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As others have said this is a ploy to allow the school district to get rid of bad union teachers and I think that's a good thing.

It's probably not. They probably have no idea who the bad teachers are. It's most likley an attempt to get rid of the most senior teachers, regardless of ability. And political -- an attempt to kill organizations that tend to be Democratic (this would be equivalent to trying to dismantle fundamentalist churches, as their Republican leaning).

Everyone looks to Finland as this great example of how education should be done, yet it looks nothing like what is being done here. And Finland is 100% teacher's unions. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sharon-higgins/why-do-the-educ...

And political -- an attempt to kill organizations that tend to be Democratic (this would be equivalent to trying to dismantle fundamentalist churches, as their Republican leaning).

I'm sure that would be an issue if fundamentalist churches were funded with public taxes and compulsory to attend.

Churches do get preferential tax treatment.

But the problem with fundamentalist churches isn't in their existence, but rather their beliefs. The opposite is the problem that the right has with unions. They aren't against teachers per se, but they're against labor having any power -- regardless of what the profession is (and the fact that its public/private labor is a red herring).

The right is against workers having the power to quit their job and find a better one? I was completely unaware of this.

Could you tell me when the Republicans stopped being abolitionists?

The right is against workers having the power to quit their job and find a better one? I was completely unaware of this.

As am I.

> And political -- an attempt to kill organizations that tend to be Democratic (this would be equivalent to trying to dismantle fundamentalist churches, as their Republican leaning).

Whoa, this just sunk in with me. I guess it's commonly accepted that most teacher's unions lean Democrat, but I never considered that the people educating children are fundamentally partisan. That's... kind of scary.

Hell, you equate with them as the equivalent of the most fanatic members of the right. That really can't be good that the kids are being educated by fanatic partisans, if your analysis here is correct.

First, there's a difference between the teacher's union and teachers (just as all unions). Unions are generally partisan. Why? Because Republicans are anti-labor, hence anti-collective bargaining.

The actual teachers probably lean left, as they're educated (who generally tend to lean left), but as most teachers aren't actively part of collective bargaining (although benefit from it) it usually isn't part of their calculus. Things like abortion, gay marriage, gun rights, taxation, affirmitive action, and other issues like that are likely just as important to any individual teacher.

"The actual teachers probably lean left, as they're educated (who generally tend to lean left)"

Nope: http://dabacon.org/pontiff/?p=539

Plots would really help that table.

Edit: OK, I messed around with matplotlib and made a couple plots. This kind of data is not my specialty. The bottom plot groups the different Democratic and Republican categories into just Democratic and Republican.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/407960/political_parties_and_educati...

The strongest trend seems to be that people in the "strong Republican" group increase with educational attainment. I made the (poor?) assumption that teachers are most likely to fall into the graduate degree category, thus the bottom plot.

That table is fairly old, but even using that table, more people with bachelors or graduate degree lean left than right (3392 v 3278). Historically, those with degrees leaned right. It's been trending left and I wouldn't be surprised if this was the point where the lines crossed.

Here's more recent data (http://www.gallup.com/poll/118528/gop-losses-span-nearly-dem...), and as you can see Republicans have lost 10% of college grad support since 2001. As you can also see, in 2001 most with college grads slightly leaned Republican. By 2009 it is hugely slanted Democratic. This is consistent with my theory that the data you provided where college grads slightly lean left was one of the first years where the lines crossed and its been an exodus of college grads to the left ever since.

2009 was basically the low-water mark for the GOP brand in modern history, so I'm not sure that those numbers are all that accurate now, but it's not a huge deal.

More to the point, the party gap in with college degrees is surely vastly smaller than the party gap in the private workforce vs members of public-sector unions, so it's sort of weird to assert that the reason teachers lean Democratic is that they're "more educated."

2009 was basically the low-water mark for the GOP brand in modern history, so I'm not sure that those numbers are all that accurate now

Isn't it somewhat odd to assert that 2009 data may not be all that accurate now, after providing 2003 data?

