There are a surplus of qualified teachers, in Canada at least I know of several people with teaching degrees and none of them can find work because the only time a spot opens up is if someone dies or retires. The software industry is in desperate need of people by comparison.
An honest question: Why do computer professionals not exercise their rights to prevent abuse (unfair firings, increased work hours without compensation, demeaning bosses) like some teachers?
Edit: Also where do you get "require" from. Not all teachers belong to a union? Did you read the article at all?
I could use the PROSA versus CSC example (which is actually the IT-workers union against a computer service company) which is going on right now. CSC is trying to get rid of 22-months notices before firing any employee, the union has given notice of strike.
But thats a Danish dispute which I doubt many here is familiar with, hence the Detroit example.
And it is hardly "one specific" example: its multiple agreements with multiple companies.
If I were to be abused by my workplace, I'd vote with my feet and leave.
I'd rather work in a system where the quality of my work determines my wages and not my seniority or how many masters degrees I've obtained.
I'd rather work in a system that doesn't strong arm my employer into paying benefits they can't afford. I don't know about you, but I'm not worried about my 401k being there in 40 years, but I'd be really scared if I had a municipal pension.
I feel I should speak up about this one as a teacher (admittedly Australian however) and a supporter of teachers unions.
Let's assume we are in a performance based pay system. How do we measure performance? Is it average student grades? If so, then do we pay teachers who work in affluent areas more because every effort is afforded the students (tutoring etc)? Do we pay teachers who choose to work in more challenging schools less (and more likely have lower grades but possibly greater impact on students' lives with their successes)?
What do we do with teachers hand picking elite classes to improve their perceived performance? It already happens even without performance pay? Or it could just be the luck of the draw. Sometimes I end up with difficult student groups simply because of a timetabling issue. Less pay?
There are other metrics for teacher performance that have been proposed, and all the ones I have heard have been very flawed.
Just to touch on the abuse bit at the start, if there was one employer in your town (as there effectively is in many rural areas when it comes to schools), should you relocate because of abuse you have received? (or indeed at all? Who doesn't deserve to feel safe from abuse in their workplace?)
This is a solved problem. The solution is Value Added Modeling. This has been known for many years, but unfortunately it doesn't fit within a soundbite.
You build a statistical predictor of student performance, then you pay teachers proportional to Actual Performance - Predicted Performance.
If teachers pick elite classes to improve their performance, the bar is raised. If their class has a predicted score of 80%, then the teacher needs an actual score of 90% to get a bonus. Conversely, if you get a class of low quality students, the predicted score might be 20%. To get the bonus, you need to achieve 30%.
The only incentives you have are hand pick classes of students that you can improve. If you are great at moving students from the 50'th percentile to the 60'th percentile, but suck with other student groups, your incentive is to get a class of students in the 50'th percentile.
It's hard to argue with the logic of that approach. Classrooms aren't always logical places though. Consider factors like student movement between classes, courses and programs designed to move students to the workforce rather than complete school, parental pressure on students and teachers to place students into unrealistic pathways, and so on.
I suppose you could factor all that into the model, though I'd question the feasibility of doing so.
I'd also argue that grades aren't the only important factor in schooling. Building social skills, discipline, time management, helping to realize goals... All ways in which good teachers can influence students, and only some of them reflect in neat packages like test scores.
Edit: I'd like to clarify that in my previous post I mentioned getting more difficult classes sometimes as the luck of the draw. I didn't mean low ability classes. I meant classes with students with serious behavioral issues, students with learning disabilities and so on. These will very often negatively impact the learning outcomes of the entire class, and is something you very rarely if ever have to deal with in top end classes.
Consider factors like student movement between classes, courses and programs designed to move students to the workforce rather than complete school, parental pressure on students and teachers to place students into unrealistic pathways, and so on.
This would only matter in the event it did not average out over a teacher's entire cohort of students. I.e., you would need to get a situation where all the students who wanted to move into the workforce were taught by teacher A, and all the students who wanted to complete school were taught by teacher B.
The law of large numbers helps here.
Also, this would only matter insofar as this factor is uncorrelated with the things you do use as predictors - parental income, race, prior grades, etc. If all the low income students want a job, and all the high income students want to complete school, the predictor already incorporates this factor.
I meant classes with students with serious behavioral issues, students with learning disabilities and so on. These will very often negatively impact the learning outcomes of the entire class, and is something you very rarely if ever have to deal with in top end classes.
If this factor is strongly correlated with income (as you suggest), the predictor will already incorporate it.
I would think the best way to measure performance would be overall improvement rather than overall performance. That way there'd be more opportunity for higher compensation in poor schools. Or better yet, let the market decide who the best teachers are. If teacher A's students are consistently graduating from college and teacher B's students are not, parents are going to vote with their dollars and send their children to teacher A. In the current system, this isn't allowed to happen.
"if there was one employer in your town (as there effectively is in many rural areas when it comes to schools), should you relocate because of abuse you have received?"
