Teacher's Union Opposes Salary Increases

In Washington D.C. a strange thing is happening. A proposal to improve the educational cesspool that is the public school system in the Nation's Capital is being torpedoed by the national teachers unions (despite support from the local union leaders and teachers).

I haven't seen the story reported in any US newspapers, and I wonder why not, since I read education columns quite regularly. If I were any more cynical than I already am, I might think there is a plot by the national unions to keep this particular proposal quiet. Or perhaps I just missed the US press stories due to summer vacations and what not. Anyway, the British news weekly, The Economist, had a short story two weeks ago.

The story begins with a typical indictment of the District's schools -- hugely inefficient, extremely high cost, abysmal test scores, and outrageous student behavior. And then the teachers:

Teachers are virtually unsackable and paid by seniority. Such incentives attract the lazy and mediocre and repel the talented or diligent.

But here's where it gets interesting, the solution is somewhat novel in education reform:

Ms Rhee [Michelle Rhee, School Chancellor] is thrashing out a deal with union leaders that would raise teachers’ wages dramatically. Starting salaries would leap from about $40,000 to $78,000, and wages for the best performers would double to about $130,000 a year. In return, teachers would lose tenure and be paid according to merit, measured in part by their students’ results. Current teachers would have a choice: they could join the new system or stay in the old one. New hires would have to join the new system. Over time, the quality and morale of teachers in Washington should soar. “Imagine the kind of talent the hard-pressed system could attract,” drools the Washington Post.

But wouldn’t all this require a huge expansion of the school budget? Perhaps not. The current system is staggeringly inefficient. The city employs an army of educational bureaucrats and has twice as many schools as it needs. It pays to heat and air-condition some schools that are only a quarter full. Insiders reckon that, within a few years, the new pay deal could be wholly financed by cutting waste. And in the short term private donors are willing to shoulder much of the cost.

The plan’s boosters call it revolutionary, in that it applies to public schools a principle—reward good work and you get more of it—that every other employer has known for centuries. But it will be still-born if the Washington teachers’ union does not agree to it. Local union leaders rather like the idea of higher pay, but the big national unions are appalled at the notion that any teachers might give up tenure. Fearing an unwelcome precedent, they are leaning on the local union to kill the deal.

I can imagine the union drooling all over the pay hikes, but like most behemoth bureaucracies, they'd like the cake too, please. Big pay hikes, no accountability, lifetime tenure. Still, it is disheartening to see the difficulty the District is having getting this approved. If merit pay is a nonstarter in a district performing as badly as Washington D.C., what hope have we in a nominally high performing suburb?