Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Teacher Unions and Professional Development

“Teaching has become the most unionized occupation in the United States, and local contracts now create a complex systems of rules that regulate labor-management relations” (Sykes, 1999, p. 240).

The legacy of industrial unionism. As the size of schools and school districts in the United States grew over the past century and half, primarily as the result of massive consolidation of school districts, it seemed only natural that the education sector would look to other sectors, business and industry in particular, for organizational models and principles that could be used in managing increasingly complex school systems. Based on principles of scientific management, educational decision making became much more centralized with, “power and authority accrued to school district headquarters (and, not incidentally, was lodged firmly in the hands of administrators)” (Koppich and Kerchner, 1999, pp. 317-318). So it was only natural that as teachers experienced and began to examine their formal working relationships with local school districts, they too looked to industrial examples for guidance. “Thus, both the AFT and NEA modeled their operation on the unions that had served American factory workers so well in the post-World War II period” (p. 317). Early on in the developing relationship among teachers, school boards, administrators the parties met and conferred on issues of interest to teachers in what Kerchner and Mitchell (1988) characterized as first generation unionism. From this first generation of unionism, we now have 34 states with collective bargaining laws that govern the relationship between teachers and their school districts. By the late 1950s the formal relationship between teachers and school districts entered a second generation of unionism steeped in “good faith” collective bargaining where wages, hours, and conditions of employment became the focus of teachers' interests through the written contract and management (e.g., school boards and administrators) retained control of policy and operational decisions in education. “This presumed bifurcation of union-management interests is reinforced by the statutorily restricted scope of bargaining. State laws define those issues about which union and management can bargaining and those that are excluded from negotiations” (Koppich and Kerchner, p. 318).
Various change forces and challenges in education over the past half century moved teachers and school districts from first generation unionism to second generation unionism characterized by distributive negotiations where, “Bargaining is about dividing up the spoils—money, rights, power—and carrying them away” (p. 319). Recently, educational reform initiatives accompanied by increasing demands for school district/teacher accountability for student learning outcomes have moved teachers' unions and school districts to rethink the traditional boundaries on their working relationships codified in collective bargaining agreements. In addition there are a number of exciting, substantive changes in teacher education and professional development that challenge teacher unions, administrators, and local school districts to rethink their relationship to professional development (Kerchner et al., 1997).
Linda Darling-Hammond (1998) argues for research that more closely examines connections between educational reform and teacher professional development. “To build lasting support for change, research about successful professional development initiatives needs to be translated into policies that will penetrate widely and comprehensively. These would include policies that influence school finance, salaries and incentives, preparation, recruitment, and retention of well- qualified teachers” (p. 13). Most likely, the translation of this research will be formalized in policies and practices that are closest to teachers and their work. These clearly include local collective bargaining agreements between school boards and teachers unions as well as a wide variety of side agreements, school/policy manuals, and other written documents governing these relationships. New Unionism. So what does this new unionism look like? To begin, there is substantial evidence that teacher unions have long been involved in socializing and supporting teachers in local school district. “Teachers' organizations participate in teacher socialization through a variety of means. First, they help set many of the terms for teachers' work and learning in the larger district through collective bargaining, including the scope of legitimate teaching activities within and beyond the school day, the nature of and expectations for leadership positions, participation in decision-making, and opportunities for professional development” (Bascia, 1999, p. 12). She makes the case that in school systems where teachers do not receive sufficient support for their teaching, teachers' organizations through a wide variety of supporting activities and structures are, “increasingly are filling in the gaps resulting from educational policies that assume unrealistically simplistic, technical vies of teaching and policy implementation” (p.3). More formally, there are at least three general strategies teachers' unions and school districts have employed to move toward more collaborative bargaining in which unions and management are seeking common ground to deal with issues of mutual interest and benefit. “The parties treat each other as professionals and consciously consider the issues that are important to both and the trade-offs each side can accept. It is this conception of negotiations that has given rise to locally based union reforms” (Koppich and Kerchner, 1999, p. 319). These include: 1) joint committees that, “expand the portfolio of the negotiated agreement and move substantive discussions of education policy and practice beyond the legally restricted scope of bargaining;” 2) trust agreements, “legally binding bilateral accords that sit outside the collectively bargained contract;” and 3) waivers, specific provisions or requests that allow school districts and teachers' unions to request relief from specific provisions or parts of the existing collective bargaining agreement (p. 320).

Despite the promise of these locally based efforts, Koppich and Kerchner (1999) view these as mere tinkering at the margins of traditional unionism that, “no matter how faithfully conducted and thoughtfully executed, have failed to move unions and districts much beyond the education reform starting gate” (p. 321). They argue that, “Teacher unions have organized teachers' economic lives and brought stability to working conditions. Now they have an opportunity to lead the transformation of education by embracing a new set of first principles of unionism: organizing around quality, organizing around schools, and organizing a flexible teacher labor market” (p. 321).
Though there are a number of positive aspects of the new spirit of unionism around issues of educational reform and teacher learning and growth, there are critics especially when the results in public policy tend to be limited to bilateral agreements between teacher unions and school districts. For example, Cibulka (1999) points out how conservative critics argue that teacher unions already have an inordinate amount of influence in schools and that their highly vested special interests may turn negotiated policies and agreements into documents that, “run public schools for their own benefit and inculcate their own values” (p. 173). Joseph Murphy (1999) describes the impact of new unionism and compacts on consumers of public education. “Public sector unions in particular are key instruments in the growth of bureaus and concomitant subordination of consumer interests to the objectives of the employees themselves. Ramsey (1987) concludes that when the economic influence of unions is combined with political muscle, public sector unions have considerable 'ability to tax the rest of society'[p. 97]” (p. 411). Finally, Joel Spring (1993) advises caution in the expansion of language in teacher union contracts to include such non-economic policy matters as professional development. He argues that expanding union contract language into such areas as professional development may have unintended negative consequences. For example, union influence in noneconomic areas often reduces public control, limits administrator influence (especially that of principals), results in overly formal and complex governance and practices around teacher development, and may negatively influence district and school decisions about resource allocations and educational policy by supporting the interests of teachers over those of students and the community.
Education Policy Analysis Archives Volume 9 Number 26/July 26, 2001 ISSN 1068-2341