Yes. That, or start a competing company. If the abuses are really bad, you'd no doubt attract a lot of other disgruntled employees who'd prefer to work for a better company. Jobs are not a right, no matter how badly people want them to be.
"If the abuses are really bad, you'd no doubt attract a lot of other disgruntled employees who'd prefer to work for a better company."
So uh, that'd pretty much be like a union, right? A group of people effectively saying that they won't work under certain conditions? ;)
I suspect we'll fundamentally disagree on the first point about parents voting with their feet/wallets, since that kinda describes the private school system, and I'm a firm believer in the same education being available to everyone (freely, if possible, and cheaply if not).
I'm a firm believer in the same education being available to everyone (freely, if possible, and cheaply if not).
A popular conservative position is to give all students the same educational opportunity by allowing parents to take their children's education dollars to private schools.
I'm aware of that one. I suspect the parents who can barely afford materials for voluntary fee public schools may disagree however ;)
(Of course I suppose the conservative counter to that is to get a better job, and that they'd have enough money if taxes weren't contributing to education dollars :)
Not like a union at all. Unions do not form businesses. Maybe they should, then they may come to realize how difficult running a successful business can be.
so because you can't measure performance to fairly give raises, you just don't measure performance and give people raises that may or may not deserve it? This leads to bad teachers staying in the system and getting raises. It's an inefficiency in the system that needs to be fixed. If teachers really cared about their students, they would want to have the best education for them.
I see we have some teacher's reading HN. Pointing out the inefficiencies in the system gets me downvoted. This is a good example as to why our schools in the US are failing.
Being a popular target for funding cuts and working a lot more (off-the-clock) hours than people typically seem aware of puts them in a weak bargaining position to begin with.
Education is a popular target for funding cuts simply because it makes up more than 1/3 of local government spending. Local governments spend more on education than they spend on police, fire, prisons, roads and health care put together.
For many (most?) countries, the education system is dominated by state-run schools. This typically means that there will be one very large employer and possibly several much smaller employers (ie private schools).
In this scenario, the very large employer wields a disproportionate amount of power. I guess it's analagous to a monopoly or near-monopoly: the very fact that you are so dominant means rules apply to you that otherwise wouldn't to protect the market--competition itself--from breaking down.
Unions are probably the mechanism for keeping the government, as that large dominant employer, honest.
The problem is the reverse is also a problem: now the government and the private schools face a monopoly in the form of the teacher's union. That monopoly can--and does--extract unreasonable concessions [1].
An important aspect of unions is collective bargaining (pay, conditions, etc). This is a somewhat controversial topic that tends to divide down political lines. Collective bargaining sprang up in the Industrial Revolution and in periods like the Great Depression to protect workers from essentially bidding themselves down.
I'm slightly biased here because I will almost certainly never need a union to protect my job or interests (I'm well educated, with in-demand skills, and I'm mobile). But it really bothers me how unions produce such inefficiencies in specific industries. Teachers and autoworkers being the biggest have crippled the ability of their respective industries to innovate and compete globally. While this may protect the livelihood of current workers, it hinders the ability of future workers to compete and earn a living. Like national debt its one generation fucking over the next...
PS - I'm young and pissed with the general recklessness of baby boomers.
The problem with this theory is in schools and regions without teacher's unions, as the article notes, there isn't an improvement.
The fundamental problem is that as a whole there is neither some better performing nor cheaper workforce that is being blocked access to teaching today.
I'm with you on the boomers, but you can't just blame unions here. You also have to blame the executives that caved to their ridiculous demands with no consideration of the long-term consequences. Yes, the union would strike, but so what. That's how battles are fought, and the execs didn't want to fight.
He wrote it in 1984, but everything he says applies to the 2008/2009 collapse of the auto industry. For that matter, go back a little further and read John DeLorean's On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors. It's pretty amazing how long these poorly run companies managed to trip along, and these books make it pretty clear it's not just the unions to blame.
Poor engineering in the auto industry was not caused by unions. The unions are basically assemblers -- how does the assembly line create engineering problems? I have no love for unions but what you say is way off-base.
Anyway, if you want to look at excessive compensation and benefits in the auto industry, look a little higher.
And at any rate, they only got what they negotiated, so if you want to blame anyone, blame management for poor negotiating, poor planning and just generally screwing up.
Finally, if unions ruined the auto industry, why is Ford doing well relative to GM and Chrysler? I drive a foreign car at the moment, but my next car will be a Ford because they did not take bailout money, and they make excellent, reliable cars (nowadays).
I agree with you and @jrwoodruff that management also deserves blame; their focus on short term metrics stops them from negotiating reasonable contracts (if they don't strike this quarter I get my bonus, etc.)
As for the assemblers preventing innovation, its much harder to pump cash into R&D when your assembly costs are twice that of your competition.
