Diane Ravitch on “The Massachusetts Miracle and the Teachers Union”
Guest blogger Diane Ravitch responds to Mike Petrilli’s recent post, “The Massachusetts Miracle and the Teachers Union“
At the Philanthropy Roundtable conference a few weeks ago, I was a “judge” of a series of presentations that were supposed to showcase the best idea for education reform. The first one was by Richard Berman of the Center for Union Facts, who described his plan to launch a media campaign to “demonize” the teachers’ unions; he gave examples of video and billboards in New Jersey.
I responded to Mr. Berman that if I were designing an ad campaign to counter his, I would point out that the highest-scoring state in the nation is Massachusetts, which has a strong teachers’ union, and that the highest-scoring nation in the world on the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is Finland, which is virtually 100% unionized, and that the lowest scoring districts and states in this nation have weak unions or no unions. So I judged that his entry would not improve education. He said something about being in the PR business and did not respond.
So I assume that this exchange was the genesis of the current effort to show that teachers’ unions were no help to education reform in Massachusetts or anywhere else.
As a judge in this round, I conclude that none of the respondents was able to demonstrate that the presence of teachers’ unions blocks school improvement and that the absence of teachers’ unions permits school improvement.
The fact is that Massachusetts became the highest-performing state in the nation and it does have a unionized workforce in the schools. So, while eyewitnesses may complain that the union got in their way, the bottom line is that the education reform program was very successful in a highly unionized state.
Not one of the critics pointed to a state or even a district that has achieved equivalent educational success and that does NOT have a teachers union. To persuade me that I am wrong, show me a state or a group of states or even a district that is non-unionized and that is leading the way in academic achievement.
Teachers’ unions do not themselves raise or lower academic achievement. That is not their purpose; their purpose is to provide teachers with rights and dignity.
Massachusetts and Finland demonstrate, at least to me, that unions do not block academic improvement. And that is why I conclude that an effort to demonize teachers unions will not improve American education.
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May 19th, 2009 at 11:25 am
This seems unserious. You surely know that you can’t just eyeball a couple of geographic locations that are wealthy, privileged, and largely white, and then pronounce that some fact about their education system is what’s causing them to be academically superior to historically disadvantaged populations in much poorer states.
May 19th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
In general, I agree that unions are certainly not the one barrier to true education reform, however, they do at times present themselves as an obstacle. There is a reason that they are called “teachers” unions” because they fight for the rights of teachers, which at times conflict with what is best for students (extended instructional time; rewarding effectiveness, not experience; etc.)
At least in my mind I cannot provide an example of a single successful urban district (by absolute terms), unionized or not unionized. But suppose we look at KIPP as a large nation-wide school district, composed of 60 schools, rather than a collection of charter schools. These schools are doing extraordinary things for the kids that they serve. Now certainly KIPP is not without it’s flaws – high teacher and student turnover being one – but, would KIPP exist if it was forced to abide by union contracts? In my opinion, it would not – and with the recent change of heart in New York we will have to wait longer to see if that is the case.
May 19th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
You cannot compare KIPP to urban school districts. Urban school districts don’t have the pleasure of forcing bad students out the door. Look at KIPP’s retention rates from year to year. They weed out the ‘bad’ apples and send them back to the district. Further, there is the obvious motivation bias that charters benefit from.
Charters are a great innovation. Kids and their families should have choices. But it is not fair to compare the performance of a charter to a district.
May 19th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
sarge–urban school districts most certainly do have the pleasure of forcing bad (or otherwise undeserable) students out the door. How else to you account for the fact that so few of them make it from 9th grade to 12th grade? Cleveland still contractually provides for “discipline transfers” at teacher’s discretion and Columbus several years ago found that greater responsibility for student mobility than they were eager to admit fell in their own lap. Add to that the ever present back-handed suggestion to unhappy parents that they might want to look into charter schools if they don’t like what is going on in their own school. This doesn’t even touch on such things as special schools for students with an ED label, “alternative to suspension/expulsion” placements or the new Columbus school for the “chronically disruptive.”
It is ridiculously easy to get rid of students. Just keep suspending/expelling them. Unless they enjoy the limited protection of IDEA (and their parents can afford legal counsel), they will go away. What is it that makes you think that things are different in charters?
But–I think that the point is more important than quibbling about either how to get rid of bad kids or demonizing unions. The reality is that we don’t have existing models of urban districts that excelling raising achievement. What is intriguing about KIPP is that it appears to be replicable. Rather than dismissing their experience out of hand with suppositions that they just get rid of undesireables, we should be asking questions about exactly what they do that accounts for not only their success, but also for their ability to carry this success to other settings. For whom are they successful? Are there preconditions within their student body that make for a match with what they have to offer? Or, if KIPP is not a suitable model for urban district to learn from, what successful models are there?
May 19th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
Diane Ravitch’s suggestion that critics point to a state or district that has done well without teacher unions to counter her example of MA that has done well with unions is a horrible way to determine the truth on this matter. Many factors influence student achievement, so isolating the effect of teacher unions would require a rigorous social science research design that could identify the influence of unionization independent of other factors.
Rather than point to a state or district, which proves nothing, I would point people to a rigorous study by Caroline Hoxby in a leading economics journal. The abstract states: “I find that teachers’ unions increase school inputs but reduce productivity sufficiently to have a negative overall effect on student performance.”
See Caroline Minter Hoxby, “How Teachers’ Unions Affect Education Production,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 111, No. 3 (Aug., 1996), pp. 671-718
If Diane Ravitch wants to convince readers that the unions do nothing to lower academic achievement I would challenge her to point to a rigorous piece of social science research that supports her argument rather than spin a story about MA without any controls for extraneous factors.
May 21st, 2009 at 5:49 pm
The auto industry would not be going out of business if the U.S. would just allow them to keep slaves and use those slaves to get the job done. Then, the profit margins would cover (for a while, anyway) the generally poor quality of the product. Still, that is not an argument in support of slavery.
I’m sure many people believe they could improve schools if they could just treat teachers like slaves: requiring them to do whatever is deemed necessary to get the job done in order to compensate for other factors (poverty, family environment, etc.) that is out of their control.
Certainly, any effective improvement to schools will be beneficial for both students and teachers. To pit either group against the other is short-sited and insulting.
February 25th, 2010 at 11:17 am
It is simplistic to suggest that teachers’ unions are causing a deterioration of education quality in the US or anywhere else. The fact of the atter is that there are conditions and circumstances over which teachers have zero control. Often, administrators and school boards latch onto the”next big idea” until they realize it is expensive or they see something shiny and then it’s on to the “next big idea.” This has the effect of creating in teachers the “this too shall pass” attitude that drives down morale. It would be an interesting experiment to turn control of a single urban or reservation school over to the authority of a teachers union with the same leeway given to charter schools. I am willing to bet we would see unparalleled success.