> I’m going to go with no on that, because obviously you can’t do grocery shopping on Zoom [...]
Hasn't the least year shown that you can't do school for kindergardeners on Zoom either?
If you're going to compare a situation where grocery store workers have the same power as teachers, you need them to have the ability to convince people that "remote stocking" (explaining to the stock daycare workers shoppers are forced to hire how to do their jobs) makes sense.
Matt, you write: "If there were overwhelming parental consensus in favor of school reopening, the unions wouldn’t be able to stop it. But there isn’t." In Pittsburgh where I live they did a survey of parents, 70% of whom wanted the school to reopen in person, but the school board still voted to stay completely remote until April. Other polls I've seen aren't as extreme as that, but they still show parents favor reopening by a decent margin. If teachers unions are able to overcome a 60-40 split in public opinion, I would argue they have too much influence.
"DCPS pays a higher starting salary for teachers than any of the 50 states"
Whenever one compares a city to states, the city will almost always be either first or last, depending upon the comparison. City-to-city comparisons make more sense.
It’s pretty weird to read this stuff about indoor dining being open and schools closed when here in the SF Bay Area we haven’t had indoor dining for nearly a year, and are just opening up outdoor dining now (though it was open for a while before).
Hi Matt, although I understand the need for labor unions, I cannot help but be skeptical of how they are run today. I don't think it's a conservative thing to concern about unions either mismanaging workers' dues or protect bad actors (in the case of police unions). I wonder what your thoughts are on 'right-to-work' laws and certain workplaces which mandate union dues, despite some workers not wanting to join one.
I was pretty amused over the summer at the way that people on the left tried to distinguish police unions and teachers unions, which in my view have very similar tendencies to negotiate and demand veto power over not only typical union issues like pay and benefits, but also the entire sphere of policy in which they work. And in both cases progressive reforms are thwarted (e.g. better use of force policies or less reliance on suspensions for students who are disruptive).
There is no way that union leadership would agree to any changes that make it easier to fire their members. That is a good way for the union leadership to lose re-election.
I think one thing the teachers identified correctly is that once you re-open it's way harder to shut back down. Yes, California and New Mexico (my home state) and surely others did impose new restrictions in November/December during the winter surge in cases. But these restrictions were too late/not strict enough to head off the worst of the outbreak. And other states like Arizona, North Dakota, etc. did nothing to re-impose restrictions. Now a lot of these places had schools open anyway (I think?) but even Blue states were not getting close to May level lockdowns. Which tells me that once things get opened back up, you wouldn't be able to shut down at the same level. So teachers unions may have been pragmatic to resist re-opening in September given closing in a new wave would have been pretty hard.
Doesn't matter as much now, since I think there is now a smaller chance of a second wave given how many people have already either had Covid + the number of vaccinated folks increasing every day.
It's helpful to look at the school reopening situation as a microcosm of our overall terrible response to the pandemic.
Going beyond the four bullet points you listed (bailouts and hazard pay), we needed 1. strong central leadership to convey important policies (in such a way that most people would follow them without needing strict enforcement) and 2. a very broad effort to prop up the economy, i.e. federal wage subsidies/guarantees across the board (as were common in Europe, and opposed to the half-measure "payroll protection program" that we got).
Instead, essentially every municipality had their own mixed set of COVID policies (with all the problems to be expected from such a scattered response: unscientific advice, poor communication, etc.).
Remember, a lot of schools didn't close right away; we can look at those experiences to see a realistic "worst case" for school opening during COVID. Many teacher friends of mine were particularly impacted by a melange of new policies, like masking/sanitation/distancing, remote or hybrid teaching. Teachers were told to do all these things, but often given zero resources or support to make it happen.
It's not clear to me that the situation will be much better if we reopen schools now. To make this work, we need a strong, coordinated, central response that includes financial support for implementing any new policy. I view the federalism-based nature of regulation in this country as more of a symptom of a lack of government competence than the cause of our feeble response to COVID. (Though, the 'vetocracy' element, which is related to federalism run amok, is also an important contributor to our problems and shouldn't be overlooked.)
This gets into a broader point about unions. One might wonder how to square the supposedly massive power of teachers unions with the evergreen reports of teachers having to spend their own meager paychecks just to provide their students with any supplies beyond chairs. I think your comparison of the teachers unions and police unions highlights one of the major points: union power is focused on a particular goal, i.e. job security, which often ends up looking like "stopping bad workers from getting fired". Giving teachers the resources to do their jobs well is not as high a priority.
It's also definitely true, in my experience, that school boards are made up of 1. political climbers and 2. people with too much time on their hands and some combination of (usually not evidence-based) educational theories and a few axes to grind. This isn't a good group to be in charge of children's education. The former group is also over-represented among school administrators, which contributes to the lack of resources for teachers to implement new policies.
Also, the economic impact of closing restaurants is large and obvious. The economic impact of closing schools is smaller and very non-intuitive to many people. (The economic impact isn't the only important thing, of course, but it drives a lot of people's first thoughts on any policy.)
