A Right to Work Nightmare

On a flight last summer I sat next to a person who told a tale far more harrowing than anything emerging from Wisconsin or Ohio.  In those places, there is a tradition of organizing, of working people joining together to level the playing field with management.  This is a tale of the consequences of radical, systemic disempowerment of education workers.  In Wisconsin and Ohio, workers lost some legal rights, but they did not lose their culture of resistance.  This story is a portrait of the consequences if that culture were to disappear, or was never allowed to develop in the first place.

"Barbara" is a grade school teacher from a suburban community.  She has a special needs son named "Tom."  Her son has an excellent IEP, a plan that realistically addresses his educational needs, and speaks to the skills he will need to be functional as an adult.  That plan is in conflict with the state's high stakes testing law. 

Tom's main deficit is in math.  He can't add 4+4 and is entering 4th grade.  If you can't do simple addition, you can't do area problems, yet the third grade standardized tests require students to solve area problems.  Barbara sees the disconnect between Tom’s homework and what her son can actually do.  Rather than follow the IEP, and address Tom's real life needs, he has been subjected to a continuous diet of test prep.  Somehow, a child who can't add managed to make the cut score on a test that requires area problems. 

I wonder if there were an unusual number of erasures on Tom's answer sheet....

But it gets worse.

Evidently principals in this town routinely refer to the "retards".  Administrators’ jobs depend on test scores there.  The high stakes nature of that state’s testing leads professional educators to revile the very children they are supposed to be serving.

But it gets worse.

In Barbara's school there is a principal with two daughters.  He manipulates class lists so that his daughters get the "good" teachers, and keeps the special ed kids and kids with behavioral issues out of those classes.  This principal uses a position of authority for personal benefit.  He can get away with it because of the power he wields over workers.  It is corruption plain and simple.

I wonder what benefit he will have derived when his daughters grow up to be morally debased, self absorbed monsters.  The apple don't fall far from the tree as they say. 

How can this be?

Barbara works in a "right to work" state.  In truth, she works in a "right to get fired" state.  She is afraid for her job.  Her need to make a living is in conflict with her obligation as a parent to advocate for her child.  She fears that if she demanded what is right for Tom, she would be fired.  She even moved to a different school to be in a better position to advocate, but the school is still in the same district.  Without tenure, without robust due process, she is exposed to the winds of a systemic corruption.

She is afraid to ask questions.  Her son's teacher is afraid to follow Tom's IEP because she will get fired if she doesn't follow the test prep regimen.  Barbara was told that state testing laws supersede federal special education laws.  I gently suggested to her that this might not be the truth, but it was so outside of her cultural experience to question authority that she could barely process this suggestion.

I mentioned that there is an NEA affiliate in her state, that there are parent advocacy resources like PIRC,  and that by organizing with other people she could possibly achieve that which she cannot achieve as an individual.  Again this was so outside her experience....

Fish school in part to confuse predators.  As an individual, Barbara would paint a big fat bulls eye on herself were she to become the parent her son so desperately needs.  In a sea of thousands or millions of similar parents and teachers she would be far safer.  The organization itself would become the target.

I described my advocacy work for educators.  Speaking out to authority seemed so alien to Barbara.  I gave her my card and encouraged her to contact me so I could connect her with some organizations.

I never heard from her.

Right to work: an authoritarian culture run amok, where educators learn to hate children, parents knuckle under to the abuse of their own children, and authorities manipulate for personal advantage.  No checks, no balances.

A nightmare.

Labor Day Reflections

I am third generation union:

·         Grandfather: United Brushworkers, AFL

·         Grandmother: Amalgamated Clothing Workers

·         Mother: CWA

·         Father: NTEU

·         Brother: AFT

·         Me: NEA

I am the first in the family to assume a leadership position.  I value the relationships I have with the local leaders in other unions.  It is not enough that Dennis Van Roekel talks with Weingarten or Hoffa.  Local leaders need to know each other and understand each other’s organizing cultures in order to build the solidarity that will rebuild the middle class.  I call this collateral circulation.

I started out in the Vermont Worker’s Center, then realized I needed to be an activist in my own local to have street cred.  Since my activism originated outside NEA I have always been curious about other unions and value what they have to teach me.  Among things I have learned:

·         AFL-CIO has ways of reconciling the interests of employees and employers in the same union.

