Making Education Succeed

If the role of the Manchester school system is to provide a secure jobs program, then it is one of the few success stories in this down economy. The union leadership has managed to negotiate, obfuscate, and bloviate right past any concerns of a declining tax base, massive private-sector layoffs, reduced student population, increased student diversification, and rising benefits costs to ensure the stability of their numbers. The only thing that is missing is any concern for what is best for education.

There once was a time where employers exacted their will over their employees, holding them economic hostage to their need for jobs through low wages and dangerous workplace conditions. The unions organized and rallied the workers to achieve livable wages, benefits, and workplace conditions – and the country prospered. But at some point along the line, the unions went beyond defending these basics and used their production-halting power to coerce employers into contracts that imposed management and hiring practices that challenged the competitiveness and ultimately the viability of the enterprise. Practices such as seniority protections, workplace job limitations, and credentialing.

Teacher's union contracts that ultimately limit the ability of the superintendent to staff as necessary to affect a transition in curriculum, budget, student body, or mandate, are ultimately restrictive, and sacrifice the mission of education to that of providing jobs security.

Three things have changed in the last 15 years in Manchester. First is that health care costs has soared at 8 – 12% per year to a current $16,500 national average, and exploding its perpetuity costs when embedded in pensions. This is a national problem, and the only way to control it locally is to reduce head-count. Second is a dramatic change in student diversification, and increase in the percentage of non-English speaking students. Third is a declining high-school enrollment due to perimeter cities building their own high-schools.

Terry Moe, Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and Hoover Institute Fellow, has devoted his academic career to the study of education and the role of collective bargaining. In his 2007 paper “Collective Bargaining and the Performance of the Public Schools”, he shows quantitatively the inverse relationship between contract restrictiveness and education output as student diversity increases. He defines 'diversity' in terms of non-English-speaking Hispanic and African populations. He states that these populations who have high free and reduced lunch rate percentages correlate to kids with language problems. Greater innovation and flexibility are required to adapt to these conditions – flexibility deliberately written out of restrictive union contracts.

The premise of his paper, one that he proves with research and numbers, is that the challenges presented with growing diversity in school population are incompatible with the restrictiveness found in teacher's union contracts, and the result is that teacher's jobs are secured at the expense of student outcome. He didn't mention who was left paying the bills.

We saw Moe's thesis tested just last week as Superintendent Brennan announced what educators he would hire back with stimulus and impact fee funds. He used the qualifier “seniority” seven times.

Today's economic uncertainty and our evolving demographic demand that the school system re-invent itself to achieve the flexibility to respond to evolving challenges as they are encountered. The unions should take this opportunity to consider their core value of protecting good wages and benefits, and yield the restrictions that affect management's ability to meet its objectives.

If educational outcome is the number one priority of the school in times of greater student diversity and budget pressure, the superintendent must have the staffing flexibility required to get the job done.

We will likely see greater use of area engineers and scientists who are interested and able to teach a single math or science class on their way to work, combined with fewer, yet better-paid teachers. Hopefully, tax-payers will finally be satisfied that accountability has been achieved. More importantly, student success will be restored as the first and foremost objective of the school system,

Joe Briggs is co-host of the 2 Joes Show that airs Wednesday 7-10pm on channel 23.