And as for ford doing well relative to GM and Crysler, you're basically saying they're doing good compared to bankruptcy. I like ford (especially their current lineup), but they've fallen a long way from their massive dominance of a few decades back.
To be clear, I agree with you (this reply seems a little ranty), the entire auto industry is a mess; a large part of these inefficiencies I feel comes out of dealing with unions - and I see the same things happening with teachers.
But to put your last statement another way, a large part of these inefficiencies comes out of having to create unions in the first place, to counter the abusive employment practices of management.
I think it's a two-way street. Auto unions are corrupt now, but they were obviously created as a reaction to some pretty bad behavior from management.
The worst, most unnecessary, most counter-productive unions, in my limited experience, are at universities :)
Work rules contribute to quality problems when they eliminate the flexibility to restructure the factory. Further, increased costs also contribute to quality problems. Toyota can pay $1600/car to improve quality, GM needs to pay that $1600 to their workers.
Regarding 3), Wagoner's comp was cut from $14.9M to $3M as a result of his failure. $3M is very little for an executive at his level. Even $14.9M is not that high for a CEO of a company as big as GM. Lady Gaga earned $62M in the same time period.
Regarding 4), GM is saddled with legacy costs of $1600/car. The CEO's pay of $3 million works out to be $8.35/vehicle.
Suppose the next best alternative available for CEO would only demand $2 million. If Wagoner could increase profits by $2.78/vehicle more than the next best option for CEO, his pay is well worth it. Do you seriously think you can get a competent CEO, capable of running GM, for less than $1 million?
We're talking about different decades. You're talking about present day, I'm talking about how we got here, i.e., the decline which began in the 1980's.
In terms of what a CEO is "worth," CEO's can certainly have negative value, regardless of the compensation.
Regarding who should take a pay cut, I would say everyone involved. But what I'm objecting to is this notion that "unions are to blame" for the auto industry's problems.
Let's assume the unions are acting like leeches, sucking out more value than they are putting in. Isn't it arguably the case that management is acting -exactly- the same way?
I would further argue that there is a -lot- more than $1600/car that separates GM from Toyota. If the unions are to blame for everything wrong, do they get the credit at companies which are doing well (e.g., Ford)?
In terms of what a CEO is "worth," CEO's can certainly have negative value, regardless of the compensation.
Do you seriously believe GM would have a higher value if the CEO position went unfilled?
Let's assume the unions are acting like leeches, sucking out more value than they are putting in. Isn't it arguably the case that management is acting -exactly- the same way?
Perhaps, but management doesn't have much power. If management demands more money than the company is willing to pay, they can be fired and replaced. That's a lot harder with unionized workers.
The gap between GM and Toyota may be more than $1600/car, but all that means is that unions are not the only cause of GM's decline. I wouldn't disagree with that.
As for Ford, what exactly did the unions do to help? The mechanism by which they harm is quite clear - they raise cost of labor. What value do they add that makes it worthwhile?
No, of course they have to have a CEO. And maybe he adds value, maybe not. He gets what he negotiated, same as the workers.
Management doesn't have much power? You're saying that an individual manager doesn't have much power and can be replaced. Sure, that's true.
As for Ford, let me clarify. No, I'm not saying the unions deserve any credit -- after all, it's the same unions as at GM!
But if you're going to give them the blame when things are bad, don't you have to also then give them the credit when things are good? The truth is they are just assembly line workers for the most part, and the quality was engineered out of the cars starting in the 1980's.
And regarding the "harm" that workers do by raising the cost of labor, why aren't management's salaries also "harming" the business by raising the cost? Why the double standard?
And regarding the "harm" that workers do by raising the cost of labor, why aren't management's salaries also "harming" the business by raising the cost? Why the double standard?
The corporation negotiates with management from a position of equality. Both parties are permitted to make or reject offers as they see fit. If GM offers too little, Wagoner is free to take a higher paying job elsewhere. If GM can find someone cheaper, they are free to reject Wagoner. GM is also not permitted to collude with other employers to reduce prices.
The corporation does not negotiate with a union from a position of equality. They are not permitted to reject union offers and procure labor at lower rates from the competition. They are also not permitted to fire and replace union workers who fail to do their jobs. Labor sellers are legally permitted to collude with each other to raise their prices, and they are given a government granted monopoly on the practice. Competition is illegal.
Yummyfajitas, you certainly have a way with words :)
You make the case that management is an innocent by-stander getting repeatedly mugged by unions. The truth is that the treachery went both ways, historically. Otherwise, why do unions exist?
[Auto makers] are also not permitted to fire and replace union workers who fail to do their jobs.
I wonder how many managers at GM have ever been fired for "failing to do their jobs," in light of the bailout. The lack of accountability is on both sides, not just one side.
I think this is a bit of a straw man. I haven't met anyone that believes that teachers unions are the problem. Schools face many problems, and the inability of school districts to fire lousy performers is just one of them. Teenage pregnancy is fast rising as one of the major problems in urban school districts, but I don't foresee any politicians campaigning on a "kids these days need to stop fucking" platform.
