(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
Nothing quite signifies the intellectual bankruptcy of the unions better than this article. Faced with a significant national trend towards revoking tenure, the President of the NEA fires back with: an absurd story about an attempt to fire an Arizona teacher 30 years ago based upon a speech impediment that was actually an accent!
Mr. Van Roekel of the teachers’ union disagreed. Recounting a story that had the burnish of something told many times, he recalled that around 1980, when he was a union leader in Arizona, he had arranged to have a speech pathologist assess a teacher whom a principal was trying to fire because of a speech impediment. The pathologist determined that the teacher had a New York accent.
“She would say ‘ideer,’ instead of ‘idea,’ ” Mr. Van Roekel said. “The principal thought that was a speech impediment. Without a fair dismissal law, that principal could have fired her arbitrarily, without citing any reason.”
Riiiiiiiiight….
Could it be that I am the only one who has noticed that, despite all of the complaining that unions do about administrators, that the vast majority of them come straight out of the teaching ranks? Furthermore, the state of school accountability in Arizona 30 years ago would have been zilch, either in the form of testing or parental choice. Such a dearth of transparency and competitive pressure would enable the arbitrary firings of staff of even effective staff. Oddly though, zilch in the way of accountability, whether in the form of testing with teeth or parental choice is the prefered policy stance of the NEA.
Strange that.
Further, the debate over tenure that I am watching involves complex discussions about methods for measuring teacher effectiveness rather than proposals for arbitrary and capricious firing. I wonder what debate Van Roekel has been watching.
Jay P. Greene's Blog 
The vast majority of “administrators…come straight out of the teaching ranks?”
Maybe that explains why administrators aren’t too bright.
I’m an administrator. And I came out of the teaching ranks. I graduated at the top of my high school class, and I have undergraduate and graduate degrees from some of the most competitive colleges and universities in the country. By any reasonable definition of intelligence, I believe I would qualify as “bright”.
That having been said, I certainly make plenty of mistakes in my job, and I still have a lot to learn about education. By no means do I have all the answers.
If you want to add to the conversation, please do. But I don’t appreciate snarky, ill-informed comments about my intelligence, or the intelligence of my many talented, dedicated, and bright colleagues.
Parry
Parry-
My intention was to comment on the idea that teacher unions often resort to boogey man stories about administrators. Van Roekel for instance would have us believe that absent tenure, there would be mass capricious firings of effective instructors.
Any snark on my part is directed only at those reactionaries who oppose changing a bad system that frustrates most of the good people who work in it.
Given absurd practices such as tenure and the dance of the lemons, I can scarcely imagine a more challenging job than being held responsible for administering a school, without having the tools needed to build your own team.
Bricks without straw.
Matt,
My comment was in no way targeted at you — sorry if that wasn’t clear. It was LAG’s comment that got me fired up. I did not read any ill-intent towards administrators in your post. And, if you had included a little administrator bashing, I’m guessing you could have come up with something more substantive than “Maybe that explains why administrators aren’t too bright”.
Cheers!
Parry
Matthew,
There is much about your post that I find objectionable. To begin with, your last remark, where you suggest that “the debate” about measuring teacher effectivness is somehow, not capricious makes you either disingenuous or ignorant of administrative decision-making in work environments. Secondly,your use of the term, “debate” begs the question: What debate have “you” been watching? There is no debate on anything. There are only soundbites from big-money people with “reform” agendas and disproportionate access to the media. It’s not exactly Lincoln-Douglas out there. I’d love to see all of this free-market education reform nonsense subjected to the intellectual rigor of a real debate, properly moderated so facts can determine the winners and losers. Now that would be a debate worth watching.
Bob-
You missed it! I’m afraid your side lost:
http://intelligencesquaredus.org/index.php/past-debates/dont-blame-teachers-unions-for-our-failing-schools/
Matt,
I’ll watch in it’s entirety, but judging from the first 5 minutes, surely you can’t consider this a debate. Could you? Spectators voting on the “outcome” is a valid intellectual excersise? I don’t think so. Were points assigned or witheld with respect to the validity of arguments and rebuttals? Individuals speaking in parallel soundbites, rather than in a conversational exchange? Doesn’t look like I missed much, but I’ll watch the rest of this, with an open mind, and keep my antennae up for something more legitimate, preferably, with a forum and format that is not stacked with corporate sponsorship and framed with language that is anti-union in it’s very conception.
Matt,
I watched it. I didn’t see any effective rebuttal or even attempt to rebut any of the so called evil-union proponents’ points. So, what were the spectators voting on? Probably the strength of the sound bites.
No, it seems “my side” didn’t lose a debate. It lost a pre-packaged sound-bite war.
Bob-
You are free to value your own opinion over that of the audience if you wish. In my opinion, the fact that the President of the NEA responded to an interview with the New York Times with an absurd story about an alleged firing from 30 years ago is an incident which speaks for itself.
Matt,
You seem to misunderstand. I am not writing to advocate for “my” opinion. You wrote a piece that I had factual reasons for criticizing. I pointed out one of the criticisms. You decided not to effectively rebut the criticisms (much like the anti-union panel members in the psuedo debate you referred to), by citing the “debate” as some kind of proxy proof for your assertions. You continue to do this in your recent post, by using a non-sequitor reference to something that a union advocate may or may not have said, without any sense of context. If you do not wish to rebut my initial criticism (or subsequent criticisms), you are free to do that. But, in the interests of establishing some standard of intellectual integrity to the “discourse” about education, it is reasonable to expect you to make some concessions when you are unwilling or unable to effectively rebut an argument that has merit (which the anti-union panel members did not do, and the audience members did not seem to regard as important).
Bob-
I can’t find any evidence of “factual reasons” in anything you’ve posted thus far.
Matt,
If you think the criticisms in my original post (and subsequent posts) are not factual, please elaborate with something specific. The burden of proof is on you to defend the notions in your original post (which, inexplicably, you have avoided doing). My posts were simply to suggest that the facts do not support your position.
Au contraire Bob- I don’t see anything in your original comment other than your opinion, to which you are entitled, but in which you have given me no reason to take an interest.
Matt,
I am sorry that you are not interested in defending your position with facts. You were initially interested in rebutting my claim that there is no real substantive debate about the current educational reform agenda. However, your response was intellectually indefensable, as I pointed out with factual information available to anyone viewing the “debate” link you posted. It’s unfortunate that you don’t acknowledge as fact that the anti-union panel members in that forum did not rebut any statement made by their opposition.
It is also unfortunate that you don’t take the same interest in defending legitimate criticism as you do in propogating misinformation about education.
It seems that I am wasting my time in my attempt at a constructive critical dialogue with you. At least our exchange is on the public record. Maybe that will mean something one day.