Memo to press: Think before you buy into the teachers' union bashing

I’ve been musing a lot on the extent to which the U.S. mainstream press bashes, blames and demonizes teachers’ unions, while so often writing admiringly and unquestioningly about charter schools.

(Back to charter schools later.)

There’s a notion that it’s impossible to “get rid of” bad teachers. The pro-privatization, anti-union right wingers like to raise an outcry about “the dance of the lemons” –- situations in which problem teachers get shuffled from school to school. And the mainstream press -– even liberals -– joins in.

Those voices constantly cite teacher “tenure” as the evil to end all evils. Here’s how Merriam-Webster defines tenure:

“…a status granted after a trial period to a teacher that gives protection from summary dismissal.”

It seems to me that anyone who has ever worked for an employer would view “protection from summary dismissal” as a reasonable right for workers. That would include most every employee of the mainstream media corporations –- who I have a feeling haven’t thought this through when they do all that bashing, blaming and demonizing of teachers.

I've seen situations in which it was indeed difficult to “get rid of” a problem employee. I’ve seen them both with teachers, in my life as a public school parent and advocate, and also with union newspaper employees, in my previous career as a daily-newspaper copy editor.

In my observation -- while union contracts did indeed help protect those problem employees’ jobs and make it impossible to “summarily” fire them --  in every case I’ve seen, it was poor management judgment that led to the situation. I recall several cases in which my newsroom colleagues, including union activists, were voicing serious and legitimate concerns to management about new employees still in their probationary periods -- and went ignored. Then when the problems blow up later, “the union” gets the blame.

Of course, that said, it’s still a terrible situation when poor management decisions result in problem teachers in the classroom. It’s a challenge balancing protecting employees against arbitrary or retaliatory management actions with the ability to terminate a problem employee. But my newsroom colleagues need to remember that they want and feel they deserve legitimate job protections too -– if teachers are the goose, newspaper journalists are the gander.

To switch animal metaphors, the elephant in the room regarding teachers’ union contracts is seniority rights. My experience (again, as a parent and advocate, not truly an insider) is with a large urban school district, so I can’t really say how this translates to a different type of district. But in our district, in general, when there’s an opening for whatever reason, a teacher with seniority may choose to step into it, generally coming from another school. That frustrates school administrators and school communities, because they may have little to no say in who winds up in the front of the classroom.

The fact that charter schools don’t have to abide by such protections gives them the advantage of truly getting to choose their teachers. One could argue that that’s a short-term advantage with a long-term downside, since in the big picture, that means charter school teachers lack a significant employee benefit -- job security. That lack is likely to lead to high turnover (a significant problem in charter schools nationwide) and less job satisfaction, meaning that charter schools will in the long run be less desirable employers and are likely to have trouble attracting and keeping the best teachers.

If that lack of seniority protection were extended to every school, it would make teaching -– already hardly a cushy job -– an even less attractive calling. That would be bad for schools, kids and public education

Meanwhile, back in the news business, seniority rights are currently a huge issue, with newspapers around the nation teetering on the brink of collapse and implementing or threatening mass layoffs. My own family’s life and financial security was hugely and directly impacted when the union that represents San Francisco Chronicle newsroom employees voted a few weeks ago to give up seniority protection, in the face of imminent threat of the collapse of the company.

This is not just a San Francisco Chronicle issue, needless to say. Newsroom employees everywhere have lost, are losing or are likely to lose their seniority protection, with as devastating an impact on them as this has had on my family.

Mainstream journalists and commentators might really want to think about that a bit more when they praise charter schools because of their lack of job protection for teachers, and when they bash teachers’ unions over the same issues. When you create a general perception that job security is a frivolous and burdensome  employee perk, you may wind up weakening your own job security still more.

I’m pretty convinced that those of my journalistic colleagues who buy into the union-bashing and charter-hyping are generally not callous or hypocritical but rather than they haven’t given this enough thought. It's time to do that thinking, though.