“A senior Senate Democrat released a draft of a sprawling revision of the No Child Left Behind education law on Tuesday that would dismantle the provisions of the law that used standardized test scores in reading and math to label tens of thousands of public schools as failing,” reported the New York Times on Oct. 11.
I was happy to see Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and chairman of the Senate’s Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, introduce the legislation into Congress. It was the mark of the decentralization of education policy and a move back to allowing educational matters to be dealt with at the state and local level.
I’ve always thought education policy should be less centralized, however, after a string of reports from Detroit News I’ve had to take pause.
“Republicans who control the Michigan Senate have introduced a version of so-called ‘right-to-teach’ legislation,” reported the Detroit News. “The bill presented Thursday says public schools would not be allowed to require employees to pay union dues or fees as a condition of employment.”
As I wrote in my last column, this won’t improve our schools at all; it’s political gamesmanship. The proposal has nothing to do with a change in the statewide curriculum, incentives for teachers to raise student performance, or other such policies.
Right-to-teach or rights-to-work laws are bad policy, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute.
“RTW laws lower wages for union and non-union workers by an average of $1,500 a year and decrease the likelihood employees will get health insurance or pensions through their jobs,” political economist Gordon Lafer said in his report.
The problem is if you consider the concessions the teachers’ unions have already made, you’re left wondering why Republicans in the state legislature are still trying to hammer them. Just as Secretary of Education Arne Duncan proposed that teachers’ starting salary be $60,000 in September, teachers across the state accepted a cut in pay, pay which was already low to start with.
In fact, according to another report by the Economic Policy Institute, “Full?time state and local government employees in Michigan are undercompensated by 5.3%, when compared with otherwise similar private?sector workers.”
The report continues to say, “Public employees—like all other American workers—have been victims of the worst recession since the Great Depression. In fact, severe financial problems as a result of the Great Recession have forced state, county, and municipal officials across the country to make massive cuts in spending.”
The other idea coming from the ‘brain-trust’ in the state legislature is more funding for charter schools. Now, I think charter schools are actually a part of the answer, but let’s understand nothing magical happens when you place public money into private hands.
Charter schools have had mixed results, with triumphs like Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone, and accusations that charter schools take away from public institutions and only do well because they are able to cherry pick among the best and the brightest.
Honest education reform should look like the reforms Michelle Rhee, the former chancellor of Washington, D.C. Public Schools, enacted and tried to push through during her time in office.
Anyone who knows the story of Michelle Rhee’s battles with the teachers’ union understands the opposition she faced, even with ideas like paying teachers higher salaries if they relinquished tenure. But the state legislature isn’t proposing ideas like that, and our teachers’ union has hardly put up a fight. Maybe when I see those kinds of reforms in the face of an intransigent teachers’ union I’ll be on the other side of the fence, but I’m surely not now.
