Why Rhee Wants To Break the Teacher's Union

CWD comments,

Clearly, Rhee is trying to sell the teachers a pig in a poke. On the other hand, these are the same teachers who have had union president's steal millions from them and who readily admit that they wouldn't want their children to attend the schools where they teach . . . and are surprised that anyone would expect them too . . .

I'm not sure that busting the Union is a necessary step in the process, but blowing the whole system up and starting over has some theoretical merit . . .

I'll admit, Rhee's professed goal - giving teachers a big raise and merit pay - is not the traditional opening gambit of a union buster. I do think it's a "pig in a poke" - that the proposed pay structure is unsustainable. But for now, let's assume otherwise. Obviously the goal here isn't to coerce the union into letting its members be paid more. Nobody's talking about expanding the school year. So what's left... oh, yeah....

Tenure.

Even when they offer wages comparable to other school districts, or above what other districts pay, school districts like D.C. have a hard time attracting quality job applicants for teaching positions. Why? Because teaching in an inner city school is considered to be a miserable experience. Teaching in a school where, despite your best efforts, you wouldn't send your own child? Where your best efforts, applied every single day, will do nothing to improve the status quo? Where your day is consumed with disciplinary problems and you struggle to maintain classroom order? I have admiration for teachers who can work like that, day after day, without burning out or quitting. But there aren't many of them.

So weak administrators hire weak applicants in order to fill positions, aren't diligent enough (or don't care enough) to ferret out those who don't have an adequate skill set before they get tenure, and the district ends up with large numbers of teachers who really aren't equipped to teach. Rhee supposedly will offer remedial programs for these teachers as part of her secret plan, so that they can in theory avoid being fired, but nothing is stopping her from offering remedial training right now. What she clearly wants to do is to break the tenure system so she can clean house.

I can't say that I blame her. I'm sure she can identify a lot of teachers who should never have been hired, and a larger group that may become highly motivated to improve their skills and performance if they can be threatened with termination. I have sympathy for an administrator who inherits a broken system. But let's be blunt: if teacher's unions were the cause of this problem, D.C.'s system should be typical of the nation's schools as opposed to being among the dregs. The roots of the problem lie in incompetent, unmotivated administration crossed with, in much of the system, what many teachers would find to be an unrewarding, often unpleasant, teaching environment.

Rhee was hoping that the offer of big money would be a sufficient enticement to get the union to voluntarily give up tenure, or allow teachers to opt into the merit system (possibly with the longer-term goal of trying to get the teachers who opted for the merit pay system to vote to decertify the union). But it's difficult to see why a union would regard a promise of an apparently unsustainable pay raise for some as grounds to surrender the largest benefit it has historically provided to its members - job security. And even if you're a good teacher, you have to have some concern about whether you would get merit pay, or have the bad luck of having a particularly bad class and be deemed to be underperforming despite strong efforts.

No Union Busting Here, Folks....

In an unsigned editorial, the Washington Post prevaricates,

Ms. Rhee has been accused of trying to break the union when, in truth, she rejected a plan to bring in a firm adept at union-busting in favor of working one-on-one with local labor officials whom she believed shared her philosophy that children come first.

A more realistic interpretation is that she was told by the union busting firm, "It's not going to work here."

It tells you something about Rhee that, before opening negotiations, she even considered hiring a "firm adept at union-busting" to attack the teacher's union. It tells you something else about Rhee (and the Washington Post) that the dream plan she has for teachers - the plan the Post gushes over every week or two - is a highly classified secret, and isn't available anywhere for people, be they curious outsiders like me or teachers who are told how wonderful it is, to read. Rhee's not interested in union busting? Perhaps Fred Hiatt and his editorial writers should, you know, read their own paper.

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee are discussing a dramatic expansion of their effort to remove ineffective teachers by restoring the District's power to create nonunionized charter schools and seeking federal legislation declaring the school system in a "state of emergency," a move that would eliminate the need to bargain with the Washington Teachers' Union.

Nope... not even a slight interest in union busting there....

I'm prepared to believe that Rhee's proposal is the best thing since sliced bread. But if it truly is such a wonderful plan, and is sustainable, why isn't she focusing her energies on publicizing the plan rather than keeping it under wraps?

