I think Rick Hess makes as good a point as can be made for Wisconsin-style reform. At present, I think he’s right on when he points out that reigning in public sector pension and healthcare benefits that are far more generous than those most folks receive is a reasonable way to save money in a recession.

But my concern is not for the present. I think we know how that’s gonna go. I worry about the future. Specifically, I worry about the future of teaching.

Jane! Get Me Off This Crazy Thing!

As teaching becomes a progressively less attractive way to go through life—and virtually all aspects of reform contribute to this, not just potential changes in collective bargaining—I find it hard to be optimistic that teachers will begin doing their jobs better or that we’ll begin attracting better people to do their jobs.

Two ideas have dominated educational discourse over the last year: (1) Teachers are the most important in-school factor in student success; and (2) Teachers are the reason why our education system is in such a sorry state.

While it’s certainly possible that both of these statements might be true, the co-existence of these beliefs—true or not—is unhealthy for our schools.

Making our Marx

Reformers feel they must bring some power to bear on teachers and their unions. The power certainly exists to be brought. A few votes in a few state legislatures and teaching, as a way of life, will begin to fall apart.

Perhaps this is a poositive outcome; I don't really know. But I do believe the term for it is “Creative Destruction.” The hope is that once something has been destroyed, something better will be created in its place.

So whatcha got, Wisconsin? Or is this gonna be another one of those, "Let them eat cheese!" deals?

The problem here is that it doesn’t seem as though anyone has thought very far ahead. Maybe Marx was right about this. But it seems a little risky to me right at the moment. If we're gonna send General Sherman to burn down Atlanta, we oughta have something better than 40 acres and a mule up our sleeves this time. Reconstructing teaching after this is over will take real work, exactly the kind we're avoiding right now as we seem more committed to breaking things down than we do to building them up.

In coming years, anti-teacher forces can and probably will gut the profession. But what people who don’t work in schools don’t know is that what actually goes on in classrooms is pretty much whatever teachers want. And I don't think teachers are going to want to do more each time we give them less. Rick's right: the current situation was fueled by politicians attempting to curry favor with big labor. But with big labor pushed out of the bargain, will we be left with only self-serving politicians to clearn up the mess? That's certainly an unappealing thought.

Don't Bite the Hand That Feeds You

Haven't we all just figured out where our bread is buttered? Haven't we finally decided that teachers make the difference? If teachers are the key to improving education, treating them harshly—whether they deserve it or not—is unlikely to produce much in the way of encouragement to improve.

It’s possible, after the dust settles, that we will enter into one of the greatest periods of educational sabotage our country has ever known. Teachers, beaten down to their last stick of chalk, will have no incentive, not even the threat of dismissal, to go the many extra miles we keep asking them to go. Many may simply resort to casual insubordination instead.

Careful with That Axe, Eugene

For all the power soon to be accumulated by reform-minded groups and politicians, little will come of policy-inspired muscle-flexing. The truth is that few, if any, policies ever push their way, uninvited, through the classroom door. That’s a lesson we can choose to learn from NCLB if we want to be smart about it, but I think it’s something most hard-core reformers don’t fully understand. Teaching is a very personal game. And teachers play it all alone with no one watching.

Once the classroom door closes, those of us on the outside have little idea of or control over what happens on the inside. When teachers feel demoralized—as they do already and surely will continue to feel in the years to come—it’s hard to imagine that the very people from whom we need so much more will be willing to give it up for so much less.

Keep in mind, as we dismantle the current system, that if teachers merely worked their actual contracts, education in America would grind to a halt. Somewhere between 15% and 30% of the “productivity” we see in American schools is completed during “off contract” time or with “off contract” resources. That’s just the way it’s always been—a big freebie for our nation. Of course, as Mr. Hess points out, teachers are compensated relatively generously in other ways, so perhaps it’s not exactly a freebie. But the fact that teachers have 40-hour contracts and work 50-hour weeks is something we never consider. A new approach needs to account for this problem, too, not because teachers won’t continue to work for free, but because it’s yet another Alice-in-Wonderland aspect of this ridiculous system we’ve been living with now for far too long.