·         So-called collective bargaining “rights” are actually a means of controlling our behavior.

·         Labor solidarity is a multiplier for our efforts.

·         You are a worker if you cannot survive more than a few weeks without a paycheck.

Happy Labor Day!  Solidarity!

Organizing Around Quality

Educators care about student learning.  This is why we get out of bed in the morning.  This is why we persist in jobs that offer slowly eroding economic and working conditions.  The real reasons we teach have enormous implications for union organizing.

Let me set some context.   Two approaches to union organizing are contending for the soul of our union. 

The member servicing model treats the union like a giant insurance company.  You pay your dues, you get services, like a professional contract, administration of that contract, or help if you get in trouble.  You don’t have to do anything except pony up the cash – others do it for you.

The organizing model seeks to involve union members in a continuous process to improve their own lives.  In this model, the union embraces the democratic engagement of members as a source of power and energy in political struggle and collective bargaining.

There is one thing that doesn’t make any sense to me:  adopting an organizing model to perform….better member servicing.  The irony is stunning.  It’s a formula for the status quo.  

What is the proper objective of an organizing model for the 21^st century?

To be successful, an organizing model has to be built around the things really motivate educators.  We call ourselves the National EDUCATION Association, not the National Salary Benefits and Pensions Association.   You can build a member servicing model quite nicely around salaries and benefits.  Unfortunately, it is the member servicing model which is being effectively snuffed in places like Wisconsin and Ohio.  

To build a successful organizing model, you need to construct it on the real aspirations of educators.  We need to organize around what good teachers really want: education quality.

The truth about teachers is that our lives are spent in rooms full of children, and that on one level the quality of our lives is directly proportional to the quality of educational experience of our students.  There is nothing more harrowing than being an ineffective teacher.  There is nothing more tragic than being trapped counting the weeks and years to retirement.

Our motivation in entering this profession is to do our very best to help students learn and grow.  Anybody entering this profession for the money has rocks in their head.  As long as the money and the working conditions aren’t too bad, good teachers will continue to teach, and will struggle to overcome whatever impediments are thrown in the way by stupid policies, underfunding, or social injustice.

Being motivated by the work itself, and by a sense of service to society, is precisely what makes education workers vulnerable to exploitation, and why over three million educators join unions that many regard as flawed, but essential.

As a local president, I find the task of effectively organizing teachers in any sustainable way extremely challenging.  Matters of negotiation and grievance are at best an acquired taste for a true educator.  Teachers by nature tend to the collaborative rather than the adversarial.

In my local, I am striving to mobilize a larger cohort of activists who undertake smaller, more differentiated jobs, including work outside the scope of traditional adversarial union tasks.  After hours of phone calls and emails this summer, I was not able to present a full slate of officers, and I completely lack a designated contact of any sort in an entire building – no rep, no negotiator, nobody.  This is the response to the one organization dedicated to the economic interests and working conditions of teachers.

I’m also president of a chapter of a national organization devoted to professional learning in my discipline.  The educators active in this chapter devote four Saturdays each year to working with nationally acclaimed clinicians.  We strive to improve our teaching practice. 

An economist might be astonished at the irrationality of this behavior.  Not only are these people spending weekends away from home and family, not only are they performing this significant professional activity unpaid, but they willingly pay dues to the organization for the privilege!

Not only that, but with far less effort than I needed to assemble my Swiss cheese leadership team for the union local, I was able to quickly assemble a talented and energetic board.  This little organization overflows with leadership capacity.

I find this dichotomy instructive.  It is far easier for me to organize a volunteer chapter devoted to education quality than to organize a union local built around economic interests and working conditions.   Organizing around educational quality works. 

Rethinking Teacher Compensation Part III: Synthesis and Solutions

Day one, we looked at history and rationale for the single salary schedule; day two we took a critical look at neo-liberal reform proposals with an eye to avoiding bad policy.  Today, I propose a set of principles to guide good policy choices.

