Sad, but true--I don't think teachers are very politically minded or generally mobilized to fight for important issues

This is a follow up to a previous post discussing whether education issues actually affect how people vote.

My two broad points:

1. Teachers generally do not follow the legislative session closely, do not contact their legislators about issues, and do not feel extremely comfortable arguing policies or even articulating their stories in public forums. This sometimes prevents legislators and the public from knowing the real picture of everyday teaching, the good and the bad of public education in Utah. That’s bad.

2. The corollary to point #1 is that teachers and the UEA are not some huge, powerful political machine as described by some legislators and commentators trying to portray themselves as the underdog or victim in disputes over education policy. (Much less the PTA. It always makes me shake my head that people try and argue that the PARENTS who would join a parent-teacher association would somehow be biased in favor of teachers in the supposed conflict of interest between teachers and students. People sign up for the PTA not because they want to be involved in their children’s school, but because they suddenly feel an untrustworthy longing to help teachers? Their $5 membership in PTA somehow makes them enemies of their own children? That’s stupid. The PTA on a local level is about as grassroots as it gets. Can’t you just admit that these people can honestly like their public schools and pursue policies strengthening those schools to benefit all students?) Sure, there’s a small politically active core of teachers in the UEA. Yes, there are individual teachers who are angry and individual teachers who are informed and politically active. But when they try and pawn off the voucher defeat as solely because of the UEA vote or blame legislative defeats on teachers, it’s a political strawman meant to energize those who have a negative view of public school teachers. That’s good…or to say, the understanding of that reality is good when legislators try the “pity poor me” defense when attacking public schools against the will of the electorate.

I have tried to follow local politics and especially education issues much more closely in the last year. Before, I think I was more like the typical teacher or person in general. I would be aware of big issues that showed up on the front page, but couldn't usually give you names, bill numbers, history of the conflict, etc. I knew more about some national issues than local issues and thought more about the presidential campaign than local elections.

I know other people and other teachers have similar feelings and it kind of makes me sad now that I see this huge disconnect between our state leadership's perception of public education and reality. We as teachers need to be talking to people and making our experiences known, but we get too busy. On the other hand, I totally understand. Like many good people, work takes a lot of time to do it well and we often want to spend time with family and pursue our outside interests in our limited free time. I have personally had a lot of difficulty balancing all of my responsibilities this summer.

Two examples of teachers I know and current education controversies in Utah:

First, I was talking to another teacher at a meeting in June soon after school ended. He is an excellent teacher, highly respected by students and teachers alike for being very effective at teaching his subject as well as making his classroom an inviting place to be. We were chatting before the meetings began and I asked him what he thought about the education omnibus bill. He had no idea what I was talking about. I believe that would hold true over the whole district—there would be more teachers who haven’t heard of the omnibus bill than who have.

Second, I was taking classes this summer with a bunch of highly motivated teachers seeking their Masters Degrees, and our small talk often consisted of educational issues. I didn't talk to all of them about it, but no one I spoke with had heard of the 20 million dollar merit pay bill that passed the legislature this last year. And as far as I know of my school's faculty, only the couple other guys I talk to about politics had heard about it as we started our meetings in August.

Teachers rarely if ever win political battles—the UEA or a sympathetic legislator might hold a press conference, the papers will cover it, a Dan Jones poll will reveal for the umpteenth time that Utahns in general support higher funding for public education, and…the legislature will still do whatever it wants and rarely suffer an election night defeat because of it. Or to repeat myself, here is part of a comment I made in the discussion of a post I wrote about the UEA (with one corrected typo):

But that illustrates the true lack of power of the UEA (My point #1). They make a lot of noise and get news coverage...and what? Senator Dayton mentioned how mad she felt over the UEA's "paving over the backs of students" ad campaign a couple years ago. (The legislature assigned tons of surplus to transportation in '06 when polls and the UEA wanted more for education. I feel we direly need both and it's a tough call, but I definitely believe that many legislators have a personal grudge against education.) The legislature was pilloried in editorials and in polls, but the money still got assigned to roads, none of the Republicans got ousted (well, PCE picked off a few anti-voucher Republicans, but with other Republicans), and business went on as usual. Polls support giving more money to education all the time, but legislators know that doesn't translate to the ballot box. How many teachers are there compared with habitual Republicans like my dad? The UEA has some token influence and gets some publicity, but the public only got really mad and acted with the rich money grab of vouchers.

