Public Education Under Siege

Chapter 16 Professional Unionism: Redefining the Role of Teachers and Their Unions in Reform Efforts

Chapter 16 Professional Unionism: Redefining the Role of Teachers and Their Unions in Reform Efforts Claire Robertson-Kraft Education policy makers have long searched for a system that will recognize and reward outstanding practice, support instructional improvement, and ultimately hold educators accountable for performance. But we are now at a moment when these ideas are more at the forefront of the public conversation than ever before. For states and districts to secure grants from President Obama’s Race to the Top Fund, they were required to develop new ways to measure effective teaching and propose plans to use this information in decisions related to compensation, career advancement, and tenure. The availability of federal funds resulted in a flurry of activity and, in the past year, several states have rewritten their education laws so that student performance data can be included in teacher evaluation systems. Although the broader public still does not agree on how best to measure performance, it is clear that they will continue to demand measurable evidence of success. As Richard Kahlenberg discusses in his chapter on unions in this book, it has become popular in the rhetoric of reformers to cast teachers’ unions as the chief obstacle to making these changes. Critics contend that unions have more power than any other interest group and only a limited vested interest in improving student achievement. Chief among their concerns are that unions protect ineffective teachers from being dismissed, allow for evaluation systems that fail to differentiate teacher performance, and promote a salary schedule that rewards seniority rather than teaching excellence. To exacerbate matters, they argue that, with a base of over three million members, Professional Unionism 159 teachers’ unions have used their political power to thwart flexibility and stifle innovation. In the current climate, this perspective has become the prevailing wisdom among an increasingly influential group of education reformers, resulting in legislation in several states that would either eliminate or significantly limit the collective bargaining rights of teachers. It’s no secret that existing systems rate virtually all teachers good or great and fail to recognize excellence or address poor performance, and that these practices make it challenging for districts to develop a high-quality teaching force. However, there’s little evidence that vilifying teachers unions will help solve the problem. To the contrary, whether districts can successfully sustain reform initiatives of this type has historically been shown to depend in large measure on teacher buy-in, particularly from the unions. If current reforms are to be effective over the long term, they must be done with teachers and not to them. This will mean changing the way unions represent teachers and teachers’ unions and school districts conduct their business. Above all else, meaningful reform will require teachers and administrators to work as partners. Rather than eliminate unions, a philosophy of “professional unionism” should lay the foundation for any comprehensive reform effort. In a professional model, unions collaborate with school districts to ensure that teachers play an active role in the implementation of new initiatives . If unions do not adapt to meet the demands of the changing context, they may face irreversible decline. * * * Collective bargaining agreements, as the product of negotiations between local schoolboardsandteachers’unions,areultimatelyinstrumentsofpolicy.Notonly do they directly influence the operation of the school district, they also shape the context for teachers’ work. In United Mind Workers (1997), Charles Kerchner, Julia Koppich, and Joseph Weeres discuss two very different approaches to collective bargaining—traditional contracts, which reflect industrial-style unionism, and reform contracts, which represent a shift to professional unionism. The industrial model of union-management relations currently in place in most school districts across the country emerged nearly fifty years ago under the leadership of United Federation of Teachers (UFT) president Al Shanker. In 1962, the UFT led a successful teacher strike in New York City resulting in the first collectively bargained contract. This watershed moment in union history transformed the 2 GMT) 160 Claire Robertson-Kraft role of unions and changed the balance of power between teachers and administrators . In the following years, union membership in New York City increased dramatically, and, in just over a decade, school teachers became among the most unionized workers in the nation. The collective bargaining laws that became widespread in the 1960s and 1970s emphasized the distinct and competing interests of labor and management , their adversarial relationships, and the union’s obligation to protect its members. Industrial contracts came to be characterized by three hallmarks: •  Separation of Labor and...