I do believe that teacher unions are a good thing and should be supported for the reasons you mentioned.  However, in some places I think the unions have acquired too much leverage.  For example, tenure is a policy that is both protectionist and enables regression as is evident in the email you received. There ought to be a way to remove ineffective teachers.  I would prefer to see a system where by after a probationary period the termination of a teacher could be a joint decision between administrator, union, and board.  During the probationary period the retention of the teacher is at the discretion of the administrator, after the probationary period there is more security but they still are held accountable by other stakeholders.  Better yet, lets create schools run and managed by teachers in private practice circumventing the need for a union.  Organize schools like law firms, remove the bureaucracy, and let the practitioner make the decisions that they know from work in the field are needed.  This will improve schools.

@Clay and others
Check this out I just posted this morning.  Close to this topic. (Clay do we have a mind link or something?:P)

http://maineview.blogspot.com/2009/03/my-michelle-michelle-rhee-and-union.html

Just to give a brief summary of my opinon, unions in general are helpful.  They protect those who couldn't protect themselves alone.  They're are kind of like a police department for workers' rights.  However just like a police depeartment, unions can be courrupt and greedy.  Does that mean we should abolish unions?  Certainly not.  Checks and balances, both on unions and management, are of the utmost importance.  Readers of my blog and comments here will know how strongly I believe in accountability.  We need to promote an evironment of cooperation not antagonization, participation not alienation, if we want to help our kids.

@Carl
Interesting idea.  In theory it would be a great plan.  How much would teachers be left to their own devices?  Would there be a board of partners like a law firm?  In a perfect world everyone could be left alone and still do the best job they could.  Unfortunately life isn't that rosey. 

I tend to regard unions in general and teacher unions in particular as --well, not a necessary evil, they aren't that bad, but definitely better than the alternative.

 Adversarial systems aren't the ideal for getting things done intelligently and efficiently, but when us-against-them IS in place, you definitely need there to be balance in the system.  If management has all the power, abuses, familiar to us all, occur.  Unions provide a necessary countervailing force.

If management was universally intelligent and benign and took the welfare of their workiers into account in decision-making, unions would be unnecessary.

However,. . .

Yes, stories abound of stupid rules advocated by unions, of poor workers protected by unions, etc.  Stories also abound of abuses by management (some of those stupid rules are in place because of stupid or bad things management was doing before the rule was negotiated.)

Contrary to popular opinion, it isn't impossible to fire an incompetent teacher once they are beyond the probationary period.

It IS difficult and maybe too expensive.  However, in my years as a high school teacher, I saw some teachers fired in schools without unions, and not once did I see it done right.  No due process, no documentation of incompetence or insubordination--just personality conflicts with the principal.  A couple of them actually needed to be fired for bad teaching or improper conduct with students--but that almost seemed to be beside the point in the way things played out.  The deciding factor was always the relationship with the principal and whether or not he (it was always a "he", but I don't know that that was significant) felt respected by the teacher.  One of the principals involved had never even observed the teachers he fired--not once.  So yes, I think unions are necessary.  And the more management hates them, the more I figure they are necessary.

But I do wish unions could somehow be more about negotiating conditions that are good for kids and not entirely about protecting teachers.

I may have it wrong, but my understanding is that in California, it is illegal for teacher unions to negotiate about things like curriculum.  If we could come up with a model for teacher unions that was less modelled after unions in industries like steel and automobile manufacturing, maybe we could devise a system that worked more for the welfare of the kids.

In general, good working conditions for teachers makes for good learning conditions for kids (depending on how one sees good working conditions for teachers, I suppose--for instance, really short working days for teachers are not good for kids), but it would be nice if unions could more directly negotiate for what teachers see as good for kids.  I honestly think things would be better in California if teachers could push back against the imposition from above of unreasonable pacing guides and scripted curricula, and I think they would if they could.

So maybe we could get beyond debating "unions--yes or no?" and start thinking about a model for unions that would work better in schools than the model developed in the context of heavy manual labor.  I don't know what it would look like, or how it could be legislated, but it might be interesting to try.

As the source of your opening question, let me muse about the state of teaching, and the relationship between that state and the resource a union can, and often does, provide.

To begin, I really don't think there are bad teachers. I think we learn from people, and often teachers who have less than engaging skills can be a remarkable source of learning. Some of my best has come from some of their worst. That said, it is good that there are good teachers in the mix to stabilize and celebrate the insights from their less productive peers.

