The National Bureau of Economic Research still has a big question mark in place for the end date of the U.S. economic recession that it says began in December 2007. During the most brutally dreadful and bleak moments of this recession, not many workers in any industry were faring well—wages were mostly flat or declining, and jobs were bleeding out like an ER patient on a tawdry episode of Grey’s Anatomy.
But please take note that the public school teachers, principals, and support staff who kept their jobs (i.e., the more “experienced” workers protected by their unions) were doing noticeably better, on average, than all other workers in America, as measured by BLS’s Employment Cost Index. As a politically favored group, the ARRA pumped a lot of money their way (see red spike in graph). Now that the money has been spent and public school workers’ compensation is rising around the same rate as all other civilian workers, teachers unions are rushing back to the federal coffers with their pink hearts in hand.
Here’s the question: Will this new money pouring in from a potential teacher jobs bill really be used to save the jobs of young teachers (who face discrimination from unions)? Or will it be used instead to buttress the salary and benefit increases of older teachers (who the unions really represent)?
A lot of good thinkers are suggesting that some conditions need to be attached to this bill to get a bit of school reform in exchange for new public dollars. I guess I’m still stuck trying to decide whether the jobs bill is really necessary and fair to begin with…
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Tyler,
You’ve raised several important questions here that I hope to address in future blog posts: educator evaluation, long-term trends in teacher compensation, defining “good” performance, etc. Paul Peterson’s latest book, Saving Schools, offers a compelling history of how these public policy issues have evolved over the 20th century.
The primary point I wish to convey in this post is that if the Congress is going to favor teacher jobs over jobs in other industries, then 100% of the funds from the bill need to go towards actually saving teacher jobs – not boosting the salaries of older teachers. In fact, districts should be contributing even more from their own budgets to save teacher positions. This doesn’t appear to be what happened under ARRA, since funds were used to increase public school employee compensation at the expense of the jobs of younger professionals.
Since teachers unions are unwilling to fairly represent some of their younger, effective members and colleagues, the U.S. Senate has a responsibility to ensure that new contracts are drawn up to save these outstanding young teachers’ jobs through a system that rewards clearly defined performance.
Or this report suggests that state and local workers, including teachers, across the country actually are compensated significantly less than private workers with similar education, training, and experience. They’re using BLS numbers too. So a few tenths of a percent difference in changes in 08/09 might obscure a longer term picture where teachers are actually getting a bad deal.
Thanks for a thoughtful reply, Forrest. I’ve got to say though that I think you’re posts (not the replies in comments) are much more inflammatory and political than is normal on this site. Not that I object at all to politicized discourse, but I read this site even though I disagree with a lot of the content because I think it’s always fair and I learn a lot from it. I’m happy to be pointed to those BLS numbers and the Harkin jobs bill by this post, but you should be aware that you’re alienating you readers with your language about discrimination and raiding public coffers. So that’s said.
On the substance: you’re comparing the educational and secondary schools numbers to the “all workers” numbers at the BLS site. So the all workers number is an average that includes teachers. But of course some groups will be above and some below the average. That’s how averages work. Teachers are a highly educated and critical group who work on multi-year contracts, and it doesn’t seem crazy that their compensation would rise moderately faster than the rest of the workforce during a recession when private industry is cutting back. ISo, is your suggestion that localities should break their contracts with their employees to keep their compensation in line with the average? And wouldn’t that just pull the overall average down and add to the recession? That’s central to the justification for ARRA and stimulus generally: when private industry is contracting, the public sector needs to pick of the excess capacity. That means public workers continuing to get paid and to get raises.
Certainly some industries have also suffered, but my point was that (1) education is important and (2) relatively easy to direct stimulus money towards, because it just involves transfers to states and localities rather than complicated public works projects and such. (Public adminstration looks like it also spiked w/ ARRA, for instance.) Perhaps (3) teachers are political and organized is part of the mix, but I don’t see how you can reasonably ignore (1) and (2).
So it seems like your real point here is that you think teachers should be compensated based on criteria other than or in addition to credentials and experience (and that “experience” can be a proxy for age-discrimination, which seems like a plausible point). I think that’s a perfectly reasonable position. So what mechanism are you advocating? Because as far as I see, teachers everywhere *have* been negotiating things like merit pay in order to make their states competitive for Race to the Top funds, so those goals are in fact starting to be met. But they’re met using democratic and legitimate collective bargaining rather that just administrative fiat. I think teacher buy-in to these changes is fundamental; don’t you think so too? Why aren’t you celebrating that teachers are increasingly buying in? As far as I can tell, your position has won!
