Between Harlem and Redwood City
But, wait, say Guggenheim and his authorities. We went to Harlem and we went to Redwood City. And we discovered that, just as there are bad teachers in Redwood City, there are good teachers in Harlem. And we discovered that it was these good and bad teachers, not the neighborhoods or family household incomes that made the difference.
However, if that is what Guggenheim and his authorities discovered, that is not what they showed in their documentary. What they showed in their documentary was that, wherever adults have the interest, energy, and time to devote to children, children are more likely to succeed—irrespective of neighborhoods and family household incomes—than where adults do not have interest, energy, and time.
So, in fact, Guggenheim and his authorities asked the wrong question. They asked: will public schools in safe neighborhoods with a high property tax base guarantee good learning outcomes for our children. A century of peer-reviewed research says “No.” They should instead have asked: will public schools in any neighborhood, irrespective of the property tax base, but with adults who have the interest, energy, and time to devote to students guarantee good learning outcomes. A century of peer-reviewed research says “Maybe.” “Maybe” and not “Yes,” because Guggenheim and his authorities should also have addressed themselves to the much more complicated problem: how do we ensure that there are sufficient adults, with sufficient interest, energy, and time to devote to our children to ensure better learning outcomes?
Here is where Guggenheim’s attack on organized labor is not so much mistaken as it is incomplete. To his credit, Guggenheim acknowledges the historical value of labor unions. Teachers were admittedly being abused by administrators. They needed representation. But, sadly, Guggenheim gets this admitted need for representation mixed up with the process known as tenure. Not only are the need for representation and the process of tenure unrelated; the one logically excludes the other. Tenure is a procedure whereby a professional organization ensures the proficiency of its membership and protects its membership from consequences of arbitrary decisions made by non-members. For example, a department of classics at a university will tenure a professor—protect that professor from the consequences of arbitrary decisions made by administrators, politicians, or students—only if it is assured that the professor will maintain the high academic standards and independence maintained by existing members. The curriculum of public school teachers, by contrast, is dictated, often in detail, by non-teaching professionals, by legislators, legislative committees, school board members and administrators. No provision whatsoever is made, or legally can be made, for input from unions or union representatives who are there, not to determine or protect academic standards, but, as with any organized labor union, to protect wages, working conditions, and benefits. Teachers in public schools have little or no control over what they teach in the classroom, which is determined instead almost entirely by elected or appointed individuals—members of school boards, superintendents, legislators, city council men and women—individuals who have no necessary expertise in the subjects taught at public schools, but at best only an expertise in seeking and retaining public office.
This sheds some much needed light on the scene in Guggenheim’s documentary where the superintendent of Washington, DC’s public schools offers to double teacher’s salaries in exchange for the teacher’s union scrapping tenure. Her aim in offering the exchange is to make it possible to get rid of bad teachers whose jobs are protected by the system of tenure. The union refuses to bring the offer to a vote among its members, presumably because it would have been approved, and so the offer dies.