The empirical evidence of my observations is the results of the elections so far this year. Behold the (non-)power of the education lobby! I wish that teachers and public education concerns did have more influence on some of these races, but right now we’re just one more loosely affiliated group of semi-frequent voters with little quantifiable power.

True Class Sizes and Utah’s Writing Scores

The article earlier today on Utah’s continued status as the state spending the least per student used a common statistic. This is a statistic that every citizen, educator, and legislator with any experience in our schools knows to be false, but is still frequently cited both by education and legislative leaders.

Still, he said, Utah faces the challenge of the nation's largest student to teacher ratio: 22.6 students per teacher. And that impacts retention.

"We have about seven more students per teacher than the national average," he said. "It makes us very economically efficient. ... It also tends to stress the system."

If we are even coming close to those class sizes, it would only be in the lower elementary grades. I am admittedly not very familiar with our elementary schools as our daughter is not yet 5, but I understand that even Kindergarten classes rarely hit that ratio. The true statistic for secondary classes would read something like:

Utah faces the challenge of the nation's largest secondary student to teacher ratio: 30 or 40 students per “core” teacher (math, science, English), and 35 to 40+ for “non-core” teachers. And that has an enormous impact on every single aspect of teaching, from planning to classroom behavior to one-on-one opportunities to grading. That additional workload and stress causes too many teachers to burnout and quit.

"In our public fairytale where we count counselors, speech pathologists, media specialists, and other necessary, but non-classroom personnel as counting towards class size, we have about seven more students per teacher than the national average figured from numbers the other states presumably lie about too. So that’s OK," he said. "It makes us very, very, very economically efficient. ... It also tends to cause a teeny-weeny bit of stress to the system when teachers provide for 200+ students. (And don’t even ask about teacher ratios at Willowcreek Junior High in Lehi or other schools in growth areas waiting for new buildings to be finished.)"

The public and legislative debate on education needs to be based on facts. True class sizes need to be admitted and discussed, by education officials as well as legislators. Are those sizes acceptable? What are the ramifications for struggling students as well as gifted students?

And those class sizes are not the result of district mismanagement or waste; growth has simply outstripped the legislature’s ability or will to fund class size reduction.

Also, the Tribune published an excellent editorial (The entire text is in my previous post.) about Utah’s scores on a national writing test comparing 8th grade students. It was justly critical of the rationalizations and explanations for the poor scores. I am not personally familiar with the test (It is apparently given to random schools within each state. Another teacher told me today that it was given at our school 6 or 7 years ago.) and cannot explain what exactly the students wrote about or the scoring out of 300 points.

I agree with the Tribune’s concluding statement:

As NAEP states, "To become good writers students need expert
instruction, frequent practice and constructive feedback."
Utah students, whose score of 152 is below the national average of
154, obviously need more of that than they're getting.

And the absolute best, most effective way to achieve that goal is to reduce class size. The same results can not be achieved by any other means. Writing software, teacher aides, professional development, and other plans help and are appreciated. But they can’t be touted as lower cost alternatives to actual smaller classes. Complaining about the very real cost of more teachers, rationalizing that class room reduction is pointless if we don’t hit the magic ratio of 15 to 1, or blaming the teachers union and claiming it just wants more teachers to boost its non-existent power are silly avoidance techniques.

We may not have the resources to reduce classrooms to the ideal size and make everyone happy, but we have money being proposed and wasted on unproven pet projects. Any poll, even of Republicans, would put classroom size as a higher priority than laptops for preschoolers and tax-cuts for Delta Airlines and Skoal Tobacco. Do the right thing legislators. If we don’t have enough money for class size reduction or you want another tax cut, tell the public and make your case. Don’t falsely accuse the districts of mismanagement or spend the money on side projects. And don’t talk down to us about how we don’t really want smaller classes. Teachers, parents, and students know better.

As you head to the caucus meeting tonight, remember that teachers are anti-family Communists who must be stopped!!