But central to these negotiations is what counts as “performance.” Your earlier post about bakers baking bread suggested that performance is actually a pretty straightforward thing to measure, but it surely isn’t. So do you think teachers are wrong to want these new evaluation schemes to be fair? That somehow it’s corrupt for them to negotiate with states and school boards about exactly what those new evaluations will look like?
If there’s going to be more federal stimulus money for schools, I don’t see why it’s a problem that they happen under existing contracts. I mean, even underperforming teachers are still performing important services. I think your goal is to encourage them to perform *even better*, but surely in a recession any layoffs would hurt students. And there’s no question that more money for schools means fewer layoffs, regardless of the salary scale. The same argument for breaking contracts was made from the right about auto workers, but then somehow contracts were sacred when it came to the financial industry.
Tyler,
Let me assure you that my writing is done in good faith. My mother is a public school teacher in rural eastern North Carolina and my fiance, who shares an apartment and a tight budget with me, is a public school teacher in D.C. Public Schools. It’s in my own self-interest to support a continuous flow of funds from the U.S. Treasury to the nation’s public education system.
As I write above, I am troubled that public school employees experienced substantially higher rates of compensation increases for each 08-09 quarter than workers in other industries. You have articulately explained the trade-off teachers unions face in choosing between saving the jobs of younger teachers and increasing the compensation of those who keep their positions. All industries face tough budget-cutting decisions during hard economic times. Do I believe that it is discriminatory and irrational to lay off teachers based on years of experience (i.e., age)? Yes, because it’s much more rational and good for students to lay off teachers who are not performing well instead. Who cares about age? Do I believe that it is discriminatory to choose to increase the wages of more experienced teachers above the average level of American workers while laying off teachers who happen to be young? Yes, I do.
Whenever an industry (finance, education, agriculture, etc.) comes to Washington for a “jobs saving bill” or “trade adjustment” or “systemic risk mitigation measure,” it is coming to secure public funds that other groups and individuals will have to pay. Politicians decide which favored industries get public dollars and which will be left hanging to dry. Those decisions are, unfortunately, often made by calculations of political donations, campaign volunteers, and threats of bad publicity. “Which industry can help keep me in office?” politicians ask. “That’s who I’m supporting.”
If we’re going to continue down the road of bailouts, there are other important industries that have suffered just as badly, or worse, than public education. Teachers unions happen to be well-organized machines with lots of money and lots of volunteers (not unlike other favored interests) to pressure politicians at all levels. If Harkin’s job bill does pass, the least we can do is ensure that the money is actually spent on saving jobs (not increasing the compensation of “more experienced” teachers). We also must require some much-needed reforms to the profession in return for We The People’s cash.
[Side Note: Do I think teachers are paid too much? Some are. Some are woefully underpaid. It's all a matter of performance to me.]
“Young teachers face discrimination from unions”? That’s sure an inflammatory way to describe seniority systems that are negotiated in good faith between teachers and school districts. “Politically favored groups raiding public coffers”?? This isn’t rich bankers forcing taxpayes to bailout their bonuses to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. ARRA didn’t pump money toward teachers because they are a politically favored group, but because it included a lot of money to prop up state budgets and money to keep education funding levels from dropping dramatically. Those are really good policy goals! It’s not corruption or interest group politics. You would prefer states just have to cut their education budgets more than they already have? Of course that money goes largely to teachers, because salaries are the bulk of school budgets. And in fact the Race to the Top money is *forcing* lots of unions negotiate on things like merit pay because they’re terrified of layoffs and salary cuts. Seems to me if one side is using cut-throat tactics to force concessions, its Arnie Duncan’s Dept of Ed.
I’m more than happy to grant that to an extent there’s a tradeoff between protecting salaries and preventing layoffs. But the fact that salaries get protected at the expense of junior teachers is because of already existing contracts that spell out a procedure for layoffs and those procedures are being followed. It’s one thing to say you wish teachers would renegotiate to trade some of their raises for fewer layoffs. Do you think teachers get paid too much? That seems like a really hard argument to make. I’m used to “reformers” saying that teachers don’t get paid *enough*, and that the fact that they take a lot of their compensation in the form of job security and benefits creates problematic incentives. But that’s not what you’re saying. Instead this post is just a lot of implication and innuendo about, what, corruption? Discrimination? “Raiding” taxpayer money?
Seriously, I have real misgivings about these posts you keep putting up, Forrest Hinton. They’re just full of really negative stereotypes about teachers and don’t seem to be even minimally in good faith.
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