Anyways, my point was that teachers probably lean left, although probably not dramatically so. It doesn't sound like you dispute this claim.

"is to be overly generous with people like teachers"

That seems to be the talking point nowadays. But, having a lot of family and friends that are teachers, just isn't true from what I know. I'm not sure where you think the abuse is coming in (benefits, pay?)

Most teachers salaries max out quite low compared to what could be made in private industry. And even their benefits aren't that much better than private industry, if at all. I have paid less for health benefits for the past 4 years in various jobs (for companies both small and large) and I always had better benefits than my sister, aunt, g/f, etc.

Schools should absolutely be able to pick teachers that are both good and bad. But a blanket firing shows a complete lack of respect and lack of commitment to fixing a problem.

Do the PV calculation of their pension. Most of them are doing better then you think. Rhode Island's pension were guaranteed 3%. http://www.projo.com/news/content/pension_cuts_01-16-09_TOCV...

Sure, which is why they are willing to accept less money.

If the government wants, they can do as companies have done (at least one of past employers did): End pensions going forward, everyone currently employed is grandfathered in, new employees get 401k with a match, new employees have a different salary step system that maxes out higher.

You're not arguing with someone who thinks the system is amazing as it is... it needs changes. But the teachers aren't the villains and they aren't living a life of grandeur.

This is the average salary and vacation time for a RI teacher...

Average Salary: $64,130(elementary), $60640(secondary)

Weeks of Vacation per Year: 15

(source: http://tinyurl.com/5dhgl8)

That's pretty good by today's standards. That's a salary of $1,733 PER WEEK that they work. I wouldn't consider a salary like that "accepting less money"

So do you think teachers just arrive in class on Monday morning and start teaching something out of thin air? A large amount of time is spent preparing material for class, and that time is not "vacation".

Well it's certainly only a single data point, but my mother has been teaching the exact same lesson plan for nearly 15 years now. Even if I were to be generous and say 50% of her summer break were devoted to preparing for the next school year, which is an absurd overestimation, that's still waaay more vacation time than just about anyone else in this country gets.

The bunch, it is not spoiled, by one apple that is bad.

That's how the saying goes, right? ;)

I certainly don't think there is anything at all wrong with teachers keeping more or less the same lesson plan year after year. From what I understand (and I have not personally studied this), the preferred teaching style in Japan and some other countries is to only make tiny incremental changes to lesson plans, year after year. Almost more of a scientific method or perhaps genetic approach to creating good lesson plans, as opposed to the more "artistic"(?) 'recreate it from scratch' method American teachers apparently use.

But really, my point is that "teachers don't really get breaks because they spend the summer revamping their lessons" thing is an old tired meme that really needs to be critically examined.

It's not that large. During periods of the year when teachers work, they only work about 38 hours/week.

http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf

The fact is, teaching is an incredibly easy job. Teachers work less than other professionals, they get incredible vacations, and ridiculous job security.

"The fact is, teaching is an incredibly easy job."

I'd just like to point out that this statement isn't actually related to the others you made. In Western Australia it's been popular for a while due to the mining boom to go and get a fly in/fly out job in one of the mining towns. The pay is fantastic and the time off is good. This does not correlate to being "an easy job".

I could say that it is "easy to do a bad job", but when is that not the case?

Anyhow, just wanted to point that out. Not after an argument :)

Fair point.

contracted hours do not equal actual hours worked.

And according to the bls the average american works about 34 hours last time I checked.... So teachers still work more!

The ATUS measures hours worked "last week" (survey is repeated every week), not contracted hours.

The average American also doesn't get 12-15 weeks vacation.

While this is definitely true, it's also true that teachers don't generally work right through summer vacation, either. I'm from Ontario, not Rhode Island, but I had a teacher who was telling the class about the construction business he runs in the summer, basically because he had too much time on his hands. I don't hold it against him, though. He certainly never whined about being overworked or underpaid.