That said, there are many legitimate reasons to explore new ways of compensating teachers.  Financial incentives are a major lever of public policy and there are already incentives built into the single salary schedule - perhaps not the ones we want.  Compensation reform in education will be an essential component of restructuring schools for the 21st century.  I'd like to propose three basic principles to keep the change process positive and to avoid adding three million education workers to the general instability of our labor force.

1. Strategic compensation systems should be "opt in."  The best experiments in strategic compensation do so.  This speaks to basic fairness and ethical policy around the social contract.  Veteran educators rightly are cautious about change, having experienced the endless churn of half baked and half completed policy through their careers.  If the strategic compensation system is well designed, even veterans will opt in.  Districts like Denver and Baltimore have followed this practice in instituting their new contracts. 
2. There should be an adaptive match between policy and problem.  We should not let an enthusiasm for novelty drive the process.  Disruption and change for its own sake do not add value.  Reform can  be achieved through innovative compensation practices and through  single salary schedules (Plattsburgh NY), according to conditions in the community.  We are solving education problems here, not tax policy or public relations problems.  Blind adherence to ideology has no place among leaders who value student learning.
3. Pay people now for the work they do now.  The big problem with deferred compensation is that someday, somebody is going to have to pay for it, especially if pension systems are chronically underfunded for short term convenience.  The solution is pay as you go.  If you pay a teacher every cent they are owed at the time they perform the work, instead of with an IOU payable decades down the road, tenure and seniority then stand on their own merit as policy choices.  If separation/termination is necessary, a person can leave cleanly, knowing that no deferred money was left on the table.  This is a new type of fair, infinitely simpler and less rule bound.

During his speech at the NBPTS conference, Education Secretary Arne Duncan spoke of educators receiving salaries in the range of $60,000 to $150,000.  He was pinning some realistic numbers on a 21st century teacher compensation system. He wasn't talking about a juiced up single salary schedule.

Compensation reform is properly used to improve education, not save money.  To give you an idea, when Denver negotiated the Pro-Comp system with their union, the DCTA, this required 13% new money.  Denver taxpayers agreed to fund the plan by taxing themselves an additional quarter billion dollars over a ten year period.  The bottom line was that the new contract was a plan to improve education outcomes.  Taxpayers will pay for improvements, but are understandably unenthusiastic about mere inflation.

I believe there are ways of rethinking teacher compensation that can lead to better outcomes.  The difficulty we face is that the single salary schedule, pensions, benefits, tenure and seniority (not to mention collective bargaining where it exists) are so inextricably intertwined that you can't take a jackhammer to any one part of the edifice without bringing the whole thing down.  Political vandals may like this idea, but it is bad policy because it demoralizes education workers, degrades the quality of education and hurts students.

The ethical policy alternative is to build a shiny new compensation structure next to the old one, a structure that speaks powerfully to education quality, and solves real world education problems.  And fund it properly.  When the last person has left the old structure for the new, then you can get out the jackhammers - or better yet turn the old edifice into a museum.

Question: what principles would you add so that compensation reform is both fair and effective in advancing student learning?

Rethinking Teacher Compensation Part II: A Brief Critique of Neo-Liberal Compensation Reform

Yesterday we explored the history and rationale of traditional teacher compensation practices.  Today we will take apart some of the more toxic neo-liberal ideas.  Tomorrow, we’ll look at some solutions.

Along comes neo-liberal education reform, built around the idea that the invisible hand of markets and competition can solve educational problems.  A whole raft of activity follows.  Reformers talk about billions spent each year compensating teachers for master’s degrees that are disconnected from student outcomes.  Municipalities and school boards balk at funding automatic step raises on the grounds that longevity does not equal quality.  The linchpins of tenure and seniority come under assault on the somewhat contradictory grounds that tenure protects bad teachers and seniority encourages the mal-distribution of good teachers.

An alphabet soup of strategic compensation initiatives seeks to incentivize desired teacher behaviors.  At their most toxic, these schemes merely reward (or fire) teachers for test scores.  The real problem with doing this is that it turns education into a commodity.  Produce more, we reward you more.  I wonder what reasonable person would want to commoditize education.  Ultimately education is a quality more than a quantity, a process more than a product. 

