It's fitting that most of the nation's 55 million pre-K through high school students are going back to school just before and after Labor Day. The folks running the show in the classrooms and the offices have become the dominant force in today's union movement.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the most heavily unionized occupational sector in the economy is Education, Training and Library Services, with 37 percent of the employees covered by a union contract.
No doubt, unions and associations have been good for teachers. The average teacher salary is $52,800 according to the Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2011. But are union educators good for education?
The public isn't convinced. Earlier this year, Phi Delta Kappa and Gallup conducted their latest poll on education. Only 26 percent of respondents said they think teachers unions and associations have improved the quality of public education. Nearly half - 47 percent - think they have hurt quality.
The poll had even more bad news for education union leaders. Reform tools that many union leaders consider poisonous to public education were highly favored by the poll respondents. Charter schools got a thumbs up by 70 percent. Supporters of Wake County's old busing for economic diversity program should sit down for this next piece of data: 74 percent favored "allowing students and their parents to choose which public schools in the community the students attend, regardless of where they live." That had to hurt.
Respondents also favored larger classes with effective teachers over smaller classes being taught by less competent teachers.
PDK/Gallup has been conducting this poll for 43 years, and the steady decline of support for teacher unions and associations is stark and undeniable. So for the good of public education, should they be shelved?
Author Steven Brill is one person who says no. I found his conclusion surprising, given his record of writing about what he considers teacher union abuses. In 2009, Brill wrote the often-cited "Rubber Room" article in The New Yorker. It chronicled the activities of hundreds of New York City teachers who were segregated from students for incompetence or gross misconduct. But thanks to the union contract, these teachers collected full pay and benefits while their suspensions and other forms of discipline were being adjudicated. Since their cases and appeals often took years, these teachers were paid by the taxpayer for essentially doing nothing.
Yet Brill believes that, if reoriented, teacher unions and associations can become a boon to public education.
Teacher quality, he says, is the most important determinant of student achievement. As he tells it, too much of the debate is focused on the extremes - on instructors who could qualify for a rubber room or on super-teachers who achieve amazing outcomes. Brill observes that unions spend too much energy defending indefensible teachers while reformers spend too much time extolling the exploits of teachers whose efforts and results are unsustainable over the long haul.
The keys to providing every child a high-quality education, according to Brill, are the teachers between the best and worst. How do you raise their skills regardless of their experience and ability?
Brill suggests that because of their size and influence, unions and associations could be in the best position to deliver the classroom training and mentoring needed by every teacher. From a strictly logistical point of view, he is probably right. He's also right from a practical point of view. Some of the best classroom results I've observed and studied have come from team teaching arrangements in which teachers complement each other's strengths and weaknesses and learn from each other.
Brill may be onto something if unions can train themselves to care about professional development as much as they do salary, benefits, seniority protections and political issues unrelated to education. To stay relevant in the classroom and to the public, union leaders must realize the next step is to empower the best among them, not to protect the worst.