Once a person can reproduce, that person should be able to live independently and support himself/herself. The current educational system keeps fifteen-year-old men and women couped up together in a "school" and treats them as children, giving them no real responsibility and no chance to be independent. The problem is not that teenagers are fulfilling their biological purpose and starting families. The problem is that teenagers are forced to remain in a state of infantilism and not encouraged to take on adult responsibilities.
Many schools suck because they are full of low quality students. Rhee made some improvements, but no improvements to teachers can compensate for low quality students.
The author's actual point is "Michelle Rhee's war on teachers' unions was a sideshow that distracted from the more important effort to give more low-income students a chance to attend middle-class public schools."
And what is the difference between low income and middle class schools? There are two significant ones - teacher quality and student quality.
If the difference is teacher quality, then Michelle Rhee's war on low quality teachers was on point and exactly what was needed. The article disputes this.
The article doesn't actually dispute that the difference is teacher quality. The article just claims that teacher quality can be improved without doing battle with teacher unions. There's a nationwide struggle to get high quality teachers into low income schools that I don't think anyone on either side of the ed reform debate would deny.
Additionally, as a teacher in a low-income school, I'd argue very strongly that you should replace "student quality" with "student attitudes." The latter doesn't suggest that poor kids can't learn.
I don't agree that the article thinks teacher quality is the difference.
Here is what the article says about altering teacher quality:
Most education researchers, though, recognize that Rhee's simple vision of heroic teachers saving American education is a fantasy...
If the ability to fire bad teachers and pay great teachers more were the key missing ingredient in education reform, why haven't charter schools, 88% of which are nonunionized and have that flexibility, lit the education world on fire?
New York didn't get ahead by firing bad teachers.
On student quality:
Rhee knew that attracting more middle-class students of all races into public schools would strengthen the schools for all students. In one interview, she recounted Warren Buffett's advice to her that the nation's education problems would be solved if private schools were made illegal and students were randomly assigned.
In D.C., the goal of making all schools majority middle class is not immediately possible, given that 63 percent of the city's students are low-income, but Rhee could have made significant progress in many schools for three reasons.
I won't replace "student quality" with "student attitudes" because I don't know if the relevant factor is attitude.
The more successful charter schools seem to work by molding the cultural assumptions of their students. KIPP, Lighthouse Academies, etc... all seem to work by getting strict discipline into the classroom (eyes up front, everyone quiet, etc..) and convincing the students that they all should go to college. I'm not sure if the current approaches are optimal, but the 'quality' of students seems to malleable.
Additionally, I think Rhee saw herself as the "Bad Cop" that DC needed to make the unpopular decisions, shake things up, and pave the way for a "Good Cop"^ to come in and build the system up in a more positive way. Rhee certainly wanted to stay longer than she did - but she had to know that she couldn't keep alienating folks and keep her job.
^Kaya Henderson, the interim chancellor, may very well be this "Good Cop."
Unions are based on the idea that fungible "workers" need to unite against "management" to avoid being replaced with workers who will accept lower compensation. The primary interest of unions is to preserve for their members jobs that pay above-market compensation.
The presence of teachers' unions means that teachers see teaching as an industrial factory job in a mature field where no more innovation is possible. Students in such a world are the products of the factory. They come into the school system at 5 years of age as unprocessed raw material and they exit 12 years later as high-school graduates, ready to take on a job.
This whole mindset is wrong. The industrial-factory model of schools should be abolished. People, whether young (students) or old (teachers), are not fungible. They should not be viewed as factors in factory. They are not.
This is a politically charged issue about union-busting that's not particularly relevant for HN.
And since the article written by a political operative [1, 2], it's no surprise that he either avoids the main issue or fails to support his arguments with much evidence.
The experiences of these top school systems suggests that three things matter most: 1) getting the right people to become teachers, 2) developing them into effective instructors and, 3) ensuring that the system is able to deliver the best possible instruction for every child.
Where did you pull that number? I went to high school in the state with the absolute highest spending per student (New Jersey) in one of the school districts that spent so much money per student we lost all state funding because the local taxes were paying so much, and we only were spending $8-9k per student.
I think a lot of people have problems with teachers unions because they think of teaching like any other job. It's not - here are the important differences:
Pay raises. It's a fantastic idea for a company to increase the pay of individuals based on performance. If individuals do well, the company does well and makes more money, and can therefore afford to pay the employees more, so this reward system is great.
In schools, there is no profit. So if teachers do better, their students perform better, and the teachers should get paid more. But they don't, since this has not brought any more money into the school. In fact, if schools are doing well they are less likely to have their budgets increased, since people will see no need to increase the budget of something that is functioning well.
