I love the term "superficial racial gap analysis" because it applies, in my opinion, to my entire state, Minnesota. Frequently, in both the local and national press, Minnesota is cited as having pretty much the largest racial wealth inequalities in the nation. That became an especially prominent talking point during the violence following the murder of George Floyd. I do not dispute that there is a large gap, and that a portion of it is very likely caused by racial bias. But I would like people to also factor in another influence: Minnesota traditionally welcomes more foreign and domestic refugees than most other places in the United States. In 2018, Minnesota had 4 percent of the nation's population and 13 percent of the resettled refugees. We also have attracted over the years an oversized number of Black families from places like Gary, Indiana, who were seeking a better life.
Well when you really, truly welcome an influx of Liberians and Hmong and Somali refugees, and families from places in the United States where the economy has disintegrated, you are going to, by definition, have a larger wealth gap between the races. But that gap exists for the RIGHT reasons -- because our social service agencies, including Lutheran Social Services and Catholic charities have been national leaders in resettling people who need the help, and who tend to be non-white.
I am proud of this Minnesota tradition. It does not mean we don't have our problems, some of them severe -- the Minneapolis Police Department has been an issue for decades. It means we have our good side, too, and that should not be eclipsed by "superficial racial gap analysis."
You can also factor in that whites in Minnesota outperform whites in most of the country, whether you're looking at life expectancy, income, vaccination rates, crime rates, etc. In terms of life expectancy MN is 3rd for Whites but only 11th for Blacks.
Following "Gapism" all the way to its logical conclusion, the 79.3 life expectancy for Blacks in Minnesota, higher than white americans' 78.6 national average is evidence of racism.
And the most racist place in America is clearly Washington DC, where white average LE is 87.5 but blacks are only at 72.6
Sorry this is off-topic; just couldn't resist when I saw that phrase. Thanks for reading and please don't let it divert the discussion from DC education reforms.
Not certain I understand the thrust of your argument. Happy to apply any sort of analysis to the Minneapolis Police Department. My admittedly off-topic comment applied to the entire state of Minnesota, a very much larger and more complex entity.
> The Washington Teachers Union, however, has been furiously opposed to it for years and continues to be weirdly preoccupied with job protection for a tiny minority of weak performers
Yes, weird, and definitely not a common property of virtually all American unions.
1. Unions embrace social justice as a new rhetorical technique to put the needs of individual members ahead of society's needs, in this case, children;
2. Democrats cannot admit that social justice is sometimes used as a dishonest rhetorical technique, nor can they admit that American unions prioritize terrible members over everybody else;
3. MY is forced to bring a knife to a gun fight with today's post and pretend this is all very strange and unexpected.
This is so extreme. All unions are obsessed with protecting terrible members? Meatpacking? Mining? Go watch Harlan County USA, it’s on Kanopy, and come back to this discussion when you’ve chilled out a little.
MY’s tone feels exactly fine to me as a public school teacher who has worked in urban unionized schools and in urban charters and public schools without unions. Without unions, school districts with terrible pay never get better pay or better teachers. Rhee’s ideas were way too extreme, the union and the public pushed back against them, and the compromise sounds like a great system to me. It needs to keep getting tweaked, not thrown out and replaced with radical school choice stuff. Charter and urban schools without unions have terrible teacher retention and often have terrible cheating scandals because they measure only test scores, not holistic measures.
"Without unions, school districts with terrible pay never get better pay or better teachers."
My grandparents were teachers, and my wife as well. I love teachers. I detest teachers unions. They protect bad teachers, and stand in the way of education reform at every turn.
We should have full school choice in this country. No kid should be trapped in poorly performing public schools.
Even if Rhee was 100% awesome and correct you can’t have someone who goes out of there way to piss people off and trash talk for years on end. She had to at some point be replaced by a go along to get along typ of person.
Is there any research that unionized teachers are better than non unionized? I've heard both this and the opposite bandied about quite a bit, but don't know if there is actual research.
There’s just such wide variance in contexts between these districts that it seems like it would be impossible to tell. Like unionized teachers in wealthy suburbs are going to seem great based on standardized tests and probably on the one observation they get a year and so would non unionized teachers in a similar district. We’re almost always talking about low income urban schools in these conversations, and the insane amount of churn in particularly high performing charters as well as the frankly insane requirements they have for parents make me feel like they’ll always look good on the research and never be able to scale up.
It seems to me that any union worth its dues to members, is going to behave in exactly this way. Solidarity is the essential value. Gross underrperformers pay their dues, too. In the public sector, this puts unions in tension with the wider public interest. It is a conundrum. I don’t know a solution, other than the radical one of banning public sector unions. Which is an uneasy choice.
I think part of what's at work is a side effect of humans' tendency to tribal loyalty. People will tolerate much pain and suffering to those they consider outside "their people" -- even inflict it -- before they will tolerate even a tiny amount of suffering to "their people". When Michelle Rhee appears on a magazine cover with a broom to symbolize sweeping out the trash, I think many teachers see a bitter enemy of their people, not, say, a potential ally who might clear out obstacles to the learning of their students before they arrive in their classroom. I don't know what it takes to shift this mentality -- I certainly think that more money overall, with higher job pressure on me and everyone else, is a tradeoff that supports me and "my people" more than it undermines us.
Why is this weird? A union represents a a group of people (teachers). One thing groups of people generally agree on is that they would like to "not be fired." The union should be in favor of their members not being fired, maximizing pay, and such.
The school board should be in favor of minimizing pay, eliminating poor performing teachers and such. Negotiations consist of coming to some agreement where one is traded off against the other.
I know this is going to sound naive, but there is a win/win here, which is teacher unions and school boards could be about producing excellent outcomes for children and society, not keeping incompetent people in their jobs or saving money for the sake of saving money.
The problem is the adversarial nature of the approach taken by both sides of this fight eliminate any trust or win/win thinking, which as the world shows us, results in poor outcomes most of the time.
I am a company owner. I am hiring engineers, like, right now. I can assure you we're thinking on win/win terms, not fixed mindset or in adversarial terms. We've interview folks who volunteer to take lesser salaries in exchange for more equity because they believe in what we are doing. Early employees will own a substantial portion of the company, which aligns interest.
I'm an engineer. And I participate in hiring. Perhaps we are defining adversarial differently. I certainly think about "expectation anchoring" and such during any salary negotiations. I consider that adversarial in that two sides have largely opposing objectives.
Early phase startup. Super simple, our objective is to get our ARR as quickly to 1M+ as we can, so we can close the next round of funding and grow the company. Without that, there is nothing else to negotiate.
Of course, if they want benefits we can't provide, or something else that I cannot do because my fiduciary duty is to the company first, yes, that point will in fact be adversarial.
But that does not color the whole relationship. On most things, interests are aligned, which allows for the kind of trust you need in order to achieve things that venture funded startups are supposed to accomplish.
The problem isn't negotiation, its over-negotiation. Everyone who does negotiation for a living at some point runs into the pain in the ass on the other side of the table who won't cede even a small, insignificant issue over some hairbrained principle, even if it would be in mutual interest to do so.
One example - I had negotiated a deal for about 80 engineers to do services work for a client. We had an hourly rate of X. The customer got bought by private equity, who installed some vendor management people, and demanded I cut my rate for the people by 30%, or we lose the contract.
Unbeknownst to them, I was under pressure from my management to exit the contract, because the rates were already about 15% below market, and we had active work on which we could restaff everyone. So when they came to me with the request, they were a little surprised when I said "cool, I will initiate contract termination paperwork tomorrow".
