United Teachers Los Angeles supports merit pay “on a cold day in hell”

The Detroit Federation of Teachers shut down city schools to stop 15 charter schools from being built for free

The California Teachers Association has compared school vouchers to child prostitution

The Washington Teachers Union has withheld kids’ college recommendations for parents who didn’t oppose school reform

In Illinois (outside of Chicago), two union-protected teachers out of 95,500 are terminated for incompetence annually

In Illinois (outside of Chicago), it costs $219,504.21 to fire a bad union-protected teacher

In New Jersey, five union-protected teachers out of more than 100,000 are terminated for incompetence annually

In New York State, seventeen union-protected teachers are terminated a year

In New York State, it costs $128,941 to fire a bad union-protected teacher

In New York City, only ten out of 55,000 tenured teachers were terminated in 2006-2007

In Los Angeles, only eleven out of 43,000 union-protected teachers are even considered for termination annually

The National Education Association received $50 million for shaky investment advice in 2004 alone

NEA members are suing over the union’s endorsement of “Valuebuilder,” a plan with over $1 billion of members’ money invested

New York State United Teachers received $3 million for shaky investment advice in 2005

Washington Teachers Union embezzlement tab: $5 million

United Teachers of Dade (Miami) embezzlement tab: $2.5 million

Massachusetts Teachers Association embezzlement tab: $800,000

Michigan teachers unions' embezzlement tab from one thief: $218,000 in bad checks

The Activist and the Contract

For a 2007 report on teachers unions and the media, veteran Philadelphia Inquirer education reporter Dale Mezzacappa summarized one (former) union activist’s evolving attitude towards the union contract:

[T]eacher collective bargaining, which was to address injustices, instead added to them … Recently, I had lunch with a retired Philadelphia teacher who spent 30 years in the system. In her younger years, she had participated in more than a dozen strikes and lockouts, often risking jail.

Now, she trains young art teachers and tries to get them jobs in city schools. She laments how the contract prevents her from choosing the best mentors for her student teachers. She’s upset that burned-out, ineffective teachers are holding positions that her students would thrive in, and nothing can be done. She finds herself placing them more and more often in charter schools.

But what about all those days walking picket lines? What about all those bruising battles over protecting teachers’ rights?

The swiftness of her answer surprised even me. “We were wrong,” she said.

“Nothing to Do with Each Other”

Mezzacappa also recounts this eye-opening story, the only time in her reporting career that she was goaded into responding in kind to someone who yelled at her. The provocateur in question was an attorney for the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, angry at her for her coverage of a 1996 contract settlement between the union and the district:

“We won!!” the lawyer shouted at me. “That should have been the headline! He” -- the superintendent -- “got nothing!”

Uncharacteristically, I yelled back. The night before, I had found it unsettling, to say the least, to watch as thousands of teachers cheered wildly at the news that they didn’t have to worry about whether their students learned anything. They’d still get automatic raises even if none of their kids met achievement goals; they’d still get their pick of jobs based on seniority; they’d still have the right to refuse extra training even if their teaching skills were woefully out of date.

“If teachers don’t improve kids’ learning, what are they there for?” I asked. “What should they be judged on? What are they getting paid to do?”

To which I got the remarkable rejoinder: “Teacher performance and student achievement have nothing to do with each other.”

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