The year was 1956, and I was an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma. In the spring, I directed a conference on school integration for school officials and school administrators from the South. At the conference, there was concern that, two years after the Supreme Court had held government-imposed racial segregation in public education to be unconstitutional, the National Education Association (NEA) had done nothing -- not even endorsed the Supreme Court decision. The conferees agreed to make an effort to get NEA support for the decision and its implementation. A meeting of interested parties was scheduled the day before the 1956 NEA convention opened, and I was asked to chair the first meeting.
I was not a delegate to the NEA convention in Portland, Oregon, but I had planned to attend a meeting of the NEA's Commission on Teacher Education and Professional Standards (TEPS), being held nearby in the state of Washington. These meetings were customarily held just before the convention at a nearby site, so I agreed to serve on my way back to Oklahoma.
It turned out that Benjamin Fine, the education editor of the New York Times, learned of our meeting and was present at it. Fine was eager to write something critical of the NEA because the association sponsored tours to Arab countries from which Jewish teachers were excluded. He advised me to conduct a press conference denouncing the NEA's failure to support the Supreme Court decisions. As I pointed out, however, I was not a delegate to the convention, so we sought to find delegates willing to sponsor the press conference. Being from southern or border states, all the conferees declined the honor. The upshot was that, in order to qualify me to conduct the press conference and participate in the convention discussion, I was instantly enrolled in the Oklahoma Association of Negro Teachers. All was to no avail, however; the NEA did not endorse the Supreme Court decision until 1961.
Nevertheless, as a result of my meeting with Fine, I was invited to accept a position at Yeshiva University in the fall of 1956. Shortly after my appointment, an article about my appointment appeared in the Times, along with a picture of me at the young age of 37. At the time, I thought nothing of it, but one might wonder why the appointment of an undistinguished department chairman at one of the score of universities in the New York City area deserved such attention in the New York Times.
The explanation was simple. Unbeknownst to me at the time, Fine was a fund raiser for Yeshiva University and used his position and prestige at the Times to promote his fund-raising activities. He was seeking $500,000 from the Ford Foundation to start a school of education at the university. The foundation was demurring, partly on the grounds that the university did not employ anyone knowledgeable about public education. My appointment solved this problem; the university actually received $525,000 from the Ford Foundation, which, as the saying goes, was real money at that time.
In an of itself, the episode proves nothing, but it triggered in me a skepticism regarding the media and higher education that has persisted to this day. Although I am still concerned about media conflicts of interest, my major concern today is the level of sophistication in reporting on educational issues. One example is media treatment of what I refer to in The Teacher Unions as "the war against privatization." The genesis of the war is simple enough. Unions are in the organizing business. Teacher membership in the NEA and the AFT (American Federation of Teachers), however, has been stagnant in recent years. Faced with stagnant regular teacher membership, the NEA and the AFT are conducting large-scale campaigns to organize support personnel: bus drivers, secretaries, cafeteria workers, custodians, and so on. The sales pitch is: "Join the NEA (or the AFT), and we will protect you against privatization." In this context, privatization is a synonym for "contracting out" school support services to private businesses; hence the teacher unions are demonizing it in every way possible.
Let us ignore the fact that, if nonteaching services were more efficient, there would be more funds for teachers. The fact is that few, if any, interest groups in our society are more eager to promote privatization that the teacher unions. For most citizens, our court system is the institution that is utilized when they claim that another party has violated a contract. At local, state, and national levels, however, the NEA and the AFT propose, demand, even strike to achieve binding private arbitration of grievances. In other words, to settle disputes over alleged violations of union/school district contracts, the NEA and the AFT insist on avoiding the public court system -- that is, public services -- in favor of private dispute settlement. Ironically, the union argument for private binding arbitration of union claims that school boards have violated the labor contract is similar, nay identical, to the arguments for privatization elsewhere. That is, the NEA and the AFT contend that binding private arbitration of grievances is more efficient, more economical for all the parties, and more likely to result in an informed outcome than resorting to our public judicial system.
This example illustrates the fact that the NEA and the AFT do not oppose privatization; they oppose privatization when the services of union members or NEA and AFT allies are involved.1 Otherwise, they often accept, even strongly promote, privatization. Yet, in reading hundreds of media reports on privatization disputes in public education, I have yet to come across one that points to this blatant inconsistency, not to say hypocrisy, in the NEA and AFT position on privatization. There is nothing new here; when the interstate highway program was being enacted, the construction unions insisted on privatization to ensure that the work would be done by their members, not by newly hired public employees.
My point here is not that the contracting out of instructional or support services is always the preferred course of action; that issue always depends on the facts of each case. Unfortunately, a case-by-case approach is what the teacher unions try to avoid; their war on privatization says nothing about the facts of each case but is a massive effort to demonize school district contracting out as a matter of policy. In this context, the media failure to show the inconsistency of union practice must be regarded as a major reason for the low level of public and professional understanding of the issues.