I’m not saying teachers deserve medals for putting in extra time. They do it—foolishly and to their detriment—of their own volition, and much of it has no positive effect on student achievement. In the process, teachers systematically devalue themselves by working for free, by spending their own money on things that should be provided for them, or by engaging in special activities that they are simply not required to participate in at all.

This doesn’t make them special people or anything like that. It’s just the way many teachers are wired. But it does shed some light on what’s at stake. A more spreadsheet-like “corporate” vision of education reform wouldn’t hinge on free labor. We run our school systems on a planned deficit that we never acknowledge. What would happen if, all of a sudden, we had to pay the piper?

This is not a justification of union intransigence, or bad teaching, or screwy pay scales, or bad hiring practices. But it’s one more unpleasant and complicated thing to keep in mind as we go forward with the continued demoralization of our teaching corps. And it’s yet another wrinkle we have to iron out if we’re going to find our way to a system that works.

But I worry that very few people right now are thinking of finding our way to a system that works. Most seem to be thinking of destroying the system we have—or hanging onto it as long as possible regardless of the cost.

Duh!

It’s no secret to anyone (especially teachers) that teaching is messed up. Anyone who feigns shock and awe at this point, or who attempts to convert outrage into influence, is being dishonest with themselves and everyone else. We don't need to wait for Julian Assange to WikiLeak a million e-mails about what's been going on as long as any of us can remember; we've all known for decades that, as Sandy Kress notes, the chickens would eventually come home to roost.

When I was a kid, I remember listening to my mom and her teacher friends talk about the state of things in their profession. Seniority-based hiring and firing was considered ridiculous. The low quality and poor training of many teachers was an affront. Every teacher I knew thought the traditional evaluation system was a joke and that teachers with MA’s didn’t seem better than teachers with BA’s, or that most professional development was useless—although in those days, at least teachers paid for it themselves for the most part.

Every controversial issue we have before us today was talked about in my house more than 30 years ago. And I suspect, teachers have been talking about these same issues long before then.

At the same time, my mom and most of her friends seemed to believe, just as we do now, that good teachers make a big difference in kids’ lives. And that bad ones robbed kids of important opportunities.

My point is not to reminisce about my childhood but to point out that we’re still blaming teachers for issues we’ve all known about for decades—and have chosen to ignore. Even teachers have known these things. And that means teachers' unions have known them, too.

Should union’s belly up to the bar and order a shot of intellectual honesty? Of course they should. But so should the rest of us. If what we’ve had for so long has always been so bad, why have we tolerated it? And, having tolerated it for so long, how, all of a sudden, can we justify tearing it down when we don’t have something better to put in its place?

Why Not Just Do Something Good Instead?

Have we thought this through? Do we have a plan? Wouldn’t it make sense to build something new and good from the ground up, perhaps at a small scale first, rather than simply to burn the whole system down to the ground just because we’ve finally decided after decades of complacency that we’re really angry about things?

This is not just a union problem or a teacher problem; it’s a national problem. It’s your problem and my problem and everyone’s problem. And these days, I’m more than a little curious as to why all the big brains we have in this country haven’t yet proposed ten or twenty reasonable solutions.

Will taking away collective bargaining make school better? Well, it’ll probably save some money and cut back on what teachers earn. Will new performance-based pay schemes improve children's lives? Well, as teachers earn less, I guess plans that help them earn more might become more popular. But this doesn’t mean teachers will teach better as a result.

As Secretary Duncan tells us, we are entering the era of “doing more with less”,so I’m not exactly clear on where the “more” is supposed to come from to spur on all that extra performance. Even if performance-based pay is a good idea, where will the pay come from to compensate the performance? Bill Gates can't pick up the tab for everything. And how about test-based teacher evaluations? Or the removal of tenure? Or changes to teacher certification? Will any of these things really make a difference in the lives of kids?

The real problem here is that we just don't know. Yet we're moving ahead anyway, guns-a-blazin', shoot to kill first, ask questions later. If only Maxwell Smart and Agent 99 we're on the case.

The Bebop Era of Ed Reform

I think we’re experimenting as we so often do, like Parker and Diz at Birdland laying down riffs so fast we can’t tell if they’re hitting the changes or not. Only this time, we’re not doing it to push the bounds of creativity but simply to create a little scorched earth. We’re in the mood to blame someone, to punish someone, to make someone pay—and that someone is teachers.

