I recently critiqued a blog-post whose content parroted the drum-beated, hackneyed complaints about teacher unions that are heard, relentlessly, from the media-hogs of corporate think tanks.. When I repeatedly asked him to substantiate his views with facts, he balked. Here are our exchanges from his blog entry, followed by my summary. Our exchanges are highlighted in red. I welcome constructive comments.........
(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
Nothing quite signifies the intellectual bankruptcy of the unions better than this article. Faced with a significant national trend towards revoking tenure, the President of the NEA fires back with:
an absurd story about an attempt to fire an Arizona teacher 30 years ago based upon a speech impediment that was actually an accent!
Mr. Van Roekel of the teachers’ union disagreed. Recounting a story that had the burnish of something told many times, he recalled that around 1980, when he was a union leader in Arizona, he had arranged to have a speech pathologist assess a teacher whom a principal was trying to fire because of a speech impediment. The pathologist determined that the teacher had a New York accent.
“She would say ‘ideer,’ instead of ‘idea,’ ” Mr. Van Roekel said. “The principal thought that was a speech impediment. Without a fair dismissal law, that principal could have fired her arbitrarily, without citing any reason.”
Riiiiiiiiight….
Could it be that I am the only one who has noticed that, despite all of the complaining that unions do about administrators, that the vast majority of them come straight out of the teaching ranks? Furthermore, the state of school accountability in Arizona 30 years ago would have been zilch, either in the form of testing or parental choice. Such a dearth of transparency and competitive pressure would enable the arbitrary firings of staff of even effective staff. Oddly though, zilch in the way of accountability, whether in the form of testing with teeth or parental choice is the prefered policy stance of the NEA.
Strange that.
Further, the debate over tenure that I am watching involves
complex discussions about methods for measuring teacher effectiveness rather than proposals for arbitrary and capricious firing. I wonder what debate Van Roekel has been watching.
Like
Be the first to like this post.
Responses to NYT on Tenure Reform
Matthew,
There is much about your post that I find objectionable. To begin with, your last remark, where you suggest that “the debate” about measuring teacher effectivness is somehow, not capricious makes you either disingenuous or ignorant of administrative decision-making in work environments. Secondly,your use of the term, “debate” begs the question: What debate have “you” been watching? There is no debate on anything. There are only soundbites from big-money people with “reform” agendas and disproportionate access to the media. It’s not exactly Lincoln-Douglas out there. I’d love to see all of this free-market education reform nonsense subjected to the intellectual rigor of a real debate, properly moderated so facts can determine the winners and losers. Now that would be a debate worth watching.
Bob-
You missed it! I’m afraid your side lost:
Matt,
I’ll watch in it’s entirety, but judging from the first 5 minutes, surely you can’t consider this a debate. Could you? Spectators voting on the “outcome” is a valid intellectual excersise? I don’t think so. Were points assigned or witheld with respect to the validity of arguments and rebuttals? Individuals speaking in parallel soundbites, rather than in a conversational exchange? Doesn’t look like I missed much, but I’ll watch the rest of this, with an open mind, and keep my antennae up for something more legitimate, preferably, with a forum and format that is not stacked with corporate sponsorship and framed with language that is anti-union in it’s very conception.
Matt,
I watched it. I didn’t see any effective rebuttal or even attempt to rebut any of the so called evil-union proponents’ points. So, what were the spectators voting on? Probably the strength of the sound bites.
No, it seems “my side” didn’t lose a debate. It lost a pre-packaged sound-bite war.
Bob-
You are free to value your own opinion over that of the audience if you wish. In my opinion, the fact that the President of the NEA responded to an interview with the New York Times with an absurd story about an alleged firing from 30 years ago is an incident which speaks for itself.
Matt,
You seem to misunderstand. I am not writing to advocate for “my” opinion. You wrote a piece that I had factual reasons for criticizing. I pointed out one of the criticisms. You decided not to effectively rebut the criticisms (much like the anti-union panel members in the psuedo debate you referred to), by citing the “debate” as some kind of proxy proof for your assertions. You continue to do this in your recent post, by using a non-sequitor reference to something that a union advocate may or may not have said, without any sense of context. If you do not wish to rebut my initial criticism (or subsequent criticisms), you are free to do that. But, in the interests of establishing some standard of intellectual integrity to the “discourse” about education, it is reasonable to expect you to make some concessions when you are unwilling or unable to effectively rebut an argument that has merit (which the anti-union panel members did not do, and the audience members did not seem to regard as important).
