Do Unions Make Education a Socialist System?

DISCLAIMER: I have only been in education for five years, and I don't fully understand unions, or the intricacies of the education system.  Even though I plan to move into administration in the future, The following are the views of someone who does not claim to have the answers, nor do I claim to be right, but as a new teacher in the coming school year, I have some questions, and the effectiveness of a system can only be made better if we are able to discuss it openly. 


My first expereince with the local union was my first Para Professional position I held from March - June 2005.  When filling out my paperwork, I was told I had to signup for the union, and I had to pay them from my measly paycheck.  My question was simply "why?"

For the next few years after that, the unions that I have had to become a part of have been relatively quiet; working in the background, keeping the places I work safe and clean for me to do my job the best I can.  This is what I think a unnion should be; a big brother that tells the upperclassmen to leave me alone so I can concentrate on school and not getting my lunch money beaten out of me. 

I have found a couple articles about unions, because I didn't want to be completely shooting this post from the hip.  The first article is from the Economic Policy Institute, on "How unions help all workers."  This article points out how unions give all workers - union and nonunion - better fringe benefits, medical insurance, pensions, and base wages.  On this I will agree.  Fringe benefits like paid leave, and a secured pension are things that young and new teachers may not consider as important until after they should.  The article points out the incluence that unions have on helping nonunionized workers in the same industry.  However, this may not apply to education, because it is all unionized. 

The next article is on Education Oasis, and is simply called "On Unions and Education."  As far as I can tell, the author is illustrating how education unions are slowing the education reform process, and taking drastic changes out of the hands of radicals.  She explains how reformers are from far off of the frontlines of education; they deal with the theories and not the application.  She says how unions are necessary to reform because they give the teachers the voice needed to be heard. 

The last article is a short one on Change.org asking if unions deserve the bashing they receive.  I will let the author explain their thesis in their own words:

But lots of folks out there seem to think the problem with the achievement gap isn't the poverty, the broken families, the guns and drugs in the streets, the minimum wage laws that make an honest job a path to poverty, the overcrowded classrooms and underfunded schools, the low-quality teachers attracted by the low-paying teacher salaries, the junk food and junk culture in the great middle-to-low socio-economic swath of America.


Nope. They seem to think it's all the fault of teacher unions.

Is it possible that unions are being misunderstood in their fight for the equality of the grunt soldiers on the frontlines? 
 
Something esle that this article says about unions is, "So that's my prejudice: unions protect the working class from the owning class."  The idea of protection is a two-way street.  If I am being "protected" from the upper class, then the upperclass is, in turn, being protected from me.  How does this translate?  Unions are able to keep the middle-class from finding wealth, and by doing this, they keep the wealthy from finding the middle-class. 
 
Consider that an employer with a high demand for a particular position may be willing to pay more for the right person to fill that place.  The employee may get a signing bonus, and they will have high expectations placed on them to demonstrate that they deserve their bonus and new salary. 
 
Consider a veteran employee who is being surpassed by the rest of their team; they are not attending the conferences that the others are, and their skills are falling behind their peers.  They will be required to improve their skills and demonstrate that they are more qualified than those behind them in order to maintain their job. 
 
Consider someone who shows themself to be an invaluable asset to a company through their ambition and drive for success within their first year of employment.  What if someone with great potential was passed over because someone else happened to have been around longer than them, but may not be the best for the team? 
 
Take these situations, and impose a Teacher union into the equation and you have two scenarios I've experienced and one that I would like to experience - a bidding war.  My brother was able to negotiate from a temporaty contract position into the position he wanted because he had options, and because there was a demand for his skills and proven abilities.  I do not have that option.  An administrative team cannot add someone who will fit perfectly into their school's environment and collaborate with the learning team because someone with seniority decided that they wanted to work the position.  This doesn't sound right, and it sounds like Affirmative Action. 
 
Unions have their faults, and they have their advantages.  But the problem with a system that creates a wage floor, is that it also creates a wage ceiling.  So which is worse?  If I don't mind making the minimum, then why would I try to excel? 

