Matt Yglesias writes that although the teachers' unions may in some instances shift policies towards one's that give preference to teachers and not towards programs that benefit kids, on the whole teachers' unions are beneficial for schools. They bring in money for schools. He points to Southern states that have weak teachers' unions and have low public investment in schools.
Well, some yes and some no.
Strong teachers unions do not necessarily mean more public investment in schools. Urban areas in Northern states have strong teachers unions and weak public investment in their schools. Think of Philadelphia or Cleveland. Those schools are seriously underfunded. The teachers work in bad conditions for little pay. In addition, nearly every well-meaning reformer in those cities have had to deal with the teachers' unions putting up road blocks at every turn, when they want to bring in new teachers, fire the bad ones, or reorganize failing schools.
But if you take cities out of it and just look at states, I'm sure that there is a correlation between strong union states and high levels of public investment in education. Though I would really like to see that mapped out to be sure. But it's not clear that strong teachers' unions are responsible for a state's greater investment in education.
This would be a really interesting and very doable study. I wonder if someone has done it already.
Apt. 11d 
I don’t think that is right. First para: I don’t have figures to hand, but I think the story is this. IN most states, most school funding is local. So what you have to do is look at the relationship between per-pupil funding and taxable property values. By this standard, even though per pupil spending is absolutely lower in urban areas than in suburban areas, it is higher, relative to taxable property values. This is true (or used to be) even when you remove non-locally raised funding.
Second para: I’m not sure about this, either — though it should be easy to figure out. But if you look at which states have really been innovative and made education a regulatory and funding priority in the past 3 decades — well, they are southern states where (I assume) union density is much lower than in northern states. (Think of who the “education governors” have been from — Arkansas, North Carolina, Kentucky, ummm, I hesitate to say it, but Texas).
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Yeah, but having an “education governor” does not necessarily translate into better schools. Arkansas still ranks very low in test scores and school funding. (I’m getting yelled at to turn the computer off and can’t check things out.) It may be easier to do innovative reforms in Southern states. Certainly it is easier to pass charter school legislation. Still, overall per pupil spending is lower in Southern states where there’s no NEA or AFT, just those multiple, weak and competing teacher associations.
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There’s a teachers’ union battle going on in a nearby community. East Providence is broke and trying to cut teacher salaries, but the teachers are fighting back. Links here and here
What’s interesting to me is how the battle in East Prov is basically coming down to Democrats (pro-teachers) vs. Republicans (anti-teachers).
I don’t think I will ever be able to think critically about teachers’ unions so long as Republicans fight them with ever fiber of their being. Irrational? Maybe.
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Jeez, Wendy, I wonder if I will ever be able to think rationally about Democrats as long as they are wholly in the tank for teachers’ unions, myself.
I sit in right-to-work suburban Virginia, with some of the best schools in the country, and look across the river at the District, where Fenty and Rhee are union-busting and providing the only hope those kids have.
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“It may be easier to do innovative reforms in Southern states.”
…because the unions are weaker?
“There’s a teachers’ union battle going on in a nearby community. East Providence is broke and trying to cut teacher salaries,”
There is a recession on, property values are sinking, there’s talk of deflation, gas is down, and in Florida, there are already teacher layoffs. Also, I don’t know about Providence, but school enrollment in certain parts of the country is shrinking because immigrants are going back to Latin America. Even Mickey Kaus recently blogged that he took a 10% pay cut. Under the circumstances, a 5% pay cut sounds pretty humane.
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“Jeez, Wendy, I wonder if I will ever be able to think rationally about Democrats as long as they are wholly in the tank for teachers’ unions, myself.”
And that would be your right and, honestly, what I would expect.
Rhee is a nightmare. She’s a plague. She’s a nightmare about a plague. I’ve expounded upon my concerns about her in the past.
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East Providence has a large budget deficit, as does the state of Rhode Island. Where do the teachers’ unions think the money will come from?
