How Many Teachers Would A Unionchuck Chuck, If A Unionchuck Could Chuck Teachers?

Public education in this country, I find, is really enigmatic. It’s something most of us have experienced, many people feel strongly about, and it’s surrounded by one of the worst governance structures imaginable and a veritably impenetrable wall of myths surrounds it. Yet, it’s supposed to be about informed reason and learning, go figure.

One of those myths, with albeit a sizable grain of truth, is that the teacher’s unions inhibit the “release” of bad teachers. The truth of the matter is that there really isn’t some amazingly accurate way of ferreting out bad teachers that the various parties can agree to. So, presently a labyrinthine web of sizable and little protection exists, exposing good teachers to firings, protecting bad teachers, and – of course – vice versa.

An interesting approach to help fix this problem proposed by some is to make teachers well…more professional, in the mold of doctors and lawyers, whose professional associations are more self-policing to maintain the integrity. Psych professor Daniel Willingham discusses this in addressing the question of how teachers can get more respect. I particularly like Eduwonk’s Andrew Rotherham’s critique of this post and I quite agree.

To add to Rotherham’s post, the idea that I found troubling from Willingham was his post/article was heavily weighted towards the damage done by bad teachers to the reputation and profession of teaching rather than the damaging substantive effects on children done by bad teachers. It’s one thing to say the unions have miscalculated and contributed to their own naysayers, it’s another to focus on the framing issues to the exclusion of the substance of the matter. Which, is what I think Willingham does.

In fairness, perhaps he’s reframing his critique to present the issue as something more approachable to reformist elements of the teachers’ unions, but if so, I think he’s still selling his argument short by focusing almost entirely on the image problems of bad teachers.

There are two types of errors when a diagnostic is imperfect, commonly called Type I and Type II. Each carries costs.

* Type I: firing someone who is actually a good teacher. Some of the costs of this error are (1) it hurts the morale of the other teachers in the school by creating an atmosphere of fear, insecurity, and injustice (2) there is one fewer good teacher in the ranks.
* Type II : failing to fire someone who is not competent. Some of the costs of this error are (1) it hurts the morale of teachers by hurting their sense of professionalism; (2) the teacher remains in class, doing a poor job; (3) the teacher damages the professional reputation of all teachers.

The costs of Type II are sorely underestimated in my book. The missing substantive issue here is that bad teachers have a direct impact on other teachers, not just the students they’re ill-serving. Teachers who don’t do their jobs send insufficiently prepared pupils to their colleagues, directly impacting their job.

The second, admittedly small, issue I took with Willingham is from this line and expected result:

If bad teachers were fired the public would see that (1) bad teaching is not tolerated by teachers and (2) teachers unions protect the profession of teaching, as well as individual teachers.

Really? It seems like short of a public stockade or awkward notice in the school bulletin, much of the public would have no idea what hiring and firing decisions are made by schools. Moreover, I think it misplaces the public criticism of teachers’ unions.

I think the problem is that Americans see the teachers’ unions as organizations that exist for the aggrandizement of teachers. Much in the same way they see the UAW as an advocacy group for auto-workers. The problem is, as much as -producing safe cars might be in the union’s professional interests, it’s a hard sell for the public that the issue is a priority for them, if the union actually cares at all.

With teachers, there’s more anger over it for several reasons (1) Americans care more about their children than their cars, (2) public education is compulsory, (3) the government issues crash-safety ratings and MPG estimates that “rate” cars, and (4) auto makers carry some degree of legal liability in the case of gross incompetence or negligence. Put simply, if I were forced to buy a terribly made Ford Pinto, couldn’t sue Ford for pushing ahead with faulty designs, and had no idea how safe or fuel efficient it was, I’d probably be a lot less sympathetic to the UAW.

On balance, I think the charge that the unions harbor terrible, child-ruining teachers, is somewhat overblown, but the criticism that they have a frosty relationship with reform or accountabilty can be much more accurate.

~ by Kyle on March 16, 2009.