Teacher Unions: Consistency is Not Their Strong Point
Perhaps no institution causes more controversy than the public school system. And these are not just minor disagreements either. There have been hundreds of lawsuits handled by the lower courts concerning the public school system. The number of cases before the U.S. Supreme Court is itself huge, and ever growing.
But an interesting yet overlooked occurrence is how often individuals or groups regularly argue opposite sides of the same subject, depending on the circumstances being discussed. And perhaps no groups within the educational establishment are guiltier of this practice than the teacher unions. Space limitations won't permit even a limited discussion of such instances, but here are two:
The first arises from a concern over the quality of the teaching staff. In response to public criticism of teachers the unions repeatedly assure everyone that the teaching staff is not only excellent but is virtually universally so. It's rare for the unions to concede that even individual teachers charged with serious offenses might be anything less than first rate, especially those that are union members.
That's ok. Unions feel obligated to defend their members, even when they are obviously not up to par.
But wait. Let's now consider union positions when negotiating teacher salaries. Aside from claims for the necessity of salary increases to match inflation, to compete with other school districts, or whatever, the unions argue that significant increases are necessary to - you guessed it - ncrease the quality of the staff. Whoops. So they are not top rate after all?
As an aside, there are two weaknesses to this argument for higher salaries (which is not to say higher salaries might not be justified in some circumstances).
First, if it happens at all, higher salaries will take decades to improve the quality of the teaching staff. Most of this year's teachers will still be here next year, and the year after, etc. It will be many years before a majority have left and can be replaced, and it may be 35 years or more before all of them have moved on or retired.
More directly related to the argument equating higher salaries with better staff is what happens when significantly higher salaries are put in place. Some years ago one district adopted a five-year contract during which average salaries were doubled. That should attract more teachers, right? And it did.
The district received many more applicants than usual. The problem was that retirement salaries tend to be based on the average salary for, say, a three-year period. Teachers about to retire were thus faced with an opportunity to greatly increase their average salary, not for three years but for five, or even more. So retirements practically dried up. The number of vacancies in the district disappeared accordingly, and there was little room for many of the new teacher applicants, no matter how good they might have been.
So, at best, higher salaries maintained the status quo and, arguably, caused a reduction in quality.
A second inconsistency, on a larger more general scale, finds the unions joining other defenders of the public school system in insisting on the high quality of the system overall, despite more than ample evidence to the contrary. But, for the sake of argument, let's assume their views are correct. At the same time this viewpoint is put forth, there is the constant drumbeat from their quarters on the ever-constant need for large increases in funding in order for the system to be able to adequately perform its purpose. Whoops again. Either the system is doing an excellent job, as argued, without the need for ever greater resources, or it needs those increased resources because it is currently unable to achieve its goals. They can't have it both ways.
The problem is that the media, the general public, and even many educators accept, or at least don't challenge, such rhetorical and factual conflicts.
David W. Kirkpatrick is a Senior Education Fellow with the U.S. Freedom Foundation and The Buckeye Institute.