Of course, they came back puzzled. They had no idea I had a BATNA that was higher than what they already were giving us. They ended up backing off the request entirely, and even agreeing to the rate increase to keep people on, because as it turned out, the work we were doing was critical to their growth plans.
Back to the teacher union context, I struggle to see who's incentives align around keeping incompetent teachers. Certainly not the teachers, who trade a tiny bit of job security for a ton of ill will from their community. Not the union who gets little in additional dues and, TBH, arguably might piss off their own members by keeping around dead weight.
The thing that irritates me the most about some of these unions is that assuming win/lose in every interaction is a rookie negotiation mistake. There are unions in other countries - germany in particular, that do this much better and have better reputations.
There's a continual presumption that if we toss bad teachers, good ones will be available to hire. Based on my experience I am extremely doubtful of this in most subjects.
I know that bad programmers produce negative value. They literally mess up things for their peers who have to do extra work.
All occupations have this problem. If you have firefighters who have a habit of lighting things on fire for fun, you might consider them not that good and maybe counterproductive.
Teachers who suck - make things better by simply leaving the profession. Same could be said for doctors, lawyers, programmers, or any other professional job.
There may be cases where we need to find better roles for people in their occupation where they are more well suited to do good work. Move people to a school where they can thrive. But the union structure is so rigid that there is no "find a place to succeed". With that off the table, firing is the only reasonable alternative.
I agree it's not actually weird. Matt only said it was "weird" because he feels compelled to color inside certain lines of Democratic Party orthodoxy. It's pandering. It's bullshit.
There is nothing weird about it. What is weird is teacher's unions ever claiming to be going on strike or negotiating a contract for the good of the students. That has never happened except incidentally on class size in the entire history of teacher's unions.
How about facts? Will they do? Examine the Chicago teacher's strike. What they did there and subsequently after receiving a very generous compensation package was one of the most appalling examples of such hypocrisy that I have ever seen in long life.
If you're only removing 1% or so, then just don't fire them. Switch the useless teachers to a no-show job. 1% is a rounding error in the budget.
If you want to get rid of people from doing a job they aren't good at, then you can do that without stopping paying them. If teachers' pay is not at risk, then the whole process becomes much less adversarial.
This idea fails to account for the incentive effect of implementing the policy. What would the new teacher applicant pool look like in ten years if the policy was "never fire the least effective employees" in the District without a change in policy in Arlington, Fairfax, or Montgomery counties?
Sure, but if what I do is in sufficient demand, I can play them off their competitors too! I'm not anti-union by any means, just saying that there is a balance to strike along multiple dimensions and we can debate where that should lie.
It is demonstrably in the interest of the union to make sure they *don't* defend their worst members at the expense of all the others. Especially when it harms their political standing in a broader community, leading to bond issues being denied and therefore everyone in that system getting a smaller pie to work from.
It is the pinnacle of short term reductionist thinking to pretend that long term consequences of over-negotiation don't exist. Defending the worst 1% of teachers or police or any other profession, regardless of how bad they are at their job, is a lose/lose proposition for everyone involved - even those who keep a job they are terrible at who otherwise don't get to find something that better utilizes their talents.
My wife's a public teacher. So is my mom. So is the guy who was the best man at my wedding. So is his wife. Basically, I love public school teachers.
That said, education reform should never be about the teachers, it should entirely be about the students. We should pay teachers more, but not because we think they're great and we want to reward them. We should pay them more to attract more talent to the field and so we can fire the bad ones *in order to help students learn.*
Actually getting rid of the bottom 1% is reasonable and making the bottom 3% shape up or ship out is also reasonable 97% of teachers really are doing the best they can. Frankly there is a lot of self selection going on the first few years
I suspect this runs into measurement accuracy problems. That is, if I evaluate someone as being terrible, even with a measurement error they're probably at least bad. So we get rid of them.
But what if someone has a bad year? Or some measurement error shows someone as bad who's actually just mediocre? What if they have room to improve?
Strong agreement. I would go further - and you very well may disagree strongly with me -- and suggest the following trade/negotiation: far, far higher cash compensation for teachers, in exchange for (i) principals gaining total authority to terminate worst performing teachers, (ii) longer school year, and (iii) defined contribution benefits. Don't worry; I know my concept is a pipe dream.
This is (unfortunately) a very salient point. I have heard from several public school teachers how much they had to struggle against the peculiarities and resentments of their principal (or, in several cases, vice-principal) in order to be able to teach the best way they believe they can.
Very fair point. Private sector companies fail if middle managers fire the wrong worker bees, but public schools are a state sponsored monopoly and face very limited accountability in the market place. Good point.
Schools and school districts certainly face direct competition for teacher talent from other schools and school districts. Certainly an incompetent Principal who fires the wrong teachers will create a voluntary teacher turnover signal.
Seniority can create impediments to switching districts --- if you've got, say, 15 years' seniority in District A and would have to give that up and start at the bottom in neighbouring District B, that's going to make you think twice about the move. Similarly, pension plan vesting probably reduces inter-state mobility for teachers, even beyond having to get re-licensed etc.
I wonder whether anyone's looked into how big these effects are....
Lewis Ferebee: "There are elements of systemic racism embedded in all systems and organizations."
MY: "But I think it’s a mistake to concede that there is evidence here of “systemic racism.”"
From that quote, you might think she has conceded less than that: not that there is any evidence *here* of systemic racism, but simply that, based on past experience with human systems, there is likely to be systemic racism.
If I run a restaurant kitchen and you ask me whether there are any pathogenic microbes on the surfaces, I'm going to say, "we prioritize cleaning and sanitation, and we have no evidence of microbial contamination, but based on the experience of other kitchens, hospitals, and even clean rooms, I think it is very likely that there are some pathogens on some surfaces."
Systemic racism, on this view, is as pervasive as dust. And conceding its likely presence is simply a nod to original sin.
I'm not saying this is an accurate or helpful way to view institutions, esp ones you are in charge of. But it's different from conceding that there's *evidence here*.
From the WaPo article: "Ferebee said the school system would develop anti-bias training for the people who evaluate teachers. According to the D.C.’s data, 70 percent of people who evaluate teachers are Black and 23 percent are White."
I'd be interested to learn more about this anti-bias training since its focus will be primarily on evaluators who are Black (and as MY notes, the white evaluators tended to rate Black teachers more highly).
It could in fact be that these Black evaluators are more negatively biased against teachers of their own race, and need to have that brought to their attention, but this is not typically how that conversation goes.
Ferebee also notes the "persistent culture of fear" the teachers face. This in a system where 84% are rated highly effective or effective, and one percent ineffective. This is Lake Woebegone territory.
> If I run a restaurant kitchen and you ask me whether there are any pathogenic microbes on the surfaces, I'm going to say...
No you aren't, certainly not if you are a restaurant owner! Yes, it's literally true, but completely unhelpful. If you run a restaurant, and someone asks you if the kitchen is clean, you are going to say yes, of course it is, we care a great deal about having a safe, sanitary environment. If you go rambling on about how bacteria exists everywhere, you're just going to chase away your customers, who will be convinced that your kitchen is a cesspit.
It may not be sub optimal, it may be strategic and perhaps perfectly optimal for vaguely nodding towards the concerns about supposed racism while also not committing to meaningfully compromising the system that’s in place. We won’t know until we see the next steps.
The point that the highest rated teachers are concentrated in the schools in wealthier neighborhoods raises some questions. For example, are these teachers actually higher performing, or do they just appear to be because they have better students? And if they are actually higher performing teachers, what would happen to teacher retention and teacher and student performance if the district reassigned teachers to achieve a more equitable distribution of effective teachers across schools?
