When left-of-center media minds such as Joe Klein and Jonathan Alter can deviate from the government talking points and document the destructive role of teachers’ unions in blocking education reform, there’s hope that others will follow suit. The latest issue of Bloomberg Businessweek documents an interesting case study.
The end of the school year is usually a happy time, but not for David Cicarella, president of the New Haven Federation of Teachers. He’s getting ready to have difficult conversations with some of his members, teachers who have flunked the Connecticut school district’s yearlong evaluation process. Cicarella will tell them the union won’t defend them, even if they have tenure. It’s time for them to look for another job.
Some of the teachers will yell at him. Others will tell him they have children to support and mortgages to pay. After one teacher received a termination notice, her husband tore into the union boss. “He said, ‘Our union would never let this s-?-?- happen,’?” Cicarella recalls. “I said, ‘Your wife drinks on the job. What do you want us to do here?’?”
In the last two years, 62 teachers left the New Haven school district after getting bad reviews. Cicarella, who taught math and reading for 28 years, didn’t fight to reinstate any of them. He reminds them that during their last contract negotiations with the district in 2009, New Haven’s 1,865 teachers agreed to abide by the results of the evaluations—which rate teachers based largely on classroom performance and whether students master their subjects. Cicarella helped write the rules. Instead of fighting each other, he and New Haven Superintendent of Schools Reginald Mayo are partners in improving the schools. “We’ve got the union right there saying, ‘We agree with the administration,’?” Mayo says. “They’re saying, ‘We’re tired of supporting underperforming teachers, too.’?” …
… Everybody seems to lose in these standoffs, but the public increasingly blames unions for protecting bad teachers at kids’ expense. In 2011, 47 percent of the people who responded to a PDK/Gallup Poll said they thought teachers unions had hurt the quality of public education in the U.S., up from 38 percent in 1976. Michael Petrilli, executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education policy think tank, argues the unions themselves are responsible for their declining public support. “They’ve resisted every reform effort that’s come along,” he says.