This fixed-budget kind of thing is the root of the difference between the education system and private enterprise. In a business, if you are not making enough money (that is, if you have a spending problem), you cut back on things: often you may lay off employees. You will have fewer employees now, but since your business isn't doing well you probably have less work to do, so it can even out. Or, if it doesn't even out, your business closes down.
Neither of these is true of education. Except for rare cases, it is unthinkable to close down a school. Obviously closing would bad for students and education in general, so it is avoided.
More importantly, workload doesn't flex as easily in schools. That is, if you run into budget problems and have to cut teachers, the other teachers must work harder to pick up their slack, since the student body population remains unchanged. Thus it is in the interest of both the teachers and the students to keep budgetary layoffs to an absolute minimum.
So what do you do with a tight budget? Who knows? Removing teachers decreases the effectiveness of education severely. So does the numerous other things I've seen schools do - stop providing textbooks, make the quality of food go down, shorten the school day, remove planning time of teachers, stop giving teachers their own offices, stop plowing the parking lot, etc. In other words, make schools suck in every way possible.
I don't have a good solution for this, beyond the obvious "spend more on education". Personally, I think this is our best bet, but that money would have to come from somewhere else, and people are not willing to pay more taxes for it.
Having it not come from taxes seems like a bad idea(at least on a large scale) since besides a tiny bit of charity the most likely source is fund-raisers which will mostly fund the richest schools and not the poorest schools that need the money the most.
The only real evidence they present is the Stanford study that found charter schools don't perform better than regular public schools. So their argument is that unions can't be the problem because charter schools don't have them and are doing just as bad. But that's a straw man.
Charter schools allow for better management they don't guarantee it. So in the first few decades of a charter school system there will be a lot of bad ideas and a lot of good ideas. But the bad ideas will throw off the average.
But the bottom line is at least the well managed charter schools can take steps to correct problems where as regular public schools can't because of union rules. Which is why some Charter schools do dramatically better.
You can't say that is why they do better. Maybe that is why they do better.
In my experience with charter schools (tech magnet schools in NYC, Delware charter schools) entry is competitive. Of course charter schools will do better if their students start out smarter.
And in other cases, it is at least elective. If your parents care enough about your education to sign you up for a charter school, aren't you already more likely to do well in school than the kids with parents who don't care that much?
If you examine a school in terms of those who teach and those who don't excluding service personnel then you should quickly be able to understand who catches the money when they 'throw money' at the problem. In the long ago, even the principle taught classes--- same boat, everybody rows. Now the less useful (useless?) level of bureaucracy begins well down from the top of your typical school and extends all of the way up. Since demonization has already been going on for years, instead of attending to the real problem, Union busting (note that no one calls it that) is being pushed as the necessary silver bullet without regard to other problems (maybe even the real problem...) Now that many school systems can't afford textbooks (at least not one per student) removing teachers doesn't seem like a useful addition to the solution set.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 137 ms ] threadEdit: Also where do you get "require" from. Not all teachers belong to a union? Did you read the article at all?
Besides the end game of unions are what happened in Detroit.
But thats a Danish dispute which I doubt many here is familiar with, hence the Detroit example.
And it is hardly "one specific" example: its multiple agreements with multiple companies.
I'd rather work in a system where the quality of my work determines my wages and not my seniority or how many masters degrees I've obtained.
I'd rather work in a system that doesn't strong arm my employer into paying benefits they can't afford. I don't know about you, but I'm not worried about my 401k being there in 40 years, but I'd be really scared if I had a municipal pension.
Let's assume we are in a performance based pay system. How do we measure performance? Is it average student grades? If so, then do we pay teachers who work in affluent areas more because every effort is afforded the students (tutoring etc)? Do we pay teachers who choose to work in more challenging schools less (and more likely have lower grades but possibly greater impact on students' lives with their successes)?
What do we do with teachers hand picking elite classes to improve their perceived performance? It already happens even without performance pay? Or it could just be the luck of the draw. Sometimes I end up with difficult student groups simply because of a timetabling issue. Less pay?
There are other metrics for teacher performance that have been proposed, and all the ones I have heard have been very flawed.
Just to touch on the abuse bit at the start, if there was one employer in your town (as there effectively is in many rural areas when it comes to schools), should you relocate because of abuse you have received? (or indeed at all? Who doesn't deserve to feel safe from abuse in their workplace?)
You build a statistical predictor of student performance, then you pay teachers proportional to Actual Performance - Predicted Performance.
If teachers pick elite classes to improve their performance, the bar is raised. If their class has a predicted score of 80%, then the teacher needs an actual score of 90% to get a bonus. Conversely, if you get a class of low quality students, the predicted score might be 20%. To get the bonus, you need to achieve 30%.
The only incentives you have are hand pick classes of students that you can improve. If you are great at moving students from the 50'th percentile to the 60'th percentile, but suck with other student groups, your incentive is to get a class of students in the 50'th percentile.
I suppose you could factor all that into the model, though I'd question the feasibility of doing so.
