In any big wrangle about school reform, teachers unions start at a disadvantage: They don’t speak for the children.
Those promoting change – be they parents, administrators, politicians or outsiders with grand theories – can presume (or pretend) to have only the best interests of students at heart. Union officials can make no such claim.
Even though most teachers union members have the hands-on, real-world classroom experience and passion for education that helps sort good ideas from ideas that just sound good, the public tends to interpret the contributions of their leadership as mere self-interested posturing.
Even still – even despite this natural handicap – it’s startling how thoroughly the Chicago Teachers Union is being clobbered in its ongoing public relations battle with the combined forces of Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Public Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard.
At issue is the idea of lengthening the school day for the city’s elementary school students.
Emanuel began speaking out in favor of a longer school day during the run-up to his election as mayor in February and has lately doubled down, bargaining with teachers school by school, offering them cash incentives to waive the hours set out in their contracts and expand the school day.
City Hall’s message has been focused and comparatively simple: Chicago’s school day is comparatively short. We must make it longer because more time in the classroom will give us better-educated students.
In contrast, the Chicago Teachers Union response has been diffuse and inconsistent.
A simple for instance: Is the union for or against a longer school day?
Yes and no.
The union is in favor of it if the extra time is well-used – “we want a better school day,” is how CTU President Karen Lewis puts it – and if teachers get commensurately more money for putting in more hours. But they’re against it because Chicago’s instructional time is very similar to instructional time in similar cities and because objective research doesn’t back up the claims for longer school days.
In August, Lewis was invited to be on Brizard’s Longer School Day Advisory Committee – a diverse task force of interested parties charged with attaching specifics onto the idea – and she ultimately declined. Her spokeswoman blasted the committee as a “publicity stunt.”
The union often stresses the need to empower classroom teachers in making important educational decisions. But when City Hall began the recent effort to lengthen the classroom day by a majority vote of the teachers in individual schools, union leaders objected, called it union busting and filed suit on procedural grounds.
The teachers now look like confused obstructionists – part of the problem, not part of the solution – largely due to self-inflicted public relations injuries.
How does Chicago’s school day compare? Union leaders never offered comprehensive data or did the research to support their argument that it’s not extraordinarily short. The Tribune on Tuesday published a comparison with some suburban districts that made this point, but the union should have performed a similar analysis months ago.
What does the research really say about longer school days? Union leaders spoke in airy and overly dismissive generalities about the purported value of more classroom time, but made little effort to bring forth specific, credible studies such as the recent paper from Duke University and the University of Texas showing unimpressive results for most kids and only minor gains for so-called “at-risk” students.
What was the union’s better idea? Labor leaders have rightly criticized City Hall for trying to simply tack extra time onto the school day before having a plan for that time. But they haven’t been promoting a plan of their own or even clarified their own position – and, no, a call for a “richer, broader curriculum” doesn’t count.
The result of this ineptitude is that teachers appear as though they are being dragged into a longer school day instead of helping lead the way.
To turn this around, Lewis ought to change her mind and join Brizard’s task force – the accusation that it’s a “stunt” will have some force if she actually attends a few meetings and can back up the charge.
And the union ought to withdraw its objections to the school-by-school effort to lengthen the day. Only a handful of schools are likely to sign on, the entire union contract is up for renegotiation next year and so defeats in these little skirmishes will only weaken the union if it carries on as though they matter.
The union may not speak for the children – it’s not their job, after all – but many teachers do. And their union must find a way to give them a better voice.
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