September 30, 2009

Teachers' Unions Make a Promising Promise

Posted by Aaron Tang at 10:46PM

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As those who read this blog know, I have not always been the biggest supporter of teachers' unions and their role in efforts to improve educational opportunity in America.

That's not to say that unions don't have important interests or that workers shouldn't have basic workplace protections or anything of the sort -- and of course teachers' unions have played absolutely crucial roles in the historic development of schooling in America -- in particular, fighting for gender equality within the profession.

So I'm always thrilled when I read about developments like this one, which demonstrate that teachers' unions are not always the enemy of school reform. Far from it, in fact. If the unions carry out their promise to voluntarily assist school districts in efforts to distribute great teachers more equitably among low-performing and high-performing schools, a lot of children stand to benefit.

First, a description of the problem with how teachers are currently distributed:

We know (at least) two things about teachers generally and what makes some better than others. First, new teachers (those in their first three years on the job) are generally not as good as veteran teachers. Second, teachers who are teaching "out-of-field" (those instructing in subjects that they do not have a major or minor in) are also less apt (PDF) to generate adequate learning gains with their students.

The problem is that both out-of-field and new teachers are more heavily concentrated in schools serving low-income communities of color. As an Education Trust report (PDF) notes, students in high poverty schools that have a majority of people of color are roughly twice as likely to be taught by novice teachers as compared to low-poverty and predominately white schools.

The same is true for out-of-field teachers; students in high poverty schools in communities of color are disproportionately likely to be taught by teachers without subject matter expertise.

With this in mind, the promises by both the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) to "waive any contract language that prohibits staffing high-needs schools with great teachers" are encouraging.

But this promise should be a starting point for discussions of union support for school reform, not the end point. For as the picture above shows (finally, he explains the photo!), the more important question in teacher quality improvement is not how to divide up the existing pool of good and bad teachers (since that is in many respects a zero sum game), but rather, how to increase the size of the pie altogether so that every child has a great classroom teacher.

And to do that, the unions are going to have to push the envelope much further, working out agreements on teacher compensation systems (to reward teacher effectiveness and not just certification and experience), alternative certification and tenure. With any luck, this most recent announcement will represent a step by both unions in that direction.