That is, however, the context for teacher organizing. Keep in mind that teacher unions are basically new. They were very, very weak until the 1960's, with only a few significant bases in key cities, and there often contentious between the UFT, AFT, and NEA, who, for many, many years avoided the label and acerbity of union organizing.

Teacher unions serve often conflicting goals: industrial job security and post-industrial professional development. They do this is a career laden with large and lumpy aggregated variables. Carl's reference - above - to the larger questions of school improvement raised in Washington highlight how those lumpy variables remain very pre-industrial and need much more disaggregation before we can seriously talk about real improvement in method, or even get to substantive discussions about "school outcomes." When, for one very uncomfortable example, we still use variables like class and race as the most critical predictors of school success, it's clear we've not looked into any details - like attendance, engagement, interpersonal networking, entry skills, peer relations and peer learning skills - which are probably the real predictors in some disaggregated, and therefore workable formulae.

Some of these variables have actually penetrated school improvement plans and professional development. Chicago's Consortium on School Research, for one startling example, identified clear and easily identified predictors of dropout behavior (attendance, earlier grades, and teacher comments, all obvious but previously lumped into "do they like school"). When we get that finer grained information we can act - how, other than the most racist and classist response, could we act on issues of class or race other than "promote assimilation!?"

I raise these issues in the context of teachers and teaching because they go to the heart of the profession. What distinguishes teaching from medicine or even social work is that so much of education remains intuitive, with very poor data very sloppily analyzed and very subjectively applied. When Gilbert Highet wrote "The Art of Teaching," he was actually far more scientific than Dewey, since he acknowledged that teaching has at least as much aesthetics as psychology.

And to go from the nature of teaching to the need for unions is not a huge shift. Keep in mind that most principals were (and probably still are) gym teachers because they have large budgets, rather than strong coaching skills, the issue of teaching vs. management is inevitably a problem. Since most schools still use a model of one adult vs. lots of little people, with very limited and often random teaming or collaboration, an atomized workforce yearns for solidarity and common causes, and often ignores huge differences in teaching style, leadership and communication skills in organizing a workplace.

How could we expect teachers to protect each other were there no union? And the need for that protection often reflects adversarial politicians, administrators, parents, kids, and other teachers.

That said, however, there are several consequences to teacher unions that were unanticipated. First, issues of seniority are rarely best served if the only measure is time in service. Whether that seniority reflects pay, time off, or instructional leadership, it is often very poorly served by measuring age rather than skills or talents.

And a byproduct of that seniority system has been a very rapidly aging teacher population, with a bimodal age distribution of old teachers running a shop of young, and churning teachers who yearn for real responsibility and immediate application of fresh ideas. Many urban systems have large and larger turnover of senior staff who retire en masse, leaving a high turnover younger staff still trying to work through their one-teacher-per-classroom anomie. This is not the intent of teacher unions, but one of their impacts.

To me what this suggests is that unions are neither the cause nor the effect of school change. In some situations, some unions have led that change; in others they retard that change - depending on the change, on their local issues and conditions, and on their individual leadership or the responding school system. In other words, unions are critical to teacher security, but only sometimes relevant to the school improvement that such security should make more feasible.

In other words, pro or con union is not the issue - everywhere, all the time. Like most generalizations in education, you need more data to draw that kind of conclusion, and, once gained, it's often not generalizable beyond a few vague conditions.

Incidentally, I think that unions, small schools, charters, and many of the other conditions that so many advocates take as "critical" to school improvement are just as idiosyncratic and situational as eye contact with a fourth grader at the right time. Really important sometimes; really trivial other times. And I think much, much too much is wagered on such local, often unique bets.

I think school improvement is best engineered within each school, building on the best qualities in that circumstance. Change can only be generalized from derived measures of student and community impact, themselves often second or third level consequences of a genuine change. That doesn't mean you don't do it. But it does mean that, when change happens, you ought to brag about it online, with video and kid products, parent and community engagement. We ought to be creating and re-creating Dewey's Lab School every day, in every way, all around the world, and bragging about each kid's brilliance as soon as we - or they - see it.

Unions can help. But so can a keyboard or a webcam. Teachers can capitalize on those breakthroughs, but so can kids and even bad teachers. Unions often pull down the norm, but they also help stabilize very rocky times.

In other words, be careful about generalizations. Just as they are right sometimes, they are wrong most times. Just like that one.

I am neither a teacher nor a union member, so perhaps my perspective is a little different. There are many professions that just don't do unions - I'm thinking engineers (my job), lawyers, doctors, architects and the like. Certainly these jobs can be difficult to the point where sometimes you wish you had a union (mandatory overtime without compensation kind of sucks), but the perception of relative high value of people with the skills to have these jobs means that you don't really want or need a union.

