A Worm in the Apple?

I just finished reading "The Worm in the Apple: How the Teacher Unions are Destroying American Education" by Peter Brimelow. The book, if you can imagine, is even more one-sided than its title suggests, and in my opinion the chip on Brimelow's shoulder detracts a bit from his credibility. On the very first page he describes a teachers union meeting like this:

They're extraordinarily fat, for a start...You can't avoid the curious feeling that you've stumbled into a sort of indoor rally for human hot-air balloons. An alarming proportion of attendees wobble and waddle through the teeming crowds of teachers...with thighs like tree trunks, bellies billowing, jowls jiggling.

Overlooking the bad taste of page one fat thigh jabs, there is some merit to be excavated from the sensationalism in the rest of the chapters. Brimelow outlines the history and structure of the largest union in the country, the National Education Association. He describes a system led not by educators but by "educrats," yielding unthinkable lobbying power and plaguing the education system with perverse incentives and inefficiencies. For a briefer look at some of the main complaints against teachers unions, see the Teachers Unions Exposed website.

The Georgia branch of the NEA is the Georgia Association of Educators (GAE), second in size to the Professional Association of Georgia Educators (PAGE). PAGE has a membership of 78,000, about twice that of GAE. In total about 93% of Georgia's teachers are unionized, and they sure can rally the troops.

Just this Saturday, they held an "Invest Now or Pay Later" rally at the Capitol. According to the AJC, 300 teachers attended. According to GAE, 1300. The "invest now or pay later" slogan is stylistically representative of the teachers unions' viewpoints and rhetoric: shallowly catchy, mind-numbingly repeated, and of dubious actual meaning. If I had a nickel for every time they used the phrase "brighter future," I could personally fix the state's school funding problems.

Actually, GAE thinks they can fix school funding not with nickels but with half pennies. At the rally, they advocated for a half cent sales tax increase earmarked solely for public schools.

Teachers unions are generally opposed to "pay for performance" if it ties teacher pay to student test scores. In the NEA article "2...4...6...8...How Should We Compensate?" (how could I have forgotten to mention the love of rhyme?!) they tout the merits of

21st Century alternative pay plans that reward teachers—not for student test scores or subjective evaluations—but for doing the kinds of things that actually improve the learning environment. None are intended to replace a strong, single salary schedule, but to enhance it.

They are referring to professional development programs, many of which have disputed merit. One in particular, called National Board Certification, became one of the hottest issues in the previous legislative session, and is likely to return to the spotlight this year. More to come on that soon.