With the way things are going in our society, economy, etc. I have a hard time not supporting any all labor unions. We are in a time of increasing returns for Capital and downward pressure on Labor. Organized labor unions are a natural counter-weight and I think if anything we need more organization (Whole Foods workers, etc.). But I do tend to think schools should be reopened...
Teachers are the last professional exception to CT's COVID vaccine distribution schedule now that the state has gone age-based. Districts will be receiving doses of vaccine and vaccinating staff this month.
In my mind, once staff was fully vaccinated (or at least had the option) I would expect schools to be 100% open and in person, with perhaps some exceptions made for students with severe health risks.
But they're not committing to that, and it's baffling. I think the unions are putting themselves at real political risk here by both being offered the vaccine ahead of most people and still refusing to open schools 100%.
"My view of teachers unions is close to my view of police unions."
100% yes. Teachers unions are exactly like police unions in that their interests are all about their members, not the public good. To be clear. That doesn't make teacher's unions bad perse; it just makes them unions. And their perspective should be treated accordingly.
To be clear, I believe that teachers' should be paid far more than they are today, but at the same the rules of their employment should be changed to reduce the role of seniority in driving pay increases and to make it far easier for principals to fire bad teachers (note: the same should go with principals as well) and to hire the ones that can best implement their vision of what their schools should be. In other words, principals should have the same ability to select, manage, and compensate their workforce that virtually every private sector boss of a professional workforce has.
I believe that the police, who historically have been more successful at negotiating favorable pay, should have more resources, but basically just to do the kinds of things that Matt outlined in his previous article:
But certainly teacher's unions should not be trusted to drive any element of education policy any more than police unions should be trusted to drive any element of our judicial system.
I think the article basically hits the nail on the head. Another underrated factor seems to be the social class of teachers. Teachers generally see themselves as white collar professionals. They have college degrees and often advanced degrees and so do their friends, spouses and neighbors. For the average teacher, their social peers have mostly been working from home during the pandemic, so asking them to go teach in person feels like an extraordinary ask that has generally not been required of other people they think are similar.
Not sure that's true for everything, but local school districts absolutely should be abolished and public schools funded and administered uniformly in each state. The district-to-district variation in public school resources, and how it maps onto housing prices and neighborhood wealth, is a travesty. And it's largely a function of schools being funded by property tax revenue from within the local school district. Put all the money in one pot and distribute it equally to every school in the state.
> I’m going to go with no on that, because obviously you can’t do grocery shopping on Zoom [...]
Hasn't the least year shown that you can't do school for kindergardeners on Zoom either?
If you're going to compare a situation where grocery store workers have the same power as teachers, you need them to have the ability to convince people that "remote stocking" (explaining to the stock daycare workers shoppers are forced to hire how to do their jobs) makes sense.
Matt, you write: "If there were overwhelming parental consensus in favor of school reopening, the unions wouldn’t be able to stop it. But there isn’t." In Pittsburgh where I live they did a survey of parents, 70% of whom wanted the school to reopen in person, but the school board still voted to stay completely remote until April. Other polls I've seen aren't as extreme as that, but they still show parents favor reopening by a decent margin. If teachers unions are able to overcome a 60-40 split in public opinion, I would argue they have too much influence.
"DCPS pays a higher starting salary for teachers than any of the 50 states"
Whenever one compares a city to states, the city will almost always be either first or last, depending upon the comparison. City-to-city comparisons make more sense.
It’s pretty weird to read this stuff about indoor dining being open and schools closed when here in the SF Bay Area we haven’t had indoor dining for nearly a year, and are just opening up outdoor dining now (though it was open for a while before).
Hi Matt, although I understand the need for labor unions, I cannot help but be skeptical of how they are run today. I don't think it's a conservative thing to concern about unions either mismanaging workers' dues or protect bad actors (in the case of police unions). I wonder what your thoughts are on 'right-to-work' laws and certain workplaces which mandate union dues, despite some workers not wanting to join one.
I was pretty amused over the summer at the way that people on the left tried to distinguish police unions and teachers unions, which in my view have very similar tendencies to negotiate and demand veto power over not only typical union issues like pay and benefits, but also the entire sphere of policy in which they work. And in both cases progressive reforms are thwarted (e.g. better use of force policies or less reliance on suspensions for students who are disruptive).
This was an excellent piece.
But in order to make it easier to "dimiss subpar teachers" wouldn't you have to dismantle the union to some extent?
There is no way that union leadership would agree to any changes that make it easier to fire their members. That is a good way for the union leadership to lose re-election.
I think one thing the teachers identified correctly is that once you re-open it's way harder to shut back down. Yes, California and New Mexico (my home state) and surely others did impose new restrictions in November/December during the winter surge in cases. But these restrictions were too late/not strict enough to head off the worst of the outbreak. And other states like Arizona, North Dakota, etc. did nothing to re-impose restrictions. Now a lot of these places had schools open anyway (I think?) but even Blue states were not getting close to May level lockdowns. Which tells me that once things get opened back up, you wouldn't be able to shut down at the same level. So teachers unions may have been pragmatic to resist re-opening in September given closing in a new wave would have been pretty hard.
Doesn't matter as much now, since I think there is now a smaller chance of a second wave given how many people have already either had Covid + the number of vaccinated folks increasing every day.
