My letter to Wall St. Journal defending teacher's unions

Terry Moe's opinion piece condemning teachers union's makes some fundamental mistakes even from a market orientation. One of the biggest problems schools face right now is finding enough highly qualified and motivated teachers. Knowing that the pay and benefits for a job at least insure a middle class lifestyle is one of those things that would attract the best and brightest to the profession. Additionally, something that most unions fight for, smaller class sizes, directly benefits kids. The less prepared kids are, the less likely it is that they can stay focused without frequent attention from the teacher. If you were running a restaurant, even with the best waitresses, there are limits on how good their service can be if you give them too many tables. Unions also fight for teacher autonomy in the classroom, something which would again attract brighter people compared to the current administrative trend to micromanage classes down to the minute, which tends to attract drones and clock-watchers.

A problem with the cult of testing is that it will end up punishing the schools with the most needy students, or the teachers who are willing to take them on. Our concern with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is that is designed to be more carrot than stick--schools that fail to meet it's goals will lose funding, making it harder to do the things that would improve their performance. We can agree that we have a sick patient, but all NCLB does is stick a thermometer is his mouth, and then yell at the doctor who has too many other patients to treat and not enough medicine.

Taking power away from the unions and giving it to school boards and administrators will likely have little to no benefit for students. School boards are often more worried about directing building contracts to their friends, and administrators are often the worst teachers who gravitated to the front office to escape teaching. Administrators tend to think of teachers as interchangeable factory workers, but as anyone who has been a student can remember, there are vast differences from teacher to teacher, and the best were those given the freedom or who broke the rules if they were too restrictive. Giving administrators the power to decide merit pay would more likely be used to reward conformists than those who rock the boat and look for new ways to involve kids in their education.

The one concern about unions that is understandable is how to get rid of bad teachers. Most unions don't necessarily want to stand in the way of this, but rather try to keep the process from being arbitrary and capricious.

What this issue really comes down to is the most successful in our society are looking for ways to pay less and less in taxes, and pretend they made it without the infrastructure, the education, police and military protection, safe products, and good roads that all of our taxes pay for. They don't want to pay their fair share, so they want to cut the budget even if it means shorting the people who will educate your kids to be the next generation of leaders and citizens.

It's time to tell the wealthy to stop being selfish cry-babies, and start acting like citizens of this country. America will not tolerate becoming a plantation, with a few rich folks up in the big house and the rest of us living off of whatever scraps they deign to toss us. That's not what made us great, and it is un-American.

Our concern with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is that is designed to be more carrot than stick--schools that fail to meet it's goals will lose funding, making it harder to do the things that would improve their performance.

Don't you mean that it will be "more stick than carrot"?

Otherwise, it's a great letter!

excellent letter.