I'd also argue that grades aren't the only important factor in schooling. Building social skills, discipline, time management, helping to realize goals... All ways in which good teachers can influence students, and only some of them reflect in neat packages like test scores.
Edit: I'd like to clarify that in my previous post I mentioned getting more difficult classes sometimes as the luck of the draw. I didn't mean low ability classes. I meant classes with students with serious behavioral issues, students with learning disabilities and so on. These will very often negatively impact the learning outcomes of the entire class, and is something you very rarely if ever have to deal with in top end classes.
This would only matter in the event it did not average out over a teacher's entire cohort of students. I.e., you would need to get a situation where all the students who wanted to move into the workforce were taught by teacher A, and all the students who wanted to complete school were taught by teacher B.
The law of large numbers helps here.
Also, this would only matter insofar as this factor is uncorrelated with the things you do use as predictors - parental income, race, prior grades, etc. If all the low income students want a job, and all the high income students want to complete school, the predictor already incorporates this factor.
I meant classes with students with serious behavioral issues, students with learning disabilities and so on. These will very often negatively impact the learning outcomes of the entire class, and is something you very rarely if ever have to deal with in top end classes.
If this factor is strongly correlated with income (as you suggest), the predictor will already incorporate it.
"if there was one employer in your town (as there effectively is in many rural areas when it comes to schools), should you relocate because of abuse you have received?"
Yes. That, or start a competing company. If the abuses are really bad, you'd no doubt attract a lot of other disgruntled employees who'd prefer to work for a better company. Jobs are not a right, no matter how badly people want them to be.
So uh, that'd pretty much be like a union, right? A group of people effectively saying that they won't work under certain conditions? ;)
I suspect we'll fundamentally disagree on the first point about parents voting with their feet/wallets, since that kinda describes the private school system, and I'm a firm believer in the same education being available to everyone (freely, if possible, and cheaply if not).
A popular conservative position is to give all students the same educational opportunity by allowing parents to take their children's education dollars to private schools.
(Of course I suppose the conservative counter to that is to get a better job, and that they'd have enough money if taxes weren't contributing to education dollars :)
Many states require non-union employees to pay the union. I believe DC does as well.
Your only choices are to be taxed by the union with voting rights or be taxed by the union without voting rights.
http://usgovernmentspending.com/piechart_2009_US_total
Teachers work fewer hours than the average professional, which includes time spent working at home.
http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf
For many (most?) countries, the education system is dominated by state-run schools. This typically means that there will be one very large employer and possibly several much smaller employers (ie private schools).
In this scenario, the very large employer wields a disproportionate amount of power. I guess it's analagous to a monopoly or near-monopoly: the very fact that you are so dominant means rules apply to you that otherwise wouldn't to protect the market--competition itself--from breaking down.
Unions are probably the mechanism for keeping the government, as that large dominant employer, honest.
The problem is the reverse is also a problem: now the government and the private schools face a monopoly in the form of the teacher's union. That monopoly can--and does--extract unreasonable concessions [1].
An important aspect of unions is collective bargaining (pay, conditions, etc). This is a somewhat controversial topic that tends to divide down political lines. Collective bargaining sprang up in the Industrial Revolution and in periods like the Great Depression to protect workers from essentially bidding themselves down.
[1]: http://reason.com/archives/2006/10/01/how-to-fire-an-incompe...
PS - I'm young and pissed with the general recklessness of baby boomers.
The fundamental problem is that as a whole there is neither some better performing nor cheaper workforce that is being blocked access to teaching today.
If you haven't, read Lee Iacoca's autobiography: http://www.amazon.com/Iacocca-Autobiography-Lee/dp/055325147...
He wrote it in 1984, but everything he says applies to the 2008/2009 collapse of the auto industry. For that matter, go back a little further and read John DeLorean's On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors. It's pretty amazing how long these poorly run companies managed to trip along, and these books make it pretty clear it's not just the unions to blame.
Anyway, if you want to look at excessive compensation and benefits in the auto industry, look a little higher.
And at any rate, they only got what they negotiated, so if you want to blame anyone, blame management for poor negotiating, poor planning and just generally screwing up.
Finally, if unions ruined the auto industry, why is Ford doing well relative to GM and Chrysler? I drive a foreign car at the moment, but my next car will be a Ford because they did not take bailout money, and they make excellent, reliable cars (nowadays).
As for the assemblers preventing innovation, its much harder to pump cash into R&D when your assembly costs are twice that of your competition.
And as for ford doing well relative to GM and Crysler, you're basically saying they're doing good compared to bankruptcy. I like ford (especially their current lineup), but they've fallen a long way from their massive dominance of a few decades back.
To be clear, I agree with you (this reply seems a little ranty), the entire auto industry is a mess; a large part of these inefficiencies I feel comes out of dealing with unions - and I see the same things happening with teachers.
But to put your last statement another way, a large part of these inefficiencies comes out of having to create unions in the first place, to counter the abusive employment practices of management.
