by Kesi Bem FosterTeacher union-bashing has become a sport among the business class and their minions in both major parties. Teachers unions, it is claimed, keep “bad” educators on the job, doing the public a disservice. But few politicians attack police unions for defending officers “accused of using excessive force against citizens, even when such force results in death.” And grossly overpaid incompetents on Wall Street put the entire world economy at peril – yet are rewarded with taxpayer dollars.
Bad Teachers on the Front Line
by Kesi Bem Foster
“Bad teachers and the AFT are easy targets for government officials and the pro-business, anti-union conservative punditry.”
Why do we let public officials lay the blame for our broken education system on bad teachers and their unions? President Obama, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Washington D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, as well as our most prominent politicians, bureaucrats, pundits, and talking heads have all pointed to an education system overrun by bad teachers protected by their union.
A recent article in the New Yorker by Steven Brill, supposedly critical and investigative in nature, makes no effort to decouple bad teachers and the United Federation of Teachers, the New York affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). He in fact re-cements this false coupling by focusing completely on the New York City Public Schools’ notorious “Rubber Room.” In the Rubber Room dwell hundreds of allegedly bad teachers, a literal purgatory for educators. Yet while Brill is quick to cite the cost of the Rubber Room for New York City and state taxpayers (around $100 million a year), he fails to note New York City’s total annual school budget, which is $10.4 billion. Thus, the awful Rubber Room is less than one percent of the total budget. Now, if in some distant future the level of incompetence on Wall Street gets down to less than one percent of the whole, we’ll be instantly flooded with articles celebrating this astounding, truly monumental achievement. To judge by the $17 trillion we taxpayers just handed to Wall Street to save their shattered financial system, the incompetence of these professionals is clearly far more than one percent. But bad teachers and the AFT are easy targets for government officials and the pro-business, anti-union conservative punditry.
What we need to do is focus on bigger targets.
“The proponents of education 'reform' want nothing more than to weaken the union, so that they can run our education system in exactly the manner of the 'free market,' and hire and fire teachers just as they please.”
The education system in this country is in desperate need of a massive overhaul: inner-city graduation rates are anemic, less than fifty percent, the gap between the achievement of white students and black and Latino students is the size of the Grand Canyon, resources are not evenly distributed, and classrooms are bursting at the seams with overcrowding. Still, even with a seemingly pro-union Democrat administration now in office, the national discourse on what’s wrong with public education remains largely the same, with bad teachers and their unions in the crosshairs. From the White House to Tweed Courthouse, the proponents of education “reform” want nothing more than to weaken the union, so that they, the business class, can run our education system in exactly the manner of the “free market,” where the executives—mayors and principals—hire and fire teachers just as they please, and implement new changes as they see fit, including above all the elimination of tenure, the seniority system, and the current salary scale.
One of the biggest complaints against the teachers’ union is that it makes it impossible for city administrations to purge schools of bad teachers. There are teachers in New York City’s Rubber Room accused of sexually assaulting students, chronic absenteeism, showing up to class drunk, and just plain old educative incompetence. The arbitration process to dismiss these teachers is excruciatingly long and teachers could spend years in the Rubber Room before a decision is reached.
“Rarely if ever do we hear about the costs incurred by taxpayers in the legal defense of bad cops.”
Does the Rubber Room hurt the City’s education system? Maybe. Are all the teachers in the Rubber Room bad teachers? Probably not. The job of any union is to protect its workers; this is just common sense. So it's surreal that the UFT is singled out for doing its job. For example, law enforcement unions don’t receive criticism for supporting their worst members. Officers repeatedly accused of using excessive force against citizens, even when such force results in death, are all supported by the police union until the legal process is given time to play out. Does their vigorous defense of bad officers harm the relationship between the citizens they are supposed to be serving and the officers on the force? No doubt it does. But rarely if ever do we hear about the costs incurred by taxpayers in the legal defense of bad cops.
There are bad teachers out there—most of us have had at least one. There are also bad police officers, bad firefighters, bad nurses, and so on. The teachers’ unions, like the police union and other municipal labor unions, are vital to the workforce they represent, and even more so to our communities. Without them, worker incompetence would no doubt quickly reach Wall Street proportions, where the priority is turning a fast profit, not performing the job according to the goals of long-term development, better efficiency, and overall success.
The great irony is that it is the business class, their elected officials, and their media pundits who are giving advice to the UFT about how to get rid of bad employees. This is like the manager of a last-place team calling up Joe Torre to counsel him on his current starting line-up. Joe might laugh at first, but then, realizing the guy’s actually serious, would quickly hang up the phone, and in the future avoid him wherever possible.
“The ongoing corporate attack on the UFT will likely gain more and more traction as the local and state budget crises deepen.”
This has been the approach of the UFT, to shrug off any and all advice about education reform that comes from the U.S. business class. No sane person can blame them. All the same, in a bitterly hostile anti-union environment such as ours, the ongoing corporate attack on the UFT will likely gain more and more traction as the local and state budget crises deepen and, possibly, rapidly hemorrhage out of control.
In this context, it’s more important than ever to state, and keep re-stating as simply and clearly as possible, that the only rational solution to public education reform is a national public education system, under which every pupil receives exactly the same funding—i.e. the immediate abolition of the old property-tax funding system, which is responsible not only for the persistence of alarmingly high student drop-out rates but the existence of bad teachers.
Here, also, the Wall Street analogy is compelling. The average pay on Wall Street is around $700,000 a year. For New York City Public School teachers, the average pay is $55,000 a year. It’s safe to assume, then, that the vast majority of smart and talented young people will be seeking careers on Wall Street, not in public education. Consequently, after virtually every smart and talented young person has taken their place on Wall Street, or in some other business-related career, those remaining will be forced to search out careers in the public sector, in teaching, nursing, bus driving, and so forth.
One thing is certain: the message this sends to young people is pernicious, namely that public education is where the mediocre go, those without talent or ambition, the place where you can find the disaffected and the disillusioned, the place where you go because your not smart enough to succeed in business. The overwhelming majority of public school teachers are not disaffected or disillusioned; they are dedicated, hardworking, intelligent, and largely taken for granted. Wall Street complains that they won’t be able to keep their best and brightest if they can’t hand out excessive bonus packages, so we send over more taxpayer money. In order to keep their best and brightest, the teacher’s union fights for their employees to keep middle class security, and they are assailed. It’s as simple as ABC: until our priorities change, our education system will continue to receive a failing grade.
Kesi Bem Foster is currently a student at City College. He can be reached at kesibemfoster@gmail.com.
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