‘Waiting for’ unions to change
Good teachers in bad system mustn't wait
There’s a moment in Waiting for Superman when Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter cuts to the core. “It’s very, very important to hold two contradictory ideas in your head at the same time,” he tells the camera. “Teachers are great, a national treasure. Teachers unions are, generally speaking, a menace and an impediment to reform.”
If balancing seemingly conflicting ideas is challenging for most people, watching Waiting for Superman must be unnerving for most teachers, especially young and new teachers.
They entered teaching for the right reasons: to motivate kids and make a difference. Most days, they go home exhausted; they put in extra hours, usually without help and advice, and spend their own money in the classroom; in urban districts, they struggle to beat the odds.
And yet here they are, in Waiting for Superman, being equated with “rubber rooms,” “dances of the lemons,” and the incompetent teacher down the hall. If they don’t keep Alter’s admonition in mind, they might walk out of the theater paranoid, and as angry as reformer-turned-reactionary Diane Ravitch, who views Davis Guggenheim’s documentary as part of a war on teachers orchestrated by foundations, right-wing privatizers, and their allies in the Obama White House.
It’s not.
Waiting for Superman is clearly supportive of charter schools. It is obviously sympathetic with the parents who feel trapped in neighborhoods with bad schools. With an appeal to the heart, it makes viewers feel the parents’ elation or desperation over winning or losing the lottery to get their children into a charter school.
It is unsparingly critical of teachers unions — and too harsh in portraying Randi Weingarten, who, as president of the American Federation of Teachers, has of late been a voice for moderation.
But it is not anti-teacher, even though many public school teachers may view it that way. The successful schools in Waiting for Superman are charter schools; teachers may assume that Guggenheim implies that charter school teachers are good, and teachers in largely unionized, district-run schools are not.
His point is not that there aren’t wonderful teachers throughout public schools; Waiting for Superman opens with shots of some of them from an earlier documentary that Guggenheim made. But terrific teachers are trapped in a lousy system for which they are partly responsible. Their dues sustain unions that have created due-process rights and contracts that protect a minority of lemons and clock watchers, much to other teachers’ and the profession’s detriment.
If teachers leaving Waiting for Superman feel guilt by association, so be it. They have the power to transform their union; they just haven’t – yet.
Many younger and newer teachers I’ve spoken with haven’t given a lot of thought to their union; they’re too busy learning their jobs. But others acknowledge that their union doesn’t adequately represent their interests. The step-and-column pay schedule, with raises based only on years on the job and irrelevant academic degrees, doesn’t reward their hard work and achievements. A tenure system with impenetrable due-process rights can protect teachers from vindictive and inept administrators, but mostly it renders meaningless an evaluation system that should guide teachers to self-improvement. Bumping rights and seniority protections can prevent principals from hiring a staff that believes in a common mission and from creating a school culture that’s open to ideas. Union reps, nitpickers and enforcers of the contract (rarely are they among the best teachers), discourage initiative and outside-the-rules thinking.
Teachers unions do well at protecting veteran teachers; they’ve done a lousy job of attracting the best and brightest to the profession and then working to keep them around. And so unions become self-fulfilling defenders of the status quo; they advocate for those who stick around, not the droves who defect or get pink-slipped.
And the unions perpetuate a clash of values and generations. Young and second-career teachers are more entrepreneurial, collaborative, tech-savvy, and independent. They tend to question and think differently. Rather than fight, they abdicate.
Change is coming. I see it in Los Angeles Unified, where teachers, feeling pressure from charters, are breaking loose to create their own independent district schools. I see it in San Jose Unified, where, with the encouragement of a new president, who’s a respected math teacher and coach, the union and district are piloting new evaluations that call for working openly with administrators, setting measurable goals, and holding themselves accountable for reaching them.
But reform must come quicker. Generation Y teachers don’t have time to wait for the baby boomers to give up power and collect their pensions. They must present a progressive vision for their union now and make the persuasive case to be treated and paid as professionals. Or they can watch their power wane in Washington and Sacramento, and their numbers erode, as in Los Angeles, with parents in minority neighborhoods flocking to charter schools.
Teachers can badmouth Waiting for Superman, boycott it, and hunker down. Or they can recognize they’ve reached a pivotal moment in the life of their union – and reform it before it’s too late.
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SVEF is the education foundation advocating for the needs of school districts across Silicon Valley. SVEF seeks to improve public education through establishing partnerships with the private sector and the education community ..
