It’s Enough To Turn Me Into Mickey Kaus
Despite my neoliberal tendencies, I don’t think that teachers unions are the core source of problems in our educational system. Sure, I think their incentives are such that they’ll rarely support educational policy that’s primarily in the interest of students, but self interested actors are the nature of politics, so I can hardly hold that against teachers unions. Also, I think undeserved demonization is a good way to embitter the unions against any type of reform, which wouldn’t help anyone.
But then there’s deserved demonization, and the unions deserved to be demonized for what’s happening in DC. The Washington district of the AFL-CIO is slamming Adrian Fenty as a “budget-shattering, union-busting, promise-breaking political boss” whose “hostility to workers and unions is completely at odds with the Democratic Party’s long-standing commitment to these major constituency groups.”So what has Fenty done to draw the unions’ ire? He said this at a pre-convention educational panel:
“The American Federation of Teachers, which I don’t think does anything for the people of the District of Columbia, is weighing in against it,” Fenty reportedly said during a pre-convention panel on education reform. “And the only thing I can think of is that the heads of the union, they want to keep their jobs.”
What they’re really complaining about is that Fenty won without their endorsement and that Michelle Rhee is pushing through a plan that would allow teachers to get on a track to be paid more according to performance, not seniority. Exactly why the AFL-CIO needs to get involved in this local spat is beyond me. At a time when unions are historically weak, do they really want to align themselves with the status quo of Washington DC?. As Ryan Avent says, “When everyone in the city is sick to death of the status quo, defending the status quo is not a good way improve people’s opinion of you.”