That salary is $10-15k less than what the average person with a masters degree earns. And they still have to take classes on the regular beyond their masters degree.

The vacation time is indeed high (most of my family falls closer to ~12 weeks than 15). BUT, they also work more than most people I know. They leave the house at 6am, get back around 4 or 5pm, and then work on lesson plans for a few more hours. On the weekends, its grading.

So, they make almost 20% less and probably work a good 20% more per day (which makes the vacation time a wash).

It's pretty good but not, by any means, mind-blowing. The idea that it is "too much" is, I think, indicative of the underlying cause of the poor education system in the US: people talk like they want the best system money can buy, but they behave in a way consistent with the desire for merely the cheapest system money can buy.

A "pretty good" salary will only, at best, attract "pretty good" educators. If you have truly great teaching ability, there's more money to be made outside of the public education system.

Or it will attract VERY passionate people who feel like their efforts aren't appreciated when everyday they feel under the gun for living the "lifestyle."

They are passionate and knowingly traded money for good benefits. And then people throw the benefits in their face and say they deserve less money. Mind boggling!

You summed it up well, and this is what my whole post was alluding to, about whether people want the best system or the cheapest system. Policy seems to speak to the latter.

"But a blanket firing shows a complete lack of respect and lack of commitment to fixing a problem."

And it shows operating on ignorance. "You're fired. No, I don't know if you're a good or bad teacher. But you're fired."

Firing everybody allows them to make their decisions based on who is actually a good teacher, instead of only being able to base their decision on who has been their the longest.

So really, you got it completely backwards.

I would think the good teachers feel just as fired and disrespected as the average and bad teachers. They're not being treated as individuals.

Technically, if you compare the same job (teaching) public vs private schools, counting benefits, public teachers make around 25% - 50% more. The whole "compared to private sector" needs to compare the same job.

Absolutely agree. I was appalled when I saw the article about not being able to fire teachers and instead putting them into "rubber rooms":

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/disgraced-teacher-enjoys-wel...

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2008/05/04/200...

And then you have really good teachers who wanted to teach for free but wasn't allowed to (they finally, wisely relented) because of some dumb technicality:

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/nov/29/local/la-me-lopez29-...

(p.s. yes, he was my middle school teacher, and he is an AWESOME teacher)

The future of the education system is grim, and only by drastic measures can a difference be made.

A question: I don't quite understand why the teachers seem to think that a layoff is better than a firing? Does it affect their tenure/experience, or something like that?

Your examples don't make sense because they are not set in Providence. There's no indication that "rubber rooms" are a problem in Providence, either.

The rest (and OP) is just supposition as to motives which remain unknown.

I didn't say that rubber rooms are a problem in Providence. I'm saying that examples like those in New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere are indicative of the state of public education as a whole. I'm saying that I support almost any means necessary for public education reform, the Providence case being one of them.

"Public unions have not proven themselves in the same way as private unions have. Private unions were (and in some cases still are) a good tool to protect employees against corporate greed run a muck."

Though the article deals with teachers, your quote makes me wonder: If public sector unions are a bad deal, why are police and fire department employee unions exempt from being targeted? Where I live (Texas), these employees have both civil service rules and a union (so they are arguably double-protected) while other public employees--except teachers--have neither and are at-will employed. I have seen no hint that police and fire should have their union representation or civil service requirements eliminated; the exact opposite is stated in places like Wisconsin and Ohio.

If public sector unions are a bad deal, why are police and fire department employee unions exempt from being targeted?

Actually police and firefighters are also being targeted. But there's just a lot fewer of them. Remember that there are more teachers in the US than any other profession. For example, see: http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2011/02/police_and_f...

This really isn't about good or bad teachers. The whole myth of the giant population of bad US teachers exists to push the agenda to break up unions.

The reason? Unions weaken the right and strengthen the left. The right has been trying to kill unions for a long time, but it hasn't been until the rise of minority district charter schools where they've been able to make a strong push that bad overpaid teachers are the problem.