Itching to be Done!!!

I am down to my last the weeks of my student Teaching Internship.  This means that I'm 75% done with it.  I have submitted an application to ten surrounding school districts, and am just itching to get the process moving towards next year. At this point, i have applied to the following school districts: Bellevue, Federal Way, Highline, Issaquah, Lake Washington, Northshore, Renton, Snoqualmie Valley, Tahoma, and Tukwila.  I'm excited to move to a new city and find a new rental home.  I'm excited to organize and arrange my own classroom, I'm excited to start doing what I've been in school for.  I'm ready.  Ready to connect to students, ready to spurr learning, ready to manage behaviors.  I'm like the annoying football player in the coaches ear saying "Put me in coach!  I'm ready!"  Well, I am.

Teaching Style: Stick to my Guns

I have been told by people that I would make a great teacher.  The question in my head is are they just being nice? And why would I?  Consider the following post a mission statement of the kind of teacher I will be.  I am smart enough to know that this post can be taken in a negative way.  I do have a stubborn streak in me, but I am willing to indulge both sides and points of view as long as others are willing to see mine as well.    Please read the whole post and even the other post that is referred to at the end, it will give you a clearer idea of how I am focused on student success.  The following is a discussion question for my LAST MAED class! 

Provide an example of ineffective instructional decision-making.  Using your example, describe what you would do to make it effective.

I would have to say that I experienced this in a situation I had earlier this year.  I have only been working with SpEd kids since 2005, and as I've learned more and more and worked with them more and more, I have had a knack for not diagnosing their disabilities, but creating a plan of action to head them towards their IEP goals.  I had an administrative/logistical mind.  Anyways, a new student arrives to the self-contained SpEd class at the HS, and I am hired earlier this year to help work with him; me and another lady.  We don't have much info on him, and he's from out of the district.  We did not have a lot of information on him, and the information we did have on him, I was unwilling to take as completely true; if the program he was in was so good, his single-mom would not have moved him to my district for our schools.  So, we were told that he does not walk, he may not walk, and he has a short attention span.  The scientific side of me wanted to test to see if these statements were true, but only one was.  That statement was that he does not walk. 

So what was at the root of this student's disabilities, and what will it take for him to be successful?  The teacher I work with (who is younger than me, but I didn't see that as an issue) felt that the important thing was to get him heading towards his academic IEP goals.  She and the other lady that worked with the student spent time trying to get him to write, and count, and stay on task, but he would not; he would hit them and pull their hair.  I didn't see this student as a case for academic growth... not yet.  He was a behavior student, and I treated him as such.  They told me he does not walk, but that didn't mean he couldn't.  We started going on walks in Oct, and I wouldn't let him fall to the ground and crawl like he's been used to.  By November he was walking upstairs by himself, after Christmas he was walking down and upstairs by himself.  In January he was out of his braces and in tennis shoes, in February we were walking around the track, and before I left in March to do my student teaching we were walking with 15 and 20 pound weights.  Now he does not bring his wheel chair to school, and rides the bus in a seat, and the other lady still working with him said he's much easier to work with. 

Where is the ineffective instruction decision-making?  It was how to get this student to be successful.  The teacher disagreed with me, and she and the other lady tried to get me to deviate from what I was doing with him.  I'm not trying to say I was right and they were wrong, but I think my process was more effective, because I saw behavior issues that they did not, and I chose to address those first. 

Here's a posting I put on my blog from back in January: http://lifeonsped.blogspot.com/2010/01/he-just-responds-to-you.html

The Inside Track

My student teaching situation is a bit unconventional.  I am interning with two teachers in two different classrooms, on two different days.  One teacher meets with her kids everyday, and the other meets with hers only every other day.  The everyday class is an Alternative Education class where the students come and go throughout the day and work on getting credits from independent work and custom-made curriculum.  These students have been suspended or expelled at some point in the district, some have behavioral issues, and some have emotional behavioral issues that stem from learning disabilities.  The other class is the Special Education Transition Program for the district.  The students there are 18-21 years old, and they are learning to live and work in the real world; they will also discover what level of independent living they will be able to manage in the long run. 