LAUSD has a chance coming up in their next election. A younger, GenXer with credibility is running for UTLA President – credibility because he has been a teacher since 1994 and has been the chapter chair at Santee HS for the last several years. http://www.newtla.com/
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as a credential student and new teacher in the East Bay, i’ve been kinda dreading the day that i’ll have to pay union dues to cta, given that my impression of their work at the state level is generally to block reform efforts that could be the key to higher-performing schools.
is there any sort of progressive teachers association that reform-minded teachers can be a part of?
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StudentTeach: You might look into Accomplished California Teachers, based at Stanford. It has a Facebook page and is broadening its membership beyond its original core membership of National Board Certified Teachers. It issued a report on teacher evaluations that is quite good.
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Before jumping on the Waiting for Superman bandwagon; check the facts. There are several States where Teachers’ unions are not allowed to have collective bargaining, where the teachers are “at will” employees. According to the Waiting for Superman premise (that it is because of union protection that the “bad” teachers can’t be let go, that is responsible for all the nation’s educational woes) you would expect those States’ scores to be better than the States, where there are strong union contracts. Right? Well…guess what? The States with the Strong teacher unions actually do BETTER than the other States.
Instead of looking for a simplistic scapegoat (teacher union) solutions let’s get to the real issues that keep too many of our children from reaching their potential. The culprits are problem which refuse to go away; i.e. poverty, crime, and lack of opportunities. (Society’s Problems) Teachers/Schools do the best we can with whom you send us. We don’t get to “cherry pick” students, like Charter Schools do. We must accept everyone, and do our best; and we do…every day!
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“The successful schools in Waiting for Superman are charter schools; teachers may assume that Guggenheim implies that charter school teachers are good, and teachers in district-run schools – largely non-union – are not.”
District-run school are largely non-union? I assumed the district-run schools were primarily union.
My daughters went to a charter school. Not only were the teachers non-union, they were paid less in exchange for greater freedoms in how to teach. That, and their kids got first crack in getting into the school.
So they were invested in providing a quality education… and it works.
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Phil: Something was mistakenly transposed. District schools are unionized. It’s been fixed.
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Did you ever wonder where the Standards movement started? Former AFT president Al Shanker. Did you ever wonder where the Charter school idea got started? Again AFT. When there is an organized process to keep or dismiss teachers with problems, like PAR in California, Unions are involved and teachers are tough on their colleagues. Your Union is what you make it. Unfortunately most teachers are too exhausted to participate. It is unfortunate that the public is waiting for the Super Teacher who will work until she drops for little money, never has to go to the bathroom, doesn’t need to spend time with her family, and never gets sick.
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Steve, can you tell us where to find the data behind your statement that, “The States with the Strong teacher unions actually do BETTER than the other States.”
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http://perimeterprimate.blogspot.com/2010/04/grannan-is-firing-bad-teachers-really.html
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Great article, John … I believe the time has come for teachers unions to have a change in perspective and place students needs at least as high as their union members (and higher than their weakest members who are doing a disservice to those students and dishonoring the teaching profession). And I say this as a representative of teachers of Career Technical Education, who largely feel isolated and disrespected by their union bosses, since Vocational programs are typically more expensive than the core academic disciplines, and therefore drain more resources away from the collective bargaining table (hence, the union has largely abandoned CTE in cash-strapped districts).
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Oops — on my post above, the Wikipedia explanation of the PSAT cut scores found its way to the end of the post for some reason, and is supposed to be after this:
National Merit recognition is based on the PSAT scores of 11th-graders. The cut score for recognition varies from state to state. That’s explained this way on Wikipedia:
“The minimum Selection Index for recognition as a Semifinalist … is set by the NMSC [National Merit Scholarship Corporation] in each state at whatever score yields about the 99th percentile.”
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I may have to see the movie, but your comments certainly stand on their own merit. (Phil Perry does point out an inadvertent error, though; teachers in charter schools and private schools are generally not members of a union. Almost all teachers in public school districts in California do belong to a union.)
Reforming teacher compensation is the key element necessary to improve student achievement; it is also the key element to finally solving the never-ending budget crisis in public schools. This reform does not require a new union or abolishing existing unions; it only requires the teachers in a specific district to get serious about a pay plan that eliminates the counter-productive incentives in their existing contracts. Briefly stated, the step-and-column pay schedule that pays everyone according to “who they are” needs to be supplemented with a pay schedule that pays specific teachers according to “what they do.”
I cannot stress enough that the solution does not lie in making it easier to remove ineffective teachers. The solution lies in a compensation system that makes it impossible to continue to be ineffective but nontheless receive full pay for substandard results. Given enough time with the proper incentives, teachers will either get with the program or they will take themselves out of the schools.
About one-half of the districts in the San Francisco Bay Area are possible candidates for the seeds of compensation reform to germinate. These are the districts that have local parcel taxes that augment ordinary school funding. There is no reason that these funds should continue to be used to support the dysfunctional compensation system now in place. If the local teachers union does not want to change, the community has the option of discontinuing the parcel tax.