The one question I've been asking everyone in my district is to point out the bad teachers. No one will tell me who they are, or how it is decided. I asked do the bad have warning, will they be given time to shapen up and feedback on their issues? Apparently no. These sorts of things make me a tad suspicious.

> The one question I've been asking everyone in my district is to point out the bad teachers. No one will tell me who they are, or how it is decided.

Have you asked the kids? They probably know. There were bad teachers in my high school; pretty much everybody knew who they were. One was so senile he routinely forgot what assignments he'd given or what he was saying.

We didn't have anyone that senile at my schile, but if we did -- the only question would be "how hard is the class". If he forgot assignments and gave A's, he'd be loved by the students.

But I went to a really bad high school. I suspect at better schools students are probably better judges. But you end up with an odd situation where the schools that need the least help have the more accurate assessment (and frankly probably have the fewest poor teachers).

Kids know who the bad teachers are. Principals know, and schools have both student results year-over-year and evaluations which are good indicators. But these are confidential, and if you can't fire someone, have to keep paying them, and can't afford a replacement, you're highly unlikely to publicly finger problematic teachers as 'bad'. You have to pretend they're good enough, because they're all you've got.

Portraying this as just some unthinking partisan campaign against unions overlooks the fact that the total compensation of teachers and other public employees has been going up while service quality has stagnated or declined. They are being compensated for their reliable political power, not their value in providing necessary services.

And if the only decision criteria is, "teachers are good, give them all the work rules and benefits their unions ask for", there's no end to that trend. The full-time political operators in the unions, accountable for their groups' interests but not society's results, will continue to extract greater pay for worse results — until some other decision criteria, which says 'no' to the union in favor of other interests, can be applied.

Principals know, and schools have both student results year-over-year and evaluations which are good indicators.

Can you get me data on this? I've asked every HS principal and probably half of the middle school principals in the Seattle School District. Maybe every principal in Seattle is incompetent, but I haven't gotten a single name or metric.

If you can get this information for Seattle, please post the result and from which principal. Because I have asked this exact question to every HS principal.

overlooks the fact that the total compensation of teachers and other public employees has been going up while service quality has stagnated or declined.

Citation on the quality of teaching has stagnated or declined. I haven't seen this data.

Are you their boss? No principal is going to bad-mouth an employee that they're obligated to work with to anyone who just asks. That'd poison the workplace. They'd be incompetent if they told you their private thoughts!

The evaluation numbers are not public data. But once in the public school district I attended years ago, I got to see the raw teacher scores from in-room evaluations. Because all teachers seemed to put on a 'dog and pony' show the days that evaluators sat in, I was afraid they'd have no correlation with my perceptions the rest of the year.

And yet, while I did not have enough access to perform a detailed analysis, the teachers I thought bad had low evaluations, from both their immediate supervisors and the 'neutral' observers from the district. The ones I thought good had high evaluations.

K-12 teacher competence is not a complicated matter, imperceptible to all but the finest measurements and highly-trained observers. If you're really curious and have the time, ask your district if you can observe the teachers you're most interested in knowing about.

My impression that the quality of services provided by public employees has stagnated or declined is more general than just 'teaching quality'. It's whole-system outputs.

In the school sphere my impression is driven by how the exact same problems and anguish are being expressed today as 10 years ago, 20 years ago, and 30 years ago (which is as far back as I've been paying attention). And roughly all the same quantifiable complaints are being advanced.

Dropout rates remain high – even with rampant under-reporting by state educational departments. When there are occasionally slight improvements in test scores, it's often shown to be due to manipulation of the comparison pools, or nasty tradeoffs to meet hollow numerical targets. And yet, if schools are to be run by large state-oriented (or even worse nation-oriented) bureaucracies, then managing by crude numerical targets are all that's possible.