DC being a single district, it has a better opportunity than many places to find ways to break the link between housing prices and access to good public schools.
Interesting, I don't know about what they do in NYC.
But there's something wrong with a public school system where the highest rated teachers just so happen to end up in the most privileged neighborhoods. Either there's a problem with the rating system and the teachers aren't actually better, or the state is perpetuating inequality by giving better teachers to those who are already the most privileged.
A randomized mandatory rotation policy for teachers would seem like one way to address that, but maybe it causes other problems.
Or highly rated teachers in less privileged schools are more likely to jump ship to another district? Although these retention rates are really high, so that seems less likely.
I found it interesting, though perhaps not surprising, that black assessors gave lower marks to black teachers than white assessors gave to black teachers. Once again, white supremacy works in mysterious ways.
Assuming this is a straightforward comment with no element of sarcasm, are you saying that you think "white supremacy" is the only possible explanation for this outcome?
My last sentence was deeply sarcastic. I do not subscribe to the critical race theory inspired expansion of the definition of "white supremacy." I strongly disagree with the likes of Kendi; I do not think that disparate outcomes between ethnic groups can only be the result of systemic racism or white supremacy in action.
Figure 19 seems to indicate so- Latinos rated by Latinos is the lowest ranked category, followed by Latinos rated by blacks, then blacks by blacks, then blacks by Latinos.
Looking at Figure 24, we both interpreted it to say that White assessors gave Black teachers -0.04 scores compared to Black assessors (it's on a scale of 1-4). BUT Black assessors gave White teachers +0.04 compared to White assessors (0.08 vs. 0.04).
If we take the baseline as 0 (Black assessor/Black teacher), it goes like this:
White assessors: White +0.04, Black -0.04, Hispanic -0.08, Asian -0.10
Black assessors: White +0.08, Black 0.0, Hispanic 0.0, Asian 0.0
Hispanic assessors: White +0.12, Black -0.06, Hispanic -0.13 (no Asian data)
I struggle to find any systemic racism in this data. Not to mention that the variation is tiny - if we assume 1 is the low and 4 is the high, the biggest difference of 0.12-0.13 is around 3%.
I apologize to Matt! Looking at the data in Fig. 19, it shows that Black assessors gave Black teachers an average score of 3.19, while White assessors gave Black teachers an average score of 3.23, just as Matt said. Actually, I'm having trouble reconciling Fig. 19 with Fig. 24 quantitatively, although I think the message is broadly the same.
There is a quick way to determine which teacher's suck and why. Basically you get a bunch of them together at a party and pour two or three glasses of wine into each one. They get very informative of which other teachers shouldn't even be allowed on school property. In vino veritas.
I would guess a lot of time servers in the over-50 cohort and a lot more idealists in the 35-and-under. If you've stayed a public school teacher into your fifties, a large portion of your comp is accrued pension benefits and their exponential growth as you get older. Not a lot of incentive to actually teach, but a lot of incentive not to get fired for incompetence. Maybe we need some multi-variate analysis of how this plays out with actual human beings.
Can we officially be done, on the left, with defending teacher unions? These are the same people who started aligning themselves with Ron Desantis on fighting vaccine mandates. They generally create the least good optics for liberals because they consistently and without the least bit of shame pursue agendas that are actively harmful to children.
At some point, just like police unions defending bad apples because they cargo cult on solidarity above all else, even common sense... teacher unions have to be viewed through the same lens. Good unions don't defend their worst members at the cost of good faith relationships with the people they serve... but most public sector unions have ceased to even try to be reasonable in that regard.
Unions are there to back up their members. Police unions and Teachers unions aren't the bad guys. Police don't want to be fired. Teachers don't want to be fired. Their representation should back them up on that.
The employer is the guy who can do the firing. The employer is the one who decided to negotiate away the right to fire. Likely he saved a few dollars in compensation or possibly severance.
If I my boss offered me 10% less pay but he could never fire me, I would definitely take it. I would personally fire anyone representing me in negotiations who didn't do the same.
I don't think it's that simple. Keeping people in a job they are terrible at *doesn't serve the person keeping the job*. They would literally be better off doing something that they are good at and not keeping a job they suck at.
I would never take 10% less pay to avoid being fired. Because even if I did, they would figure out a way to make my life suck and stunt my growth to the point where I wanted to leave.
I suppose there are people who look at the world strictly transactionally. Good for them, I guess. But any union that is going to defend anyone, regardless of merit, working in a school (science teachers teaching young earth creationism? convicted child molestors?) - is going to get a lot of opposition and lose support of just about everyone not in the union (and, to be noted, many inside the union)
How do you not get that it is the school boards responsibility to hire good teachers (generally for as little pay as possible) and the unions responsibility to represent a bunch of random people looking for jobs teaching?
Where it is that you live such that your school board decided to save money by ensuring that convicted child molesters were able to be employed in their schools? And why is it you don't think that means you should have a problem with your school board?
I think Aaron is talking about the number of egregious examples of unions supporting truly terrible people who have done terrible things. The Neal Erickson case jumps to mind. I think we can all agree a better position for the union would to disavow union members and representation in such situations.
Yes, although I would be inclined to think that was an individuals error. As in, his job requirements said that independent of reason for firing he should seek renumeration, whereas most anyone can see that he should have sought clarification unless he (the union) was in fact legally bound to do so.
The plug for zoning reform at the end was weak. If DC scrapped zoning and the price of real estate west of 16th street fell by 15%, the vast majority of families would still be priced out of the good schools. This includes 99% of working poor families.
To get real equity, you would have to decouple school attendance from ability to live in a fancy neighborhood. This is called busing. Nothing triggers white flight like busing! 38% of kids in DC get food stamps. If they were spread evenly throughout the system, 38% of kids in every class would be on food stamps. Plenty of households that are far from middle class respectability make too much to qualify for food stamps. The educational outcomes of kids whose households make a bit too much to get good stamps are hardly inspiring, eg most people who graduate from residential four year colleges come from the top third of the income distribution.
White progressives are happy to send their kids to schools with middle class minorities and immigrant strivers. I doubt they are ready for economic integration.
DC already partially does this and Matt does readers who are not familiar with the weird quirks of DCPS a disservice by not mentioning it.
As a city resident, you have the right to apply to any school in the city for attendance. The best public schools in the city, which all feed into Wilson High School in the lily white west of the park neighborhood, are much more diverse than you would think. Wilson is 39% white, 29% black, and 22% Hispanic despite the neighborhood being 80%+ white, if not 90%.
The problem is that a lot of the black and hispanic kids who attend Wilson have to trek a huge distance from the poorer, eastern parts of the city to attend it. Commutes of an hour or more aren't unheard of for these kids to get there. Building subsidized housing near Wilson could help alleviate this burden on these types of kids and their parents. Which would be good.
application is still a sort of economic filter, albeit a less demanding one. are there stats on the economic composition of dioxin high, eg percent of students on food stamps, below 200% of poverty etc. those souls. e fascinating
Charter schools are listed on a separate website since its technically a separate school system.
As an aside, I hate how often the conversation regarding schools in DC gets simplified into the same neat little boxes as our larger discussions about racism and politics on a national scale. Charters are wildly popular in DC, and the wide latitudes charters can take in pedagogy has revealed some really interesting differences between what white and black families find important in their kids educations and how this affects achievement.
8% of the students at Wilson are “economically disadvantaged” versus 100% of the students at Anacostia high. School choice seems better at helping middle class parents (of all races) work the system than achieving economic integration. In fact, those stats show pretty stark income segregation.