Another option for the city would be bankruptcy, which would void all contracts-including contracts for firefighters, police, etc. I think we will see more towns and cities choosing this route, in order to get out from under union contracts which they simply can’t pay.
If you wish to support unions, request a copy of your town’s contract with the teachers’ union. This is a matter of public record. Then read it, and consider trying to run a school within its constraints.
I do not think it’s a coincidence that some of the most effective schools, KIPP schools, charter schools, etc., are not union schools.
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“I do not think it’s a coincidence that some of the most effective schools, KIPP schools, charter schools, etc., are not union schools.”
But KIPP is starting to go union, isn’t it?
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“I do not think it’s a coincidence that some of the most effective schools, KIPP schools, charter schools, etc., are not union schools.”
Of course, I’m woly unconvinced that the KIPP schools & charter schools offer a better education, but even if they did, and even if that was because of the greater flexibility with managing teachers allowed by non-union shops, I’d suggest that the KIPP model, in particular, relies heavily on teacher heroism, a model that cannot be translated on a large scale.
I think correlational analyese (and this discussion doesn’t even seem to depend on that) are hugely and terribly flawed, and that it’s meaningless to talk about a correlation between unionization and what measure shall we use for the schools? (funding? test scores? governors who call themselves “education” governors”? proportion of *state* spending on education). The analysis would be meaningless.
I think unions work to improve working conditions for teachers and that sometimes the improvemens of working conditions (including teacher pay) benefits the children and sometimes it doesn’t. I also think that systems with unionization probably have “better” schools than systems without it, but that is so confounded by other variables that I think it would be foolish to attribute the better schools, in say, MA v AR to their differing union status.
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As far as I know, teachers at two KIPP schools have voted to unionize. There are 66 KIPP schools.
It will be interesting to see if performance at the two schools drops, rises, or remains the same, compared to other KIPP schools, and the two schools’ past performance.
The Boston Globe had an article not long ago about the superior performance of charter schools. “Pilot” schools, which are something like charter schools, but run by the School Department, with unions, did not show performance above city averages. http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2009/01/06/charter_schools_grade_highest/
The study’s quite devastating, as it “compared the performance of students at the charter and pilot schools to students who entered the lottery to attend those schools but did not get in.”
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“I’d suggest that the KIPP model, in particular, relies heavily on teacher heroism, a model that cannot be translated on a large scale.”
While KIPP does require more hours from teachers, I think there’s a case to be made that the trade-off is a much more appealing workplace (more respect from students, a more orderly environment, better management, etc.). Pay is important, also. Doctors work long hours, too, but few people talk about it being unreasonable to have a model of “medical heroism.” (Within reason, of course.)
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“Another option for the city would be bankruptcy….”
The problem with bankruptcy, at least for Pittsburgh, is that the union members (and retired union members) are effectively the city’s biggest creditors. That is, the pension fund is seriously underfunded.
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“Doctors work long hours, too, but few people talk about it being unreasonable to have a model of “medical heroism.” (Within reason, of course.) ”
But, doctors (even “just” in family practice) make an average of 200K a year, while teachers make 40K. And, in spite of that level of pay, doctors are rebelling against the heroism model of medicine, too.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/102685.php
I think respecting teachers will go a long ways towards making the profession more palatable, but it’s not going to replace pay.
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bj,
I did mention pay, and I say that “medical heroism” needed to be reasonable (I don’t want an epidural from the guy who has been up for 24 hours). Note, though, how many people there are willing to adjunct for essentially minimum wage. You may not get paid much or get benefits, but there’s a basic level of respect that you can expect when teaching college students or adults that you cannot count on when dealing with the high school set. I’ve done high school (although not in the US), TAing, adjuncting, and adult ESL–the working conditions are very different.
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stranger.