How Can Obama Help Rhee?

Today, Fred Hiatt asks if Obama can help Michelle Rhee reform the D.C. schools. Although he doesn't say so, it seems implicit that the help he wants Obama to offer is assistance in breaking the teacher's union. Hiatt remains the leading advocate of Rhee's "mystery meat" compensation system for teachers - yes, aspects of the proposal are intriguing, but why are the details being kept secret.

For example, given that only short-term funding is available for the new compensation program, a valid question is what happens when the money runs out? Does Rhee expect increased public funding? substantial corporate contributions that continue even after her program is old news? Or will it be "back to the old compensation scheme" but with no tenure? I'm not affected by the proposal and I want to know, so why cant the teachers who are being asked to get behind the proposal?

Hiatt serves up a couple of anecdotes, the first of which is a pretty typical story about Rhee, and I think it highlights why she inspires such support.

A principal recently was defending a teacher whom D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee had observed in the classroom and found wanting.

"Would you put your grandchild in that class?" Rhee asked the principal.

"If that's the standard, we don't have any effective teachers in my school," the principal replied.

Recalling that comment a few days later, Rhee is still steaming. "I said, 'That is the standard,' " Rhee says, and you think: Whew, glad I'm not that principal

That story also highlights why she wants to be able to do something about D.C.'s teachers - clean house of perhaps entire schools full of underperforming teachers, and pay enough that good teachers who wouldn't otherwise consider D.C. may consider signing up.

I'm personally skeptical that good teachers can be transplanted into classrooms where the kids don't behave and don't want to learn while retaining their efficacy - achieving and maintaining classroom order, particularly in a difficult school environment, is a separate skill from being a great, inspirational teacher. But other than through high compensation, I'm not sure how else D.C. even has a shot at attracting quality teachers.

On the other hand, this anecdote about Rhee gives me pause:

Recently, she recounted at the Aspen Institute forum, a man approached her, spitting mad about her experiment to pay some middle school students for good behavior and good grades. "It is a sad day," he said, "when we are paying kids to be doing something they should be doing anyway."

"No," Rhee replied, "yesterday was a sad day, when only 8 percent of our eighth-graders were at grade level for math, and we weren't really doing anything about it."

This reminds me of the arguments I have heard for cutting music and art programs while maintaining football - despite its very high cost, it's "necessary" to have football teams because otherwise a body of marginal students would lose their principal incentive to go to school and pass tests. Now they get "paid" as well, to do what every other student is expected to do for free? While the services and amenities that make school a nicer place for diligent and well-behaved students continue to get cut? And what's the lesson? That the only way Rhee wants to throw money at you is if you're a good teacher or a crappy student?

No, really, the idea of throwing money at mediocrity isn't what bothers me. Nor is the funding of school programs for marginal or disinterested students at the expense of the diligent and gifted. Even in a school district that's supposed to be reinventing itself as an example of excellence, what else can you really expect? But dare I ask, is there any evidence that paying students does more than inspire a few more kids to show up in class, if that? Is that truly the best use of the money? And what after the money runs out or a student receives the maximum payment? Even a child can tell you that - literally.

Betts is talking about kids like Daamantae Brown, 14, a tall and lanky eighth grader. He's also a borderline C student and star athlete with a temper that can get him into trouble.

Brown is more afraid of being banned from playing football because of bad behavior or grades than missing out on the cash incentives for good academic and social performance.

Still, the boy says most students will behave as long as the money lasts.

"If the bad students, if they was acting up before this, then after it's done [the program], they're going to act the same," Brown says.

The evidence that this works? Let's ask the principal advocate of this idea, Harvard economist Roland Fryer:

"We don't have any data yet," says Fryer.

To me, "pay for performance" sounds like a gimmick. But you know, I'm willing to wait to see the data. The program is underway, so we'll have a pretty good idea of whether or not it works at the end of the school year. But here's a thought - what if it doesn't work? Will this experiment leave its subjects less motivated to show up in class when they're no longer being paid?

