The Detroit News and Tulsa World — June 13, 2010
“Time to end teacher union stranglehold on education” By Sarah Longwell
For young teachers looking to get their first gig after graduating from education school, times are tough.
In New York City, the Success Charter network advertised 135 openings; it received 8,453 resumes in response. In Westchester, a school announced seven openings. More than 3,000 candidates responded.
New York isn’t alone: School districts across the country, faced with budget shortfalls, have put a freeze on hiring any new educators. This is bad news for newly minted teachers entering the work force.
There is a silver lining, however: This glut of new educators gives administrators a golden opportunity to revamp rules protecting bad teachers.
Reformers can take advantage of this surplus of labor by pointing out that anyone who doesn’t like new rules that will improve the nation’s quality of education can quickly be replaced by those who will play ball.
Consider the recent experience of Central Falls, R.I. Presented with a plan to improve the town’s failing high school -- a plan that proposed paying teachers more to work a few extra hours a week -- the union said "no deal." Frustrated by the lack of cooperation from teachers who had no real desire to improve the school’s dismal scores, administrators replied "fine" and fired the lot of them.
Central Falls was immediately inundated with resumes from teachers desperate to get a crack at a job in a terrible economy. Seven hundred teachers applied for fewer than 100 openings.
Having lost their leverage, the fired teachers caved into all of the administration’s requests and were eventually rehired. Problem solved: The students will get a better education, and the teachers get to keep their jobs.
Reformers should aim high: Their first target should be tenure rules. One of the reasons younger teachers are hit the hardest is the ubiquitous and antiquated tenure system, as well as seniority-based layoff policies. Operating in a "last-hired, first-fired" landscape, young, hungry teachers armed with the latest in pedagogy find themselves without a chair when the music stops.
There is simply no question that tenure has eliminated accountability.
In Los Angeles, only 112 tenured teachers out of 45,000 were terminated between 1995 and 2005. The graduation rate for that district in 2003? 51 percent. In New York City, only 10 of 55,000 teachers were dismissed in the 2006-2007 year. More kitchen help probably gets fired from McDonald’s each week, and even they get more than half of their orders right.
The reason the tenure system has survived is because of the teacher unions’ political clout, not because it’s a good policy. The unions have fought tooth and nail to keep tenure intact, for good reason: It keeps their members employed regardless of how poorly they are doing and keeps them loyal to the union that depends on their dues.
It’s time for administrators across the country to follow Central Falls’ example. There are teachers out there who are willing to work. There are administrators who want to get rid of poor-performing educators but can’t because of tenure rules. Administrators need to make it clear that tenure is a thing of the past and that if the teachers in the district don’t like it they’re free to go elsewhere -- replacements will be found who are happy to do the same job without lifetime guarantees of job impunity.
Opportunities like these don’t come around every day. Smart administrators will jump at the chance to make long-needed improvements to the education system. But administrators who choose to maintain the status quo will have bargained away their students’ futures in an effort to stay in the good graces of the union.