I think it's a two-way street. Auto unions are corrupt now, but they were obviously created as a reaction to some pretty bad behavior from management.
The worst, most unnecessary, most counter-productive unions, in my limited experience, are at universities :)
Work rules.
Anyway, if you want to look at excessive compensation and benefits in the auto industry, look a little higher.
$3 million + worthless stock options ($15M at the time of issue) is not that high.
http://www.mlive.com/business/index.ssf/2009/03/gm_ceos_2008...
Lets compare that to what some Google employees earn:
http://www.oochoo.com/2010/11/google-offers-3-5-million-doll...
1. Work rules created the quality problems? The quality was engineered right out of the cars through cost-cutting and bad priorities.
2. 2008? American car companies got into trouble decades before 2008.
3. Google is profitable, whereas GM and Chrysler failed, took bailouts, never punished their own management, same as the bankers.
4. Paying $3 million for failure is acceptable? Okay, so why is paying $50k to a line worker "too much" then?
Regarding 3), Wagoner's comp was cut from $14.9M to $3M as a result of his failure. $3M is very little for an executive at his level. Even $14.9M is not that high for a CEO of a company as big as GM. Lady Gaga earned $62M in the same time period.
Regarding 4), GM is saddled with legacy costs of $1600/car. The CEO's pay of $3 million works out to be $8.35/vehicle.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_19/b3932001_...
http://www.gm.com/investors/sales-production/press-release.j...
Suppose the next best alternative available for CEO would only demand $2 million. If Wagoner could increase profits by $2.78/vehicle more than the next best option for CEO, his pay is well worth it. Do you seriously think you can get a competent CEO, capable of running GM, for less than $1 million?
We're talking about different decades. You're talking about present day, I'm talking about how we got here, i.e., the decline which began in the 1980's.
In terms of what a CEO is "worth," CEO's can certainly have negative value, regardless of the compensation.
Regarding who should take a pay cut, I would say everyone involved. But what I'm objecting to is this notion that "unions are to blame" for the auto industry's problems.
Let's assume the unions are acting like leeches, sucking out more value than they are putting in. Isn't it arguably the case that management is acting -exactly- the same way?
I would further argue that there is a -lot- more than $1600/car that separates GM from Toyota. If the unions are to blame for everything wrong, do they get the credit at companies which are doing well (e.g., Ford)?
Do you seriously believe GM would have a higher value if the CEO position went unfilled?
Let's assume the unions are acting like leeches, sucking out more value than they are putting in. Isn't it arguably the case that management is acting -exactly- the same way?
Perhaps, but management doesn't have much power. If management demands more money than the company is willing to pay, they can be fired and replaced. That's a lot harder with unionized workers.
The gap between GM and Toyota may be more than $1600/car, but all that means is that unions are not the only cause of GM's decline. I wouldn't disagree with that.
As for Ford, what exactly did the unions do to help? The mechanism by which they harm is quite clear - they raise cost of labor. What value do they add that makes it worthwhile?
No, of course they have to have a CEO. And maybe he adds value, maybe not. He gets what he negotiated, same as the workers.
Management doesn't have much power? You're saying that an individual manager doesn't have much power and can be replaced. Sure, that's true.
As for Ford, let me clarify. No, I'm not saying the unions deserve any credit -- after all, it's the same unions as at GM!
But if you're going to give them the blame when things are bad, don't you have to also then give them the credit when things are good? The truth is they are just assembly line workers for the most part, and the quality was engineered out of the cars starting in the 1980's.
And regarding the "harm" that workers do by raising the cost of labor, why aren't management's salaries also "harming" the business by raising the cost? Why the double standard?
The corporation negotiates with management from a position of equality. Both parties are permitted to make or reject offers as they see fit. If GM offers too little, Wagoner is free to take a higher paying job elsewhere. If GM can find someone cheaper, they are free to reject Wagoner. GM is also not permitted to collude with other employers to reduce prices.
The corporation does not negotiate with a union from a position of equality. They are not permitted to reject union offers and procure labor at lower rates from the competition. They are also not permitted to fire and replace union workers who fail to do their jobs. Labor sellers are legally permitted to collude with each other to raise their prices, and they are given a government granted monopoly on the practice. Competition is illegal.
You make the case that management is an innocent by-stander getting repeatedly mugged by unions. The truth is that the treachery went both ways, historically. Otherwise, why do unions exist?
[Auto makers] are also not permitted to fire and replace union workers who fail to do their jobs.
I wonder how many managers at GM have ever been fired for "failing to do their jobs," in light of the bailout. The lack of accountability is on both sides, not just one side.
Many schools suck because they are full of low quality students. Rhee made some improvements, but no improvements to teachers can compensate for low quality students.
The author's actual point is "Michelle Rhee's war on teachers' unions was a sideshow that distracted from the more important effort to give more low-income students a chance to attend middle-class public schools."