In the past 30 years, teacher's unions (and other public employees' unions) have risen to become some of the most powerful political groups in each state. Have schools wildly improved over this same period? Are we now in a golden era of public services? Are civil servants now more respected than ever before?

Or perhaps, the 50-year experiment in public-sector unionism has maximized things other than positive results – like off-budget pension obligations and partisanship.

I take issue with your statement about stagnation. You're implying that apart from pay, the only other variable in the mix is the teacher. Now admittedly I'm in the Australian system not the American, but I know that if you asked teachers here what some of the main detrimental factors are to their teaching, then department policy and political pressure would be pretty high up there.

It's very convenient that politicians forget about forcing schools to accept the latest testing fad, drastically changing course requirements on a regular basis, increasing the numbers of children with learning disabilities in regular classes (much of the time without adequate learning support), etc. Especially when they want to find an excuse for underperformance.

did you seriously have no teachers that were just Bad while you were in public schools? i am so incredibly envious.

no teacher who slept and wet herself? or turned a (nearly blind) eye to students being assaulted in her classroom? (two different teachers, both witnessed by myself.)

those are just the first two cases that come to my mind. i could come up with a bunch more, and i only went through 1 elementary, middle and high school each. when the system doesn't make it trivial to replace such teachers, the system is broken beyond comprehension.

I had bad teachers, but the teachers I thought were bad probably would get the best student reviews. They'd sleep in class, weren't prepared, but they gave mostly A's. My favorite teachers taught well and expected a lot. They were a lot less popular.

I had teachers who were not great. But I never had one out and out bad teacher. Never saw a teacher sleeping (in class) or wetting themselves (wow). And no teacher I had ever stood for any student being assaulted. Maybe there are benefits to growing up in the middle-of-nowhere Missouri.

One reason is that many places classify firefighters and police forces as critical services, and therefore cannot go on 'real' strikes. At most they can enact work to rules, and stop working overtimes. This takes away a lot of the bite of unions.

I absolutely understand the need to choose good teachers over bad teachers. However, how much will the teachers' salary play into the selection process? I would imagine a teacher with 20 years experience gets paid quite more than a teacher with five years experience. Serious question, does salary go into consideration when rehiring or is it solely based on teaching skill?

Unfortunatly, teachers are not exempt from the basics of economics. If salary isn't considered, they're doing it wrong. The job of the government is to maximize the educational output with the resources they have available. If that great (or crappy, for that matter) teacher costs too much, and the money is better spent elsewhere, so be it.

I agree with you on the points that we should be able to select the best teachers for our schools, however, I think most of that is rhetoric designed to distract from the fact that it's a budgetary issue. Selecting the best teachers and best schools requires school choice, not bureaucrats deciding for us who is best and who is not. School choice, vouchers and real reforms are no where near this debate. The debate is framed in this language to obtain popular support.

It's a budgetary issue, remove the ethos and pathos and you'll find at the core of the issue a budgetary one. The council needs to eliminate $40 million dollars, one way to do this is to ensure all your teachers have no seniority and thus are all at the bottom of the pay scale. Layoffs will just remove the lowest paid employees so they all must be fired and then rehired to ensure that their previous seniority isn't factored into the calculations. A $40 million dollar deficit spread across 1926 teachers is $20,000 per teacher per year, you're not going to negotiate that kind of drop. Anyone want to bet that the avg. teacher salary minus the base teacher salary in Providence is about $20,000?

However, a cold numbers based story like that wouldn't play well to the public so you need something else like selecting the 'best' teachers, and you can be sure that if the board was given the option that the 'best' would become the 'cheapest', especially in an uncompetitive market such as public schooling (aka. state sponsored daycare).

I'm a big fan of real school choice, but this just seems like a way for the school district to lawyer their way out of an agreement, and obtain popular support by couching the argument in terms that are not on the table. If it's about letting the best teachers rise to the top, the school board should fire all the teachers, and provide vouchers for parents to use in obtaining their children's education. This is about firing a bunch of people and rehiring the same people at a lower price.