Would you believe me if I told you that there is one way to fix nearly all of the problems America faces today? We could address pressing issues like economic productivity, public safety, health care, poverty, foreign investment, and global competitiveness with just one silver bullet. Just one.
That silver bullet is education. Education is our panacea.
In the popular documentary Waiting For Superman, Davis Guggenheim attacks the teachers unions and blames them for our education crisis. The unions have taken positions on education reform that counter their needed function.
Guggenheim is unfair in portraying the unions as the greatest roadblock to classroom excellence. Over the past forty years, the National Education Association (NEA) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) have been instrumental in fighting for adequate teacher wages and lobbying for school funding. Eliminating the unions is not a solution. The success of Finland’s education system, which maintains a completely unionized teaching force, shows that unions can play a vital role in establishing education as a high status professional sector.
Rather than protecting its members, teachers unions should focus on galvanizing prestige in the teaching profession by endorsing more rigorous standards for our educators.
By requiring higher standards, only the most capable and competitive citizens will be eligible to become educators. Other industrialized countries have surpassed us in education by placing sole emphasis on first-rate teachers. Exclusivity generates status. Consider the teaching standards in Singapore, South Korea, and Finland, which require all teachers to be from the top third of their graduating class. When only the brightest enter the profession, education endures a cultural change.
While the vast majority of our teachers are highly effective, the unions continue to sustain a minority that aren’t. Let’s stop incentivizing lousy teachers. Hoover Institution economist Eric Hanushek suggests that if we were to fire the worst five to ten percent of teachers every year and replace them with just average teachers, we would promptly surpass most developed countries in math and science. In his State of the Union address, President Obama agreed that we must oust unsatisfactory teachers.
Michelle Rhee, the former chancellor of the D.C. public schools, ignited a major controversy when she fired inadequate educators, but this practice should be embraced in all our underperforming schools. Surely, we need not rid our schools of quality educators. Yet, unions can help our schools by being more flexible in removing teachers that regularly fail our students in the classroom.
No one benefits from weak teachers, including the unions. There has been a rising tide of public opinion against the NEA and AFT, as evidenced by Guggenheim’s documentary. Teachers unions should want their members to feel like classroom professional executives. I know there are challenges in discerning which teachers underperform. But I also know that we can find practical techniques to fairly evaluate teacher quality. For unions to influence change in our schools, they should expend resources to identify which of their members are the most defective.
In order to augment standards, we also must establish a National Education Academy. Harvard’s education expert Tony Wagner insists on an education process modeled after our military academies. We should launch a central institution for excellence: a West Point for teachers. Our military understands how to structure the process of turning a civilian into a soldier; we need a similar method to transform civilians into teachers. The unions should endorse the quality standards of our military—that renowned eminence and distinction—for our classrooms.
Of course, there exists the reality that we have a shortage of teachers. By dismissing unsatisfactory teachers, our good teachers will be less effective with larger class sizes. I believe this is a legitimate concern, but I must ask: Why is it that we struggle in recruiting an exemplary work force in education? It is my belief that America will be able to enlist a new generation of teachers with ease once we instill exclusivity in the business of education.
Within a school, teacher quality primarily dictates success. Who stands in the front of a classroom is a strong determinant of whether a student will attend college. Teachers unions provide critical protection; their role in fighting for wages and support programs for good teachers, especially in budget-constrained states like Wisconsin, is unmatched. We should not abolish the unions, but rather rethink their role in order to invigorate fierce competition.
The current status of education in America is abysmal. When compared to other industrialized countries, the United States ranks near the bottom in math, science, and reading. This has detrimental economic implications. Guggenheim asserts that there will be approximately 123 million high-paying, high-skill jobs here in the U.S. by 2020, but merely 50 million Americans will have the sufficient education for them.
This is also a calamity in justice. Education inequality particularly devastates minority communities. Our most disadvantaged students tend to be enrolled in our worst schools. The cycles of poverty persist as we passively neglect the most fundamental social justice transgression of our generation.
President Obama said that whoever “out-educates us today is going to out-compete us tomorrow.” This nation’s future depends on our teachers and students. We need the urgency to comprehensively reform education in a way that encourages our finest citizens to become teachers. Teachers unions must spearhead an education revolution.
Post does not necessarily reflect the views of Penn Democrats.
Post does not necessarily reflect the views of Penn Democrats.
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