Punishing teachers—whether they deserve it or not—strikes me as tactically satisfying but strategically dubious. Even unequivocal moral justification can’t change the fact that after this round is over, teachers will be less likely to want to teach longer and better than they do now. And that this is precisely the opposite of what we want out of education reform.

Our present course—no matter how thoroughly justified it seems—seems unjustifiable to me because I don’t think the people with the power have a very thorough understanding of what school is really like. Mr. Hess’s very correct argument notwithstanding, I would hope that by now we would have found a less adversarial approach to changing teaching.

In the short run, I wish a few folks could spend a few hundred hours teaching today; just to feel what it’s like. (Maybe Wisconsin’s democratic legislators could put in a few days while they’re hiding out to deny their republican rivals a quorum.) Work in a dozen different schools. Dip your toe in the water just a little bit. And then see what you think.

Maybe you’ll see something different, something most of us have missed, something positive and constructive that will provide a workable solution for the future of our schools and for our country.

Postscript

Note to reformers: figure out some creative ways to begin treating teachers like the superstars we need them to be.

Note to teachers: start acting like superstars.

Note to politicians: before you drop the bomb on Hiroshima, make sure you’ve got your Marshall Plan figured out.

Note to the rest of us: Stop waiting for Superman and start demanding more creative solutions and constructive dialog between reformers, teachers, and politicians.

Personally, I like Rick's heart AND his brain.

And I find it harder and harder to equate classic employee/management negotiations with the massively detailed teacher contracts whose salary components are nearly an afterthought.

Frankly, what I adamantly favor are job protections for workers whose jobs risk their health and safety, or those whose life experience simply makes them vulnerable to unfair work demands. I have to say I am really struggling with the entire notion of teachers as a profession being in need of those same protections.

When I look at schools that are most rapidly advancing the achievement and students and transforming the face of American education, I see teachers who themselves have taken on the management role. I see school environments where a shared sense of mission looks a lot harder, but a lot more satisfying than the oppressive settings where a workday is counted in minutes, and nobody gets to operate outside a tediously defined role.

We don’t just need choice for students. We need it for teachers.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker proposed his biennial budget Tuesday night, March 1, and through it he revealed his true intentions: destroy public education.

He has simultaneously proposed:

• Massive cuts to public schools – approximately $1 billion dollars over two years (a 5.5% cut).
• Freeze on property tax increases, preventing local governments and school boards from raising additional revenue.
• Expansion of the Milwaukee voucher program by ending enrollment caps, expanding it to schools in the entire Milwaukee County (not just the city) and lifting the income limits – no longer trying to maintain the illusion that this is a program to help “the poor.”
• Refusal to the fix the “voucher funding flaw” which diverts public school dollars to private school students, but doesn’t allow the Milwaukee school district to count those students in their state aide formula even though they are paying for those children’s education.
• Ending numerous other state-funded educational initiatives including (quoting from the official budget document): “advanced placement; alternative education; alcohol and other drug abuse prevention and intervention; children-at-risk; English for Southeast Asian children; improving pupil academic achievement; nursing services; preschool to grade 5 programs; science, technology, engineering and mathematics programs; and supplemental aid.”
• This budget proposal is on top of his plan to strip virtually all collective bargaining rights away from public employees, including all public school employees.

The president of the Milwaukee School Board, Dr. Michael Bonds, put it this way to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “It’s going to be devastating. It’s almost a triple hit – the money we lose, the choice proposals and the fact that the budget didn’t address the funding flaw in Milwaukee.”

When I wrote last week that I stand foursquare behind Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's proposals to curb public employee benefits and the collective bargaining, my friend Diane Ravitch lamented, "Rick, that's very sad. Someday you'll see the error of having more brains than heart." I won't argue the point, but I will say a bit more about just why Walker's controversial stance speaks to my brain.

As the University of Arkansas's Robert Costrell calculated out last week, Wisconsin's public employees collect 74 cents in benefits for every dollar in salary, more than triple the rate for their private sector counterparts. In Milwaukee, the average ten-month salary for a Milwaukee Public Schools teacher is $56,500 but the total cost to MPS is $100,005. Why? For one thing, the Wisconsin state pension calls for a 6.8% employer contribution and a 6.2% employee contribution, but MPS agreed back in 1996 to pay the employee share as well. For another, the 1982 collective bargaining agreement also grants MPS teachers a second pension, funded entirely by a 4.2% district contribution. As for health care, MPS spends 39% of wages on health insurance, compared to a private-sector norm of 11%. MPS pays the full premium for medical and vision benefits and also grants full health care to retirees, with the district picking up the entire premium in effect at retirement.

