Teachers’ Unions vs. Progress

Now here’s a frequent subject of debate: teachers’ unions.  Marcus A. Winters, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, writes in the City Journal about the unions in New York:

The use of data to improve student learning is a crucial modern education reform.  Standardized tests produce rich sources of information that researchers can use to identify effective policies and practices. The data revolution, moreover, promises to move education policy away from politics. Numbers don’t have agendas or run for reelection. Accurately collected and properly analyzed, data can reveal truths that escape our sight.

One such truth is the effectiveness of individual teachers. Data analysis is far from perfect, and no one argues that it should be used in isolation to make employment decisions. But modern techniques can help us distinguish between teachers whose students excel and teachers whose students languish or fail.

There’s just one problem with the data revolution: it doesn’t work without data. States must develop data sets that track the individual performance of students over time and match those students to their teachers.

Unfortunately, New York has deliberately refused to take that step.  The state already has a sophisticated system for tracking student progress, but it doesn’t allow this statewide data set to match students to their teachers.  No technical or administrative factors prevent the state from doing so. Only political obstacles stand in the way.

Winters continues, examining the root problems with the teacher union policies:

The premise underlying the policies favored by the teachers’ unions, which govern so much of the relationship between public schools and teachers, is that all teachers are uniformly effective. Once we can objectively distinguish between effective and ineffective teachers, the system of uncritically granted tenure, a single salary schedule based on experience and credentials, and school placements based on seniority become untenable.

The unions don’t want information about their members’ effectiveness to be available, let alone put to practical use, and thus far they’ve successfully blocked New York State’s use of such data.

Not only has the State been hampered from data system improvements, but so has New York City:

When New York City hinted that it would use its own data system to evaluate teachers based on student test scores, the state legislature passed a law banning the practice. Fortunately, that law is set to expire next year and may never actually be enforced, thanks to the city’s new reading of it, which frees city officials to use test scores for tenure decisions this year. Still, the legislature’s actions illustrate its opposition to using data in any way that would identify ineffective teachers.

New York’s stubborn resistance to the data revolution not only harms the education our children receive; it leaves hundreds of millions of federal dollars on the table during a massive budget crunch. The Obama administration’s Race to the Top grant competition will distribute $4.35 billion to states that pursue modern education reforms. According to the competition’s rules, however, any state with a law that prohibits the use of test-score data to evaluate teachers is immediately disqualified from consideration. A state’s application also becomes more attractive under the guidelines if its data set matches students to teachers. Currently, New York fails on both counts.

The City of Los Angeles also faces similar opposition to unions.  United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) filed a lawsuit in late December to block the potential hand-over of new campuses and struggling ones to charter schools in part of the city’s school reform plan.

Charter-school advocates defended the plan’s legality as did the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The Board of Education approved a resolution in August to turn over 12 long-struggling campuses and 18 new ones to bidders from inside or outside the district, including some charter operators.

The long-anticipated lawsuit contends that under state law a new school can only become a charter if at least 50% of its permanent teachers petition for it.

The union argues a new school must be staffed by district teachers who would then have the option of converting it to a charter. Under the district’s plan, a charter could move into a new school and hire its own faculty.

Charters operate independently of local districts and are not bound by some rules that govern traditional schools. Most charters are non-union.

Los Angeles Superintendent Ramon C. Cortines announced in mid-December that “the Los Angeles Unified School District would begin aggressively weeding out poor-performing teachers and administrators.”

“This district can rightly be criticized for the promotion of ineffective teachers over the years,” he said in a prepared statement. “That is about to change. We do not owe poor performers a job.”

The policy encourages district supervisors to consider firing some of the 404 probationary teachers who were found to need improvement in their last performance evaluation.

It also urges greater scrutiny of 339 administrators who have not become permanent in their positions and 175 tenured teachers who received negative evaluations last year.

Just for some perspective, Los Angeles is the 2nd largest school district in the country and had a graduation rate of 44% in 2006, the sixth lowest of the top 50 largest districts, behind Detroit, New York City and 3 others, according to USA Today, with the overall graduation rate for the nation at 70%.

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