Why We’re Failing Our Schools

A remarkable thing happened in New York recently: the state legislature, in effect, turned down the chance to win $700 million in federal money. No one does that, except extremely conservative Southern governors (who inevitably relent and take the money)–oh, and occasionally teachers’ unions. A few years ago, I wrote here about the Detroit union that forced the local government to reject a $200 million philanthropic gift to build 15 charter schools using a model that was already succeeding in the city. And now we have New York’s United Federation of Teachers (UFT), a storied crew, thwarting the state’s attempt to file an application that might have won $700 million in Race to the Top education funds–and again the issue is charter schools, with a substantial dollop of teacher accountability thrown in.

If you haven’t heard about Race to the Top, shame on the Obama Administration. It was one of the most creative pieces of last year’s $787 billion stimulus package. It established a $4.35 billion fund that Education Secretary Arne Duncan could distribute to states on the basis of their willingness to reform their schools. Duncan’s definition of reform–a common one these days–demanded more school choice and competition as well as an emphasis on teacher evaluation and accountability. “Duncan really nailed this,” says New York City Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey. “You can use federal funds to drive a reform agenda. You can buy change, even from state legislatures … although in our case, the opponents were pretty ingenious–invidious and ingenious.”

The New York teachers’ union was launched in 1960 and led in the early years by the smartest and toughest union man I’ve ever met, Albert Shanker. The teachers are among the most powerful interest groups in New York State (and nationally, in the Democratic Party). The UFT’s slogan is “A Union of Professionals,” but it is quite the opposite: an old-fashioned industrial union that has won for its members a set of work rules more appropriate to factory hands. There are strict seniority rules about pay, school assignment, length of the school day and year. In New York, it is near impossible to fire a teacher–even one accused of a crime, drug addiction or flagrant misbehavior. The miscreants are stashed in “rubber rooms” at full pay, for years, while the union pleads their cases. In New York, school authorities are forbidden, by state law, to evaluate teachers by using student test results.

Toward the end of his life, Shanker began to realize the union was headed down the wrong path. In a 1993 speech, he talked about the need for more accountability: “I wouldn’t be saying these things … if I didn’t have the sense that we are at the same point that the auto industry was at a few years ago. They could see they were losing market share every year and still not believe that it really had anything to do with the quality of the product … I think that we will get–and deserve–the end of public education through some sort of privatization scheme if we don’t behave differently.”

In the end, the challenge has come not from privatization–but in the form of public charter schools, in which individual entrepreneurs are chartered by states to create their own schools, according to their own visions. Not surprisingly, those visions usually don’t include the workplace straitjacket that comes with unionization. The successful charters usually have longer school days and years, more intense efforts to guide student behavior, more creative or theme-oriented curriculums and more aggressive evaluation of teachers. Not all these schools work. Indeed, it can be argued that most states have been too slow to close down those that don’t. But over time, the results seem to be improving dramatically. A recent study showed that students in New York City’s charter schools–who are selected randomly, by lottery, and are 90% African American and Latino–have closed 86% of the gap in test results between the poorest neighborhoods of the city and ritzy suburbs like Scarsdale, which is known for its excellent schools.

There are national implications to this fight. As Shanker pointed out, American schools have been slipping for decades–our students are now 32nd internationally in math scores, 10th in science, 12th in reading. It will be impossible to rebuild our economy–to create the sophisticated, high-paying jobs we need–as long as we have an archaic, industrial-age school system. It’s also hard to keep a strong democracy with a citizenry that is increasingly uneducated and ill informed. No, teachers’ unions are not the only problem here. Troglodytic local school boards and apathetic parents are just as bad. But the unions, and their minions in the Democratic Party, have been a reactionary force in education reform for too long. Barack Obama began to change that last year with Race to the Top. It’s a fight he needs to expand, and win.

time.com/swampland