Interesting takedown of a few of the common Myths of the Teachers Unions by Jay Greene of The American Enterprise. I'm married to a high school algebra teacher and department head with 34 years of experience in public schools, and we've argued about discussed some of these things several times, including today over this article.
She is anything but a teachers union sympathizer, having never joined as a matter of personal principle, but she rightly points out that the union is hardly the only villain of the piece. A great deal of the increase in cost per student today, versus a decade or two ago, goes to pay for the "special needs" kids of all kinds, the "alphabet kids" as they are called, with their tutors, their monitors, their escorts, their transporters and their counselors in tow. Her estimate is that at her school, about one third of all school staff is engaged in the education of this small fraction of the overall student body.
Throw in parents who are either uninvolved on the one hand, or highly visible and outraged when teachers demand performance and discipline instead of mere attendance on the other. Throw in administrators without the spine to stand up to parents by enforcing discipline, or by defending a teachers' demand for actual "school work." Toss in a large dose of "social promotion", and you get a high school student arriving without junior high skill levels, and carrying with him an attitude that is dismissive of the entire enterprise.
With all of those things as qualifiers, my criticisms of the teachers unions (and Greene's) stand. Generally speaking, they want no part of teacher accountability or peer review. They oppose teacher testing and policies that would make it easier (than impossible) to fire the worst performing teachers. The notion that teachers are poorly compensated doesn't hold up to serious scrutiny compared to other professional occupations, especially when benefits packages and hourly compensation are considered. Nor does the idea that there is a correlation between dollars spent per student and the quality of education that student receives. And it is hardly coincidental that the union's pet reform, class size reduction, would if broadly implemented add significantly to union membership rolls and union dues. It would of course also drive up significantly the costs to taxpayers.
Class size reduction is also the hot button solution for politicians these days, largely because it's hard to argue with. Sure it's virtually incontestable that it is easier to teach effectively in a classroom of 15 students than it would be in a class of 30. (Strangely, when college students are paying for the privilege of attending, lecture halls for some classes at major universities accomodate class sizes in the hundreds without compromising the learning.) And if we operate on the premise that the quality of public education is worse today than it was 40 years ago, (and I don't think we would have too many dissenters from that view) then the class size activists should have to explain why class sizes of 25-30 were not a debilitating problem then, but have become so today.
Posted by dan at January 10, 2007 1:44 AM