforts to teach more students to higher standards. Pressure will build to evaluate teachers more rigorously and to take other steps to reform teaching. But unions aren't going to go away. With more than 3 million members and vast political networks, they've become most powerful force in American education. That's not going to change. The need to buttress public school teaching is nothing new. In his classic 1932 study of teacher status, The Sociology of Teaching, Willard Waller noted that the teacher in our culture has always been among persons of little importance. Teaching, he said, was a refuge for unsalable men and unmarriageable women. A presidential commission urged President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1955 to press for reform that Rhee won in her new teacher contract: Every effort must be made to devise ways to reward teachers according to their ability. But such calls for reform were no match for rising influence of teacher unions. The first collective bargaining contract was signed in New York City in early 1960s, and by late 1970s, unions had become such powerful force in national politics that newly elected President Jimmy Carter rewarded them by creating U.S. Department of Education, something they'd long sought. And unions have been even more influential at state and local levels. Ripe for Change But two things are different today. There are fewer people entering teaching profession with blue-collar backgrounds who would be inclined to old-style unionism. And Democrats, traditional teacher union allies, are increasingly unions' most vocal detractors. Teaching has long attracted many first-in-family college graduates, many graduating from programs at less rigorous state universities. This lack of status contrasts with high status of teachers in such countries as Finland, South Korea, and Singapore, countries with strong education systems that attract best and brightest college graduates. But new breed of teacher is entering U.S. classrooms, at least in number of urban centers. Teach for America, launched two decades ago with 500 graduates of selective colleges and universities, is now $190 million-a-year enterprise with 8,200 teachers in three dozen sites. …