No the study is not at all devastating. The study started with 10 charters, and then dropped SIX of them because they had not kept adequate data. Selection bias? One of those charters spends about $7k per student per year more than the BPS average spending per child. The BPS contains all the students that leak from the charters because they are not doing well there. None of those charters has significant numbers of children with serious special educational needs, the presence of whom in BPS schools seriously strains resources and structures within those schools. Kane is a great researcher, and the study is interesting, but it does not compare like with like in any sense. You simply cannot conclude anything at all about the superiority of charters to non-charters on the basis of this.
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Here’s one more issue brought up by the comparison of high school to adjuncting college. I suspect that there is a fair number of people (especially women) who would be interested in teaching two or three courses a week at a high school, but don’t want to sign up for 5-6. Correct me if I’m wrong, but this looks like an area where unionization makes a difference, since unions tend to hate part-time work.
Laura, if somebody offered you the chance to teach two courses of high school American history, would you be interested?
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No, Amy, most teachers union contracts protect part-time work, and give employees far more control than they would otherwise have over how many courses they teach. It is employers who hate part time work, because it there are significant fixed costs to employing someone, and makes managing more complicated (which is fine if you have good managers of course, but we’re talking about public schools here).
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re: Unions and part time work. At the universities (mine), the union set up rules limiting part-time and temporary labor. They say that they just want to force universities to stop abusing part time labor and hire more tenure track people, but it doesn’t work out that way. Most part-time employees have no union representative.
And actually, unions in other fields have really fought against part-time work. They say that they want to limit abuse of part-time work, which is actually cheaper for more employers since they don’t have to offer benefits.
The teachers union has been criminal in allowing women to be abused as library assistants and teachers assistants. Those are positions held by women who want a part time position in the school system. They are hired in huge numbers, paid crap money and given no benefits. The administration is tickled pink at having this cheap labor and the unions turn a blind eye to that nonsense.
So, I’m not sure you’re right on this one, harry.
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“The teachers union has been criminal in allowing women to be abused as library assistants and teachers assistants.”
So, what *should* the unions do about this iniquity?
The same question comes up about adjuncts and regular track faculty. A while ago, UC Davis, or some other UC school decided to mitigate the problems of poorly paid adjuncts by making TT positions, and taking away the money for adjuncts. That meant fewer TT positions (than adjuncts, since the TT folks got paid more, and were more likely to work more hours). Then, to make matters worse, the jobs weren’t necessarily going to adjuncts, because as TT positions, they were attracting candidates that the adjunct positions didn’t attract, so the competition was fiercer. The net results was a worse situation for the adjuncts (i.e. they didn’t have jobs anymore).
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how about mitigating the problem of poorly paid adjuncts by paying them more? That would make more sense, no? Same goes for the paras in regular schools.
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Headline in tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal: “Big Firms Deepen Job, Wage Cuts.” The article cites a number of companies cutting staff, or hours, or wages. I don’t think that there will be many employers increasing wages in the near future. I also don’t think there will be enthusiasm among taxpayers to support raises and generous pensions for public employees.
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Talk of retirement and taxes reminds me of my proposal for the bailout. Let people deduct capital losses from 401k/IRA/403b/etc accounts. It’s not the fairest proposal, but it seems more targeted to the frugalish portion of the middle class than anything done so far. Also, disproportionately benefiting the elderly seems to help in getting past Congress.
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“I also don’t think there will be enthusiasm among taxpayers to support raises and generous pensions for public employees.”
In the current environment, maintaining the same wage level is the same as a raise, particularly for non-homeowners. Wages go farther than they used to even last summer (thanks to gas price decreases) and houses are becoming affordable.
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Amy P, I’m pretty sure that come June HR is going to send me a letter saying pretty much exactly that.
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“how about mitigating the problem of poorly paid adjuncts by paying them more”
So, do we fire a quarter of the adjuncts, to pay the other 75% that much more?
Or, is this one of those plans that means getting more money, from somewhere? If we’re talking about a university, where do we get the money from? For public schools, I guess that would be the taxpayers (and I’d be comfortable with that). But, for a university? a private one? Should we raise tuition?
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Would universities get better adjuncts, in return for more money? Or only happier adjuncts?
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