I think that changing teaching into one of these types of careers leads to higher quality teachers, higher pay and happier customers (parents and students). How to get from here to there is a good question, but in Baltimore at least, I think the charter schools are moving that way. Teachers are much more involved in running the schools. The administration works to attract and retain and train teachers in ways that are very different from the lower performing "traditional" public schools in the city. I see the best charter schools as moving towards a valued teacher. At that point I think the unions move towards being a "professional society" like the AMA for doctors or the IEEE for engineers.

Despite being Canadian and generally more "left-of-center" than many Americans (all those general welfare aspects Clay mentions are things I support), I'm not always in support of unions. I'm a genuine fence-sitter, and tend to lean more to the side of anti-union than pro-union. This is because my experiences both as a student and a teacher has shaped my opinion perhaps more than logic has. I'm at odds between my intellectual understanding of the need for unions, and my personal negative experiences of them. I'll be honest when I say that I have personally not experienced ANY good coming from teachers' unions. Wait - that's not 100% true. One year, the union negotiated collectively for a retro-active pay increase, and I subesquently was given an extra $3000 after having left the district. So I suppose I have the union to thank for that. But that's it.

My suggestions regarding unions are similar to those of Cornelia's (and I *am* a teacher). I have always been baffled by why education professionals don't have a professional society liek the ones she mentions. I have suggested this before in previous comments, but I would really like to see teachers have a professional college or governing body which regulates the profession. That is where the checks and balances should be, in my opinion.  Too often I have seen unions get in the way of accountability, and all at the expense of learning. I feel that if there were some way to manage the profession itself, the unions' role would change, or perhaps they would not be necessary at all.

I do really like Carl's ideas listed here -- Clay, maybe he can guest post? I would be interested in learning more. I'm especially interested because, if "unions protect the working class from the owning class," then in Carl's model, the working class *is* the owning class, thus removing the need for protection of one from the other.

One last point: Cornelia says that some professions don't "do" unions because "the perception of relative high value of people with the skills to have these jobs means that you don't really want or need a union."  Ideally, this could be the case for teachers, too. The problem is that in education we don't have the "relative high value of people with the skills." We may have people with the skills, but we don't have the perceived value. How do we go about changing that? Secondly how do we go about ensuring that all the people in this profession are, indeed, "the people with the skills"?  There *are* ineffective teachers out there, yet unions often ensure they are retained.

I don;t know about other unions, but the unions here in Detroit protect and defend teachers who are incompetent.   A GOOD teacher is invaluable and most of them are, but those who should have been fired years ago are only able to hang around because of the union who supports them.   The union should mandate standards for them and if they don;t meet them and refuse to meet them, then they should be fired!!
The same goes for incompetent professors who are protected by tenure, even though they have NO business in the classroom!

Oh...another issue with teachers union for those of us with autistic kids - Wendy Portillo is getting backed by her union. How about a union for special ed students who are abused in school?

There's an action here at change.org on the subject here:
http://autism.change.org/actions/view/make_wendy_portillo_accountable_of_emotional_abuse
And a post on the situation here:
http://autism.change.org/blog/view/should_wendy_portillo_still_be_teaching

I have been teaching for 10 years, actively involved in the union as a building rep for 4, and I was recently elected as president of my local.

A couple of points to consider:

1) The union doesn't defend individuals; it defends the contract. If administrators follow the disciplinary and just cause provisions of the contract, then it is not that difficult to get rid of a tenured teacher. In Michigan (including Detroit), teachers lose about 98% of the termination cases that are appealed to the tenure commision. However, if a district wants to get rid of a teacher without following the contract, the union has to fight against that or it sets a precedent.

2) Teachers unions are closer to the AMA than they are to the UAW because the membership of teachers unions, like the membership of the AMA, is highly educated. All members of teachers unions have at least a four year degree and most have continuing degrees. Teachers unions are composed of white collar employees and that makes a difference in how they interact with administration and their expectations for the union itself.

3) Teachers unions often counsel poor teachers out of the profession. Union officials don't want to spend their time on dealing with teachers who act unprofessionally. Once a teacher demonstrates a pattern of unprofessional behavior, is informed of his shortcomings, and refuses to change, the union doesn't want that person teaching any more than the students, parents, or administrators do.

