Collective Bargaining is Vital to Public Education

Before February 11, 2011, I rarely discussed with my Wisconsin non-union friends and neighbors the merits or demerits of union rights. However, as noted in last week’s post, Governor Walker’s dichotomous creation leaves no room, short of his recall, for safeguarding public educators’ union rights. Securing the recall of defective governorship in Wisconsin requires public educators to garner support for their unions from non-union workers.

Admittedly, defending teachers’ collective bargaining rights is a challenge when the vast majority of private sector workers are currently not union members. I do not claim to know what is best for non-union laborers in their own lines of work. However, I unapologetically believe that protecting teacher union rights is vital to the long-term future of quality public education.

A year ago, I made this very point to my local school board members in urging local opposition to Walker’s union-busting repair bill. In response, one commissioner wrote,

We are going to have to agree to disagree on your statement – “...protecting teacher union rights is vital to the long-term future of quality public education.” I understand your fears of losing that document that makes you feel safe. What I don't understand is how that document is vital to a good education. We have excellent teachers in this district that would do a great job teaching and molding our children whether those teachers have a union contract or not.

This commissioner raises the essential question in the call to recall Walker and his union-busting supporters. Public educators must help Wisconsinites understand why our unions are vital to quality public education. We must teach.

Essential Question: How is the protection of union rights vital to the long-term future of quality public education?

Historical Background:

Walker’s pitch to demolish collective bargaining smacks of radical regressivism rather than moving Wisconsin forward, as he contends.

A study of history reveals that the development of teachers unions in Wisconsin gave rise to professionalism in education and, consequently, improved the quality of public schools. Before union growth, sexism was rampant in public schools, pay inequity was common for female and elementary teachers, health insurance for most educators was non-existent or inadequate, and many Wisconsin teachers qualified for food stamps (see WEAC history). Teachers unions fought against these injustices to improve the work conditions and the standard of living of professional educators. The growth of teacher professionalism, made possible by educators unions, empowered Wisconsin’s teachers to greatly improve Wisconsin’s schools.

The aforementioned board commissioner’s recognition that our school district has excellent teachers, in the least, is acknowledgement that unionization does not impede teacher development. More optimistically, the professional development of educators, made possible by unions, gave rise to excellent educators enfranchised by collective bargaining through the decades. 

The commissioner might be correct that excellent teachers can keep the public education boat afloat for some time after collective bargaining, but the eroding of teacher morale and the Walker- induced mass exodus of our most experienced educators shows the detrimental, if not terminal effects of teacher disenfranchisement.   

Educators Unions Provide Constancy

Like a revolving door, students, parents, administrators, superintendents, board members, venture philanthropists, and venture politicians gyrate through our public school systems. Often, each layer and new generation capriciously propose new and old unproven ideas for achieving their latest ideals.

In the private sector world, board members are usually paid and united behind a common mission to improve profits. In contrast, the complicated world of public education has unpaid board members with varying loyalties and sometimes personal and political agendas that trump the mission of public education. School boards, also quite often attract well-meaning individuals not schooled in public school matters and business leaders who hope to inject their business worldview into our uniquely educational world.

Most often, it is professional educators, aided by their unions, who keep the merry-go-round of school reforms and leadership from careening the entire public school system out of control or into the control of entrepreneurs and politicalprenuers of many sorts. It is professional educators and their unions that provide steadiness, perspective, and common mission to an otherwise erratic organization that sees a constant turnover of board members, superintendents, administrators, parents, and students.

Our students need stability. Teachers and their unions deliver this.

Unions Protect the Professional Educator’s Voice:

Shamelessly, I contend the educator’s perspective is the most important in the complicated conversation of public education. Most parents and certainly politicians cannot match the experience and expertise of professional educators in managing the learning and development of students.

Unions protect the voice of the experts. Governor Walker likes to distort this point and fabricate that teachers unions provide unreasonable protections (even to the exploitation of a promising teacher). “[Teacher tenure] is not the same in K-12 education, even though critics confuse the public by saying so,” historian Diane Ravitch recently wrote. “Teachers in K-12 schools do not have a lifetime guarantee; what they have is a guarantee of due process if someone wants to fire them. The right to a hearing, the right to be presented with evidence against them.”

These union-fought-for protections allow for dissenting teachers’ perspectives to be spoken, written, aired, or published. This is what democracy looks like. Without union protections, many teachers’ valuable perspectives will be silenced. Without collective bargaining, public schools and its students will lose again in Walker’s Wisconsin.   