Another example requires a brief review of some of the data set forth in The Teacher Unions. The book points out that:
The book includes a great deal of additional data that support the conclusion that the teacher unions are a formidable political force. Nevertheless, I recently encountered a book titled Teachers: The Missing Voice in Education.2 The authors were professors at Washington University and Hofstra University. The preface was written by a nationally known professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, who echoed the book's theme that "the teacher's voice has been missing." Interestingly enough, the index to the book did not include a single reference to the NEA; the only reference to the AFT was a sentence of appreciation for the cooperation of the AFT affiliate in Dade County, Florida.
Obviously, if the teacher's voice is missing, then my analysis is badly mistaken, or the NEA and the AFT are ignoring teacher preferences in spending their huge revenue streams. Astonishingly, former AFT president Albert Shanker had endorsed the book. From 1971 to 1997, Shanker was the author of weekly advertorials in the Sunday New York Times. No other individual in education at any level, public or private, enjoyed such access to the media -- hardly surprising since the cost of "Where We Stand" recently stood at more than $750,000 a year. Nevertheless, Shanker's advertorials were only a small part of his access to the media, employers, foundations, and government agencies. One can only wonder to whom the "we" in "Where We Stand" referred.
If as Teachers: The Missing Voice in Education contends, the voice of teachers is missing in the schools, then what is the purpose of collective bargaining or the efficacy of teacher unions whose include exceeds $1.3 billion annually? Teacher bargaining was supposedly launched to provide teachers with a voice; if they don't have it after 35 years and billions of dollars to secure it, one must wonder what it will take or whither goeth the union revenues. Interestingly enough, the book is allegedly based on research funded by the U.S. Department of Education, and it was published in the State University Press of New York. In my view, it would be difficult to find a more glaring example of the waste of tax dollars at the state and federal levels.
Currently, the union impact on educational achievement is a highly controversial issue. At the outset, it should be recognized that the emphasis on educational achievement is itself a major strategic victory for the unions. It is not that unionization leads to higher levels of student achievement; the record is rather clear that it does not.3 Nevertheless, the emphasis on achievement is a strategic union victory for two reasons: it leaves open the possibility that government could raise the levels of achievement by spending more, and it overlooks the cost issue, which is a major union loser everywhere.
Conceptually, we could raise levels of achievement by spending more, but how much improvement could we generate at what cost? As long as cost issues are ignored and we debate only educational outcomes, the unions benefit immensely. As I have pointed out elsewhere, however, the government statistics substantially understate the real costs of public education. For example, these statistics sometimes do not include the state contributions to teacher retirement systems, an omission that results in a 10% to 15% understatement of teacher compensation.4 In any event, it is almost always possible to improve any product or service by spending more. The practical question is, How much improvement for how much more money? As long as the real costs of public education are substantially understated and the debate over education reform is limited only to what leads to educational improvement, the NEA and the AFT can continue to defend the public school monopoly with illogical arguments.
Suppose, for example, that comparable students educated in private schools do not outperform students in public schools. Suppose even that pupils in public schools outperform comparable students in private schools. The unions point to such research, or such claims, as evidence of their success. But even if the research is competent, which it usually is not, the results should be seen as a major criticism of public education. What is not stated in such studies is that public education is a system that spends much more per pupil to achieve the same or only a marginally better result.
In all candor, it is surprising that the media and higher education take seriously the contention that teacher unions do not have a negative impact on educational achievement. Nobody who reads union contract proposals to school boards would have any doubt on the issue. Let me comment here on just one effect of the unions that does not receive the attention it should. I refer to single salary schedules, that is, the overwhelming practice of paying teachers solely on the basis of their years of teaching experience and academic credits. Neither the grade level, subject, nor merit is allowed to affect teacher compensation, insofar as the teacher unions can influence the outcome.
The rationale is that all teachers share a common interest in educating students and possess a common set of skills. This is nonsense. Imagine a university that tried to operate by paying professors this way. Would it pay medical professors the same as history professors? The medical professor can easily command $250,000 a year in private practice; many history professors would be fortunate to get a job anywhere. There would be no alternative to overpaying the history professors or going without competent medical professors.
In K-12 education, the kinds of persons who can be good mathematics and science teachers have talents similar to those of persons in mathematical and scientific occupations. This is why there is a perpetual shortage of qualified mathematics and science teachers in K-12 education; as a result of single salary schedules, school districts cannot compete for the talent pool that could provide good mathematics and science teachers. Those who could teach these subjects well can earn more in mathematical and scientific occupations outside of teaching. The unions then cite these shortages to achieve raises for teachers in fields in which there are five to 10 qualified applicants for every position.
