Matt Di Carlo at Shankerblog has some, as always, thoughtful and nuanced ideas on the discourse surrounding education policy. He argues that accusations of “teacher bashing” is often an unfair charge to level against education reformers, but that these reformers should also recognize that there is less space between criticizing teachers unions and criticizing teachers than they think. He writes:
So, is there any distinction between teachers and teachers’ unions? Of course there is.
People who disagree with policies traditionally supported by teachers’ unions, or support policies that unions tend to oppose, are not “anti-teacher.”… It’s certainly true that the rhetoric in education can cross the line (on both “sides”), and extreme, motive-ascribing, anti-union statements are understandably interpreted as “bashing” by the teachers that comprise those unions. Some of the discourse involving unions and policy is, however, from my (admittedly non-teacher) perspective, more or less substantive.
So, you can “love teachers and disagree with their unions,” but don’t kid yourself – in the majority of cases, disagreeing with unions’ education policy positions represents disagreeing with most teachers. In other words, opposing unions certainly doesn’t mean you’re “bashing” teachers, but it does, on average, mean you hold different views than they do.
He goes on to note that teachers are not a monolith, and thus there will be disagreement among teachers and some will oppose union policies. But I think this point deserves more emphasis, specifically I think many rules favor incumbents and people who already are teachers over people who would otherwise be teachers, or will become teachers. This is true of a wide range of occupational licenses. For instance, maintaining rules that make it hard to become a barber make incumbent barbers better off, but hurt those who would have become a barber were it not for the rules.
So while it is true that opposing policies that helps incumbents means opposing policies they support on average, I think it is a less understood and in many cases more important point that rules which help existing workers often hurts others who want those jobs.
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Sunday ~ May 13th, 2012 at 11:03 am
BSEconomist
Yglesias has some good posts on this issue from a while back, but I just want to second his position: occupational licenses are not the equivalent of unions they are substitutes for unions. Frankly, its not entirely clear that unions are on net barriers to entry–as an historical matter unions have often as not helped train new employees even as they fight the use of non-union employees. On net, its not obvious to me which of those two effects dominates.
On the other hand, occupational licenses are pure barriers to entry. Unions have the incentive to make the union-as-a-whole as valuable as possible to its employers (and so maximize its own bargaining power) while occupational licensing is about the use of the state to maximize an individual’s price in the market by minimizing the competition. To put it another way, a union wants to get bigger but for occupational licensing “bigger” doesn’t even make sense.
I don’t disagree with anything else you say here, but you really shouldn’t conflate unions with licensing. The more you crack down on unions the more licensing you are going to get and this should be understood as a Bad Thing ™.
Sunday ~ May 13th, 2012 at 3:26 pm
Adam Ozimek
Licensing is predominantly service sector jobs, which were never much unionized. So I don’t see how your explanation makes sense.
Sunday ~ May 13th, 2012 at 11:09 am
erichorowitz
I think Di Carlo misses the important distinction between “Teacher Bashing” and “Teacher policy position bashing.” For example, if the Lakers make a trade that Kobe Bryant bashes, and you write something praising the trade, you would hardly call that Kobe bashing. His job is to play basketball like a teacher’s job is to teach. Whether or not you’re bashing them should be based on how you feel about those performances, not on their opinions about other things.
And you’re spot on about incumbents. The goal of the unions is to protect incumbent jobs. Period. In New York City the union is suing to stop school turnarounds because the city would be allowed to replace half the teachers at each school. The total number of jobs would stay the same, but the loss of incumbent jobs is unacceptable. The NY Daily News has a good column about the hypocrisy in the union’s positions.
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/uft-latest-junk-lawsuit-article-1.1074650
Sunday ~ May 13th, 2012 at 2:29 pm
Becky Hargrove
I love teachers, hate their unions. But unions beget unions in an attempt to self protect. Many teachers are actually hostage to plumbers unions and I’ll explain. What came first? I don’t know but I do know one reason teachers need their own unions, to protect their salaries from high housing costs. Home building was never subjected to high technology, which means housing of all kinds costs far far more than it ever would have, otherwise. Buckminster Fuller got nowhere with his technology dreams for housing in part because of plumber’s unions. This is not just a problem for teachers. It is a problem for women in general who end up more dependent on men as a result. Unions beget unions.
Sunday ~ May 13th, 2012 at 5:52 pm
save_the_rustbelt
I’m a big supporter of teachers, but was insanely furious the day a high school administrator told us the only way to get rid of a totally incompetent teacher (as admitted by the administration) was to let him FINISH HIS 30 YEARS!
Worse yet, due to his seniority (26 years) he was teaching required senior government courses.
He was a stain on a couple of hundred really fine teachers.
Tuesday ~ May 15th, 2012 at 5:53 pm
gab
1 bad teacher out of a couple hundred? That’s a huge good/bad ratio. There is no other occupation that has that kind of ratio. You should be thankful.
And one other thing – that administrator is full of crap. What he really meant is that he either hadn’t done the necessary work to document that teacher’s “badness” or he was unwilling to do the necessary work. Just like most employers, the district has to have cause to fire somebody and you have to gather the evidence.
Tuesday ~ May 15th, 2012 at 7:52 pm
Morgan Warstler
sorry bub, you can eat it.
here’s how it is: you will figure out ow to make it VERY EASY to fire bad teachers, or there wont be unions left anymore when we get done.
yours is the weaker side.
Monday ~ May 14th, 2012 at 10:36 am
Morgan Warstler
It is this simple… we want to go through the ranks of teachers and decide for ourselves which are good and which are bad, and throw away the bad, not “help” them get better.
This is anti-union and pro-teacher, because we don’t count the bad teachers are being teachers in our new system.
This sorting process doesn’t require justice the way criminal justice does.
No one is overly concerned about the rights of a few innocent teachers who get swept up while we are executing the bad ones.
We can be be most efficient with an ax, not a scalpel.
And that’s just the way it is.
Monday ~ May 14th, 2012 at 5:00 pm
Max
Isn’t this “discourse” just a veil over partisan politics? Everyone knows that teachers unions are a source of support for the Democratic Party. That’s the real issue, isn’t it?