Teaching… a Skill?
In recent (U.S.) news, there was a strike of the Detroit teachers Union. It has led to a lot of problems in the District (no I do not live in Detroit, I’m from/live in NY), but it has also brought even more problems to light. There are a few issues that I have learned about that really frighten me.
In the overall scheme of things,
anyone could say that the strike was about the teachers–who are members of the Detroit Federation of Teachers (a union if you can’t tell)–desire to get a pay increase and better benefits; moreover, that desire was a detriment to the students. Members of the government, obviously members of the management in the school district, and some parents, etc. have said that the strike was selfish because the district is facing a $105 million deficit and must balance a $1.4 billion budget.
This could get complicated,
so I will lay out the causes of, and the consequences from the strike, and then I will discuss my real position, which is that the teachers had every right to strike.
Last year, the teachers had to suffer a pay cut.
It was a pay freeze really, so in essence, due to rising cost of living (gas prices, rising cost of health care, mortgage, cost of food, inflation, etc.) they had less money to take home. The District was/is facing a loss of students–as well as teachers–because they are moving away, this leads to the first issue of their budget crisis. The school district gets paid by the number of students that attend its schools, but if more students leave, they get paid less. Another issue, and I would say the bigger issue, is the mangers of the district’s mismanagement of funds. In so much as many schools aren’t getting what they need, money is getting used inappropriately, unfair pay increases, whatever. This mismanagement has further exacerbated the issue because mismanagement means that the programs that need the money the most do not get it; moreover, because they do not get the money, things get worse, and there becomes a greater need for money that they still do not get. (I hope that made sense, it is very tautological, but that’s the way it goes.)
Why the strike you ask?
Well, because there is this budget crisis, the district has asked the teachers to take another pay cut. Fact: the teachers haven’t had a pay raise in 3 years. Imagine asking your employees to do the same amount of work, but get paid less, for reasons that have nothingto do with them, how do you think they would react?
However, if it was just a pay cut,
I don’t think they would have struck, or at least I believe they would have had a greater disincentive to strike. Unfortunately, there was a whole list of things that the teachers and the district disagreed on. The district wanted charter schools, meaning each school could control how much they paid their teachers. This is a detriment to the Union because it is harder to equalize pay across many schools when the schools have little incentive to do so. The district also wanted the teachers to pay more for health insurance and get a plan that was worse for them, two extreme losses considering how much the cost of health care has increased over time (that’s another essay all together). Add more problems with length of contract, layoffs, and etc., and the Union had plenty of reasons to strike.
The two main reasons not to strike.
1. The students: this can be rationalized by saying that the long term benefits to all students and teachers greatly outweighs the short term disadvantages. (I’ll discuss the situation with students and schools below.) 2. Michigans’s Public Employment Relations Act, Section 423202 I believe. It says that it is illegal for the teachers to strike, fines them 1 days pay for each day they strike, and fines the Union $5000 per day. Really, the teachers are just not getting paid to work, and the Union can take that loss as well, so not much of a disincentive.
Who is really at fault here?
There are, as always, at least two sides that can be taken here. Many people say that the real reason why the school district, and by extension its students, is doing so badly is because the teachers are doing a bad job as teachers. (This may seem off topic, give me a minute.) The test scores of the students are going down; people–students and teachers–are leaving the district to go to other better, but more expensive, schools; and the overall “educational morale” is steadily declining in Detroit. However, this is really a micro aspect to a macro problem.
People say that students don’t learn because teachers don’t teach.
They have no desire. They are not skilled enough. They are too concerned with economic issues, and not concerned enough with the welfare of their students. Using Detroit as the example, I want to challenge those assertions. While I concede that there are those teachers who are awful and inconsiderate (there are all types of people in this world) I refuse to believe that every teacher who takes a job where they get paid $35,000 to start to only reach about $70,000 by the time they retire (this is in Detroit), has no desire to teach. There are teachers who get masters degrees that start at $40,000, I think there are a great many who actually have a love of the job in their hearts. To expound on the masters degrees, let’s consider this: how equitable is it for a teacher to get a masters in education to have a starting pay of $35-40,000, whilst a business person who gets a masters in business can start at $200,000? Which is the bigger problem? A teacher who wants more for their skills, or societies view that education is less salient than business. Are the people who educate our future business moguls less important?
