6.0 Teacher Unions
Source: Nicholas D. Kristof, Cincinnati Enquirer Opinion page A15. October 16, 2009 referencing a devastating article in the New Yorker by Steven Brill.
“… unions ordinarily prevent teachers from being dismissed for incompetence – so the schools must pay failed teachers their full salaries to sit year after year doing nothing in centers called “rubber rooms.”
…. . The union fought to secure her return to teaching, Bill (Brill) wrote, until she passed out again, and her “water bottle” turned out to contain alcohol.”
… it is so expensive to remove teachers that the authorities typically try to do so only in cases of extreme misconduct – not for something as “minor” as incompentence.
Of course there are many other obstacles to learning: lack of safety, alcohol and narcotics, troubled homes and uninterested parents. But there’s mounting evidence that even in such failing schools, the individual teacher makes a vast difference.
Research has underscored that what matters most in education – more than class size or spending or anything – is access to good teachers.
There are no silver bullets, but researchers are gaining a better sense of what works in education for disadvantaged children: intensive preschool, charter schools with long hours, fewer certification requirements that limit entry to the teaching profession, higher compensation to attract and retain good teachers, objective measurement to see who is effective, more flexibility in removing those who are ineffective.
Unions’ clout needed
I’m hoping that unions will come round and cooperate with evidence-based reforms, using their political clout to push to raise teachers’ salaries rather than protect ineffective teachers.”