Not that it makes a huge change in the data but there is some significant rounding in the poverty rate that I believe ties into the schools being title 1. I think (I'm sure someone smarter than me can verify) that if a school qualifies as Title 1, the poverty rate is listed at 100% no matter the actual breakdown.
For example, Powell Elementary in Ward 4, which has become an increasingly desirable school for both poor families and gentrifiers, is listed as 100% economically disadvantaged, despite having 12% white student body. Due to the neighborhood and DC's demographics, you can safely assume that basically 0% of the white student body comes from economically disadvantaged families, and likely they come from significantly upper income homes. Likewise, the school draws from an area that also includes middle and upper income black and hispanic families, so I'd guess a small but real portion of those students are not economically disadvantaged as well.
This isn't to say that the overwhelming majority of kids attending Anacostia high aren't poor, nor is the disparity between it and Wilson any less stark or real, but just to point out there's some nuance in those numbers.
1. The employer-employee relationship isn't always adversarial, but unions are created to be adversarial. So a unionized industry will almost inevitably have adversarial relations, especially a large unionized industry. It's baked into unions' principal-agent relationship. They are duty-bound to maximize the best interests of their members, just as corporate CEOs are duty-bound to increase shareholder value and lawyers are duty-bound to zealously represent their clients. It's very difficult for them to moderate their advocacy for their principals' interests for the sake of the greater good. It's not impossible, but it isn't how the system is designed to work. Their default setting is to represent their principals' interests to the exclusion of anyone else's.
2. This doesn't mean unions are bad. We have lawyers and business corporations for a reason, and we have unions for a reason too. Sometimes we as a society have to mediate between two competing legitimate points of view, and we decide the best way to ensure a just result is to "arm both sides." It's like checks and balances in government. If both sides fight vigorously, hopefully the outcome will land on the best/most truthful spot in the middle.
3. Because the process is adversarial, it is always in unions' interests to refuse to do whatever management wants their members to do. It is by refusing to do whatever management wants that the union can demand that management pay the union's members to do that thing.
4. That's generally fine in the private sector, but in the public sector there are two complications. First, in the public sector it is management's (i.e. the government's) job to seek the good of society, not to increase shareholder value. That doesn't mean it always does that, of course - not by a long shot. But it is supposed to, and so it often does. Therefore, because it is in unions' interests to refuse to do whatever management prioritizes, it is generally in public employee unions' interests to refuse to make any changes that would benefit society. Second, management also has a principal-agent dynamic, and while its agents (i.e. politicians) do have an incentive to seek the good of society, its principals (i.e. voters) don't always place the *highest* priority on that. So when push comes to shove, you'll often find that management would rather not pay unions extra to agree to stronger accountability for bad apples, but instead would rather lower taxes. In other words, if you "arm both sides" in the public sector hoping they'll eventually land on the most societally beneficial settlement, you may be disappointed.
5. This does not mean that public employee unions are bad. If they didn't exist at all, their members could be exploited. It does mean, however, that you shouldn't be surprised when they oppose changes that would require their members to do good things. That is, in fact, what you should always expect them to do.
So... can we talk about Chicago and the teacher's strike there? That was amazing to behold. I will never forget the MSNBC panel devoted to this urgent affair. It had all the stars, Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, I think Reid as well. They had representatives of the Teacher's unions as well as an astroturf parent's association that ardently supported everything the teacher's wanted. Which evaporated as soon as the deal was inked. And how they did talk? They talked about the crappy libraries, the run down school infrastructure, the terrible HVAC, the obsolete and inadequate school computers. You'd almost think the teacher's union actually cared about these things. Sadly, when they got to the bargaining table every single one of those issues just evaporated. And the settlement, every nickle of it, over a billion dollars, went to guess who? To be honest I never expected anything else. Unions bro!
Ah but what they did later was one of the shittiest things I have ever seen. When that big settlement forced the closure of Chicago's oldest and most rundown schools (which were predominantly black) and the students were directed to newer schools in better condition the union went nuts. And then we were treated to on air assertions by Melissa Harris Perry that keeping these Black Students segregated in run down shithole schools there was no money to fix was in the student's best interest. She even had one study to back it up.
And so we were treated to union allegations that the Mayor was racist because he did not support segregation. A unique situation you think? No the same allegations were leveled at the Black mayor of Philadelphia. He was racist. Can't have Black students being permitted to attend better newer schools even when the student/teacher ratio isn't violated. Why it might cause a few teachers to get laid off.
Given Matthew's unconventional opinion on allowing all children of whatever age to vote I would like to know his position on allowing all students of whatever age to evaluate their teacher's performance. Just like they do for college staff even before such students have reached the age of majority.
Well, you have you use sources in accordance with their strengths.
The major national dailies, for instance, are mostly good for offering detailed advice on the micromanagement of tactical extraction from combat catastrophes that they cheerleaded us into in the first place. All the best airlift-command experts edit the newspapers.
I'm not a teacher (putting this out there ahead of accusations of bias). I have 2 kids in public school (not DCPS). Of all the metrics by which I judge teachers and schools, the standardized tests are low down the list, unless the scores are outrageously bad.
The value of the results is only as good as the tests, and the tests are worthless. I know that "teaching to the test" is constantly cited, but even in my suburban district, I've watched it. Curricular changes have all been made in line with improving test scores, and they've been particularly rough on ELA. They focus on abstracted skills and shorter passages. There isn't coherent content.
I love the term "superficial racial gap analysis" because it applies, in my opinion, to my entire state, Minnesota. Frequently, in both the local and national press, Minnesota is cited as having pretty much the largest racial wealth inequalities in the nation. That became an especially prominent talking point during the violence following the murder of George Floyd. I do not dispute that there is a large gap, and that a portion of it is very likely caused by racial bias. But I would like people to also factor in another influence: Minnesota traditionally welcomes more foreign and domestic refugees than most other places in the United States. In 2018, Minnesota had 4 percent of the nation's population and 13 percent of the resettled refugees. We also have attracted over the years an oversized number of Black families from places like Gary, Indiana, who were seeking a better life.
Well when you really, truly welcome an influx of Liberians and Hmong and Somali refugees, and families from places in the United States where the economy has disintegrated, you are going to, by definition, have a larger wealth gap between the races. But that gap exists for the RIGHT reasons -- because our social service agencies, including Lutheran Social Services and Catholic charities have been national leaders in resettling people who need the help, and who tend to be non-white.
I am proud of this Minnesota tradition. It does not mean we don't have our problems, some of them severe -- the Minneapolis Police Department has been an issue for decades. It means we have our good side, too, and that should not be eclipsed by "superficial racial gap analysis."
You can also factor in that whites in Minnesota outperform whites in most of the country, whether you're looking at life expectancy, income, vaccination rates, crime rates, etc. In terms of life expectancy MN is 3rd for Whites but only 11th for Blacks.
Following "Gapism" all the way to its logical conclusion, the 79.3 life expectancy for Blacks in Minnesota, higher than white americans' 78.6 national average is evidence of racism.
And the most racist place in America is clearly Washington DC, where white average LE is 87.5 but blacks are only at 72.6
Sorry this is off-topic; just couldn't resist when I saw that phrase. Thanks for reading and please don't let it divert the discussion from DC education reforms.
Not certain I understand the thrust of your argument. Happy to apply any sort of analysis to the Minneapolis Police Department. My admittedly off-topic comment applied to the entire state of Minnesota, a very much larger and more complex entity.
Also not understanding why the label "centrist liberals" -- apparently applied as an epithet here -- has any relevance.
