The Power and Destruction of the Teacher's Union

Yesterday, here in Tennessee, and with little media coverage, teachers were stripped of their union bargaining rights.  The vote, nearly split down party lines, with one Republican jumping ship to vote against the measure, is something that we are all too familiar with nowadays.

America, however, does not turn to two, major and opposing national movements when everything is fine.  The debatable fact is that our schools seem to be broken.  Our students are not matriculating, our graduate schools are becoming more and more full with students that were not educated here (see below), and nothing seems to be changing.  Americans are tired of it and many have chosen to place this blame squarely on the teachers.  The logic: if our kids are not being educated as well as the Scandinavians or the Chinese, it is the teachers' faults.  However, there seems to be enough blame to go around.        

To break it down: high school matriculation rates have plummeted.  Only 7 in 10 students will graduate high school on time.  This number causes a lot of problems such as lower employability, more likelihood of ending of in government assistance programs (welfare, etc.), and more likelihood of committing crimes and ending up in jail, leaving greater burdens on society both in regard to financial costs and the costs of chaos, such as the psychological and physical damage that criminals caused.  Unfortunately it should be no surprise to anyone to hear that minorities, particularly Black Americans have a much lower rate of graduation.  Why does this matter?  Well, very much unlike White Americans, Black Americans today have about a 1 in 3 chance of ending up spending some portion of their life in prison.   Something is definitely wrong here.

Now you may wonder, why do foreign students attending our graduate schools matter in this discussion?  Well, there's a few reasons.  Despite the good, such as the breaking of cultural ignorance and the like, these students are taking spots in physics and economics education that our students could (theoretically) have.  I say theoretically because our students are not being admitted due to their comparative lack of educational preparedness.  Either way, what ends up happening is that we use our best educators to educate these students, who then leave for their own countries.  If we are not educating our own students to one day educate their own students HERE, then America's tradition of great colleges and universities will slowly disintegrate as universities on the other side of the world gain more steam.  

Despite all of this, little has changed in the past fifties in regard to how we are educating and training our students.  Stagnation has allowed us to fall from first to near worst among developed nations.  If American exceptionalism, be it a good thing or bad thing, has done anything, it is a primary cause of the recent anger among the people.

So let's consider the primary target of the attacks: teachers unions.  If we cannot critique without insult, that's a serious problem.  Okay, so...

...are unions good or bad?  Answer: probably good.  They allow unskilled laborers to earn a fair wage.  Consider how much we would pay pipe fitters, box makers, and other easily replaceable workers if there was no union behind them.  These unions often require a significant amount of continued training as well.  The general expectation is that one who hires union workers will not only have more security that the worker will not disappear with your money before finishing, but also that the worker is more competent than the average _____.  So what about teachers?  They are trained and skilled, their individual talents and abilities have a profound effect on their output, and others at similar levels do not have unions.  So: should the teachers have a union?

Answer: if they want.  The problem is that it does not seem necessarily all that useful to them.  The reason that  there are not unions for, say, professors, is that they would not gain from such a move.   As a union, teachers have the power to collectively bargain, deduct union dues from paychecks (which seems somehow illegal, if though the teachers have signed a form okay-ing the withdrawal), and can more easily act as a wall of defense when a teacher is near firing.  

Sounds good right?  Yet problems lie underneath.  Unions lobby hard against more stringent and universal teacher evaluations.  While many, MANY, incompetent administrators exist, schools that perform poorly for years and years often go through piles of new administrators without any significant teacher placements.  Unions particularly focus on opposing any evaluations that could have punative consequence, often citing that they, as teachers, have a better concept of how their students learn than anyone else.  This is probably true, but should not be a roadblock to outing under-performing teachers, as many or as few of them as may exist.

This should also not stand in the way of reforms.  Teacher's for decades have demanded more money, but refuse to allow the application of a meritocratic system to determine if that money is deserved.  Under a fair system, if most teachers are good, most should get more money, but being inegalitarian, that's unacceptable.  When cases regarding the differences between other nations' and the United States' education systems arise, particularly concerning how our schools can be made better, such as year-round school year or a longer school day, the unions generally dismiss them as meaningless, unless the teachers in those countries are making more money, in which case a necessity to change teacher pay rates is echoed once again.

Since this all seems to be heading that way, let's discuss pay.  Coming out of college, teacher's are 

paid a rather reasonable wage when compared to others right out of undergrad with little field experience.  This varies by state, as does cost of living.  As with all fields, some states are better than others.   The problem that the unions point to is the considerable low average salaries for teachers, ranging in the mid-$40,000 range.  Now even if one separates that by cost-of-living, it never becomes THAT much.  But, as a who is a teacher once said, "no one goes into teaching for the money.  They do it to help students."  Obviously this does not mean we should slight our students, but rather than comparing teachers to doctors, lets look at national averages.  The average salary of someone with no more than a undergraduate degree in this country is $45,400.  Teachers are right in the same boat as everyone else with a college diploma.  And, considering that many have summer jobs, which at minimum would bring in another $4,600 or so dollars at minimum wage (if at full time), the average teacher makes around $50,000 a year.  Considering the American household makes about $72,000 and that most of those households have two working adults, teacher's make considerably more than average.  

Do I think we should pay teachers more?  Sure.  As soon as we eliminate the national debt, fix programs like social security that are draining our pockets, and implement some programs to strengthen our education system.  

So what are unions doing for teachers, besides keeping the (few) bad ones where they are for longer, denying  reform after reform, and constantly campaigning for more money?  I'm not really sure.

They still have their right to exist nonetheless.