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Elizabeth,

Ummmm…I think that he just took sides.

One side is saying that unions are bad for education, bad for schools, and the ruin everything they touch.

The other side is saying that unions are not bad for education, not bad for schools and don’t ruin everything they touch.

One side is saying that there are educational reasons to be against teacher unionization, and the other says there are are not.

Elizabeth,

There are union activists who claim that even in the absence of abuses that a wonderful organization will STILL benefit from unions. (I am related to such a person.)

However, I’ve never seen that specifically in the educational world or debate. The case for unions in school is different than that. The case for unions comes in response to existing conditions and history.

The folks at KIPP AMP are saying that because teachers have been shut out of decision-making, because the administration is not paying proper attention to the needs of the faculty (those are their two issues, right?), the school is suffering. And, they continue, the way to get teachers’ voices heard at these issues addressed is to unionize.

The more general case for teachers unions is built around just and handful of ideas, not all of which are educational.

* There is an ample history of administrators showing favoritism to some teachers over others in a variety of way that are not good for schools. Union contracts limit the inappropriate favoritism. (e.g. nepotism, giving friends the best classrooms or teaching assignments, etc.) This might or might not be an educational reason.

* The oldest reason is that people historically lost of lot of rights when they became teachers. They were treated like public figures who conduct and morals were subject to public debate and potentially discipline up to and including firing. Women who dated were fired. Go to a bar and have a drink and your pay is cut. After all, if you are educating our children, shouldn’t you only have the highest moral character? Well, the idea of unions and the establishment of due process procedures for discipline and firing was to protect teachers — as with the first reason of distrust of administrators — from the public’s inappropriate and irrelevant standards.

Again, not exactly an educational reason.

* There IS an educational idea, however. Teachers, in theory, have knowledge of what is going on the ground, and are real experts in their work. It is crazy to leave the voice of most of the experts in the organization out of decision-making. You’re not going to have every decision subject to vote by all the employees, but have a representative of the workers at the table with management when major decisions are made seems — to many — to be a good idea.

* There is also a political idea, and this is the most controversial one. There are lots of people with power. The superintendent has power, and has the ear of other people who have power. Klein can get on his bully pulpit any time. He can get his views heard on any radio or TV station, or any print outlet, any time he wants. The rich and powerful can always get their views heard. But the little man doesn’t have that kind of voice. Even with the web, getting anyone to hear your view can be difficult. Therefore, unions exist to give the great number of little guys’/gals’ view heard in the big debates. Like, we know what Klein thinks about mayoral control, but what do teachers think? The union is supposed to fill that role. And if the owners or senior administrators of organization can endorse political candidates, why can’t workers? — even if the organization is a public one.

Is that an educational reason? Indirectly, yes. But you don’t need collective bargaining rights for that last one. You can have professional associations that are not like what people think of as teacher unions for that.

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So, I don’t think that people really argue that teachers unions make schools better. I think, instead, the closest argument to that is that teachers unions prevent others (especially administrators) from making them worse. But the bigger argument is that just because a person decides to become a teacher, that doesn’t mean that they should be an indentured servant. This bigger argument is more about worker rights, the right to be treated decently (however that is defined).

If you believe that a happy workforce is a more productive workforce than that might be an educational argument. But I think that that is a little weak. Not totally wrong, but a little weak.

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Now, I do think that there are certain arguments that can be made. For example, I think that the superintendent and the union president can privately agree that certain unpopular/controversial things have got to be done. And then, they can each go in public and blame the other for half of them. “I didn’t want to go along with X, but if we were going to do Y, I had to do it,” and the converse from the other side. They can conveniently blame the other for the part that their constituency wouldn’t normally go for. This way, entrenched interests have a bit less power to stop change.

Now, that takes a really good partnership between the two, one built on respect and mutual understanding. And that is not very common.

So, the pro-union argument is really that unions are not automatically good for schools. The argument is that they are good for teachers without being bad for schools and students. And then, indirectly, the argument is something like, “if it is good for teachers, the men and women who know, love and nurture your children every day, isn’t that good for you children, too?”

I’m one of those pro-union people. I don’t think that most people — including senior administrators — understand how physically demanding and emotionally draining great teaching is, to say nothing of how time consuming its daily preparation is. And I suppose that the argument could be made that by fighting to ensure that teachers are treated decently (which is a standard obviously subject to debate), unions help to keep good teachers in the classroom and even to attract potentially good teacher, too. So, there’s your educational argument. But it’s indirect and a little tenuous.

I wonder if Arne Duncan’s “Kipp conversion” experience in Chicago has affected his views on this matter.

If you recall, there was an attempt to try a district conversion to Kipp in a unionized school.

While no doubt all parties disagree on the cause, I think everyone agrees that the effort failed, the school was crappy. Kipp withdrew its name and support, perhaps in 2007 or so.