> The Washington Teachers Union, however, has been furiously opposed to it for years and continues to be weirdly preoccupied with job protection for a tiny minority of weak performers
Yes, weird, and definitely not a common property of virtually all American unions.
The story here is:
1. Unions embrace social justice as a new rhetorical technique to put the needs of individual members ahead of society's needs, in this case, children;
2. Democrats cannot admit that social justice is sometimes used as a dishonest rhetorical technique, nor can they admit that American unions prioritize terrible members over everybody else;
3. MY is forced to bring a knife to a gun fight with today's post and pretend this is all very strange and unexpected.
For the kids' sake - I do wish you good luck.
This is so extreme. All unions are obsessed with protecting terrible members? Meatpacking? Mining? Go watch Harlan County USA, it’s on Kanopy, and come back to this discussion when you’ve chilled out a little.
MY’s tone feels exactly fine to me as a public school teacher who has worked in urban unionized schools and in urban charters and public schools without unions. Without unions, school districts with terrible pay never get better pay or better teachers. Rhee’s ideas were way too extreme, the union and the public pushed back against them, and the compromise sounds like a great system to me. It needs to keep getting tweaked, not thrown out and replaced with radical school choice stuff. Charter and urban schools without unions have terrible teacher retention and often have terrible cheating scandals because they measure only test scores, not holistic measures.
Pretty much. It is literally black letter labor law that unions are required to defend the interests of their members regardless of their behavior.
Yes, unions were important bulwarks in the past. Since then they’ve helped bring down industries across the world thanks to rent seeking.
"Without unions, school districts with terrible pay never get better pay or better teachers."
My grandparents were teachers, and my wife as well. I love teachers. I detest teachers unions. They protect bad teachers, and stand in the way of education reform at every turn.
We should have full school choice in this country. No kid should be trapped in poorly performing public schools.
Even if Rhee was 100% awesome and correct you can’t have someone who goes out of there way to piss people off and trash talk for years on end. She had to at some point be replaced by a go along to get along typ of person.
She was, and Kaya Henderson carried out 100% of her policies.
Is there any research that unionized teachers are better than non unionized? I've heard both this and the opposite bandied about quite a bit, but don't know if there is actual research.
There’s just such wide variance in contexts between these districts that it seems like it would be impossible to tell. Like unionized teachers in wealthy suburbs are going to seem great based on standardized tests and probably on the one observation they get a year and so would non unionized teachers in a similar district. We’re almost always talking about low income urban schools in these conversations, and the insane amount of churn in particularly high performing charters as well as the frankly insane requirements they have for parents make me feel like they’ll always look good on the research and never be able to scale up.
Yeah see below, calling workers “rent seekers” rather than, you know, humans.
The fact you can't debate the point is telling.
"have no useful advice for what else to base politics off of"
Maybe competent and effective government. If we had more of that you would find people much more willing to fund it.
It seems to me that any union worth its dues to members, is going to behave in exactly this way. Solidarity is the essential value. Gross underrperformers pay their dues, too. In the public sector, this puts unions in tension with the wider public interest. It is a conundrum. I don’t know a solution, other than the radical one of banning public sector unions. Which is an uneasy choice.
Citizens could more actively push our representatives to insist on reasonable terms in contract negotiations.
I think part of what's at work is a side effect of humans' tendency to tribal loyalty. People will tolerate much pain and suffering to those they consider outside "their people" -- even inflict it -- before they will tolerate even a tiny amount of suffering to "their people". When Michelle Rhee appears on a magazine cover with a broom to symbolize sweeping out the trash, I think many teachers see a bitter enemy of their people, not, say, a potential ally who might clear out obstacles to the learning of their students before they arrive in their classroom. I don't know what it takes to shift this mentality -- I certainly think that more money overall, with higher job pressure on me and everyone else, is a tradeoff that supports me and "my people" more than it undermines us.
Totally agree.
Why is this weird? A union represents a a group of people (teachers). One thing groups of people generally agree on is that they would like to "not be fired." The union should be in favor of their members not being fired, maximizing pay, and such.
The school board should be in favor of minimizing pay, eliminating poor performing teachers and such. Negotiations consist of coming to some agreement where one is traded off against the other.
I know this is going to sound naive, but there is a win/win here, which is teacher unions and school boards could be about producing excellent outcomes for children and society, not keeping incompetent people in their jobs or saving money for the sake of saving money.
The problem is the adversarial nature of the approach taken by both sides of this fight eliminate any trust or win/win thinking, which as the world shows us, results in poor outcomes most of the time.
The employer employee hiring relationship is by definition adversarial.
Says you. With no evidence.
I am a company owner. I am hiring engineers, like, right now. I can assure you we're thinking on win/win terms, not fixed mindset or in adversarial terms. We've interview folks who volunteer to take lesser salaries in exchange for more equity because they believe in what we are doing. Early employees will own a substantial portion of the company, which aligns interest.
I'm an engineer. And I participate in hiring. Perhaps we are defining adversarial differently. I certainly think about "expectation anchoring" and such during any salary negotiations. I consider that adversarial in that two sides have largely opposing objectives.
Early phase startup. Super simple, our objective is to get our ARR as quickly to 1M+ as we can, so we can close the next round of funding and grow the company. Without that, there is nothing else to negotiate.
Of course, if they want benefits we can't provide, or something else that I cannot do because my fiduciary duty is to the company first, yes, that point will in fact be adversarial.
But that does not color the whole relationship. On most things, interests are aligned, which allows for the kind of trust you need in order to achieve things that venture funded startups are supposed to accomplish.
The problem isn't negotiation, its over-negotiation. Everyone who does negotiation for a living at some point runs into the pain in the ass on the other side of the table who won't cede even a small, insignificant issue over some hairbrained principle, even if it would be in mutual interest to do so.
One example - I had negotiated a deal for about 80 engineers to do services work for a client. We had an hourly rate of X. The customer got bought by private equity, who installed some vendor management people, and demanded I cut my rate for the people by 30%, or we lose the contract.
Unbeknownst to them, I was under pressure from my management to exit the contract, because the rates were already about 15% below market, and we had active work on which we could restaff everyone. So when they came to me with the request, they were a little surprised when I said "cool, I will initiate contract termination paperwork tomorrow".
Of course, they came back puzzled. They had no idea I had a BATNA that was higher than what they already were giving us. They ended up backing off the request entirely, and even agreeing to the rate increase to keep people on, because as it turned out, the work we were doing was critical to their growth plans.
Back to the teacher union context, I struggle to see who's incentives align around keeping incompetent teachers. Certainly not the teachers, who trade a tiny bit of job security for a ton of ill will from their community. Not the union who gets little in additional dues and, TBH, arguably might piss off their own members by keeping around dead weight.
The thing that irritates me the most about some of these unions is that assuming win/lose in every interaction is a rookie negotiation mistake. There are unions in other countries - germany in particular, that do this much better and have better reputations.
There's a continual presumption that if we toss bad teachers, good ones will be available to hire. Based on my experience I am extremely doubtful of this in most subjects.
I know that bad programmers produce negative value. They literally mess up things for their peers who have to do extra work.
All occupations have this problem. If you have firefighters who have a habit of lighting things on fire for fun, you might consider them not that good and maybe counterproductive.
Teachers who suck - make things better by simply leaving the profession. Same could be said for doctors, lawyers, programmers, or any other professional job.
There may be cases where we need to find better roles for people in their occupation where they are more well suited to do good work. Move people to a school where they can thrive. But the union structure is so rigid that there is no "find a place to succeed". With that off the table, firing is the only reasonable alternative.