Michelle Rhee's Secret Plan for Teacher Pay

The Washington Post is again pushing Michelle Rhee's plan for eliminating tenure at for new hires and any teachers who join the new program, and increasing teacher pay for those teachers:

The bold plan of D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee is two-tiered: Salaries as high as $130,000 would be available to teachers who forgo tenure and tie their pay to student performance, while those retaining tenure would still receive generous raises. No teacher with tenure would be forced to give it up under the voluntary plan.

I remain puzzled by this, for reasons also raised by this editorial:

Montgomery County teachers have been told that they'll probably have to forgo the 5.3 percent pay raise they had been promised for next year because of a worsening economy. Fairfax County, which this year could afford only 2 percent cost-of-living raises for its teachers, has no idea what it will be able to provide with revenue shrinking.

In other words, funds for increased teacher pay are unlikely to come from taxpayers - and given the state of the economy, school budget woes can reasonably be expected to get worse before they get better.

Still, union leaders have balked, thus jeopardizing the $200 million that Ms. Rhee says she has raised from national foundations willing to fund the contract -- but only if the District revamps how teachers are compensated.

Finally a hint at how D.C. will pay for the plan - at least initially - but more details are needed. That $200 million will last how many years? Followed by what? Massive reductions in salary? Teacher layoffs? Seriously - what's the plan to sustain this level of expenditure?

The Post complains about a critic of the plan:

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, criticized the plan in a letter to the editor of the New York Times even though, as she admitted to us, she hasn't seen the plan.

So the Post believes you can't comment on this plan unless you've seen it? Even though they have yet to print the plan, post it on their website, or point people to a place where they can read the plan?

I can't really argue with that, as I want to see the plan and its details so I can evaluate it for myself. I would like to know the specifics. Weingarten may be encountering the same problem I am having - the details of the plan appear to be a closely guarded secret, so to comment on the plan you have to rely on inferences and second-hand accounts.

But wait a second:

The union's refusal to put the proposal to a vote before its general membership is telling. Much misinformation about the proposal has been floated. Contrary to what has been said about the plan, there is apparently an appeals process for teachers who are terminated, as well as programs to aid in teacher development.

Apparently? So the Post hasn't seen the plan either, and the authors of this unsigned editorial are relying upon second-hand descriptions that they don't even know to be true. I guess it's okay to support a plan you haven't read, just not to oppose it.

What's So Hard About Putting It In Writing?

The Washington Post is in a tizzy because the D.C. teacher's union is skeptical of proposed meetings between school administrators and teachers about Michelle Rhee's alternative compensation proposals:

Teachers should ask who benefits by shutting out Ms. Rhee. Certainly not teachers, who could receive some of the highest salaries in the country with the compensation plan she proposes. Under the proposal, teachers get a choice: Stick with the traditional pay scale with small raises, or forgo many tenure and seniority protections and get big money based on effectiveness in the classroom.

But why are meetings necessary to educate teachers about the proposals. It's fair to assume that most D.C. teachers can read. So why not put the proposal, in its full glory, up on a website? If it's that important to the Post, why not publish the details in the paper for all to see?

I really would like to see the details. If this is such a great deal, why the secrecy?

Michelle Rhee's Proposed Reforms

In terms of this,

[Chancellor of D.C. public schools Michelle] Rhee proposes offering teachers the choice of staying in the seniority system or giving up their seniority and tenure rights in exchange for the opportunity to earn as much as $131,000 a year for raising student performance.

Does anybody have any details on the specifics of this proposal, or how it would work in practice? Is this going to be a typical "transformational" union contract deal whereby new teachers are pressed into the "bonus-based, non-tenured" positions while teachers already in the union get similar rewards without accepting similar risks? Given that the D.C. schools don't have the funds to double teacher salaries, how many (or should I say, how few) teachers will actually get the types of bonuses and merit pay Lieberman describes?

One of the advantages of tenure is that it insulates teachers from parental complaints. What incentive will school administrators have to stand behind teachers whose demands and classroom discipline trigger complaints from students and parents, particularly in schools where large numbers of students are disinterested and their parents unsupportive of education? How will student performance be measured? Simply by administration of standardized tests, thus overtly rewarding "teaching to the test" even if other teaching techniques are more inspirational or provide a better framework for learning?