One dimensional solutions like merit pay (and its various sophisticated modern flavors) take institutions that can only be optimally effective by means of a culture of collaboration, and incentivize competition.  By making people compete for a limited pool of merit pay, one encourages the withholding of information and the breakdown of trust.  There is no faster way to destroy a school culture.  Private industry discovered this many years ago.  Why half baked incentive schemes that failed in industry are being recycled in education is beyond me.

Let me repeat – competition in education is bad because optimal performance in schools requires profoundly collaborative cultures.  This is the Achilles heel of neo-liberalism.  You can’t succeed at this endeavor when you make teachers and schools behave like too many piglets at too few teats.

The flaw in pay for performance is that while the goal is 100% success, performance pay requires winners and losers because there is a finite amount of money to dedicate to the purpose – that’s called budgeting.   So there has to be losers.  We already have a system with winners and losers - that’s the problem we are trying to solve.  Do we want to put that system on steroids?

Finally, one cannot ignore the fact that there are lazy and duplicitous politicians and policy makers who are trying to steal veteran educators' deferred compensation so they can evade the tough work of raising the revenues necessary to fund the public good.  Schemes that promise to “do more with less” are the snake oil of education policy. 

Those who would end the defined benefit pensions of teachers and other public workers on whatever spurious grounds, and after failing to fund them properly for decades, turn our government and society into a giant kleptocracy.

The single salary schedule and its associated mechanisms may be a relic of another time, but, by side stepping the more poisonous effects of competition, traditional teacher compensation practices at least leave the possibility of collaborative school cultures and basic fairness intact.

Rethinking Teacher Compensation: Ethics Equals Good Policy - Part I. Time Flows Only One Direction

Rethinking Teacher Compensation: Ethics Equals Good Policy is a three part series.  I will be posting each day as follows:

Monday: Part I. Time Flows Only One Direction
Tuesday: Part II. A Brief Critique of Neo-Liberal Compensation Reform
Wednesday: Part III. Synthesis and Solutions

Part I. Time Flows Only One Direction

The single salary schedule is the most common system for organizing the compensation of teachers.  It rewards for two things: longevity and education.  A teacher receives a raise for each year of service (step increases) and a raise for achieving certain educational benchmarks, such as graduate credits and Masters degrees (column increases.)  It emerged during the Progressive era, some 94 years ago, to solve certain problems in education.  It promoted equity between teachers of different races and genders.  It rationalized compensation, and was used to take favoritism out of the equation.

In order to work the single salary schedule had to be tied to two other mechanisms: tenure and seniority.  Tenure is due process, the idea that civil servants should only be terminated for just cause, in other words for issues related to performance.  Teachers gain tenure when they attain the right to due process, usually after certain number of years and satisfactory evaluations.  Prior to attaining tenure, teachers are "at will employees;" they can be terminated for any reason or for no reason.  Seniority is "last in, first out" which prevents veteran teachers from being terminated in favor of younger, cheaper workers.  Without tenure and seniority, the single salary schedule is functionally meaningless.

There is another issue that further complicates the picture: defined benefit pensions.  Pensions are part of an overall benefit phenomenon - public sector employees have historically traded higher salaries for better benefits.  With pensions, teachers trade salary for income after retirement.  Teachers contribute a percentage of salary to the pension system and the government also makes a contribution.  Actuaries make recommendations for funding the system, which, in an ideal world, policy makers and legislators are supposed to follow.

This is a deferred compensation system.  Teachers are paid peanuts early in their careers on the promise of a middle class salary later in their careers, along with good benefits and a dignified retirement.  Due process and seniority are the glue that hold the system together: without a reasonable expectation that they can last long enough in their jobs to receive their top level salaries and pensions, the single salary schedule would be a cruel joke.

It is also a social contract.  Government benefits by being able to defer costs into the future, and still have a stable, well educated work force in schools, essentially trading the future for short term benefits.  Teachers benefit by having stable employment and clear, understandable rules governing compensation and retirement.  They trade salary in the short term for long term benefit. 

Historically, the single salary schedule has functioned as designed.  A large population of career educators has stuck around, and has acquired additional training and education.  They have paid every penny they owed by statute into the pension system.  Teachers have kept their part of the bargain in this vast social contract and invested their very lives in it.  Teachers cannot take back the years.  There are no do-overs for veteran educators.  Time only flows one direction.