I agree it's not actually weird. Matt only said it was "weird" because he feels compelled to color inside certain lines of Democratic Party orthodoxy. It's pandering. It's bullshit.
There is nothing weird about it. What is weird is teacher's unions ever claiming to be going on strike or negotiating a contract for the good of the students. That has never happened except incidentally on class size in the entire history of teacher's unions.
Links please.
How about facts? Will they do? Examine the Chicago teacher's strike. What they did there and subsequently after receiving a very generous compensation package was one of the most appalling examples of such hypocrisy that I have ever seen in long life.
So no links then...
Nope. I don't work for you.
If you're only removing 1% or so, then just don't fire them. Switch the useless teachers to a no-show job. 1% is a rounding error in the budget.
If you want to get rid of people from doing a job they aren't good at, then you can do that without stopping paying them. If teachers' pay is not at risk, then the whole process becomes much less adversarial.
This idea fails to account for the incentive effect of implementing the policy. What would the new teacher applicant pool look like in ten years if the policy was "never fire the least effective employees" in the District without a change in policy in Arlington, Fairfax, or Montgomery counties?
Actually it seems it's about 4% or so. Moreover, I'm sure some of those people are people you just wouldn't want to employ.
I don't know, I feel the way to best maximize my pay is for the lower performers to make less (or be fired) and that money given to me instead.
You are only one dues-payer. Better to have two.
Sure, but if what I do is in sufficient demand, I can play them off their competitors too! I'm not anti-union by any means, just saying that there is a balance to strike along multiple dimensions and we can debate where that should lie.
It is demonstrably in the interest of the union to make sure they *don't* defend their worst members at the expense of all the others. Especially when it harms their political standing in a broader community, leading to bond issues being denied and therefore everyone in that system getting a smaller pie to work from.
It is the pinnacle of short term reductionist thinking to pretend that long term consequences of over-negotiation don't exist. Defending the worst 1% of teachers or police or any other profession, regardless of how bad they are at their job, is a lose/lose proposition for everyone involved - even those who keep a job they are terrible at who otherwise don't get to find something that better utilizes their talents.
And that is good?
Is it really in the interest of the union workers as a whole to keep a couple of bad apples employed?
All it does is give everyone else a bad name.
My wife's a public teacher. So is my mom. So is the guy who was the best man at my wedding. So is his wife. Basically, I love public school teachers.
That said, education reform should never be about the teachers, it should entirely be about the students. We should pay teachers more, but not because we think they're great and we want to reward them. We should pay them more to attract more talent to the field and so we can fire the bad ones *in order to help students learn.*
We should get rid of the bad ones and not just the worst of the worst.
Actually getting rid of the bottom 1% is reasonable and making the bottom 3% shape up or ship out is also reasonable 97% of teachers really are doing the best they can. Frankly there is a lot of self selection going on the first few years
I suspect this runs into measurement accuracy problems. That is, if I evaluate someone as being terrible, even with a measurement error they're probably at least bad. So we get rid of them.
But what if someone has a bad year? Or some measurement error shows someone as bad who's actually just mediocre? What if they have room to improve?
There's no doubt a performance improvement plan (PIP) that has to be offered, attempted, and failed before someone can be fired.
That really depends on what they are doing. I think back to the famous NY rubber rooms for teachers.
There were many of them that it just wasn't safe to have them around kids.
They should be fired quickly.
True
Strong agreement. I would go further - and you very well may disagree strongly with me -- and suggest the following trade/negotiation: far, far higher cash compensation for teachers, in exchange for (i) principals gaining total authority to terminate worst performing teachers, (ii) longer school year, and (iii) defined contribution benefits. Don't worry; I know my concept is a pipe dream.
1) Oh dear heavens no, you have no idea what the politics in school buildings are like.
2) You know who doesn't want that? Often, parents.
3) DC benefits are a scam.
Actually I used to be one of the board of directors for a charter school so I've got an idea
The longer school year is a huge one. 180 days of school is a joke. That's half the freaken year.
They should have that up around 240 to 250 or so.
250 days a year would be two weeks of vacation a year. No employee should get that little time off.
That's what most people get 2 weeks of vacation a year.
4 at the very most
I think most people should get more vacation. Also, this doesn't allow for the prep and PD work that teachers need to do.
This is (unfortunately) a very salient point. I have heard from several public school teachers how much they had to struggle against the peculiarities and resentments of their principal (or, in several cases, vice-principal) in order to be able to teach the best way they believe they can.
Very fair point. Private sector companies fail if middle managers fire the wrong worker bees, but public schools are a state sponsored monopoly and face very limited accountability in the market place. Good point.
yes, but full school choice would fix that problem
Yes!
Schools and school districts certainly face direct competition for teacher talent from other schools and school districts. Certainly an incompetent Principal who fires the wrong teachers will create a voluntary teacher turnover signal.
Seniority can create impediments to switching districts --- if you've got, say, 15 years' seniority in District A and would have to give that up and start at the bottom in neighbouring District B, that's going to make you think twice about the move. Similarly, pension plan vesting probably reduces inter-state mobility for teachers, even beyond having to get re-licensed etc.
I wonder whether anyone's looked into how big these effects are....
Lewis Ferebee: "There are elements of systemic racism embedded in all systems and organizations."
MY: "But I think it’s a mistake to concede that there is evidence here of “systemic racism.”"
From that quote, you might think she has conceded less than that: not that there is any evidence *here* of systemic racism, but simply that, based on past experience with human systems, there is likely to be systemic racism.
If I run a restaurant kitchen and you ask me whether there are any pathogenic microbes on the surfaces, I'm going to say, "we prioritize cleaning and sanitation, and we have no evidence of microbial contamination, but based on the experience of other kitchens, hospitals, and even clean rooms, I think it is very likely that there are some pathogens on some surfaces."
Systemic racism, on this view, is as pervasive as dust. And conceding its likely presence is simply a nod to original sin.
I'm not saying this is an accurate or helpful way to view institutions, esp ones you are in charge of. But it's different from conceding that there's *evidence here*.
From the WaPo article: "Ferebee said the school system would develop anti-bias training for the people who evaluate teachers. According to the D.C.’s data, 70 percent of people who evaluate teachers are Black and 23 percent are White."
I'd be interested to learn more about this anti-bias training since its focus will be primarily on evaluators who are Black (and as MY notes, the white evaluators tended to rate Black teachers more highly).
It could in fact be that these Black evaluators are more negatively biased against teachers of their own race, and need to have that brought to their attention, but this is not typically how that conversation goes.
Ferebee also notes the "persistent culture of fear" the teachers face. This in a system where 84% are rated highly effective or effective, and one percent ineffective. This is Lake Woebegone territory.
> If I run a restaurant kitchen and you ask me whether there are any pathogenic microbes on the surfaces, I'm going to say...
No you aren't, certainly not if you are a restaurant owner! Yes, it's literally true, but completely unhelpful. If you run a restaurant, and someone asks you if the kitchen is clean, you are going to say yes, of course it is, we care a great deal about having a safe, sanitary environment. If you go rambling on about how bacteria exists everywhere, you're just going to chase away your customers, who will be convinced that your kitchen is a cesspit.
Right, like the administrator could have said,
"Systemic racism is pervasive in institutions, but we don't see any special evidence of it here."
That would have been better.
On the other hand, "public figure speaks in public, expresses own views sub-optimally," is not a shocking occurrence.
It may not be sub optimal, it may be strategic and perhaps perfectly optimal for vaguely nodding towards the concerns about supposed racism while also not committing to meaningfully compromising the system that’s in place. We won’t know until we see the next steps.
