Tag: Reverse Seniority


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Teachers Union Walk-Around Money


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Let’s just call the recently-passed Edujobs bill what it really is: A congressional Democrat plan to keep control of the federal legislative branch by subsidizing the National Education Association and…

Doling out the election cash.

Let’s just call the recently-passed Edujobs bill what it really is: A congressional Democrat plan to keep control of the federal legislative branch by subsidizing the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers — and absolutely useless and unnecessary to boot. It really is that simple. As I pointed out in The American Spectator earlier this year, congressional Democrats — fearful of losing seats (and possibly, control) in both houses — were looking for a way to placate the NEA and AFT (whose $71 million in donations during the 2007-2008 election cycle makes them the single-biggest forces in campaign finance) and keep their money and bodies in the game.

As it has been pointed out over the past few months, there is almost no need for these subsidies. For one thing, the original estimates have turned out to be illusory as school districts such as New York City have figured out ways to stave off layoffs, either by cutting jobs in other areas of education (including school staffers represented by the Service Employees International Union and other unions), holding off scheduled teacher pay raises or cutting other areas of school district operations. For all the caterwauling by teachers unions, their allies and congressional leaders such as House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave “Walking Around Money” Obey, the subsidies were absolutely unnecessary. More importantly, given that the layoffs would only affect at best five percent of the 6.2 million people working in education — small potatoes compared to the wrenching layoffs within the private sector — school districts would have done just fine without the money.

Though the bill does benefit the NEA and the AFT, it’s difficult to discern how it will really help congressional Democrats. For one, the waves of dissatisfaction among voters have more to do with how the party and President Barack Obama have handled such issues as federal economic stimulus subsidies (that has done little), continued mismanagement of budget deficits (a continuation of Bush II-era mismanagement) and the passage of a healthcare reform bill no one outside of pharmaceutical giants, unions and “progressives” want. If congressional Democrats want to keep power (which they may still do based on recent polling in states such as Connecticut), the solution lies in pursuing a more fiscally-prudent set of budget policies, cutting federal spending, reducing taxes and taking on the long-term strains on economic growth — including deficits in Social Security and more-aggressive education reform.

Congressional Democrats also didn’t need to give any money to the NEA and AFT because the two don’t have any other options in the general election cycle. Although the two unions give plenty to Republicans at the state and local levels, they hardly give any money to Republicans in Congress. This means that the NEA and AFT don’t have many allies on the national level (even though both the unions and conservative and suburban elements within the GOP share a heated disdain for much of the Bush/Obama school reform agenda). Given the lack of allies and the fact that the NEA and AFT have other issues on which they share common ground with Democrats (the moribund card check legislation and healthcare reform), the two unions have little choice but to back congressional Democrats at all times.

What Edujobs represents is lost opportunity to further advance school reform. Teacher quality reforms such aren’t advanced by the subsidies because  school districts aren’t required to end Reverse Seniority (“last hired-first fired) layoffs and other seniority-based privileges in exchange for the money. There is no provision requiring districts and states to address their long-term fiscal problems, namely at least $600 billion in pension deficits and unfunded retired teacher health liabilities. There is no Race to the Top-like component that would reward states and districts for innovating how they handle human capital management issues. Education doesn’t begin to understand that the sector shouldn’t be treated different than any other during periods of economic dislocation.  Not one thing of value for children or for improving the abysmal quality of American public education.

Essentially, Edujobs has all the hallmarks of Tammany Hall dealmaking devoid of strategic cleverness or plain common sense.

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Four Thoughts on Teacher Quality


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A few observations on improving teacher quality in the dropout nation: More reasons for focusing on improving teacher quality in urban school systems: As University of Pennsylvania researchers Richard Ingersoll…

A few observations on improving teacher quality in the dropout nation:

  • More reasons for focusing on improving teacher quality in urban school systems: As University of Pennsylvania researchers Richard Ingersoll and Lisa Merrill points out in Educational Leadership, 45 percent of teacher turnover takes place in just a quarter of public schools — mostly, the urban systems that help spur the dropout crisis. Certainly part of the problem is the environments in which those teachers must work — which, as Martin Haberman notes, are challenged by systemic bureaucratic decay and incompetence — and the fact that far too many teachers coming out of the nation’s university schools of education are ill-equipped to work in those schools. But as we have seen with layoffs that are occurring (or about to happen)  in New York City and elsewhere, as much of the problem lies with reverse seniority (or last hired-first fired) policies that make it difficult to retain young talented teachers. New York City, for example, will have to get rid of 13 percent of the 30,000 new teachers it has hired in the last decade.  Dealing with all of these issues is critical to improving teacher quality in urban schools.
  • Promoting their obsolescence? University schools of education often attempt to defend their woeful programs by arguing that alternative teacher training programs such as Teach For America are no more successful at training high-quality teachers. But you wonders if they realize that by making such a statement, they are also justifying the end of their existence. Given that aspiring teachers pay a high cost for attending ed schools — and attend TFA and other such programs for free — why wouldn’t they direct their attention away from ed schools? For school districts, especially urban systems plagued by low-quality teachers, TFA and other alternative preparation programs offer them sources of new high-quality teachers specially skilled for their needs.
  • Perhaps we shouldn’t let Baby Boomer teachers retire: As someone suggested at Reason‘s Hit and Run blog in response to my latest column in The American Spectator, it may be cheaper to make it difficult for teachers to retire. After all once a teacher retires, the costs don’t disappear; the costs are merely switched over to the pension system, which districts must pay into anyway. This wouldn’t exactly help children or improve teacher quality. But it would help alleviate the long-term costs of deals between districts, states and affiliates of the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers that have become too expensive for taxpayers to bear.
  • The next battleground in the teacher quality wars won’t be Colorado (where the battle is already being waged) or in Florida (where the tenure reform bill SB 6 was vetoed by the pusillanimous and ambition-oriented Charlie Crist), but in Texas, where the National Council on Teacher Quality took aim at the quality of the state’s ed schools with a recent report. With more than 30 school superintendents backing NCTQ’s conclusions, expect one of the gubernatorial candidates to eventually propose reforms that go beyond the changes already enacted in the Lone Star State and in Indiana last year. Tying student test score data to teacher performance evaluations would also go a long way towards measuring the quality of ed school curricula and shutting down schools that don’t deserve to exist.

Update: Speaking of my point about ed schools and TFA, NYU Professor Jonathan Zimmerman used the traditional argument in his (admittedly, moderately pro-TFA piece) in his Los Angeles Times op-ed.

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