There are some very interesting arguments on this tread. Some are intellectual and some are specific. They remind me of the forums I have read about the reading wars (whole language vs phonics). Some "experts", some "in the trenches" and others because of some specific connection or idea. So it is hard to "weigh" them as all equal.
I teach 1st grade. I have for over 20 years. I was "late into the field", having my babies first, being involved in their early education and schools before I became a full time teacher. I come from a family of educators. I am active in my local association (union negotiator) and have participated in various functions at the regional and state level. I cannot say I am an "expert' but I am "in the trenches".
....To the question: Do teacher unions deserve our support? Why or why not/ Extra credit for suggestions of how unions can/should be improved, how they are/are not scapegoated in the media, etc....
A complete answer would take me much longer than I have time for.  But I'll give it a go.

My answer is Yes, all unions deserve our support. Study history about unions, why and how they came to be and their purpose. Teacher unions are no different about their purpose. They are set up to protect their workers in salary and conditions. Read about teaching conditions of the 20's and 30's and 40's and you'll understand that teachers were subject to all kinds of "requirements". We are still subject to all kinds of requirements but now we have unions that advocates for us on a local, state and national level.
Teaching is a craft, it gets better with experience some teachers come better prepared and some teachers are "naturals".  No two teachers are alike, even with the same curriculum. Every classroom is different: one student, some material changes, the surroundings in or outside of the room can change the dynamics from hour to hour, day to day or year to year. Teachers have to be multi-taskers. They often make several decisions a minute. A teacher's classroom management style and ability and whether that matches the students needs is by far a teacher's worst curse or great bounty. Teachers are trained in how to teach: how to organize a lesson and how to determine a student's progress, hopefully in the content area that they are assigned to teach in. Teachers are not widget workers and do not spew out a "product" (student) that can be fairly weighed against "another product" (student) after 180 days of teaching. Some teachers work better by not interacting with their colleagues and others thrive on support, collaboration and the giving and getting of expertise from other teachers.Teachers are people who choose a profession that can make a difference in the life of a child.

So how do you create a fair and equitable system for such a diverse work force?  By protecting their salary and working conditions, which is what a teacher union does. Otherwise, you will have teachers who have such a fear of management that they won't be innovative, willing to try new things or stand up for various ideas that they believe in or against ideas that they don't believe in. Take for example the post that possible started this thread  ..."The union in my area refused to sign a contract that made them submit grades by computer instead of pencil and paper. Sometimes things aren't what they seem."

Very true--Sometimes things aren't what they seem. That poster indicated that unions weren't good because technology should be a good thing and therefore the union was bad because they refused to submit grades by computer. Gee, I only wish that my local had been "strong" enough to counter our administration's desire to force us into a computer system that we weren't ready for. We now have to submit k-5 grades and attendance in a web-based system. The secondary schools 6-12 have been doing this for a long time. They post a final grade for each of about 165 students. Secondary teachers weren't affected much by the change.  They have a newer school and better technology. But this has cost us, as k-5  teachers, untold amounts of lost hours a week especially around grade reporting time--(that time really good be better spent organizing lessons). Our computer system was not advanced enough, the training was not appropriate and the district can not afford enough tech support to keep things running smoothly. But as "good" teachers we patch it up, work around it and spend a lot more time on attendance and grades than we ever did with handwritten reports because the software  "system" that our district was able to afford was developed about 8-10 years by some college kid who understood what secondary schools needed but not elementary schools. The software hasn't been upgraded much and apparently won't be because the company has enough contracts with school districts that can't afford anything more and can't afford to switch providers so the software company has no incentive to change. And the really stupid thing is--nobody but us knows the truth (and now you)---we dare not make the district look bad, especially in these tight times with competition among the school districts for enrollment.  My guess is that those teachers in that district, that fought off the requirement,  knew that they were not ready tech wise (as a district) to have to submit their grades by computer. I only wish we were that knowledgeable a few years back.  No one had any idea that we all couldn't be online all at once, that our server wasn't "big" enough and that the software would be so slow and cumbersome. Was that the union's fault?  Sometimes things aren't what they seem.

