Education

Data for the Teacher Union Bashers (including Bill Maher and Arianna Huffington)

by Clay Burell

category: Teacher Unions

Published March 28, 2009 @ 07:04AM PT

We've spent a good deal of time on this space debating whether teacher unions create problems by "protecting bad teachers" from dismissal (see "Do Teacher Unions Deserve the Bashing?"). That discussion was often more full of opinions that data justifying them. This post may remedy that, if the data below the videos is accurate.

On his HBO talk show "Real Time," Bill Maher asserts in no uncertain terms that this teacher unions do deserve bashing in the following two clips from his HBO talk show "Real Time." He calls the unions "corrupt," attacks the tenure system, and accuses unions of shuffling "bad teachers" from school to school like the Catholic Church's shuffles child molesting priests from parish to parish. Pretty hard-hitting stuff - and the audience heartily applauds each attack. Even UPenn professor Michael Eric Dyson, after arguing that Obama and ed reformers should acknowledge socio-economic factors in their plans, says he's "with" Maher on the "corrupt" teacher unions. (The other guest, by the way, is NYPost conservative columnist Andrew Breitbart.)

Watch it below, then see excerpts from David Macaray's response on Counterpunch. The stats Macaray marshals in defense of unions are compelling, on the surface. Anybody want to take them on? (Start at 9 minutes on Clip One, then see the rest of the discussion in the first three minutes on Clip 2):

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David Macaray offers a statistics-filled response to Maher in "The Myth of the 'Powerful Teachers' Union'" on Counterpunch (h/t to Norm Coleman):

On Friday, March 13, comedian and uber-liberal Bill Maher joined the attack on his HBO show.  In one of his signature tirades, Maher, a California resident, railed against the “powerful” California teachers’ union, accusing it of contributing to the crisis in public education by not allowing the school district to remove incompetent teachers.

Maher came armed with statistics.

{snip}

Maher made a huge deal of the fact that, because of the union’s protective shield, less than 1% of California’s tenured/post-probationary teachers get fired. Although this ratio clearly outraged him (he appeared visibly upset by it), had he taken five minutes to research the subject, he’d have realized that this figure represents the national average—with or without unions.

In Georgia, where 92.5% of the teachers are non-union, only 0.5% of tenured/post-probationary teachers get fired. In South Carolina, where 100% of the teachers are non-union, it’s 0.32%. And in North Carolina, where 97.7% are non-union, a miniscule .03% of tenured/post-probationary teachers get fired—the exact same percentage as California.

An even more startling comparison: In California, with its “powerful” teachers’ union, school administrators fire, on average, 6.91% of its probationary teachers. In non-union North Carolina, that figure is only 1.38%. California is actually tougher on prospective candidates.

So, despite Maher’s display of civic pride and self-righteous indignation (“We need to bust this union,” he declared), he was utterly mistaken. The statistics not only don’t support his argument, they contradict it. (much fuller article here)

Any changed minds out there?