Why steer so much money into benefits that do little to improve schooling or services? It's simple, really. Benefit costs are long-term and largely invisible to taxpayers, while they satisfy the demands of political, influential union leaders. Like sugar subsidies or pet Pentagon pork, this makes benefit giveaways as tempting as catnip to policymakers in Madison or Milwaukee. They get to say yes to a concerned constituency, and nobody much complains or cares--at least until the bill comes due (which is now). It's far too appealing for state and local officials to shovel out the goodies, figuring that the public employee union leaders will appreciate it and no one else will really notice.

While politically attractive, these benefits are an awful way to spend scarce money. Retirement benefits and massively subsidized health care aren't much use in recruiting young educators in the modern labor market (in large part, because these benefits are easy for potential hires to overlook). And these promises create huge obligations that suck dollars from schools and classrooms even as they leave future policymakers to foot the bill.

Is any of this the "fault" of Wisconsin's teachers? Nah, not really. Everyone wants the best benefits we can squeeze out of their employer, and the job of union leaders is to squeeze away. (Though, when government employees are organized to demand more funds from government officials whom they play an outsized role in selecting, it's no surprise that the "squeezee" is remarkably pliable.) Is it the fault of public employees that they're a powerful force, largely unchecked by competition or aggressive management, or that state and local officials eagerly pander to them? Again, nope.

If anyone deserves blame, it's gutless, irresponsible legislators, governors, and school board members who have made untenable promises in order to win votes and keep folks happy. The point of reining in public employee collective bargaining is not to "punish" teachers or other employees, but to address the pols' innate, craven tendency to cater to passionate, highly organized interests. Checking this irresponsibility, not just for the moment but for the decades ahead, requires addressing structural incentives. And the problem needs to be checked because, even when states can "afford" these benefits, it's a poor use of scarce resources.

Indeed, the depth of the problem and the measure of the congenital irresponsibility of superintendents, school boards, and state officials is the eagerness with which many are striving to curry favor with their teachers by poor-mouthing Walker. Some see such criticism as evidence that Walker is going too far. Me? I see it as a measure of the problem--a reflection of the temerity that Walker is aiming to tackle. Ed Week's Sean Cavanagh did a terrific job of spotlighting this craven streak last week, quoting Miles Turner, the executive director of the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators, protesting, "[Walker's proposal] goes way too far." It's instructive to see supes who claim to be desperately cash-strapped pooh-poohing the potential savings from Walker's proposal, even as the state eyes additional K-12 cuts in the push to close a looming $1.8 billion 2012 deficit. Turner said that many of the superintendents have amicable, "established bargaining relationships" with teachers' unions and frets that if districts and unions could bargain only on wages, it would take districts into "uncharted territory" and create a "very problematic work environment." Of course, given that the placid district-union relationships have been purchased at the cost of grandiose benefits and show little evidence of, you know, responsible management, I'm not sure that these established marketing relationships have worked all that well for Wisconsin's students or taxpayers.

Wisconsin's public employees argue that they are now offering some benefit concessions as evidence that no deeper changes are necessary. I'm not sold. First, as I've noted, this willingness to countenance modest concessions only emerged when the employees sought to counter Walker's more ambitious efforts. Second, if this modest movement is the most that Wisconsin taxpayers can expect, in the wake of the Great Recession and when confronted with a hard-core state executive, I'm profoundly dubious that status quo arrangements will yield any meaningful changes in Wisconsin's crippling benefit outlays.

Just as I reject school reform built on the pursuit of millions of "superman" teachers, so I don't trust the notion that everything will be fine if we just elect leaders with spines of steel, hearts of gold, and a deft negotiating hand.

