Well, according the the negotiated agreement...

Albert Shanker and Collective Bargaining

I should preface this blog with the statement that I am not a member of the teachers' union here in town, nor do I have a copy of the negotiated agreement readily available to cite at any given time. My reasons for not being a member vary. When I first entered teaching, I didn't know anything about the teachers' union, and when I was approached to join, I was newly married and money was tight. We couldn't afford the dues and I was led to believe that it was a waste anyway. What could the union do for me personally? If they were going to fight for teachers, that would include all of us, members and non-members alike. Now that I think about it, it seems selfish. It feels as though I am reaping the benefits that I haven't paid for...but I am still not going to join. However, this is not about me and my personal thoughts on my local union; it is about Albert Shanker, the man who many believe brought collective bargaining to all teachers.

I didn't know that before 1960, most public employees did not have the right to bargain collectively. This led to illegal strikes and Albert Shanker's idea that teachers needed the protection and help that unions could give. I found it interesting that Shanker wasn't a teacher. He only worked in a school while pursuing his Ph.D., and it was there that he had a challenging assistant principal, and an idea was formed...teachers need protection. Similar to the thoughts of the Rights Movement that was sweeping through education, not only do students of all backgrounds have rights, but teachers do as well. Shanker helped bring about equality for teachers regarding policies and salaries, but unfortunately the power he created with unions can be seen as part of the downhill road that education has taken.

Shanker's belief that collective bargaining would lead education upwards, actually can be seen as having the opposite effect. Unions, rather than focusing on what is best for the students, seem mostly focused on what is best for an employee, e.g. grievance procedures, benefits, pensions, and let's not forget increasing memberships. In the chapter, there are issues that teacher unions across the nation face -- teacher certification, merit pay, dismissal procedures, class size reduction -- but the way unions have approached these issues makes one wonder at their true motives.

According to Shanker -

• Unions are opposed to alternative teacher certification processes. He states that there are numerous studies that show that a teacher's credentials do not have a direct correlation to a teacher's effectiveness (121). Since teachers respond well to financial incentives (and really, who doesn't?), unions have helped educators to receive extra money for further education, like a master's degree, but this hasn't improved the quality of their teaching in the classroom. He doesn't state clearly why he believes unions oppose alternative certifications for teachers, just that they do.
• Unions also, as a whole, oppose merit pay. Shanker himself believed in school-wide bonuses for high-performing schools, but not in paying individual teachers for their performance. In recent years, the debate over merit pay has been in the news, with the Obama administration promoting it. The secretary of education, Arne Duncan, has stated that if states are to receive extra federal monies, they must create merit pay plans (124). Unions see the advantage of uniform pay schedules since they also unify the organization. If everyone receives the same salary increment, the only way to receive it is to support the union.
• Tenure for teachers depends on the state, and unions have helped more teachers to achieve tenure by insisting that districts follow in-depth grievance procedures before a teacher can be fired. And, to help recruit members, unions offer full legal assistance to teachers if a union tries to dismiss them. In many districts, before a teacher can be fired for ineptitude, there has to be months of observations and documentation, showing that the teacher is incapable of his/her job. Unfortunately for students, this seldom happens due to whatever reasons, and poor teachers remain in the system, protected by the union.
• Class size reduction is the one area in which the unions have had a positive impact, at least to some. Since 1960, the ratio of students to teacher has gone from 26:1 to almost 15:1 in 2005 (129). Most educators would agree that smaller classes are ideal, but Peterson raises the idea that if given the choice between a higher salary or less students, most teachers would choose the higher salary, whereas the unions may prefer the latter since it would increase the number of possible members. He does go on to offer the explanation that unions may be in such support of smaller class sizes because the American public seems to be.

Although Albert Shanker opened the door to teachers being able to collectively bargain for their rights, the unions that were created failed in the most important aspect...keeping the teachers' salaries high enough to keep the jobs competitive. Although the student to teacher ration dropped, the number of employees (instructional and support staff) to students has doubled between 1960 and 2000. Lowering the number of students requires more teachers, and with this comes more administrative duties and support services, and also more money. Instead of eliminating the middle man, education adds to it by creating more jobs outside of the classroom, rather than raising teacher salaries to attract high-quality professionals, i.e. quantity over quality (154).

This moves us into the era of focusing on education excellence, but are the good intentions actually another route towards even more centralized control over schools and less emphasize on the actual student learning?

Peterson, Paul E. "Albert Shanker and Collective Bargaining." Saving Schools: from Horace Mann to Virtual Learning. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap of Harvard UP, 2010. Print.