I've been spending my student teaching constantly changing gears from one class to the next, and back again.  But what makes my experience so unique is that both of the teachers I'm working with are going to be retiring at the end of this year.  THis doesn't mean I will be able to easily step into their classes when the positions become available.  In fact, both of their positions would be too difficult for a noobie eacher like myself to handle in their first year.  What is unique is the conversations I get to have with both of them.  I am able to chat with these two educational sages and they get to reflect on their careers and tell me what they would have liked to have accomplished, what they wish education could be like, and what positions are not yet posted that are available. 

The last thing is the inside track I am  wanting to talk about.  These two ladies have connections I can only hope to gain over my educational career.  I was telling one about the districts in the area that i have applied to so far (Issaquah SD, Lake Washington SD, Renton SD, and Snoqualmie Valley SD) and with each one, she mentioned someone who she had a connection with who was not a teacher, but a director of this, or the chair of that department.  I don't want my first position to be from a favor; the first teaching year is supposed to be hard enough.  But in conversatios with the other teacher, she mentions positions the district is looking for that it hasn't posted yet, and the people that may go for it, and what kind of person the ditrict is looking for.  Information is a weapon, and something that I can use to my advantage. 

The quesion then become: how do I get this information to work for me without taking advantage of favors that ma not be necessary to call in?

SpEd vs. Senate Bill 6 & Budget Cuts

VS.

Recent news stories in special education point towards the same ideas: Budget Cuts, and Special Education Spending.  The two seem in opposition to one another.  In one article The Florida Senate is trying to pass Senate Bill 6 where teacher pay would be linked to student test scores.  In the realm of Special Education, this is a horrific concept, because success for these students cannot be measure by test scores.  The ability to tie your own shoe or independently use the bathroom is not a question on a test.  Luckily, today Gov. Crist Vetoed the bill.  My Fox Tampa quoted the Governor as saying, "There must be more attention to their special needs."  He mentions how the bill ignored this population of schools, but that the bill, in general, was too flawed.  Common sense did win out, and this was a step in the right direction. 

This situation in Florida points to the notion that education reform is needed, but what will it look like?  It will not look like merit-based pay, nor will it look like federal mandates and across-the-board standards.  I also do not believe it will look like a model of business-like cut-throat pressures for success.  It is true that education NEEDS to be reformed, but it will look like a new education model that will not start at the top and make its way down to the students.  I have a hard time beliving my WA Senator in DC has any idea what will help the students in the schools in their own state.  What will work for one district, will not work for its neighboring district.  Therefore, Education reform needs to look like the democratic system in which we live and thrive.  Reform needs to start with the highly trained professionals we trust to enrich the lives of our children.  It takes a community to raise a child in the way that they should go... NOT the government.  The unions should push for influence, power, and respoonsibility of the teachers, not more money.  You give teachers the power to educate the children in the right way, and the parents will fork over the dollars to let their children be taught. 

But I digress.

The second article I was reading was talking about budget cuts in the recession economy and the overspending of Special Education Programs.  What was interesting in the article was the Federal mandates to provide Free and Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) to all students, but they don't provide the funds to the districts so that they can do that.  We argue for more money and smaller classes through the unions, but what we need is the ability to hire the needed professionals to educate the children, and the proper environment that is conducive to learning.  How does this happen?  We need to change what we think about education.  Everything else in society is changing, but we're still trying to stick to the same ideas of what is considered to be "teaching."  Is it more important for a student to know the meaning of the work and recite it for a test, or to be able to find the meaning of whatever words they may come across on their own?  Is it more important for students to loathe dragging themselves through restricted learning methods that are intent on getting test scores, or should we get them to enjoy the learning process so that they will be more willing to step out and venture into the world and discover what it can teach them?  Asking ans discussing these questions will get us on the road to reform.