The problem with collective bargaining by public employees is that these unions are unchecked by competition and wield massive influence as they help to elect their bosses. I get why Wisconsin public employees view Walker's proposal as an assault, but I see a sensible measure to rein in the tendency of pols to serve narrow interests at the expense of the commonweal. If you want pols to address exorbitant benefits and undisciplined budgets, you can tell 'em to "do the right thing" or you can take steps to help them do so (hello, Base Closure and Realignment Commission). Me, I'll leave the "do the right thing" option to those with more heart--to those who think school improvement is just a matter of caring more about kids or spending more or urging teachers to work harder. For better or worse, I'm a head guy. And that's why, as I said last week, I think Gov. Walker is doing the right thing, however bitter the medicine may be.

The current controversies in Wisconsin and other states are unfortunate because the goal of providing an excellent public education for all of our children is dependent upon highly skilled and dedicated teachers. To pit teachers against administrators and board members while teaching students to get along is not the right message for the lawmakers and the news media to be sending.

Do local school boards need more flexibility when it comes to containing benefit and wage costs? Yes. Absolutely. School boards want to ensure that the limited resources we have are going to the classroom to provide the best educational experience for our students.

However, for the best results, we still must maintain a civil, constructive relationship with those who work day in and day out with our students and our schools.

As we have seen from the bold and creative leadership of Governors Malloy of Connecticut and Rendell of Pennsylvania, it is possible to make difficult fiscal decisions, with all parties at the table, without trampling on the collective bargaining rights which have served the state so well.

If collective bargaining were the real obstacle to student achievement, the best schools would be located in states that have outlawed collective bargaining by teachers. Student achievement in these states, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia, tends to be among the lowest in the country. Another bogus argument, that unions are responsible for retaining ineffective teachers, has been repeatedly disproven by negligible dismissal rates in these states.

Collective bargaining is the successful process of coming to the table in good faith and reaching an agreement that all sides can live with. What we’re seeing is just an attack on working people and their right to be heard in the workplace. The current economic crisis should not be used as an excuse to advance an anti-union agenda.

Like Mr. Kress, I see chickens coming home to roost. Or perhaps a more apt proverb is the Apostle Paul’s reminder that we reap what we sow. But unlike Mr. Kress, I see the important lesson being directed toward those who took up union-bashing as a part-time sport, enjoying the short-term political benefits but not thinking through the full implications.

There are well over a dozen contributors to this forum, including Sen. Bennet (who I voted for) and Sect. Duncan (whose boss I voted for), who I believe fell into this trap. There will always be the Kochs and the Walkers, looking for ways to attack public education and educators. One would hope, however, that better angels prevail upon the rest of us. Labor-management collaboration should be encouraged (my preference is for labor-management-community collaboration, actually), but let’s not fool ourselves about how we got to this ugly point in our history.

Public education and teachers are under assault in Indiana, Wisconsin, Idaho, Ohio and elsewhere. Instead of focusing on ways to strengthen education and create jobs, some politicians are looking for someone to blame. And educators have become the target.

Collective bargaining provides a routine and structured process for teachers to meet at the table with management and discuss critical issues, such as lack of books and supplies, class size, poor teacher evaluation systems and innovative ideas. There are innumerable examples of how this process has worked for students and schools. In Evansville, Indiana, union leaders and district administrators created the Equity Schools Project, which focused resources on three of the district's struggling schools. Under the agreement, each school can add up to 20 more days of classroom instruction to the school year, plus five professional development "data days," when teachers learn to analyze and use data to address student needs and boost achievement. Graduation rates for the 2008-09 school year show that collaboration between educators and school leaders is producing tangible results, with one high school increasing its grad rate by nearly 10 percent over the previous year.

Labor and management in Evansville are working together in new ways to improve academic achievement. Collective bargaining has resulted in shared decision-making that is reaping huge benefits for students in that community. Evansville has become a national model for school transformation, but their continued success is in jeopardy if the Indiana state legislature has its way. Instead of working with educators to continue the progress of the past few years, some lawmakers would rather score political points by picking fights with teachers and other public employees.

It is ironic that these attacks come on the heels of a national conference hosted by the U.S. Department of Education and co-sponsored by NEA and other education groups that showcased the value and importance of labor-management collaboration. Some 150 teams from school districts across the country came together because they recognize that student success is a shared responsibility. No one understands the problems facing America’s public schools as acutely as the teachers and support professionals who work in these schools every day, and they deserve to have a seat at the table and a voice in school quality issues.