I'm heading to my first caucus meeting tonight. I'm a teacher. I have cast many votes for both Republicans and Democrats. I have a family and children whom I love.

I believe our legislators should not give extra time to lobbyists rather than constituents, not accept gifts (Senator Bramble's concerns about not receiving paid trips to "investigate" important issues are self-serving and far outweighed by the appearance of impropriety, whether real or only perceived) or at the least disclose every gift over five dollars in value, should not push through tax breaks for lobbyists (Delta, Anderson Corporation, Skoal, etc.), should not use omnibus bills to dishonestly shield defeated legislation from discussion and public scrutiny, and should not be able to LIE about their employment with a multi-billion dollar nuclear consortium and then testify on behalf of that corporation in front of a committee that they chair!

I believe vouchers were an ingenuous attack on public education that fooled many people through their false claims of "cookies" to redistribute. The legislators constantly attack and belittle teachers and school districts, even when their own legislative audits and public information budgets prove their findings wrong. It doesn't have to be business vs. schools, but there is a virulent anti-public-education movement that is vastly over-represented in our legislature.

Teachers are not covertly teaching abortion, sex, or anti-American values. Discussion of our history--good and bad--and moral dilemmas is not a threat to America. A lack of critical thinking and blind acceptance of what politicians tell us IS.

It's not like the blog I read today is known for critical analysis of both sides, but this post makes me simultaneously mad and sad. This is the extreme right-wing that does not represent the large center of public opinion in Utah.

If you want to protect our conservative, pro-family values in Utah, please do not stay home Tuesday night. Our opponents are organized and are launching an all-out war against conservatives, and it's won or lost in that little neighborhood caucus meeting of only about 20 people. Not only is parental choice in education at stake -- but everything we cherish as conservatives.

Teachers are not the enemy! To oppose vouchers is to support one of the primary means of creating the largest, most prosperous middle class in the history of the world. On the otherhand, vouchers benefit very few families at the expense of the majority of middle-class families.

And in a totally non-surprising show of hypocrisy, here is an excerpt from an email sent out from Parent's for Choice in Education last Friday:

Special interest groups opposed to meaningful education reforms are well aware of this, and in a bold attempt to protect the education status quo, they've recruited candidates across the state to run as Republicans against school reform incumbents. They're even running anti-voucher candidates in districts where a majority of voters voted for Referendum 1.

Translation: In a bold attempt to hijack democracy in favor of an unpopular ideological agenda, Parent's for Choice in Education has spent over half a million dollars in the last two campaign cycles ('04 and '06) to unseat pro-education Republicans--even in the majority of districts that oppose vouchers--and ramrod vouchers (among various anti-education measures) through the legislature by one vote. We are upset that people are calling us on our dishonesty and getting involved in the political process.

Why Good Teachers Can Disagree About the Direct $2500 Pay Raise

Teachers are for the most part hardworking, caring people who want to serve their students while still providing for their families. However, they are nowhere near the monolithic, reflexive voting block the UEA haters decry. They unite against obvious attacks on public education like vouchers, but otherwise represent diverse philosophies and stages in life. This is no different than any profession. For example, podiatrists, plastic surgeons, and general practice physicians face similar challenges with schooling, high insurance rates, and balancing costs, but don’t all agree on every law, regulation, and medical practice. They have different opinions and interests depending on their area of specialization, place they live, family background, time in the profession, religion, and individual personalities. And that is a good thing. Different points-of-view are important to healthy democracy and debate. In Alpine District, the teachers reflect the population and are generally conservative Republicans, but each teacher’s individual circumstances and stage of life differ.

In the papers and at the legislator Q&A session I attended at Cherry Hills Elementary in Orem, the legislators have been trying to use those differences as wedges to fracture the occasional unity of teachers against their pet proposals like vouchers or merit pay. Last year, the legislature allocated a $2500 dollar raise and a one-time $1000 bonus for all teachers. That money really helped my family and I appreciated it. They put the money directly into salary, bypassing the normal process of increasing the amount of the WPU which is allocated per-student to the districts which then negotiate salary and benefits with the local unions. The UEA opposed this top-down measure.