Why do the teacher unions oppose differentials by subject? Because they are bad for unions. If allowed, the unions would be divided internally over what group of teachers should receive the differentials. Also, the teacher unions must respond to the wishes of a union majority opposed to salary differentials they cannot obtain.
The teacher unions did not create single salary schedules, but they are the most powerful obstacle to the changes that are needed. This is only one of the many ways in which the unions have major negative, albeit unrecognized, effects on American education. In fact, I would say that the most publicized negative effects of teacher unionization, such as the obstacles they present to firing incompetent teachers, are far less important than their negative impact that goes unrecognized.
Let me conclude with a comment about NEA candor with its membership and the public. The NEA constantly tells its members that NEA-PAC endorsements are based on the educational positions of candidates for federal office. A quick perusal of the NEA-PAC questionnaire shows the claim to be false; support for a single-payer national health insurance plan and for the ERA were among the noneducational positions listed for NEA-PAC endorsement in recent years.
To avoid any controversy over whether my discussion of the issue in The Teacher Unions was fair to the NEA, I requested permission to quote the NEA-PAC candidate questionnaire in its entirety. To my astonishment, the NEA refused to grant permission on the ground that the questionnaire was "for internal use only." In other words, a questionnaire sent to hundreds of candidates for federal office, undoubtedly seen by thousands of nonmembers, was for "internal use only." It seems to me that an organization that feels the need to adopt such transparent excuses to protect itself will not be able to withstand the scrutiny that lies ahead.
As transparent as they are, the union efforts to question the motives of its opponents or distort their positions are even more pathetic. For example, in a recent review of The Teacher Unions, Stefanie Weiss, assistant editor of NEA Today, states, "Teachers, Lieberman writes, are among the most self-serving individuals on the planet."5 In The Teacher Unions, I wrote: "The strongest argument for teacher unions is that their pursuit of teacher interests is not different in principle from the pursuit of self interest by other groups....In a culture that praises competitive markets while most try to subvert them, there is no point to moralizing about teacher union efforts to promote teacher and union welfare; the teacher unions invest more in government largess because government is their employer, not because they are more self serving than corporations" (p. 225). In another work, I had written: "My intention is to avoid the banal controversies over whether teachers are more self serving or more idealistic than other occupational groups; on the whole, they are neither."6 Obviously, outright distortion is not a problem for NEA staff members in responding to criticisms of the NEA.
Despite the recent thumbs-down given by the NEA delegates to the proposed NEA and AFT merger, perhaps just the effort to merge in 1998 may be the turning point. Those who opposed the merger for the most selfish of reasons will no doubt have cited acceptable reasons for their opposition. Perhaps teachers will have learned more about their organizations in the summer of 1998 than they have in decades.
The appropriate analogy here is to the Berlin Wall. Only a few years before it crumbled, the Wall appeared to be impregnable; opposition was sporadic, intermittent, apparently futile. Nevertheless, the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were so discredited that even their supporters no longer believed in the dogma or had the will to crush the revolts. We can see the beginning of similar developments in the teacher unions. At a time when he was able to be more forthright about such a matter, Shanker commented that he would be more concerned about pupils when they started paying dues. Fundamentally, Shanker's point was well taken; legally and practically, the teacher unions represent teachers, not pupils, parents, or taxpayers. Nonetheless, the NEA and the AFT are now engaged in a huge public relations campaign to "reinvent the union," supposedly by treating educational achievement as their top priority. Realistically, it would be the coincidence of all time if an institution established for the redistribution of school board revenues and employee protection turned out to be the driving force behind a more productive education system.
I do not question the sincerity or the motives of NEA and AFT leaders who advocate "the new unionism," but as one who was present at the creation of the old union, I must point out that the beneficent outcomes of the new unionism are precisely what the proponents of the old union assert in the 1960s and the 1970s. This time, however, it will not take so long to recognize the claim for what it is -- to wit, the latest in a long history of efforts to maintain the status quo in education. Fortunately, despite conservative ineptitude in dealing with teacher unions, the string is about to run out on these efforts.
2 Marilyn N. Cohn and Robert B. Kottkamp, Teachers: The Missing Voice in Education (Albany: State University Press of New York, 1992).
3 For an extended discussion of this point, see Lieberman, The Teacher Unions, pp. 217-25; and Myron Lieberman, Public Education: An Autopsy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), chap. 6.
4 The new accounting standards promulgated by the Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB) are expected to remedy the omission. The estimate is based on interviews with GASB officials, 12 December 1997, Norwalk, Conn.
5 Stefanie Weiss, "Review of The Teacher Unions," Working USA, January/February 1998, pp. 76-77.
6 Lieberman, Public Education: An Autopsy, p. 53.