We must keep making our case: Protecting teacher union rights is vital to the long-term future of quality public education.

'Tis a Shame, the Mastication of Education

In his 2006 memoir Teacher Man, the late, great Frank McCourt tersely wrote, “Teaching is the downstairs maid of professions.”

Just six years later, McCourt’s proposition is already in need of a rewrite. In Walker’s Wisconsin, teaching has been relegated from professional status to political fodder. I fear what will be excreted when the free-market reformers are done masticating education.

     

Professional distrust reigns in the wake of Gov. Walker’s union-busting legislation created without consideration of professional educators’ input. Too many state and local business-focused politicians and their supporters have promoted unjust resentment for teachers, their unions, their compensation packages, their work conditions, and their professional standing.

Just this past week, the leaked documents related to “Operation Angry Badger” show how this mastication of public education is deliberate, coordinated with groups outside Wisconsin, and aggressively funded. Understandably, many teachers fear what further awaits public educators in Gov. Walker’s Wisconsin.

Talented educators are prematurely retiring. Would-be educators are choosing new careers. Teacher morale is low. As a middle-aged educator recently joked, “Every year since college I wished I was younger--until this past year. Now I suddenly wish I was older.” Certainly, there is truth in this jest. Many of us are too young to retire and too old to start a new (more respected) profession.

Many midstream educators, like me, feel stuck in Walker’s muck. I have been trying to fight my way through this political sewage, but without much success. Last July (2011), one of Gov. Walker’s staffers, Alan Colvin, agreed to meet with me to hear my professional concerns related to Gov. Walker’s reckless education agenda. Despite my differences in opinion with Mr. Colvin on the direction of Gov. Walker's policies, he was a true professional and admittedly a positive representative of the Governor's office. As recommended by Mr. Colvin, I then e-mailed my professional concerns to Governor Walker’s chief education policy advisor, Kimber Liedl.  

What was intended to be a professional exchange about education policies was then reduced to political dribble by assistant education policy advisor, Michael Brickman—who was ostensibly tasked out by Ms. Liedl to address my educational insights. Young Mike—a twenty-something with zero education experience—dived right into a debate on my concerns. I played along with Mikey for a bit and pointed out how Gov. Walker’s vision to “Recruit, Retain, and Reward Great Teachers” was failing miserably. Young Mike began patronizing me and positioned that Walker’s plan appeals to lots of educators who get into "education for the right reasons."

According to Mikey B, the tens of thousands of Wisconsin educators fighting to retain our professional voice are simply in education for the wrong reasons. I called Mikey out on this false implication and pointed out how divisive this approach is to public education and our state. Michael then insultingly looped me in with apparent protestors who have threatened Governor Walker (something I would never condone). As noted, the conversation was reduced to dribble.

Recognizing the poli sci graduate's diversionary tactics, I decided I would take this matter up with Brickman's supervisor. I had to ask Mike for his name three times before he provided his full name. I then made multiple calls and e-mails to Ms. Liedl (who I later discovered is purportedly also a career political staffer with no teaching experience) to address Mike’s inability to recognize my professional standing as a veteran educator. My repeated calls and e-mails were never answered.

This incident, along with all the rest of the angst from this past year, has left me wondering—is teaching a profession? Would, for instance, politicians like Gov. Walker employ advisors without professional business experience to advise on business legislation? Why is it acceptable to place non-educators, like Liedl and Brickman, in high-ranking education positions? We do not need a teacher to explain the answers to these questions. In Walker’s Wisconsin, education is not a profession. Education is impersonal politics. 

In my 16 years of teaching, I have, like many teachers, unknowingly evangelized and overtly advised dozens of promising students to join my noble profession. When I previously sized up prospective students for education careers, I evaluated their empathy, ethics, fortitude, leadership, maturity, interpersonal skills, and eagerness to learn before nudging them toward teaching.

With the current attack on public education, however, our next generation of professional educators will have to be seasoned young, impervious, and politically active. Otherwise, future educators will be doing more political initiatives in education, for less than professional pay, and with less professional liberties.

“‘Tis a shame,” McCourt might add.

Follow up links:
Modified publishing of this blog post in the Washington Post, Answer Sheet.
Interview with WTDY in response to this blog posting.
Fine critique of this posting by P.L. Thomas of Furman University.