The traditional route would end up in a percentage increase across the board for all salaries. A 7% WPU increase would likely end up as a 5% or 6% increase in salaries, not counting benefits. So a salary of $30,000 with a 5% raise would increase $2100, while a salary of $55,000 would increase $3850. Instead, the $2500 increase this year represented an 8% increase in my base salary and only a 4% increase for my colleague who has been teaching for 25 years.

At the Cherry Hills meeting, the legislators explained their support of the direct raises with claims that the money they allocated to salary “wasn’t getting to the end of the row” and that the districts couldn’t account for the money they gave them. These claims were misleading at best—see my previous post about admin. costs and audit results. They also explained to us how the UEA officials were opposed to the direct raises because they were all senior teachers and wanted the money for themselves. (There was no mention of senior leadership pressure on new legislators causing them to break explicit campaign promises or face all of their bills getting tabled. i.e. Rep. Sandstrom) The constant UEA bashing I detailed in my notes on the meeting shows the true game of the legislators. They are angry that the UEA organization provided the framework for the referendum signature gathering and raised funds to oppose the voucher bill. If teachers can be pitted against each other or the union, it dilutes the power of their opposition on important education bills. They’re getting something right for the wrong reasons.

We had some interesting discussions about the issue at lunch when we heard a similar proposal was in the works for this year, and I have spent quite a bit of time discussing the ramifications of the new raises with my aforementioned colleague. Seeing some of the issues from his point-of-view has helped me understand the complexity of all these issues and how compensation is inextricably tied to the healthcare system.

Being a teacher on the bottom half of the totem pole, I obviously really liked the direct raise on a purely personal level. It allowed us to put more money into my IRA and make some needed home improvements. The decision can also be justified for the profession in terms of attracting and retaining quality teachers. A teacher doesn’t go into the profession with the same mentality as someone going into business, but they do require some stability and the ability to provide for their family’s future. We’d be in deep trouble if teaching were only feasible for second earners in two-earner families as some have suggested. So I figure the $2500 increase is still an increase for the older teachers who are more financially stable, and that it will help the new teachers who need it most.

The “greedy” senior teachers have legitimate concerns about their pay when some circumstances are considered.

First, expenses of all sorts increase along with salary as your family grows and grows up. College alone has spawned an entire financial industry dedicated to paying for higher education and those expenses have increased at a rate triple or quadruple the rate of inflation. Teachers deserve the ability to plan for their children’s education. Undeniable point granted.

Second, people are living longer and retirement costs, especially healthcare, are increasing. My colleague gave me a copy of his first salary schedule in the Alpine district from 1983-84. A teacher with 30 years of experience and a Master’s degree made just under $25,000 a year. Since retirement money is based on years worked and previous salary, a teacher who retired after that year would receive a pension of about $15,000 a year. This obviously seemed at least reasonable at the time. If they had been prudent and had their house paid off, they could probably have gotten along just fine. But what if that person were still alive today, 25 years later? People commonly live into their 80’s and beyond now. Property taxes and normal living expenses don’t end. Living without insurance isn’t a reasonable option and an independent policy can be upwards of $10,000. What if they need to live in a nursing home? What if that stay is for a period of years? What if they require major surgery or medical devices such as wheel chairs? The healthcare crisis looms over anyone considering the years after retirement.

My colleague’s elderly mother receives care at a facility that costs $5000 a month. Her roommate and her husband are facing the necessity of using their house as collateral for Medicaid coverage so that the wife can continue receiving care at the nursing home. They’ll literally have nothing when they die. My colleague deals with his mother’s care weekly and often talks with that other couple, keeping his possible future financial needs fresh in his mind. What seems like a secure retirement now could look just as meager in 25 years as that $15,000 seems now. Teachers nearing retirement have a natural and understandable interest in maximizing their earnings now as every dollar translates into more security in retirement.

