Tag Archives: teachers union

Three Teacher Strikes Open the Year

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Residents in the Allegheny County school district Shaler Area had a strong inkling back in June that there would likely be a teacher strike if negotiations did not produce a new contract. We suggested that teachers demonstrate over the summer to show they were serious: it is doubtful that they actually did that, but today the picket lines were manned and the start of school delayed. The issues related to education, pay, benefits, whether or not Pennsylvania should allow strikes, replacement teachers, etc., etc., arise again after a relatively quiet year on the labor front and those in the district and others in southwestern Pennsylvania are going to hear a lot about it in the media.

Based on data from the Pennsylvania School Boards Association-who collects and disseminates data on strikes in the state which we used to produce our most recent report on the topic-Shaler teachers last went on strike in the 1997-98 school year for three days.

While the Shaler strike is obviously dominating the news locally, there are other strikes that are occurring in northeastern Pennsylvania to start the school year. Teachers in the Wyoming Area District and the Old Forge District have walked off the job this week.

What is PPS’ Worldview on Incentives?

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A news article described the achievements of several schools in the Pittsburgh School District under one of the incentive programs created under the current bargaining agreement between the District and the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers. As our 2010 report on pay for performance noted, the Students and Teachers Achieving Results, or STAR, incentive program would allow for teacher bonuses of up to $6,000 and staff (represented by the PFT) bonuses of up to $2,000 if the school falls within the top 15% of all Pennsylvania schools on student achievement. The contract stated that if eight schools did not get in the top 15% the threshold would be lowered to the top 25% of all schools so that the goal of a minimum of eight would be met. The article noted that ten schools were named STAR schools by the District.

When the District applied for money from the Gates Foundation with its proposal titled "Empowering Effective Teachers in the Pittsburgh Public Schools" it posited the following: "the plan will correlate teacher compensation with demonstrated student achievement…this is an important step for Pittsburgh, as nearly all of PPS teacher compensation is driven by salary schedule, which is based on factors that research demonstrates are not linked to student achievement: teachers’ educational achievement and years of service".

On the PPS’ Empowering Effective Teachers website page it states "For too long, teachers have gone unrecognized for their individual strengths and contributions to student learning. School districts have been unable to measure differences in teacher effectiveness or use this information to help teachers improve. Until now."

What of the teachers at one school that achieved the bonuses? One said "The monetary incentive isn‘t what I‘m coming here for every day" (but probably was not turned down). Another said "It doesn‘t take just one player to win the game. It‘s the team working together". (as often as teachers say that students need to come to school ready to learn, will the bonus money be shared with parents?) Note that while the STAR bonuses go to only the schools that achieve, there is no differentiation between teachers within the schools that might have done more for the achievement. The teacher who might have greater "individual strengths"-in the words of the EET webpage-gets the same bonus as another at the school. That’s what comes as a result of the District wanting pay for performance but deferring to the teachers’ union since implementing the vision was subject to collective bargaining (as noted in the Gates Foundation proposal).

The PFT president pointed out in the article that teachers who did not get the STAR bonus could "earn an extra $10,000 yearly by working a longer school week and year, assuming more responsibilities as they climb the career ladder." In other words, the teachers that read the article or heard the news through the grapevine should not feel slighted, they can earn money by taking on other duties as they go up the salary scale, which is what the PPS said was one of the factors that does not do anything for student achievement based on what was written in the EET proposal.

But the topper came from the Superintendent who said "We don‘t want teachers in competition with each other because when that happens, kids lose in that kind of culture, and other undesirable things happen…teachers can start jockeying for particular children." So much for individual strengths and differences in teacher effectiveness-based on this statement the Superintendent feels teachers will "cherry pick" students to boost their bonuses. That sounds like the argument public school defenders make about charter or private school enrollment, not about their own teachers. Note again this is not the head of the teachers union-this is the chief executive officer of the District saying that. It has long been understood that principals assign students to classes; but more to the point, does the Superintendent actually believe this?

Bethel Park Superintendent Seems Confused About Responsibility

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Lamenting the inability of the Bethel Park School District to get a contract with teachers for the last two and half years, the superintendent says she has been silent until now because she is in a " peculiar position of advising the Board and leading the staff."

Hold the phone. Does the Board not hire superintendents to manage the schools on behalf of the residents and taxpayers of the district? That being the case, the superintendent is honor bound to work for the board and taxpayers. Staff members do not pay her salary, they answer to her as the board’s appointed agent in charge.

Clearly, she has the obligation to advise the board on what it should do vis-à-vis the teachers’ contract but her obligation has to be first and foremost to the board. She can be an advocate for programs that improve education or management procedures that improve cost effectiveness. At the same time, she is not, and should never consider herself, to be a spokesperson for the union’s interests. The union has enough power on its side in the bargaining process including the right to strike and the state’s idiotic no layoffs for financial reasons provisions.

If the talks are at an impasse, and compensation costs cannot be lowered under the terms of the old contract, the superintendent should offer suggestions about programs to cut-one of two criteria the state permits for reducing staff. Alternatively, if teachers will not agree to slight increases in class size to save their jobs, then the onus must be on their union for staff that lose their jobs because of intransigence.

The Bethel Park board should question whether the superintendent understands her role.

New PSEA Head Certified to Teach Economics—But What Kind?