Who really was or is  the data for anyway? Answer-the state and federal government.  No Child Left Behind requires districts to have a system to prove academic improvements among certain small groups of students. It was difficult for administrators to "disaggregate" (pull apart)  the information without a data base so many school districts now have a computer generated, standards based report card with the data they need on each student so they can "pull" the information. Did it help teaching? Did it help reporting to parents? That's for another forum. What is the union's response? That the teachers are trained, compensated if the training is on their time and materials and equipment provided. What happened in my case? I bought my own computer because the district's computers were unreliable and difficult to use (the district computer was on a counter-no desk or work station near the cable line--it wasn't a healthy place to sit for a few hours....). I spent considerable time figuring out the application (although I am pretty computer literate) after a 2 hour crash course about the grade book that no kindergarten through 3rd grade teacher had need for. (I am probably more frustrated than other teachers because I understand how far advanced we are in technology--have you looked at google lately?--- and how much more time this particular application is taking teachers to enter data than it needs to be. I keep looking for shortcuts or upgrades in the system and there aren't any!)  Being a  negotiator I spoke up about this, but it is one of many issues (as you find if you are a negotiator) and life goes on and so does teaching. You don't always (or even often) get what you wnat. As a poster to the change.org forums said:  Sometimes things aren't what they seem.

There are lots of stories like this......"The union in my area refused to sign a contract that made them submit grades by computer"..... (unions seem "bad") and the media picks up on them. Newspapers and TV news have to develop stories that the public will read or watch so their publications and broadcasts can be ranked "highly" to charge advertisers enough to not only make their product but make a profit. Even local or regional papers don't often enough promote the good that happens in their community. People seem to be conditioned to seek out bad news whether it's teacher unions or bad politics or a murder. Bad news perpetuates itself like the "the sky is falling " from Chicken Little. Of course, right now the bad news is the economy and it really is bad news. Thank heavens teacher unions aren't the cause. However, as the layoffs start to happen for the next school year I think we might read of stories about how the younger, newly hired teachers are being picked on because of permanency rights and "those bad teacher unions".  I hope not.  I hope that there is a story written about how the teacher's union really works to save jobs. I know -I have been in the trenches, consoled those teachers receiving their "pink slips" (layoffs) and fighting for teachers that shouldn't be laid off.

How could teacher unions be better? I wish that teacher unions actually had more "clout". But I think we do what we are suppose to do--protect teachers as best as we can. I think what you really want to ask is : How do we make schools better?

In my district we do have curriculum committees and hiring committees that teachers belong to which allows those "in the trenches" to at least understand how "what they have to teach" has come to be.  Currently there seems to be a respect among administrators, school board and teachers that we do things together and have a common purpose in my district. It hasn't always been that way and it isn't that way in many school districts.  But management changes, more often than the staff and what we have done is cite "past practice" to continue to have a say in hiring and curriculum when a newly hired administrator comes along. It really comes down to whether there is a good management style in a school instead of whether there is a "good" or "bad' teacher's union.
 
It is easy to pick on the teachers unions as a reason for the academic problem we have in our country --- (unfortunately, it is true, people aren't as educated as we need them to be--that's scary!)  Teacher unions are organized. Teacher unions are outspoken. Teacher unions contribute to causes. We fight the media. We love the media. We use the media. But are we (teacher unions) THE cause for academic failure?

Let's talk about the REAL issues for academic failure--poverty, values, violence, funding. Let's talk about the Bush Curse and the Obama Dream! Deal with those first and then talk about whether teacher unions deserve support. It probably wouldn't even be an issue.

Carl, you are conflating the union with the educational system.

The union does not have control of the educational system. Politicians have control of the system. Unions are one of the myriad voices some politicians pay attention to, but unions are not the primary voice that influences the educational system.

In my experience (obviously, a unique experience, but not necessarily out of the ordinary), the teachers I work with come from a varied background and value diversity in their students.

For example, in my building there are about 80 teachers. In my wing there are about 25 teachers. Of those in my wing, two were high school dropouts who went back to get GEDs and then college degrees. A majority were average students. A few were exceptional students. I was an average student (GPA wise) who also turned out to be a national merit scholar. I'm not sure which part of my experience prepared me to deal with drunken parents at conferences, students crying because someone insulted their boyfriend, or students who miss more days than they attend, but somewhere along the line I guess I learned to care about individuals, which most teachers have picked up somewhere.

What percentage of high school dropouts do you want to go back into teaching before you are convinced that there is a diverse group of people who teach?

Teachers and unions often are much more respectful of diverse learning styles and methodologies than you give credit for.

For example, a teacher I work with was recently told that his standards were too high (quote from admin: "You're teaching a college course to sophomores in high school.") and his teaching environment was not appropriate (quote: "You have to get rid of the couch and the easy chairs."). The union didn't have any issue with what he was doing--it was the administration that squashed that which was out of the norm.

Please take a look at the positions of the NEA and see if your argument holds that the union and the educational system are monolithic.

