Great Read: Rick Green's Spot On Analysis

Today's Courant features a Rick Green column, West Hartford Teachers: Be Open To Change, that is must reading for educators everywhere.

It's about the knee-jerk hubris that too many local teachers unions suffer from. i urge you to read the entire piece.

Barbara Carpenter, the now former president of the 900-member West Hartford Education Association, walked out the other day, blasting her union's commitment to the future of education in town.

-snip-

"We really need to change the culture," Carpenter said when we met to talk one afternoon a few days after she quit. For the union, she says, this means less arguing about workplace rules and more involvement in actually running schools.

Right now, Carpenter said, "it's all about salary and benefits and prep time. The 'same old, same old' is not working."

-snip-

"The old model is broken," she said, referring to school districts where unions too often behave as if they are workers on the assembly line on the factory floor.

"We have to be able to sit down collaboratively. Both sides have to be open."

Carpenter told me she worries as she sees classroom size climb ever larger. She sees more schools adding homework centers to help students who can't keep up in the classroom.

She thinks schools ought to be redesigned to allow for longer school days, perhaps with teachers working different, non-traditional shifts. She thinks teachers and administrators and board of education members ought to be working together more — instead of fighting over trade-union issues, like who has bus duty.

I called John Yrchik, executive director of the Connecticut Education Association, to ask whether it troubled him that the president of the West Hartford local had walked out with a broadside against the teachers' union.

"A complete shocker," he replied.

Yrchik was quick to note that my call had "ironic" timing because the union is aggressively moving in new, progressive directions and pointed to a new collaboration with the University of Connecticut that aims to redesign schools in Hartford and other cities.

"This is an extraordinary coming together of major education stakeholders," he told me, that utilizes "the best ideas of everyone."

"Collaboration is always the goal to be sought after, when it's possible," he said.

Carpenter, ironically, wasn't finding much of this within the ranks of her hometown union local. Within hours of her quitting, the union changed the locks, seized her computer and shut off her cellphone.

"I didn't want it to go under the carpet," she said of her profound disagreement with fellow union members. "Let's get it out. Let's put everyone's feet to the fire here."

Teachers Union Epiphany?

Two editorials in today's NY Times deserve comment.

The first, Educators or Kingmakers? By David White is a litany of stale neo-con ideas that have been kicking around for years and no more pertinent today than when Reagan was in office. White argues that the teacher's union will have disproportionate clout at the Democratic convention and adds,

Good news for the unions, however, might not be good news for education. The union agenda has often run counter to the interests of students and teachers alike.

Take those collective bargaining agreements that the unions have negotiated in school districts across the nation. As Terry Moe, a professor of political science at Stanford, demonstrated, these agreements have hampered student performance in California. Why? Because they protect ineffective teachers — at the expense of everyone else.

Or consider performance-based pay. Forty percent of teachers leave the classroom within their first five years on the job — in some measure because they don’t stand to gain the same performance-based pay raises available to their private-sector counterparts. Merit pay would help public schools retain good teachers by paying them more. But the unions have fought against such measures.

The same can be said about school choice. Despite compelling evidence that it improves student achievement, the national teachers’ unions regularly stand against the policy.

The list goes on. While politicians are aware of the consequences of having these unions set educational policy, they are also aware that they have millions of members and dollars at their disposal. At a convention where every vote is in play, that union power has the potential to be greater than ever before. /span>

While teacher's unions deserve a critical look, most of White's criticism is poor.

As the Times reported months ago, failing schools are often clustered in poverty demographics. Vouchers can't transfer kids into suburbia no matter what anyone thinks and can't fix schools in impossible situations.

And special ed teachers whose students make tiny progress, art teachers, social studies teachers and many others aren't going to receive the merit pay a test score driven subject teacher will. The list indeed goes on.

The second editorial compliments unions for innovating contract negotiations to include rather than preclude what teachers love about their profession. In Teaching Change by Andrew J. Rotherham, Rotherham hopes that teacher's unions begin listening to the desires of teachers.

While laws like No Child Left Behind take the rhetorical punches for being a straitjacket on schools, it is actually union contracts that have the greatest effect over what teachers can and cannot do. These contracts can cover everything from big-ticket items like pay and health care coverage to the amount of time that teachers can spend on various activities.

Reformers have long argued that this is an impediment to effective schools. Now, increasingly, they are joined by a powerful ally: frustrated teachers. In addition to Denver, in the past year teachers in Los Angeles also sought more control at the school level, and found themselves at odds with their union.

Most contracts are throwbacks to when nascent teacher unionism modeled itself on industrial unionism. Then, that approach made sense and resulted in better pay, working conditions and an organized voice. Yet schools are not factories. The work is not interchangeable and it takes more than one kind of school to meet all students’ needs. If teachers’ unions want to stay relevant, they must embrace more than one kind of contract. <-snip-> ...Where this leads is not toward the abolition of unions, as some in their ranks fear and their most rabid critics want. Instead, creating a portfolio of contracts to match a portfolio of schools will give parents better options and re-energize teachers’ unions as an agent of progress.

Rotherham is correct. Teachers unions need to become much more sophisticated about their professional responsibilities to the profession in addition to their members. They can lead educational change or be left in its wake.

Unions are getting smarter

If Connecticut and Connecticut's schools are going to improve, the Teacher's Union needs to step up. The rate of technological change will not wait for teachers who think the future is a linear progression of missed opportunities that are of no consequence. Change matters.

When I'm begging that we embrace change, become masters of our school's destinies, and evangelize the benefits of technological change I often am greeted by indifference. Teachers, administrators, and too many others assume that there are no consequences for watching the world go by. They misread the historical trajectory of the world's wealth and our critical need to move.

Today's younger generation is being financially squeezed into a life of indenture to credit companies at the very time when our president and his band of merry buffoons are draining our ability as a nation to maintain our financial stability.

Within a single generation we may experience a generational political blowback that will include the outsourcing of teaching positions to foreign virtual education suppliers. The cost of education at every level is beginning to exceed the benefit. Teachers have to get the message. And that message is to row, to add value to education so that these kids are the world's best prepared thinkers.

We cannot afford to bicker or pass the buck. Let's work together instead of looking for handouts, five-year plans, or special dispensations. The future is here now. Let's embrace it, teach it, and own our destiny. The alternative is unacceptable.

There is hope in that the UAW is beginning to realize that unions must begin to exercise responsibility for making success happen here. Teachers should take notes. The national treasury is a bank vault full of debt.

From today's Courant:

UAW Chief: It's Time To Fight
Says Industry's Woes Require New Solutions, Union Involvement
1:35 PM EDT, June 13, 2006
By TOM KRISHER, Associated Press

In a speech to about 1,300 members at the UAW's 34th convention in Las Vegas, Gettelfinger seemed to be preparing the union for a different relationship with the troubled domestic automakers as they face challenging times.

"Like it or not, these challenges aren't the kind that can be ridden out," he said. "They demand new and farsighted solutions - and we must be an integral part of developing these solutions."

POP QUIZ: What kind of thinking must unions do?