In terms of teachers who don’t teach
because they are not skilled enough, have we considered that it is the environment that they teach in that keeps them from teaching, and not their ability to perform the task. Once again this is for Detroit: there are schools that do not have enough supplies for their students. I read of one story where the students were legitimately complaining because there was no toilet paper in the bathrooms, yet the principal was able to get a platinum television for his office. Maybe it’s just me, but that makes no sense. Do you want another statistic? There are schools where the student to book ratio is 3:1. That means that for every 3 students, there is only 1 textbook. Many schools are riddled with bullet wholes. Teachers have to take their own money to pay for school supplies for their students (a topic that I will expand on below). How do we expect teachers to teach if their environment completely contradicts the effort?
My point is,
if you are looking for the major cause of break down between the Union and the District, look no further than the management. I cannot tell you what their priorities are–although I would take a “wild” guess and say it is somewhere in the business sector–but I can tell you that their priorities are not in education. The district has a $350 billion budget, approximately (I forgot the exact amount). Yet their solution to the deficit is to take money from the teachers and have a 2% decrease across the board (this will lead to closure of schools and layoffs of all employees, not just teachers.) One of the major criticisms of the strike is that it has caused 25,000 more students to leave the district, meaning there will be a decrease of $190 million in aid from the government for the schools. I cannot lay this at the hands of the teachers alone. However, I doubt that the strike was the sole cause of their departure. The whole district has been sliding down for years. It has gotten progressively worse. Maybe the strike was the final impetus, but really, if they could afford to go, why should they stay?
The fact of the matter is
that the managers of the district, the Superintendent (who got a raise and made $200,000 last year when the teachers couldn’t get a pay increase because of “budgetary issues”), and the others are all mismanaging the school system and ruining it from the inside out. They are slowly destroying the educational system and laying the blame at the feet of the teachers who are suffering along with there students. Whilst they are getting raises steadily, the teachers are losing two fold. Because they are dedicated (despite the claims otherwise) they are spending their own money in order to provide for their students. But considering an age where the standard of living continues to rise, and their pay doesn’t follow with that rise, the teachers are unable to afford this practice. There are teachers who say they cannot even pay their mortgages because they cannot pay them. This is why they are fleeing the Detroit school system, not because they don’t like teaching, but because they cannot afford to.
According to the contract
the Union and District have finally agreed to (and the teachers have agreed to accept) a contract where teachers will get a 3-year deal that includes a pay freeze in the first year, a 1% raise the second year and a 2.5% pay raise in the third year. this should satisfy them right? Huh, no. They also now have to pay 10% more for health insurance, and, as opposed to the prior system where older employees did not have to pay (only 55% had to pay), now everyone pays. They lose 1 preparation period a week, Substitute teachers are making about $30 less, and they have all lost sick days (this is an approximation of the contact, I haven’t read it yet, but this is from what I remember of it), and teachers and students will lose some of their Easter break vacation days. First and foremost, the increase in health insurance of 10%, and the 3.5% increase over 3 years means that the teachers really aren’t making much more than now. Like I said, if you consider the rising cost of living and etc., many will either have to go to another profession or move because they will be broke. (There’s a lot of financial stuff that I can’t get into right now.)
I think I will conclude this essay (for now) with a question.
What does it say about our society, when it treats it’s teachers this way? How can we expect them to help those non-geniuses who cannot afford to move, who live in the margins of our society, whose parents live in the margins or our society, who need the support of our government (and I’m not talking welfare, only/or specifically education) if we allow the government to ignore their needs. We can complain all we want, and I can sit here at my ivy league school and complain all I want, but really, who is at fault? It’s the government, who is more concerned with business and profit than the state of it’s students, that needs the spotlight on it. It’s this government that allows self-interested people to take control of a school system and ruin it without any consequences. It’s our government that is destroying our students and future by not giving a damn when it is their job to give a damn.
However, it’s our job to stand up and say that we care for our teachers and our students and our marginalized people if anything is ever going to change. We do want change right? We live in a civil, liberal, society right? So what is stopping us from forcing the government to give a damn about them, and by extension everyone?