School administrators often look at out-of-school events from their administrative perspectives.
One of these events that carries particular relevance was the release last winter of the so-called Mitchell Report, a study by former Sen. George Mitchell on the extent of steroid use in professional baseball.
Two years in the making, Mitchell’s report tried to determine which players took steroids, when they took them and who was to blame for the whole mess. The use of steroids over the past 20 years has undermined the integrity of baseball by giving the users an unfair advantage over the nonusers.
As school leaders, we can learn a valuable lesson from the way both team owners and union leaders neglected the growing crisis. During my 26 years as a superintendent in Illinois, I was on the board of education’s bargaining team for 10 contract negotiations with the teachers’ union.
Two Scenarios
As I reflect on what the Mitchell Report discovered and my many years negotiating teacher evaluation plans, I’m prompted to reach two conclusions, illustrated hypothetically to make my points.
• I am Roger Clemens using 20-20 -hindsight.
“I am the best pitcher in baseball. If everyone but me takes steroids, they will surpass me. Therefore, I better take steroids too.”
Alternatively: “I could not take steroids. But then I have to ensure nobody else does. If I urge my union to bargain for stricter drug testing and it works, then nobody will be taking steroids and the playing field is level again. It’s good for me and it’s good for baseball.”
• I am a high-performing classroom teacher looking at my career and my -profession.
“I am an excellent teacher. If I am evaluated by a process that fails to recognize my skill, then I am considered no better than a poor teacher. If I am evaluated by a process that has very few observations, then my skill is not only being missed, but the poor teachers are on equal footing with me.”
Alternatively: “I can urge my union to bargain for a strong evaluation plan that actually eliminates the slackers. It’s good for me and it’s good for teaching.”
Testimony before Congress about steroid use in baseball pointed to the fact that the players’ union and the team owners did not realize the extent of the problem until it was too late. Neither side pushed hard enough for random drug testing because baseball was hugely successful. The players were hitting a record number of home runs, happy fans were turning out in record numbers, and everyone was making big money. However, suspicion that many players were cheating tainted the entire game.
It wasn’t until years later that the crisis became obvious and the two sides agreed, under pressure from Congress, to a random drug-testing program. It was too little, too late. The damage to the integrity of the game has tainted the whole modern era. What was most interesting during the hearings is that the union took the brunt of the criticism for a failure to agree to drug testing years earlier. The union failed to bargain in the best interests of the group. When asked by Congress why a drug testing regimen was never agreed to, the union’s leadership said, “We have no choice but to act as unions are required to act.”
Vocal Minorities
A parallel case can be made with respect to the contractual bargaining of teacher evaluation plans. The failure to weed out poorly performing teachers may not be apparent until the school district’s test scores fail to rise, year after year. Then it may be too little, too late, to act. The lesson: You cannot wait until a crisis erupts. Unions and administrators need to be initiators and not just reactors. This can be accomplished by listening to all teachers, not just those in union leadership, and considering what is best for the profession of teaching rather than what is best for individual teachers.
In my experience, union leaders have followed one of two philosophies. Some operate in the best interests of the collective membership, while others lead in the direction of certain vocal individuals. If they were bargaining for the whole group, unions would do what is best for all teachers and their profession. When they act on behalf of individual members, unions reflect the views of the vocal minority.
Rather than bargain an evaluation process that rids the profession of poor teachers, some unions resist, block and evade any changes proposed by management to hold poorly performing teachers accountable. I have seen unions resist frequent evaluative visits by administrators, resist unannounced visits by the evaluators, seek union representation for any critical comment by an evaluator and drag out any change that may make teachers accountable for their teaching.
In the school district where I started as superintendent, 80 percent of the teachers were rated superior and 20 percent were rated as excellent. I soon discovered the ratings were based on one pre-arranged observation. When a districtwide committee was formed to improve the evaluation process, union leaders would persistently ask, “Why do you want to change this?”
More recently in Chicago, 200 teachers were fired because their students did not make sufficient progress on the state’s mandated test. The dismissals were the result of a process used in the Chicago Public Schools called a “turnaround model,” in which everyone at a chronically failing school — teachers, administrators, secretaries, etc. — is dismissed. Good and bad are forced out together with no sorting process. In effect, the school district’s action says, “We can’t tell the good teachers from the bad, so everyone goes.” When this happens, it’s a little late for the effective teachers to be saved. The crisis is at the doorstep and management feels desperate to do something, anything, to improve student academics. Good teachers have much to lose when bad teachers are retained year after year.
Unions and management shouldn’t wait for the impending crisis in education. Let them learn from the mess in which baseball found itself.
Joe Matula is an assistant professor of educational administration at Governors State University in University Park, Ill. E-mail: jmatula@comcast.net