For example, here's what the NEA says about reading:
"There is no one way to teach reading that is effective for all students. The teacher is the key to successful reading. Teachers should receive a sound preservice education as well as ongoing, relevant professional development in order to implement complete reading programs that address the full spectrum of reading skills and diverse student needs. Teachers should be supported by parents, skilled education support professionals, communities that value and promote reading, and policies that provide adequate resources and allow them to use their expertise." http://www.nea.org/home/19027.htm

The unions support many reforms to the current educational system (which was imposed by politicians). Please take some time to learn about what the unions advocate before you paint them as obstructionist.

They deserve our support when they do good and our ire when they do bad—like all unions, groups, businesses, etc.

Some useful changes.

1. Bad teachers have to go. My daughter had a horrible teacher. It took her 3 years to recover from his atrocious teaching. Many parents and former students have complained about this particular teacher. However, he's still there because he has clout in the union (and seniority).

2. The one thing about unions I dislike in general is they same pay. Ummm no, "better" workers should be compensated for be so. Same with teachers.

3. Just because a teacher has been teaching for a while and has seniority doesn't mean they are good (see point 1). It breaks my heart to see good, young teachers get the axe because some dinosaur has seniority.

Clay,
I think the discussion about teachers unions is Republican driven, and really about Unions regardless of teaching. There are a variety of features that are unique to teacher unions worthy of respect and worthy of occasional criticism. First, they most surely have driven up the price of teachers - not of entry teachers, who are still paid at the bottom of human services - but of senior teachers, who have probably maxed out in skills after about 10 years and ought to have other, additional or different responsibilities to reflect their seniority. The "problem" with teacher unions, in other words, is the "problem" of staff and personnel management in education: teachers are NOT interchangeable, and seniority does not mean "more of the same."

The real issue is staff differentiation, and that is often a positive - but exceptional - characteristic in some teacher union contracts. For example, most don't realize it but charter schools were actually invented (not exclusively, but coincidentally) by the American Federation of Teachers, who installed "Pilot Schools" - with virtually the same waivers of status and curriculum - in their union contract in Boston well over 15 years ago. They also installed an in-service professional development organization which, in spite of 53 colleges in the Boston area, none of those colleges ever sought to create.

Therefor the whole discussion about union vs. anti-union seems, to me at least, very, very stilted. There are deep personnel issues affecting education - why, for example, the uniform model is a single adult in a classroom of children has no serious academic or instructional justification; why there are still eight grades for elementary schools has no justification; why some courses - like Geometry - are favored for a 9 month calendar when their content merits more like 9 weeks; why the old Career Opportunities Program that recruited nonprofessional paraprofessionals in elementary schools, focused teacher and college skills on improving their capacity, and produced high quality non traditional teachers for ten years, why that's not part of the Obama stimulus, now THAT is a very good question.

We face a serious teacher shortage in the next ten years, with a massive cycle of senior teacher retirement and a very poor productivity record of new teachers from ed schools. That crisis ought to be at least as good as the fiscal one we've got, for creating positive and innovative solutions that make substantive change in schools. And THAT is an awful lot more productive a discussion than pro or con unionization. 

I would like people to explain, while on the topic, what the real difference is between a good and a bad teacher. Is it in affect or substance; in productivity of kids or productivity of curriculum; in time on task or tasks themselves. When curriculum has very little flexibility, it seems spurious and simply nasty to blame a teacher for a rigid instructional system. So also, when a teacher wings it and spins into massive creativity, they may well leave a few kids behind or shuttled to the side. Good teaching comes from good classroom cultures, and those vary immensely. I really don't think parents are doing their jobs when they blame a teacher - for ANYTHING! A kid can learn from anybody, and sometimes even the best of us fail, while - almost as often - the worst can inspire greatness. Some of my best work as a student was when a particularly bad teacher, in vague ineptitude, had us write about "anything." I chose to write about teaching 11th grade English (her subject) and learned the art of the diatribe, now nearly 48 years ago! Was I an early learner or she an inspired, if clumsey, inspiration! Who the hell knows!

The best analysis on unions I heard was from Pedro Noguera who said if unions were such an impediment to school success, then the South would have the best schools. 

The best analysis on unions I heard was from Pedro Noguera who said if unions were such an impediment to school success, then the South would have the best schools. 

It's very uncomfortable to think that seniority is more objective than the success of students. It's merely more easily quantified - in years rather than products. One of the themes in discussion in my district is to evaluate the whole k-12 system on how much money its graduates get when they go to college or take a job. Rich ones do fine; poor ones do better; smart ones do best but they all have plenty to get. I pointed out that the 400 graduates could be generating as much as $200,000 each in four year private college financial aid, which is quite a bundle for a school system to generate for its community.

