SDNR Commentary

Is it time to break the San Diego Unified and Los Angeles Unified teachers unions?  The two behemoth school districts continue to underperform and mal-serve it’s customers – the students, parents, and taxpayers of San Diego and Los Angeles.

The edict of academia is to provide our children with an education that will serve them into adulthood.  Unions have become self-serving entities caring more about the unions themselves than the charter to educate our children.  As a result, many school districts are underperforming and our international academic ranking has dropped from first to 17 in the last 40 years.

Education unions are extremely powerful and have a large say in the political underpinnings of society, pushing a habitually liberal point of view. They work in the background in Sacramento to protect their constituents – the teachers and workers of the school districts in California.  They craft legislation, and as we have seen in several elections, they spend hundreds of millions of dollars attempting to reshape opinion using campaign advertisements.  In some cases, they spend teachers’ union dues opposing Legislation that has nothing to do with education, such as fighting California Proposition 8.

Dealing with the unions is becoming increasingly burdensome in some communities.  At Central Falls High School in Rhode Island, the graduation rate among high school students is below an abysmal 50 percent.  School Superintendent Frances Gallo attempted to negotiate an additional unfunded 25 minutes of education per day for rotational tutoring of students – a plan the unions soundly rejected.

In Central Falls, the private sector median income is $22,000 per year, while teachers’ salaries average approximately $75,000 per year.  Couple terrible performance and higher than average pay, there is no sympathy for the teachers within the community.    After repeatedly warning the union leadership, the Superintendent fired all 74 teachers.

According to a study commissioned by Cal State-San Marcos in 2008, San Diego Unified’s graduation rate in 2008 was 82.3 percent, one point below the state average of 83.3.  Amongst San Diego County school districts, the graduation rate percentages range from a low at Vista Unified of 59.1 percent to a high of 96.5 percent at Carlsbad Unified.

From San Diego Unified’s own enrollment figures, they currently educate approximately 34,500 seniors per year.  At 20 percent, 6,100 students do not graduate.  What are the lifelong prospects for those who do not graduate high school?

Unions will point to a bevy of reasons, including pay, poverty, culture, language barriers; every possible excuse.  However, there is no excuse for over 6,000 San Diego students not receiving their high school diploma each year.

L.A. Unified is the second largest school district in America.  The numbers in Los Angeles are even more staggering.  In school year 2005-2006, L.A. Unified has a 64 percent graduation rate and only 48 percent of those that graduated, did so on time.  That number has since improved, but has a long way to go.  Furthermore, 14 percent of LAUSD's senior class failed the high school exit exam.

In 2007, Detroit’s graduation rate was an incomprehensible 24.9 percent.  Three out of every four students do not graduate.  Nationally, 1.23 million high school seniors did not graduate.

Over 6 million American children attend private schools.  The graduation rate is, on average, 20 percent higher than their local public school counterparts.  Generally, private school teachers make 15-25 percent less in compensation and receive much poorer health care benefits.  Most private schools do not offer retirement accounts.  Yet, they continue to pump out better qualified students – without unions.

Unions do not provide incentives for the competent and exceptional teachers.  They lower the bar for academia by fighting to keep the incompetent educators, who are a drain on the system and hurt our children.

It is nearly impossible to fire teachers, even the worst performing.  Short of committing a felony while on the job, teachers cannot be fired, in some cases for very egregious violations.  For example, despite budget cuts and looming teacher layoffs, the Los Angeles Unified School District is paying $10 million a year to 160 teachers who are not allowed anywhere near a classroom.

Unions need to face facts and realize they cannot continue to drain the system, protect poor behavior, and reward bad results.  They cannot negotiate compensation packages that are unsustainable, and should work with districts to replace the dregs of below average teachers.

Perhaps, a few more mass firings of entire districts/high schools are in order to get the union to behave in a reasonable manner.  Unions need to be advocates for the children and for education in general.  The least among them have no place in academia.

I speak for many when I convey my thanks to those teachers who toil long and hard to educate our children.  The teachers who understand that our children are our future.  We are eternally grateful to the wonderful educators that have worked tirelessly on behalf of our children.

Ask any student; they will tell you which teachers they like and why.  The answer is simply, they make learning fun.  Those are the teachers that should be held up as shining examples of education.  Those were always my favorite teachers, and I can tell you their names some 40 years later – the ones that made lasting impressions.

Our children should not be forced to endure poor teachers.  Furthermore, students see poor teachers being rewarded with jobs – the wrong message to ingrain upon them as they embark into adulthood.

Education needs to be a meritocracy – top to bottom.  Teachers should earn their jobs through performance and achievement in the classroom and should be paid accordingly.  Success breeds success.

Steve Hunyar is the author of America the Disposable; The Culture War During the Era of Apathy and host of the radio program The East County Underground. To contact Steve, please email him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

                                        

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Comments (2)

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Comments such as the one above is one of the many reasons why unions have lost all respect in American culture. Teachers, autoworkers, and public-sector employees are nothing but whiny children, what do you not understand about collective bargaining. The point of collective bargaining is that individuals do not have the economic leverage to receive wages and benefits above what the market is offering, so laws allow you to collude as a group to set wages and benefits by forcing the employer to negotiate with you. Now the pendulum is swinging the other way, as a collective group you are underperforming so you will be punished as a group. The most unfair aspect of this is that the many good teachers who are forced to join unions, the immaculate are forcibly lumped in with the mediocre. This is the real sin of unions, and they can't compete they use political influence to destroy competition, lower standards, and harm consumers. I thought the whole point of antitrust laws were to protect consumers from monopolies.

Mark-Anthony , February 24, 2010

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Mr. Hunyar is truly perpetuating a myth. As a 15 year veteran teacher of LAUSD, nothing can protect me if I am negligent to perform my duties and am singled out for dismissal. I do not have tenure. My union does afford me due process, but not even my status as CCSS Teacher of the Year gives me guaranteed employment. While media coverage as of late has singled in on the errant teacher (are there no errant workers in other professions?) I would ask readers to consider what societal forces are having on impact on school performance, such as funding disparities between schools and wars and prisons, a huge infusion of English learners, and a decline in parental involvement in schools. We are not making excuses; we will teach whoever shows up at our doors. But to pin the blame on the state of education as a whole on the teachers and their unions, is misguided, in my opinion. I am thankful that the union has afforded me certain provisions that are beneficial to both students and teachers such as a cap on the number of preps new teachers can be assigned, protection against being a roving teacher in your first 3 years of teaching, an opportunity to use the bathroom during nutrition and lunch instead of mandatory duties, the freedom to select the best materials I deem most effective for use in my classroom, and a negotiated class size that is smaller than what the school district always believes to be educationally sound. Mr. Hunyar, you can advocate for the firing of all the teachers you want. Who will replace them? At my school in South Los Angeles, we still have unfilled positions because there is a dearth of teachers willing to work in impacted neighborhoods such as mine or Center Falls. It is negligent to not consider that reality when making decisions like that of the school board in Rhode Island. For facts and figures to counter the myth perpetuated in this article, visit http://www.counterpunch.org/macaray03202009.html or my blog at dontforgetsouthcentral.blogspot.com

avalonsensei , February 24, 2010

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