"strategic and perhaps perfectly optimal for vaguely nodding"
Agreed, there's more than a hint of DEI boilerplate to the statement, just mouthing pieties because it's expected.
Not uncommon with other invocations of original sin?
The point that the highest rated teachers are concentrated in the schools in wealthier neighborhoods raises some questions. For example, are these teachers actually higher performing, or do they just appear to be because they have better students? And if they are actually higher performing teachers, what would happen to teacher retention and teacher and student performance if the district reassigned teachers to achieve a more equitable distribution of effective teachers across schools?
DC being a single district, it has a better opportunity than many places to find ways to break the link between housing prices and access to good public schools.
They do some regression at the end to try to control for the school level differences.
San Francisco has tried to solve this a couple of different ways, and it has never made anyone happy.
New York City already does this. Their results are decidedly middling.
Interesting, I don't know about what they do in NYC.
But there's something wrong with a public school system where the highest rated teachers just so happen to end up in the most privileged neighborhoods. Either there's a problem with the rating system and the teachers aren't actually better, or the state is perpetuating inequality by giving better teachers to those who are already the most privileged.
A randomized mandatory rotation policy for teachers would seem like one way to address that, but maybe it causes other problems.
Those seem like 2 likely explanations.
Is this a third?
Or highly rated teachers in less privileged schools are more likely to jump ship to another district? Although these retention rates are really high, so that seems less likely.
I found it interesting, though perhaps not surprising, that black assessors gave lower marks to black teachers than white assessors gave to black teachers. Once again, white supremacy works in mysterious ways.
Assuming this is a straightforward comment with no element of sarcasm, are you saying that you think "white supremacy" is the only possible explanation for this outcome?
My last sentence was deeply sarcastic. I do not subscribe to the critical race theory inspired expansion of the definition of "white supremacy." I strongly disagree with the likes of Kendi; I do not think that disparate outcomes between ethnic groups can only be the result of systemic racism or white supremacy in action.
My bad -- sorry to nervously interfere in your well-constructed irony!
No need to apologize! I should have indicated sarcasm, which is much more difficult to communicate in writing than face-to-face. Have a great day!
It's the soft bigotry of low expectations.
It would be interesting to see if the white assessors were harder on the white teachers, or just more lax on everyone?
Figure 19 seems to indicate so- Latinos rated by Latinos is the lowest ranked category, followed by Latinos rated by blacks, then blacks by blacks, then blacks by Latinos.
Presumably this furor will increase the spread.
As David pointed out below, it looks like Matt may have misinterpreted the data: https://dcps.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/dcps/page_content/attachments/EquityDisparate-Outcomes-memo_IMPACT-Review_August-2021.pdf
Looking at Figure 24, we both interpreted it to say that White assessors gave Black teachers -0.04 scores compared to Black assessors (it's on a scale of 1-4). BUT Black assessors gave White teachers +0.04 compared to White assessors (0.08 vs. 0.04).
If we take the baseline as 0 (Black assessor/Black teacher), it goes like this:
White assessors: White +0.04, Black -0.04, Hispanic -0.08, Asian -0.10
Black assessors: White +0.08, Black 0.0, Hispanic 0.0, Asian 0.0
Hispanic assessors: White +0.12, Black -0.06, Hispanic -0.13 (no Asian data)
I struggle to find any systemic racism in this data. Not to mention that the variation is tiny - if we assume 1 is the low and 4 is the high, the biggest difference of 0.12-0.13 is around 3%.
I apologize to Matt! Looking at the data in Fig. 19, it shows that Black assessors gave Black teachers an average score of 3.19, while White assessors gave Black teachers an average score of 3.23, just as Matt said. Actually, I'm having trouble reconciling Fig. 19 with Fig. 24 quantitatively, although I think the message is broadly the same.
There is a quick way to determine which teacher's suck and why. Basically you get a bunch of them together at a party and pour two or three glasses of wine into each one. They get very informative of which other teachers shouldn't even be allowed on school property. In vino veritas.
I would guess a lot of time servers in the over-50 cohort and a lot more idealists in the 35-and-under. If you've stayed a public school teacher into your fifties, a large portion of your comp is accrued pension benefits and their exponential growth as you get older. Not a lot of incentive to actually teach, but a lot of incentive not to get fired for incompetence. Maybe we need some multi-variate analysis of how this plays out with actual human beings.
Can we officially be done, on the left, with defending teacher unions? These are the same people who started aligning themselves with Ron Desantis on fighting vaccine mandates. They generally create the least good optics for liberals because they consistently and without the least bit of shame pursue agendas that are actively harmful to children.
At some point, just like police unions defending bad apples because they cargo cult on solidarity above all else, even common sense... teacher unions have to be viewed through the same lens. Good unions don't defend their worst members at the cost of good faith relationships with the people they serve... but most public sector unions have ceased to even try to be reasonable in that regard.
Unions are there to back up their members. Police unions and Teachers unions aren't the bad guys. Police don't want to be fired. Teachers don't want to be fired. Their representation should back them up on that.
The employer is the guy who can do the firing. The employer is the one who decided to negotiate away the right to fire. Likely he saved a few dollars in compensation or possibly severance.
If I my boss offered me 10% less pay but he could never fire me, I would definitely take it. I would personally fire anyone representing me in negotiations who didn't do the same.
"Police unions and Teachers unions aren't the bad guys"
Yes they are. When they protect bad cops, then people get killed. When they protect bad teachers, then kids don't get educated.
I don't think it's that simple. Keeping people in a job they are terrible at *doesn't serve the person keeping the job*. They would literally be better off doing something that they are good at and not keeping a job they suck at.
I would never take 10% less pay to avoid being fired. Because even if I did, they would figure out a way to make my life suck and stunt my growth to the point where I wanted to leave.
I suppose there are people who look at the world strictly transactionally. Good for them, I guess. But any union that is going to defend anyone, regardless of merit, working in a school (science teachers teaching young earth creationism? convicted child molestors?) - is going to get a lot of opposition and lose support of just about everyone not in the union (and, to be noted, many inside the union)
How do you not get that it is the school boards responsibility to hire good teachers (generally for as little pay as possible) and the unions responsibility to represent a bunch of random people looking for jobs teaching?
Where it is that you live such that your school board decided to save money by ensuring that convicted child molesters were able to be employed in their schools? And why is it you don't think that means you should have a problem with your school board?
What about the infamous NY rubber rooms, where the unions were protecting teachers that were literally a danger to kids
https://nypost.com/2019/11/02/nyc-pays-rubber-room-teacher-six-figures-20-years-after-sex-abuse-claims/
I think Aaron is talking about the number of egregious examples of unions supporting truly terrible people who have done terrible things. The Neal Erickson case jumps to mind. I think we can all agree a better position for the union would to disavow union members and representation in such situations.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2522818/Teachers-union-seeks-10-000-severance-teacher-molested-son.html
Yes, although I would be inclined to think that was an individuals error. As in, his job requirements said that independent of reason for firing he should seek renumeration, whereas most anyone can see that he should have sought clarification unless he (the union) was in fact legally bound to do so.
The plug for zoning reform at the end was weak. If DC scrapped zoning and the price of real estate west of 16th street fell by 15%, the vast majority of families would still be priced out of the good schools. This includes 99% of working poor families.