Other measures are how many graduates need not take remedial courses when they get to college; how competitive their college placements are (using anything from the Newsweek poll to a focus group of educators); how many student teachers seek out mentor teachers (and how much of a "bonus" those teachers might earn from joint appointments with ed schools); how many teachers are involved in teams, and whether those teams include outside community, business, or college partners; and how much the school(s) contribute to the overall community, culturally, in and through sports, nutrition, older affairs, business and industry. Some of those are "objective," or, at least, as objective as seniority is for teachers. I don't really believe in that value, however, since I can see how easily too much seniority leading to too little innovation. In my student experience, I found seniority gave the confidence to some teachers to deeply and broadly innovate; but as a teacher I've seen remarkably little of that.

Many of the responses emphasize teaching.  Most "teachers" emphasize learning.  When we recognize learning we are seeing magic.  When a "teacher" sees that...it his our purpose for teaching.  Learning does not take place only in a classroom; it takes place at home, on the athletic field, in an auditorium, anywhere.  Schools that emphasize learning are the best.  Everything else in the school setting must provide support for the learning function.  That's why we need the union.  School boards, Superintendents, and their staffs, Principals, Vice-principals, etc. can interfere with the classroom (where the magic takes place) that's why we need a union.  Systems where teachers are let go so that a  School board members crony could get his son a job, that's why we need the union.  Curricula that are determined by what series of texts the system purchases (with some kick backs, I know), are why we need a union.  I can go on with 30 plus years of classroom experience.

I have not read the entire thread, so please forgive me if I repeat something that's been said above.  As a union representative in Maine (former teacher and married to a teacher), I just wanted to explain one aspect of education law as it exists here.

"Educational policy" is a phrase in Maine law (26 MRSA 965) which has been - over the years - interpreted to narrow the topics which are available for teachers' bargaining.  The length of the student day and pretty much anything that happens during that student day (curriculum, textbook selection, planning periods, scheduling of lunch breaks, class size, transfer between and among schools/classrooms, and more) are all essentially non-negotiable.  There are some legal caveats to that statement, but it's basically accurate.  

In Maine, then, negotiating conditions which are "good for kids" or "good for education" is a non-starter.   Even if language were negotiated somewhere in the state which allowed for such a thing, it might be successfully challenged years later as unenforceable because it's "ed policy" and only school boards have the authority to set policy.

If this is true in other states, as well, it explains a great deal about why unions are seen as only protecting teachers' jobs.  Even if we'd prefer something different, that's probably the case.

Again, I really wish I had time to respond to this blog in more detail. Right now my district is going through a RIF process (Reduction in Force) because of the economic times. We are laying off k-5 teachers who have been hired in the last 3 to 4 years and temporary teachers. As a negotiator, I have sat in a few of these RIF scheduled appointments (the superintendent, who is a truly a great administrator,  wants to make this as personal as he can instead of just sending the pink slips). The district is making the process as transparent as possible--laying off newer hired teachers by their credential type. As hard as this is, I can't imagine laying off by a merit based system. By who's values would you lay off--student scores, classes taken, committees served, how many parents like you? (Student scores are very subjective because they can not be weighed equally--even if the government has attempted to do so.)
Even the process of layoffs in an objective manner (by hire date) when you have part time compared to full time and job share teachers, etc has been horrendous. Without a union we would be stabbing each other in the back, trying to make ourselves "better" than the others.  Is that the kind of school you want to send your child too? Teachers should be able to collaborate and not have to be competitive with each other. Most of the teachers I know share with each other. I am on several tech groups that do nothing but share ideas and lesson plans and my team at school meets once a week to learn from each other. Belonging to a teacher's union allows me to  be innovative, try out ideas, and share my best lessons without threat that my salary or seniority will be challenged.
These layoffs really bring home the fairness of the system, as crummy as it is--last hired, first fired. Thinking I might be layed off after 20 years because  I "had the nerve" to tick 3 parents off last year because of their children's outrageous behaviors or that my students scores weren't quite up to standards but had shown considerable growth because they came in way below grade level or that I didn't serve on all the committees that my principal wanted me to sit on or even that I served on committees but the administration thought I had too much power or influence and didn't like that all make me value being a union member.
Joy

Joy's response is the most accurate justification and explanation of union organizing in education I've seen. Too often people forget that the NEA was NOT a union for many, many more decades than it has acted in collective bargaining, and that it only formally became a union under the pressures she's underscored. THAT is the truely insidious and evil intent of the largely Republican know-nothingism of anti-union diatribes. There are plenty of reasons for and against collective bargaining, but few as compelling as those that Joy underscores: collaboration, respect, mutual responsibility.