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The morning news brought the startling revelation that the newly elected head of Pennsylvania’s largest teacher union (PSEA) has a certification to teach economics. Two questions come to mind immediately: what kind of economics is he certified to teach and does it bear any resemblance to real economics?

Bear in mind that the first principle of economics is the law of scarcity. The first principle of unions is to ignore the law of scarcity. Any student with a knowledge of Economics 101 sufficient to get a B grade in the course can tell you that wage rates are a price and that competitive markets for labor are the efficient and best way to allocate labor and determine wages. He would also know that wage rates in different occupations and industries must reflect worker productivity and the price of the product being and sold.

The objective of unions is to do away with market forces and ignore the role of supply and demand. The results, as we have seen, have been catastrophic for U.S. industries such as steel and autos. Now with the Obama administration becoming the heavy-handed advocate in chief for unions, their ability to wreak havoc on the economy is being renewed and the impact on our ability to grow curtailed. When the head of the AFL-CIO is the President’s leading economic advisor, the nation is in serious trouble.

Moreover, and to our great misfortune, in the public sector, where the new PSEA head operates, the forces of international competition can play no countervailing role in suppressing the destructive force of rapacious unionism. Many government services are monopolies that cannot be outsourced. So when unions enter the picture with incessant demands for compensation, favorable work rules and endless grievance procedures, government services become more expensive and are of lower quality than they would otherwise be.

In light of union antagonism to the laws of economics, one must wonder; just what was the nature of the economics covered by the PSEA head’s economic certification?

New PSEA Head Wants to Improve PA Education—Really?

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Quoted in Monday’s Tribune Review, the new president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association-the teachers’ union-says he wants to work with the Governor and other state officials to make public schools the schools of choice. He also maintains that our schools are doing really well although there are still problems. Naturally, these are problems he believes could be solved with more resources, i.e., taxpayer dollars.

How sad that the teachers’ union has appropriated the title "education association" for itself rather calling themselves what they are-a union for teachers.

The new president says assessment test scores are improving in every grade. But that claim is dubious. SAT scores have not improved and that is the litmus test of how schools are doing. Moreover, as the Allegheny Institute has documented in its Policy Brief series, the big improvements in the 8th grade scores are questionable. Then too, 11th grade reading scores have not improved and the math scores remain dreadfully low. And, if we look beyond the reading and math tests, where so much time is spent preparing students for the tests, to the performance on science, we find abysmal results.

The teachers’ union president wants to make public schools the schools of choice which means he wants to protect public school employee jobs. If he truly cared about quality education for Pennsylvania’s students, he would be focused on helping create alternatives to the public school monopoly. But as is sadly the case for union leaders, he cannot square the circle. The union is about promoting the union members’ interests; the interest of students will always be secondary-if not even less important. The union’s interests include electing legislators who will serve them first and foremost. Students and taxpayers always receive short shrift from these elected officials. If they were honest and opened their eyes they would see the damage resulting from teacher strikes and the law disallowing layoffs for economic reasons. These union-coddling statutes represent massive assaults on the marketplace and unconscionable degradation of taxpayers. And so it goes in Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania SAT Scores Point to Futility of Higher Spending

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Once again reality intrudes on the fantasy world of the politicians, educrats, teachers’ unions, school board members, and many parents who have swallowed hook, line and sinker the narrative that ever greater spending will improve educational results. Just released 2010 SAT scores for Pennsylvania high schoolers can only be described as appallingly inadequate given the increases in state and local taxes over the past decade.

 

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Pay for Performance: How Will it Play Out in Pittsburgh’s Schools?

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Student achievement improves, and, as a result, so too does the pay of the principal, the teachers, and other school employees responsible for the improvement.  That is a brief definition of a pay for performance system.  It differs from the traditional salary step system in which an employee’s pay is based on how much education they have attained or how long they have worked for the particular district.  Pay for performance is the subject of our most recent report. 

 

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The New Teachers’ Contract

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Articles in yesterday’s papers delivered the news that there is a tentative five-year contract between the Pittsburgh Public Schools and the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers on the table. If ratified, the deal would extend through June of 2015 and, if current trends hold (enrollment falling by 3% annually, and average growth in expenditures of 3% annually), the District will be spending about $662 million and serving 23k students by the time the contract expires.

It appears as though employees will see no changes in health care insurance benefits in the years of the contract and will enjoy annual salary bumps, with those at the top of the salary schedule getting $1,500 each year of the agreement. Not bad considering the rising cost of health care and the massive pension spike that is headed our way.

And what of pay for performance? The possibility of tying teacher pay to student achievement, though a remote possibility given union opposition to the idea, was raised first in November of 2008 when the school board outlined goals for the 08-09 school year. One board member said "people need to see the reward because it gives them the incentive to do more" while the head of the PFT said many performance pay models were "tremendous failures".

The award of $40 million by the Gates Foundation this past fall certainly gave the idea momentum, and the District at that time had a few years of experience with a performance pay model for all of the school system’s principals (around 70) who no longer get salary step raises but are instead "compensated based on their performance" according to the website of the office that oversees the program.

So the District and the teachers appear to have settled on a "voluntary" arrangement for teachers instead of a widespread adoption of performance pay. Consider that principals are not unionized and their pay system did not have to be collectively bargained, whereas the teachers are and it does. If there is a five year contract with only minimal movement to performance pay for teachers then it appears the union, not surprisingly, won on this issue.