Now the chickens come home to roost.

Governor Walker is trying to address four issues at once: (1) balancing budgets – the state government’s, municipalities’, and school districts’, (2) eliminating work rule provisions of collective bargaining contracts that impede performance, (3) debilitating the power of unions in general, and (4) eliminating a source of political and financial support for his opponents. It is possible to believe that (1) and (2) are necessary without believing in the merits of (3) and (4).

Of course, Walker believes that (3) and (4) are necessary to ensure (1) and (2). It is not an irrational an argument, even if you disagree with it. To prove him wrong, unions will need to become much more flexible and outcome-oriented on work rules than they have been in the past. If teachers unions continue to staunchly defend “last hired/first fired” and oppose innovations like charter schools, they will be making Walker’s point for him. But if they demonstrate the ability to change and reform, they can prove him wrong.

Unfortunately, Walker’s actions seem more likely to prompt unions around the country to dig in and fight, rather than support reforms. It is not an irrational response. When your survival is threatened, you fight to defend every inch of ground.

Walker may win this battle in Wisconsin, but lose the war throughout the nation. His is a high risk strategy that has mobilized labor like nothing else in the past 30 years and has the potential to increase union resistance to necessary reforms. Let’s hope the unions prove him wrong and embrace reforms that demonstrate they can be true partners in improving educational outcomes for students. If they don’t, they’ll be making Walker’s argument for him.

Wisconsin Governor Walker is out to destroy public education, as we know it. His proposal to ban unions at public universities, the University of Wisconsin Hospital, and among state childcare workers and to strip collective bargaining rights from all other public employee unions will be catastrophic, not only to the employees, but to the institutions themselves.

The five decades of relative labor peace in Wisconsin will end. In fact, it has ended already, with massive rallies in the state capital, dozens of school districts shutting down because of protests and the largest protest rally in the state’s history this past Saturday with 100,000 people gathering in Madison. On 24 hours notice a week before, 2,000 people picketed Walker’s house in a west Milwaukee suburb and demonstrations have taken places in dozens of cities and small towns throughout the state. High school and college students have walked out of classes.

Wisconsin was the first state in the nation in 1959 to pass a comprehensive collective bargaining law for public employees which helped contribute to a strong economy, a tradition of clean, effective government and one of the best university systems in the nation.

If Walker’s bill passes the careful negotiations that have taken place over the years to improve public education will no longer be possible. Instead of practitioners and administrators negotiating and working our problems together, there will be top-down dictates and rancorous disagreements. Gone will be the labor/management cooperation that has created site-based hiring procedures and peer review programs such at the TEAM program in the Milwaukee Public Schools.

Gone will be the ability of workers to have a voice of how their work places should operate and how they can better serve their students.

Gone will be the basic economic guarantees and due process rights that might attract and retain people for a career in teaching. Several energetic young teachers have told me that they are planning to move out of state if Walker’s proposals are enacted.

Walker has taken the worse aspects of “right to work” laws from Southern states and encapsulated them into a “budget repair bill” to fill a $137 million shortfall in the current biennial budget. He has blamed excessive pension and health insurance benefits of public employees while simultaneously pushing through $117 million worth of business tax breaks. He’s going to require that all public sector unions have recertification votes on an annual basis and prohibit the collecting of union dues through payroll deductions. It’s out an out union-busting, not a budget repair bill.

Protestors from all over the state have made their voices heard. Picket signs speak the truth such as the ones that read “Governor Walker isn’t qualified to be a substitute teacher in my classroom,” referring to Walker’s failure to complete a four-year college degree and “Walker, Stop Your Koch addiction” in reference to the financial support he’s received from the billionaire Koch brothers who are likely to benefit from another part of the “budget repair bill” which empowers Walker to sell off state owned heating and power plants to anyone of his choosing without going through a normal bidding process.

It’s not only the public sector unions that are opposing Governor Walker’s union busting legislation, but also private sector unions, hundreds of local elected officials, religious organizations, the NAACP, Voces de la Frontera, and other parent and civic groups. The governor has awakened a sleeping giant –- the working people of Wisconsin – and we are ready for the battle. We will defend the children and public education of our state. Our future, and our children’s future depend on it.