One of the earlier posts argued that so few lead so many that they could not be representative. There are 535 members of Congress, and they represent more than 300,000,000. Numbers involved in leadership reflect numbers involved period. A teacher union local - like any local - is a community, and, if you don't like the leadership, make a lot of noise. As Saul Alinsky described it, if you've got the numbers, pull them out and show them off to the other guys: the eyes have it. If you've got fewer, make a lot of noise, usually at night: the ears rule. And, if you have very few indeed, make a big stink: the nose knows. These Republicans, they have a remarkable smell, particularly when it comes to union and collective bargaining. 

First, let me say how impressed I have been reading this particular thread. Both sides have been respectful and offered their best explanations in a manner which allows for solutions that might be acceptable to both.

I have been teaching for going on 8 years now and am currently the Co-President of my local union. For me, the biggest obstacle to any meaningful change is the tone of the discussion itself. It seems that where the union goes overboard is when they are forced to respond to virulent attacks meant almost solely to break the union entirely. Rather than find compromise which both keeps the union alive and which addresses the concerns people have with its operation, we are consistently forced to deal with voices that want to do away with us entirely. In response to these voices, the union is forced into a difficult situation.

Instead of accusing us of protecting "bad" teachers, perhaps you could help us to address these teachers without automatically suggesting that unions need to be disbanded. What makes a "bad" teacher? What criteria are the most effective in determining a "bad" teacher? Why isn't it the responsibility of Adminstration to make these determinations before tenure kicks in? After tenure, what are the steps that administration must take in defining a "bad" teacher?

Instead of berating the seniority pay system, perhaps you could come to the table for a discussion of a fair and equitable merit pay system. Today the head of the AFT remarked that the devil is in the details when it comes to the merit pay system proposed by President Obama. This seems like a measured and appropriate response and not the response of an evil union which refuses to change.

I tried to address some of these issues (although not nearly as well as some people here) in my personal blog:

http://liberalinthelandofconservative.blogspot.com/2009/03/do-teacher-unions-deserve-bashing.html

I am going to digress for just a few sentences.  When our levels of health care is matched with other industrial nations, we spend the most money but have one of the poorest levels of health care.  Our infant mortality rate is one of the highest in the world.  Why aren't we bashing the doctors and the AMA?

To my educational views.  Sometimes a little historical prespective is in order.  The cost of education and teacher salaries (the largest component of cost) seems to be the greatest concern.  We blame the NEA and other teacher organizations for demanding equitable teacher salaries.  I wonder if we paid teachers at the level of "pool boys" we wouldn't be so concerned about general salaries and "bad" teachers.

The unified teacher salary schedule (salaries rise yearly to maximum level in from 12 to 20 years.  The public is usually not so concerned about starting salaries but seem to blanch as teachers rise to the maximums.  The unified schedules began after the Great Depression,when local governments recognzed that they could not pay teachers, what they deserve initially.  So a schedule was devised recognizing the real value of teachers but postponing their real worth for a number of years, (12-20).  The public never understood this and no one communicated then and now about how teachers agreed to this system (without Unions, I may add) out of their social responsibilities (certainly not their economic).

Now when teachers and their representatives ask for raises, that is a % above the schedule, they are just trying to protect salaries from inflation.  Teachers generally are accused of asking for double raises, and that is patently untrue.

As for "bad" teachers.  The responsibility for "weeding out" bad teachers is the responsibility of the "School Administration".  That's what the get the higher pay for.  If a school has bad teaching, that school has a bad principal!  Tenure is just a protection that teachers accrue to insure that there is "due process".  We give that to accused criminals, and we owe no less for teachers.  Remember a "bad" teacher is a teacher who has been proved to be bad.  Innocent until "proven guilty"

I do not want to get into a personal coloque, but I have to take exception!  First, doesn't a human being, after 20 or 25 years of teaching deserve some protection, i.e. due process?  Second, if you have witnessed bad, dangerous behavior, what did you do? 
Tenure laws are to protect public employees from capricious firing.  (Wrong political actions, wrong church, etc.)  Union bashing, in any form will not improve education and I though that is and was the goal!

Adrienne, I'm sorry for your experiences.  I can understand your opinions.  I have seen similiar circumstances, but in my experiences the problems concerning personnel were usually caused by administration rather than the union.  Good luck!