If the difference is teacher quality, then Michelle Rhee's war on low quality teachers was on point and exactly what was needed. The article disputes this.
Thus, it must be student quality.
Additionally, as a teacher in a low-income school, I'd argue very strongly that you should replace "student quality" with "student attitudes." The latter doesn't suggest that poor kids can't learn.
Here is what the article says about altering teacher quality:
Most education researchers, though, recognize that Rhee's simple vision of heroic teachers saving American education is a fantasy...
If the ability to fire bad teachers and pay great teachers more were the key missing ingredient in education reform, why haven't charter schools, 88% of which are nonunionized and have that flexibility, lit the education world on fire?
New York didn't get ahead by firing bad teachers.
On student quality:
Rhee knew that attracting more middle-class students of all races into public schools would strengthen the schools for all students. In one interview, she recounted Warren Buffett's advice to her that the nation's education problems would be solved if private schools were made illegal and students were randomly assigned.
In D.C., the goal of making all schools majority middle class is not immediately possible, given that 63 percent of the city's students are low-income, but Rhee could have made significant progress in many schools for three reasons.
I won't replace "student quality" with "student attitudes" because I don't know if the relevant factor is attitude.
^Kaya Henderson, the interim chancellor, may very well be this "Good Cop."
The presence of teachers' unions means that teachers see teaching as an industrial factory job in a mature field where no more innovation is possible. Students in such a world are the products of the factory. They come into the school system at 5 years of age as unprocessed raw material and they exit 12 years later as high-school graduates, ready to take on a job.
This whole mindset is wrong. The industrial-factory model of schools should be abolished. People, whether young (students) or old (teachers), are not fungible. They should not be viewed as factors in factory. They are not.
And since the article written by a political operative [1, 2], it's no surprise that he either avoids the main issue or fails to support his arguments with much evidence.
[1] http://tcf.org/about/fellows/richard-d.-kahlenberg-senior-fe...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_Foundation
http://www.mckinsey.com/App_Media/Reports/SSO/Worlds_School_...
The experiences of these top school systems suggests that three things matter most: 1) getting the right people to become teachers, 2) developing them into effective instructors and, 3) ensuring that the system is able to deliver the best possible instruction for every child.
In the US, you spend $20K per student.
I think part of the solution in the US is to tear down the whole system, go local and market-based.
On average, it seems that it was around $10K 5 years ago. This would be a respectable amount IF the results, on average, were good. But they are not.
Pay raises. It's a fantastic idea for a company to increase the pay of individuals based on performance. If individuals do well, the company does well and makes more money, and can therefore afford to pay the employees more, so this reward system is great.
In schools, there is no profit. So if teachers do better, their students perform better, and the teachers should get paid more. But they don't, since this has not brought any more money into the school. In fact, if schools are doing well they are less likely to have their budgets increased, since people will see no need to increase the budget of something that is functioning well.
This fixed-budget kind of thing is the root of the difference between the education system and private enterprise. In a business, if you are not making enough money (that is, if you have a spending problem), you cut back on things: often you may lay off employees. You will have fewer employees now, but since your business isn't doing well you probably have less work to do, so it can even out. Or, if it doesn't even out, your business closes down.
Neither of these is true of education. Except for rare cases, it is unthinkable to close down a school. Obviously closing would bad for students and education in general, so it is avoided.
More importantly, workload doesn't flex as easily in schools. That is, if you run into budget problems and have to cut teachers, the other teachers must work harder to pick up their slack, since the student body population remains unchanged. Thus it is in the interest of both the teachers and the students to keep budgetary layoffs to an absolute minimum.
So what do you do with a tight budget? Who knows? Removing teachers decreases the effectiveness of education severely. So does the numerous other things I've seen schools do - stop providing textbooks, make the quality of food go down, shorten the school day, remove planning time of teachers, stop giving teachers their own offices, stop plowing the parking lot, etc. In other words, make schools suck in every way possible.
I don't have a good solution for this, beyond the obvious "spend more on education". Personally, I think this is our best bet, but that money would have to come from somewhere else, and people are not willing to pay more taxes for it.
Charter schools allow for better management they don't guarantee it. So in the first few decades of a charter school system there will be a lot of bad ideas and a lot of good ideas. But the bad ideas will throw off the average.
But the bottom line is at least the well managed charter schools can take steps to correct problems where as regular public schools can't because of union rules. Which is why some Charter schools do dramatically better.
In my experience with charter schools (tech magnet schools in NYC, Delware charter schools) entry is competitive. Of course charter schools will do better if their students start out smarter.
And in other cases, it is at least elective. If your parents care enough about your education to sign you up for a charter school, aren't you already more likely to do well in school than the kids with parents who don't care that much?
This seems dishonest given how hard he tried-- only to be thwarted by a union which always closes ranks.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/31/090831fa_fact_... http://gothamist.com/2011/01/30/joel_klein_easier_to_prosecu...