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NEA on Teacher Quality and Equity: Crossroads or Another Blind Alley?
10/01/09
08:33:51 am, Categories: Announcements [A] The House Education Committee’s hearing on teacher quality yesterday is being hailed as some sort of landmark in the ongoing struggle to make sure poor and minority children are not shortchanged when it comes to teacher effectiveness and subject matter competence.
In his testimony NEA President Dennis Van Roekel committed to:
"address barriers in collective bargaining agreements by requesting that every local NEA affiliate enter into a compact or memorandum of understanding (MOU) with its local school district to waive any contract language that prohibits staffing high-needs schools with great teachers. These compacts should also add commitments that would enhance this goal." [the emphasis in "bold" is NEA’s, not mine]
I hardly gave this statement any notice. I am so used to rhetorical and even written commitments made by the NEA on teacher quality and equity issues that are at best never followed through on and at worst completely at odds with what they are doing on the ground and behind closed doors, that it blew by me like a falling leaf.
But they are playing this as a sea change and some observers are taking them at their word.
Jay Mathews gave it a headline and a few paragraphs yesterday in the Washington Post, based on reporting by Nick Anderson who was at the hearing. Mathews updated the post with a strong statement of support for the NEA’s "shift" from the AFT. It’s notable that Jay’s dispatch from Anderson stands right alongside his reporting from June about efforts by AFT’s affiliate in Baltimore to reverse a collective bargaining agreement waiver for KIPP Ujima Village charter middle school which is working to the benefit of both students and teachers in that school.
The Wall Street Journal gave NEA’s announcement headline treatment as well, but also quoted a skeptical Checker Finn who said: "I will be a little surprised if any locals allow districts to assign teachers willy-nilly."
Hopefully, Van Roekel is sincere, and this would be a significant change from his predecessors who, frankly, have not been. Chairman Miller made sure to mark the moment, stating that he was treating Van Roekel’s commitment as NEA being on record, and said he was encouraged.
It didn’t take too long, though, to realize that taking the NEA at its word is tricky business. Over at Teacher Beat, Stephen Sawchuk reports on how in the same hearing Van Roekel mischaracterized the Administration’s policies on teacher effectiveness, claiming that Obama and Duncan want to base teacher ratings "on a single test score" even though all the Administration wants to do is make sure test scores aren’t excluded. Miller corrected Van Roekel, who had little to say and visibly shrunk in his seat in response. As Sawchuk notes, these kinds of exchanges between the Chairman and the NEA President are nothing new.
It’s this kind of wordplay, cleverness and, let’s face it, dishonesty, that is going to make it very difficult to know what the NEA meant yesterday by "committing" to address collective bargaining agreements, let alone make sure they and their locals actually do something. There’s rarely someone around who’s willing to ask the tough questions, and push for real action, and you didn’t need to look any farther than most of the Democrats on the Committee who spent the better part of their limited time with the witnesses kissing Van Roekel’s, uh, ring as if teacher quality and equity back in their districts was not really a problem.
Most policy analysts with an eye on the bigger picture predict that, sooner or later, teacher work contracts will look more like those of their peers in other professions and that parents of those students being shortchanged under the current system will either get a better deal or reach the critical mass necessary for them to persuade their elected officials to let them take their per pupil allotment elsewhere, as they have done in Milwaukee and, kinda, in D.C.
How those dynamics unfold over time is really up to the NEA and the AFT, who throughout this debate have acted like the current system is a meteoroid that dropped on their heads yesterday from outer space, rather than a very high wall that stands between students and quality teaching that they themselves have constructed.
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