This was an excellent piece, but I'm here in the comments to remark on the strictly petty: Hire a copy editor. Please.
It's helpful to look at the school reopening situation as a microcosm of our overall terrible response to the pandemic.
Going beyond the four bullet points you listed (bailouts and hazard pay), we needed 1. strong central leadership to convey important policies (in such a way that most people would follow them without needing strict enforcement) and 2. a very broad effort to prop up the economy, i.e. federal wage subsidies/guarantees across the board (as were common in Europe, and opposed to the half-measure "payroll protection program" that we got).
Instead, essentially every municipality had their own mixed set of COVID policies (with all the problems to be expected from such a scattered response: unscientific advice, poor communication, etc.).
Remember, a lot of schools didn't close right away; we can look at those experiences to see a realistic "worst case" for school opening during COVID. Many teacher friends of mine were particularly impacted by a melange of new policies, like masking/sanitation/distancing, remote or hybrid teaching. Teachers were told to do all these things, but often given zero resources or support to make it happen.
It's not clear to me that the situation will be much better if we reopen schools now. To make this work, we need a strong, coordinated, central response that includes financial support for implementing any new policy. I view the federalism-based nature of regulation in this country as more of a symptom of a lack of government competence than the cause of our feeble response to COVID. (Though, the 'vetocracy' element, which is related to federalism run amok, is also an important contributor to our problems and shouldn't be overlooked.)
This gets into a broader point about unions. One might wonder how to square the supposedly massive power of teachers unions with the evergreen reports of teachers having to spend their own meager paychecks just to provide their students with any supplies beyond chairs. I think your comparison of the teachers unions and police unions highlights one of the major points: union power is focused on a particular goal, i.e. job security, which often ends up looking like "stopping bad workers from getting fired". Giving teachers the resources to do their jobs well is not as high a priority.
It's also definitely true, in my experience, that school boards are made up of 1. political climbers and 2. people with too much time on their hands and some combination of (usually not evidence-based) educational theories and a few axes to grind. This isn't a good group to be in charge of children's education. The former group is also over-represented among school administrators, which contributes to the lack of resources for teachers to implement new policies.
Also, the economic impact of closing restaurants is large and obvious. The economic impact of closing schools is smaller and very non-intuitive to many people. (The economic impact isn't the only important thing, of course, but it drives a lot of people's first thoughts on any policy.)
With the way things are going in our society, economy, etc. I have a hard time not supporting any all labor unions. We are in a time of increasing returns for Capital and downward pressure on Labor. Organized labor unions are a natural counter-weight and I think if anything we need more organization (Whole Foods workers, etc.). But I do tend to think schools should be reopened...
Teachers are the last professional exception to CT's COVID vaccine distribution schedule now that the state has gone age-based. Districts will be receiving doses of vaccine and vaccinating staff this month.
In my mind, once staff was fully vaccinated (or at least had the option) I would expect schools to be 100% open and in person, with perhaps some exceptions made for students with severe health risks.
But they're not committing to that, and it's baffling. I think the unions are putting themselves at real political risk here by both being offered the vaccine ahead of most people and still refusing to open schools 100%.
"My view of teachers unions is close to my view of police unions."
100% yes. Teachers unions are exactly like police unions in that their interests are all about their members, not the public good. To be clear. That doesn't make teacher's unions bad perse; it just makes them unions. And their perspective should be treated accordingly.
To be clear, I believe that teachers' should be paid far more than they are today, but at the same the rules of their employment should be changed to reduce the role of seniority in driving pay increases and to make it far easier for principals to fire bad teachers (note: the same should go with principals as well) and to hire the ones that can best implement their vision of what their schools should be. In other words, principals should have the same ability to select, manage, and compensate their workforce that virtually every private sector boss of a professional workforce has.
I believe that the police, who historically have been more successful at negotiating favorable pay, should have more resources, but basically just to do the kinds of things that Matt outlined in his previous article:
https://www.slowboring.com/p/fixing-the-police-will-take-more
But certainly teacher's unions should not be trusted to drive any element of education policy any more than police unions should be trusted to drive any element of our judicial system.
You are being way to kind to the teachers unions. They have a far bigger impact than you are alluding to here, see this great study: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/09/are-school-reopening-decisions-related-to-union-influence.html
I think the article basically hits the nail on the head. Another underrated factor seems to be the social class of teachers. Teachers generally see themselves as white collar professionals. They have college degrees and often advanced degrees and so do their friends, spouses and neighbors. For the average teacher, their social peers have mostly been working from home during the pandemic, so asking them to go teach in person feels like an extraordinary ask that has generally not been required of other people they think are similar.
" independently elected school boards are a bad idea, and that the American tradition of local control of [anything] is basically pernicious."
fixed that for you
Not sure that's true for everything, but local school districts absolutely should be abolished and public schools funded and administered uniformly in each state. The district-to-district variation in public school resources, and how it maps onto housing prices and neighborhood wealth, is a travesty. And it's largely a function of schools being funded by property tax revenue from within the local school district. Put all the money in one pot and distribute it equally to every school in the state.