PICKING AT THE SCABS REVEALS DAMAGE OF TEACHERS' PACTS

Date: Saturday, October 15, 2005

At a seminar last weekend for journalists who cover education, Harvard University researcher Linda Kaboolian summed up the difficulties of change in unionized school districts. "A contract," she said, "is the scar tissue of past battles."

Damaging and inflexible? Sounds about right.

The seminar was put on by the Hechinger Institute for Education and the Media, based at Columbia Teachers College, with support from the Broad Foundation. The institute does several of these each year, and conveniently for me they often schedule the Western ones here in Denver.

The topic this time was "Covering the Teacher Unions and their Impact."

Some 30 journalists, and about as many presenters, attended nine sessions over three days.

The presentations tilted toward the pro-union side, though not monolithically. Given the topic, that's not unreasonable. But what did surprise me a bit was that the audience apparently did the same.

Questions from the journalists in the audience were along the lines of, "Fewer than half the teachers in my district are in the union. What do we do about that?" or "How do we get new teachers to recognize the value of the union for them?"

Short answer: If you're a reporter, you don't "do" anything at all about trends you happen not to like. And if you see nothing problematic about asking questions like that in a public forum, maybe you need to rethink what your job is.

Now, I didn't ask any questions at all, so maybe I wasn't the only one who would answer the first question, "Celebrate!" I don't mind being the skunk at the garden party, if it serves a useful purpose, but spewing solely in order to get attention isn't useful.

One thing I hadn't realized was that the standard, industrial-issue teacher contract that is the norm today, with its rigid schedule based on number of years in teaching and number of graduate courses, is a relatively recent development. The first collective bargaining contract for teachers, Scott Treibitz said, was signed in New York City in 1962, and it was modeled on the success of manufacturing unions. "Teachers made huge gains," he said.

In wages and benefits, perhaps; but in terms of student achievement?

Hardly.

But student achievement, just about everybody agreed, is not generally part of the collective bargaining process. Denver's plan, if voters approve funding for it in November, would be an exception.

Unions, by law in many states, have "a duty to represent," which means that they must do their best, according to contract provisions, to protect their members, no matter how incompetent or worse.

Carolyn Doggett, executive director of the California Teachers Union, became quite indignant at the suggestion that it is too difficult to remove bad teachers. "Don't sit there and tell this group," she said to another panelist, "that 'teachers have a job for life.' It is categorically untrue." She added, "We counsel out many people you never hear about."

Good, as far as it goes; but what about the people who aren't "counseled out"? Howard Fuller, now at Marquette University but formerly the superintendent in Milwaukee, told of a teacher whom he caught shoving a student's head into an unflushed toilet. He fired the teacher, but an arbitrator restored the teacher's job. The teacher had had "a bad day."

Doggett also took exception to one of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's initiatives, which would extend the probationary period for new teachers to five years.

"Proposition 74," Doggett said, "means no protection until the sixth year." People can be fired for any reason. "How can we attract people to our profession?" she demanded to know.

Oh, I dunno; union participation outside of government has been falling like a rock, so it would appear that most people are content to take their chances in the real world, and unwilling to sacrifice the chance to be rewarded according to their accomplishments.

One problem that came up often was contracts that give teachers with seniority their choice of open positions in the district. One difficulty is technical; because there are a series of deadlines, by the time the internal transfers are all worked out, it may be August, and by then the applicants most in demand are likely to have been offered and to have accepted jobs in districts that are able to act sooner. But a more serious structural difficulty is that the teachers with more experience opt for jobs in less challenging schools. Why not, if the pay is the same?

Not everybody thinks that way, of course, but enough do that the schools with the most at-risk children are the least likely to have the most effective teachers.

Randi Weingarten, head of the New York City teacher union, had just closed a contract that cut back on teachers' right to transfer. The price? A 14 percent raise.

Scar tissue, indeed.