An argument can be made criticizing these teachers for overdependence on government retirement (though it would be awfully hypocritical coming from legislators…). I think this would be legitimate criticism of my generation, but you have to see where the teachers near retirement age are coming from. The stock market was widely viewed as speculative, risky, and beyond the abilities of individual investors as recently as the 1980’s. The retirement wisdom and mentality of the older generation counted on a stable pension to get through their retirement years as a matter of course. We can prepare the teachers my age to invest individually, but we can’t pull the rug out cold turkey from under thousands of teachers for following what was regarded as the prudent retirement path. Those teachers, along with everyone else of that age, just didn’t have the same resources we do now. Without the internet, investment information and competitive investment options weren’t easily accessible to a common worker. You couldn’t just pop into Vanguard online, check yields, see fund descriptions, and open up an IRA through an online funds transfer. The paradigm has changed now, but there’s still a steep learning curve to investment and savings as we can see in the financial news every day.

In addition, teachers retiring now and receiving pensions weren’t getting those higher salaries, and thus saving, for long. They made significantly less money as beginning teachers than I do. I was surprised to find out how many current teachers’ families qualified previously for free or reduced school lunches, sometimes for over a third of the teacher’s career. There wasn’t spare money to save and they missed out on a lot of years of compound interest.

Now, having said all that, I still think the current direct raises are a good thing. The new teacher shortage and huge initial investment needed to get a house are probably even more pressing than post-retirement benefits and the smaller raise still helps all teachers. Though, as my friend says, I’ll definitely have a different perspective in 20 years as I face my own medical problems and my family grows up needing more clothes, orthodontics, car insurance, etc. We can disagree without assigning selfish motives to each other.

The real solution lies in increased pay across the board to help secure both new and old teachers. Legislative motives don’t look good when they resort to untrue statements of cost and blame to justify the direct raises. The money IS flowing to teachers; it just hasn’t been that much historically. Trying to pit teachers against each other and delegitimize the unions as partners in education through bypassing traditional negotiations smacks of an ax to grind rather than true concern for teachers.

The UEA: The Legislature's All-Purpose Excuse

OK, I know I don’t have tons of people reading and commenting on this, but I don’t see a reasonable basis for all the hatred. The UEA advocates for many educational improvements such as smaller class sizes, along with higher teacher salaries, and most Utahns support that cause. Jesse
thinks the UEA are scammers because they haven’t achieved higher salaries:

My biggest problem with all teachers' unions is that they are ineffective at their core mission and thus are a corrupt drag on teacher salaries. Despite more than doubling inflation-adjusted education spending over the last four decades, teacher salaries have been flat during the same period. That's a pretty crappy job negotiating compensation for the rather large budgets that unions work with.

I just can't see how a group powerful enough to stare down the legislature can tuck tail and run when confronting district superintendents, you know? I wonder how long it'll take before teachers figure out they're being scammed.
December 31, 2007 1:17 PM

Both the NEA and AFT (page 3, PDF) show flat teacher salaries in separate surveys.

...(and some other stuff)…
December 31, 2007 3:42 PM

I can't agree. I discussed this with a bunch of old-timers and no one felt there was some unrealized windfall we’d been swindled out of. What grand pot of money were we supposed to take drastically higher salaries from? Construction costs and growth alone account for most of the increase in spending. We also know we need computer labs, copy machines, test sheet scanners, software, training, etc. These costs differ GREATLY from the paper, pencil, chalk, and dittos of the past. The legislature hasn’t increased spending with that in mind. The needs have increased and funding has just barely kept pace with the growth. I think teachers in general sympathize with the difficulties in funding the large number of students in Utah from a smaller tax base. We can almost feel guilty when we see firsthand many of the families that struggle with taxes, but we also need some way to plan for the future if you want anyone teaching as a primary career. I was surprised to learn how many teachers’ salaries qualified their kids for reduced lunches in past years. I would have qualified for WIC if my wife hadn’t been doing extra babysitting while pregnant or if our second had come a year earlier.

