Education

Reprinted with author's permission as printed in the Rocky Mountain News, February 1, 2008

The refusal of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association to support the contract waivers sought by Bruce Randolph School has resulted in one of the worst public relations disasters ever suffered by a Colorado labor union. In rejecting the very reasonable reform requests sought by the great majority of the school's teachers, supported by parents and approved by the Denver Public Schools board, the DCTA has gotten a very public black eye that no amount of union doubletalk or sophistry can conceal.

The message is clear: Union power trumps both the wishes of teachers and the needs of children.

As this tragedy unfolds, observers sigh and say, "Oh, that's just the way all teachers unions behave." Not so! It's just the way American teachers unions behave, and it is profoundly important for public policy-makers to understand this critical distinction.

Believe it or not, teachers unions in France, England and Japan are much more powerful than their American counterparts. Teachers union leaders in France truthfully boast that they can put a million people in the streets of Paris to back their salary and benefit demands. In England, the National Union of Teachers vastly exceeds the legendary power of the British mine workers.

Yet in none of these countries are the teachers unions the dangerous obstacle to student progress and quality teaching that they are in America.

How can this be so? The answer is that teacher unionism in America arose from dramatically different historical circumstances than was the case in Europe.

In Europe, today's teachers unions trace their origin to the centuries-old system of guilds or craft associations. These entities were as devoted to advancing the material interests of their members as any modern union, however they always understood the fundamental link between good work and good pay. They also knew that the best guarantee of good work was good workers, and this meant requiring high standards for anyone wishing to enter their ranks.

In keeping with these ancient traditions, becoming a teacher in Europe involves a highly demanding admission process including university training with strong content (i.e., no "education" courses), rigorous examinations and a strict apprenticeship prior to full admission to the profession.

These demanding qualifications for teachers allied to similar traditions of strong academic content measured by rigorous national examinations for students goes far toward explaining the repeatedly demonstrated inferiority of U.S. student achievement in those embarrassing international comparisons that invariably show America at or near the bottom of the class despite per-pupil expenditure nearly twice the average of the European Union.

American teachers unions as we know them are a relatively new invention. The National Education Association through much of its history included both administrators and teachers and had very little to do with issues like salaries and benefits. When teacher organizations finally went their own way - much influenced by the fierce Albert Shanker-led labor wars in New York City in the 1960s - the structural models they chose were the industrial trade unions. Thus, organizationally, American teachers unions looked much more like the United Auto Workers or the Teamsters than teachers unions in Europe.

The union role was seen as protection of the "workers"; product quality was viewed as exclusively a "management" concern.

This indifference to "product quality" would eventually bring disaster upon competition-driven private sector industries and their unions. However, in the competition-free public education sector, product quality (i.e., student achievement) never became an industry-threatening issue. In effect, it remained an exclusively management issue toward which unions need only offer the hypocritical lip service we so commonly see today. As Shanker - always the realist - once brutally put it, "I'll start worrying about kids when kids start paying dues to the union."

This attitude - so dramatically different from other nations - is the Achilles' heel of American education reform. Until it changes, any renaissance in American public schools is a pipe dream.

William J. Moloney was Colorado education commissioner from 1997 to 2007.