Further, there is a sub-set of these districts that has additional leverage and potential flexibility. Many districts with parcel taxes also receive substantial extra revenues each year from local educational foundations, which generally are supported by cash donations from parents. Making parents and school boards aware of their options can go a long way towards fixing this mess.
Until viable examples exist of alternate compensation practices, the unions in the large districts will not change. Change is always difficult, but if you do not know where you are going, it may become impossible.
I’m sure that the usual suspects are going to rain all over the “charter school parade,” but charter schools are not the answer to achieve better schools. They can be part of an answer, but in existing conditions they are an escape hatch from a compensation system that is crippling public education.
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I found this Gerald Bracey piece relevant (thanks to Jay Matthews for refreshing my memory) to some of the ‘Superman’ fallout. Note that it was written over three years ago.
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Thanks, Davis, for another simplified and skewed portrayal of education in America today. Is the issue too complex and demanding to really understand and treat more deeply? Now all the ‘followers’ will leap to a facile blame of the unions and teachers, who are sadly the only ones left doing the actual hard day-to-day work of educating.
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Tom C said:
Reforming teacher compensation is the key element necessary to improve student achievement <snip>.
Please clarify. How would you measure good teaching? No one seems to have a plan for that.
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Unfortunately Mr Fensterwald repeats the oversight of filmmaker Guggenheim; investigate what unions are already doing. The film villifies Woodside High School as emblematic of the old tracking model where many students are doomed to factory jobs. Perhaps if both had bothered to actually examine what goes on inside Woodside they would have found a widely variety of challenging choices for students who are doing amazing things. They might have found that this Title 1 school, with a 56% hispanic population, is full of students learning and achieving. And they might have found that this is done with the collaboration and inspiration of the union.
I suggest anyone genuinely interested in what goes on at Woodside contact the school, and go talk to the staff and students. mr Guggenheim didn’t bother – it didn’t fit with the slanted story he had to tell.
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For those interested, I did a video interview of Emily Jones, the student in the movie who chose to apply to Summit Charter Prep High instead of Woodside, and her mother, Ann. I plan to post it early next week. Emily eloquently tells her own story.
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Wouldn’t it be interesting to go over to Woodside High School and take a thoughtful look at the validity of Guggenheim’s view of tracking (great for the high-track students, a forced march to mediocrity for the regular-ed students)? Guggenheim resoundingly damned a widespread practice, almost casually and in passing, and I’ve seen hardly any comment on that.
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Well, it seems that Mr. Fensterwald drank the kool-aid Davis Guggenheim is distributing!
John, are you aware of the QEIA schools that CTA is working with? And NEA has a national Priority Schools campaign going on. Both of these programs are promoting reforms that are teacher designed & driven. QEIA schools in CA are beginning to show significant gains.
As to teacher evaluation, Oak Grove Educators Assn. and the district changed our evaluation system several years ago, and student performance can be used as a part of teacher evaluation. These two examples show demonstrate that teachers are looking for good and valuable reform.
As a veteran teacher, I believe that no one wants poor teachers for our students, and I agree the film isn’t anti-teacher. All we are asking is that teachers receive due process. There are certainly ways to work within the system, we do it all the time.
Attracting the best and the brightest has always been a challenge, but it’s even more difficult now as salaries lag woefully behind, layoffs loom every March 15, and the demands on teachers increase.
As a local union president and CTA member since 1975, I truly resent your remark that union activists generally are not the best teachers! I know that not to be the case, and we are constantly striving to do the best jobs we can for our students with fewer resources and less pay.
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KC: I stick by my assertion regarding which teachers become site leaders. Clearly there are exceptions, and you’re not the only one (note to readers: KC also serves on the TOP-Ed advisory board).
There has yet to be a full, objective evaluation of QEIA — only anecdotal evidence of success that CTA has promoted. I look forward to an actual study.
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I hear that only losers become shop stewards in the Newspaper Guild too.
(Joking — since my husband and I have both been shop stewards in the union formerly known as the Newspaper Guild, and I believe that John was one too. However…)
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Jennifer Thomas posted: “Tom C said: ‘Reforming teacher compensation is the key element necessary to improve student achievement.’ Please clarify. How would you measure good teaching? No one seems to have a plan for that.”
Jennifer, I do have a plan for evaluating teachers. FYI, there are many evaluation plans already in place; the first place to check is the teachers’ contract in your district.
You might find relevant the “Manifesto on how to fix our schools” by Joel Klein, et al. This Washington Post editorial opinion was published Sunday; a link is http/www.contracostatimes.com/ci_16350029.
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