Whoa. Just checked and I’m fairly certain we qualify now. I even had kids a little later than the average BYU guy. The point is, teachers are not just being whiny when they qualify for federally subsidized food. You’re not supposed to spend above something like 28% of your gross income on housing to be financially stable. Say you have a $1000 monthly payment for a $12000 yearly commitment to your mortgage. (At that price, you’re either getting a great deal on your interest rate or living in a very modest home. If you want your family to grow, good luck.) That translates to a yearly salary of $42,857 if you want to live at the threshold of fiscal responsibility. Here’s the salary schedule for Alpine School District:

http://www.alpine.k12.ut.us/publicComponents/newsletters/Employee%20Salary%20Schedules-Teacher%20schedule%20FY2008.pdf

Even tossing in savings from our admittedly good health insurance obtained from the large state-employee pool discount rates, how long until you can buy a home without moving to Genola? Surprised a lot of teachers quit in the first 5 years? And as salary increases, a lot of you know more than I do about the increasing costs of your growing family as well. (A 25-year teacher just told me he’s paying $150 more a month in insurance now that his 16-year-old son is driving. Ouch! I need to call my parents and retroactively thank them profusely.)

But with all this, teachers see firsthand at school that there are financial needs all over, and that is precisely why they DON’T go nuts and strike constantly. AND, while I believe Jesse is sincere, honestly tell me that UEA critics wouldn’t go nuts if we HAD gotten high percentage salary increases at the expense of the technology and extra classrooms that the funding went to. It’s a rock and a hard place for teachers. The same rock and a hard place hold true for the legislature, but the UEA gets demonized while having almost no real power.

I vaguely remember a strike from elementary/middle school years, and I was out of the country during the last strike in the late 90's. My school AEA rep says those two strikes made him disassociate from the union for awhile, and I would tend to agree with him. I want to be in the classroom even when I'm annoyed at the legislature. I only know only one teacher at my school, a California transplant who thinks the teachers should fight much harder for higher salaries like in his home state, who would support something like that. But that illustrates the true lack of power of the UEA. They make a lot of noise and get news coverage...and what? Senator Dayton mentioned how mad she felt over the UEA's "paving over the backs of students" ad campaign a couple years ago. (The legislature assigned tons of surplus to transportation in '06 when polls and the UEA wanted more for education. I feel we direly need both and it's a tough call, but I definitely believe that many legislators have a personal grudge against education.) The legislature was pilloried in editorials and in polls, but….the money still got assigned to roads, none of the Republicans got ousted (well, PCE picked off a few anti-voucher Republicans, but with other Republicans), and business went on as usual. Polls support better funding for education all the time, but legislators know that doesn't translate to the ballot box. How many teachers are there compared with habitual Republicans? The UEA has some token influence and gets some publicity, but the public only got really mad and acted with the rich money grab of vouchers.

Here’s two great posts from the Edu Blah Blah Blahg that sum it up well:

The Utah Education Association- we are not evil
I read a post on the Utah Amicus quoting a letter which stated,

"Why have we entrusted the education of our children to the faceless names of the Utah Education Association?"

In other words, "Why have we entrusted the education of our children to teachers?"

Well, I'm pleased to inform the general letter-writing public that UEA members (aka teachers) have names and faces (as both help when teaching).

This leads to one of the things that consistently bothers me about anti-union rhetoric. Many people who speak against the UEA regard it as an automaton with no heart. It doesn't take much effort to learn that the UEA is all teachers, through and through. Even the VP, Ellen Thompson, is still expected to be a classroom teacher while meeting all the obligations of her office. In fact, the only officer who is not a current classroom teacher is the president, Kim Campbell (understandably, as being UEA president must be a large time commitment).

I am a teacher. I love teaching. I believe in public education. If you've met me, you've met the UEA, and for that matter the NEA. Would you want to entrust your child's education to me? I would hope so.
Posted by andbrooke at Sunday, September 23, 2007

Yep, that's my union
I'm the union rep at my school- a job I've come to enjoy. I've made it a point to learn as much as I can about the union and almost all of what I've learned has been positive. I have yet to learn something about my teacher's union that would make me want to cancel my membership (and I even read Mike Antonucci's blog).

Talking to other teachers, I've heard a lot of different reasons for why they are not members. Some understandable, some absurd. The voucher referendum, though, makes me want to shake them all and ask, "Can't you see what they do for you? This referendum would not have gotten off the ground without the UEA!"

Now the NEA is throwing their weight behind the referendum. This is teachers' money from across the nation (including mine), and they're spending over a million on us. For me, this makes every dues payment worth it. By Nov 6, every penny I've sent them will have come right back to my state, for a cause I believe in.
Posted by andbrooke at Saturday, September 22, 2007