To get real equity, you would have to decouple school attendance from ability to live in a fancy neighborhood. This is called busing. Nothing triggers white flight like busing! 38% of kids in DC get food stamps. If they were spread evenly throughout the system, 38% of kids in every class would be on food stamps. Plenty of households that are far from middle class respectability make too much to qualify for food stamps. The educational outcomes of kids whose households make a bit too much to get good stamps are hardly inspiring, eg most people who graduate from residential four year colleges come from the top third of the income distribution.
White progressives are happy to send their kids to schools with middle class minorities and immigrant strivers. I doubt they are ready for economic integration.
DC already partially does this and Matt does readers who are not familiar with the weird quirks of DCPS a disservice by not mentioning it.
As a city resident, you have the right to apply to any school in the city for attendance. The best public schools in the city, which all feed into Wilson High School in the lily white west of the park neighborhood, are much more diverse than you would think. Wilson is 39% white, 29% black, and 22% Hispanic despite the neighborhood being 80%+ white, if not 90%.
The problem is that a lot of the black and hispanic kids who attend Wilson have to trek a huge distance from the poorer, eastern parts of the city to attend it. Commutes of an hour or more aren't unheard of for these kids to get there. Building subsidized housing near Wilson could help alleviate this burden on these types of kids and their parents. Which would be good.
application is still a sort of economic filter, albeit a less demanding one. are there stats on the economic composition of dioxin high, eg percent of students on food stamps, below 200% of poverty etc. those souls. e fascinating
There are! DC actually provides a ton of demographic data on their schools. For Wilson it's here -
https://profiles.dcps.dc.gov/Woodrow+Wilson+High+School
Charter schools are listed on a separate website since its technically a separate school system.
As an aside, I hate how often the conversation regarding schools in DC gets simplified into the same neat little boxes as our larger discussions about racism and politics on a national scale. Charters are wildly popular in DC, and the wide latitudes charters can take in pedagogy has revealed some really interesting differences between what white and black families find important in their kids educations and how this affects achievement.
8% of the students at Wilson are “economically disadvantaged” versus 100% of the students at Anacostia high. School choice seems better at helping middle class parents (of all races) work the system than achieving economic integration. In fact, those stats show pretty stark income segregation.
Not that it makes a huge change in the data but there is some significant rounding in the poverty rate that I believe ties into the schools being title 1. I think (I'm sure someone smarter than me can verify) that if a school qualifies as Title 1, the poverty rate is listed at 100% no matter the actual breakdown.
For example, Powell Elementary in Ward 4, which has become an increasingly desirable school for both poor families and gentrifiers, is listed as 100% economically disadvantaged, despite having 12% white student body. Due to the neighborhood and DC's demographics, you can safely assume that basically 0% of the white student body comes from economically disadvantaged families, and likely they come from significantly upper income homes. Likewise, the school draws from an area that also includes middle and upper income black and hispanic families, so I'd guess a small but real portion of those students are not economically disadvantaged as well.
This isn't to say that the overwhelming majority of kids attending Anacostia high aren't poor, nor is the disparity between it and Wilson any less stark or real, but just to point out there's some nuance in those numbers.
*wilson
1. The employer-employee relationship isn't always adversarial, but unions are created to be adversarial. So a unionized industry will almost inevitably have adversarial relations, especially a large unionized industry. It's baked into unions' principal-agent relationship. They are duty-bound to maximize the best interests of their members, just as corporate CEOs are duty-bound to increase shareholder value and lawyers are duty-bound to zealously represent their clients. It's very difficult for them to moderate their advocacy for their principals' interests for the sake of the greater good. It's not impossible, but it isn't how the system is designed to work. Their default setting is to represent their principals' interests to the exclusion of anyone else's.
2. This doesn't mean unions are bad. We have lawyers and business corporations for a reason, and we have unions for a reason too. Sometimes we as a society have to mediate between two competing legitimate points of view, and we decide the best way to ensure a just result is to "arm both sides." It's like checks and balances in government. If both sides fight vigorously, hopefully the outcome will land on the best/most truthful spot in the middle.
3. Because the process is adversarial, it is always in unions' interests to refuse to do whatever management wants their members to do. It is by refusing to do whatever management wants that the union can demand that management pay the union's members to do that thing.
4. That's generally fine in the private sector, but in the public sector there are two complications. First, in the public sector it is management's (i.e. the government's) job to seek the good of society, not to increase shareholder value. That doesn't mean it always does that, of course - not by a long shot. But it is supposed to, and so it often does. Therefore, because it is in unions' interests to refuse to do whatever management prioritizes, it is generally in public employee unions' interests to refuse to make any changes that would benefit society. Second, management also has a principal-agent dynamic, and while its agents (i.e. politicians) do have an incentive to seek the good of society, its principals (i.e. voters) don't always place the *highest* priority on that. So when push comes to shove, you'll often find that management would rather not pay unions extra to agree to stronger accountability for bad apples, but instead would rather lower taxes. In other words, if you "arm both sides" in the public sector hoping they'll eventually land on the most societally beneficial settlement, you may be disappointed.
5. This does not mean that public employee unions are bad. If they didn't exist at all, their members could be exploited. It does mean, however, that you shouldn't be surprised when they oppose changes that would require their members to do good things. That is, in fact, what you should always expect them to do.
So... can we talk about Chicago and the teacher's strike there? That was amazing to behold. I will never forget the MSNBC panel devoted to this urgent affair. It had all the stars, Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, I think Reid as well. They had representatives of the Teacher's unions as well as an astroturf parent's association that ardently supported everything the teacher's wanted. Which evaporated as soon as the deal was inked. And how they did talk? They talked about the crappy libraries, the run down school infrastructure, the terrible HVAC, the obsolete and inadequate school computers. You'd almost think the teacher's union actually cared about these things. Sadly, when they got to the bargaining table every single one of those issues just evaporated. And the settlement, every nickle of it, over a billion dollars, went to guess who? To be honest I never expected anything else. Unions bro!
Ah but what they did later was one of the shittiest things I have ever seen. When that big settlement forced the closure of Chicago's oldest and most rundown schools (which were predominantly black) and the students were directed to newer schools in better condition the union went nuts. And then we were treated to on air assertions by Melissa Harris Perry that keeping these Black Students segregated in run down shithole schools there was no money to fix was in the student's best interest. She even had one study to back it up.
And so we were treated to union allegations that the Mayor was racist because he did not support segregation. A unique situation you think? No the same allegations were leveled at the Black mayor of Philadelphia. He was racist. Can't have Black students being permitted to attend better newer schools even when the student/teacher ratio isn't violated. Why it might cause a few teachers to get laid off.
My advice is to crush them.
Given Matthew's unconventional opinion on allowing all children of whatever age to vote I would like to know his position on allowing all students of whatever age to evaluate their teacher's performance. Just like they do for college staff even before such students have reached the age of majority.
I love the connection at the end. Parking minimums are systemic racism. :-)
Once again, you want to read actual journalism, you have to go to Substack; certainly not to the 2021 clown car Washington Post.
Well, you have you use sources in accordance with their strengths.
The major national dailies, for instance, are mostly good for offering detailed advice on the micromanagement of tactical extraction from combat catastrophes that they cheerleaded us into in the first place. All the best airlift-command experts edit the newspapers.
I'm not a teacher (putting this out there ahead of accusations of bias). I have 2 kids in public school (not DCPS). Of all the metrics by which I judge teachers and schools, the standardized tests are low down the list, unless the scores are outrageously bad.
The value of the results is only as good as the tests, and the tests are worthless. I know that "teaching to the test" is constantly cited, but even in my suburban district, I've watched it. Curricular changes have all been made in line with improving test scores, and they've been particularly rough on ELA. They focus on abstracted skills and shorter passages. There isn't coherent content.