Bob-
I can’t find any evidence of “factual reasons” in anything you’ve posted thus far.
Matt,
If you think the criticisms in my original post (and subsequent posts) are not factual, please elaborate with something specific. The burden of proof is on you to defend the notions in your original post (which, inexplicably, you have avoided doing). My posts were simply to suggest that the facts do not support your position.
Au contraire Bob- I don’t see anything in your original comment other than your opinion, to which you are entitled, but in which you have given me no reason to take an interest.
Matt,
I am sorry that you are not interested in defending your position with facts. You were initially interested in rebutting my claim that there is no real substantive debate about the current educational reform agenda. However, your response was intellectually indefensable, as I pointed out with factual information available to anyone viewing the “debate” link you posted. It’s unfortunate that you don’t acknowledge as fact that the anti-union panel members in that forum did not rebut any statement made by their opposition.
It is also unfortunate that you don’t take the same interest in defending legitimate criticism as you do in propogating misinformation about education.
It seems that I am wasting my time in my attempt at a constructive critical dialogue with you. At least our exchange is on the public record. Maybe that will mean something one day.
SUMMARY
Since Matt was clearly evasive and unwilling to logically defend his assertions, I propose the following as explanations:
1. Matt, through my attempt to debate him, realized that his assertions were not reasonable and did not want to admit this. If this is true, he is doing a disservice to public education. His lack of humility should not result in the spread of misinformation. The intellectually honest thing for him to have done was to
retract the assertions he made, in the blog where his article was originally posted. Had Matt properly engaged me in our discourse and successfully defended his assertions, I would have conceded as much. Matt's unwillingness to do so exemplifies a lack of "intellectual integrity".
2. Matt knew his assertions were not reasonable, even before I replied to his post, but has ideological reasons for propogating misinformation about teachers. This may include an allegiance to the notion of privatizing education so that investors can use taxpayer money to enrich themselves. Proponents of education privatization, for decades, have been seeking to use their money to dominate the media and access to policy-makers, for the purpose of undermining the public credibility of teacher-unions. Only by undermining their credibility can they win access to public money. Again, Matt should have been honest about his motives for attacking teachers and retracted his assertions, and in their place, put forth his real argument: "People should have the right to profit from the education of young people". This proposition, though debateable on it's merits, would at least result in more honest discourse, since it includes no no hidden agendas.
3. Matt knew his assertions were not reasonable, but is envious of the democratic protections that teachers enjoy, through their status as unionized public service sector professionals. He may be or may know a private sector employee that has lost his job (due to seniority, which is highly correlated in any profession with higher salary), or forced to accept an inadequate pension and or/benefits package. His knee-jerk assumption may be to accept the erosion of private sector benefits as being part of the natural order of things, but does not question the fairness of that. Instead, he may find it easier to wish that teachers become as unfortunate as he or his friend is, by accepting similar conditions. If this is true, he should, again, issue a retraction, and assert his real argument: "I have less than I used to. I am afraid to stand up to those that take it away from me, so I want everyone else to suffer the way I do".
While more honest, it is easy to understand Matt's unwillingness to take this position, as it is akin to the proverbial child who, after getting beaten up by the classroom bully, decides to take it out on the class nerd. by stealing his lunch money
Daniel Earley
Thanks, for your question.
By “benefactors”, I am referring, specifically, to the private investors, including, but not limited to hedgefund managers who are not in it for the kids. They are in it for profit, using taxpayer funds (charter schools). I’m not claiming that the desire for profit, in itself, is a vice. but the unions are no more self-serving than are private investors. Both are part of the economic context in which public education operates. My point was that it is bigotry and/or naivete to attribute motives to one group and not to the other. They both have the same motives: maintaining a standard of economic survival. Many of the so-called philanthropists are really “venture philanthropists”, formerly referred to as “influence peddlers”. They have lots of reasons for “donating” (investing) in schools. Their “donations” have strings attached. My view is that no one should have the power to use their wealth to determine public policy. All of this teacher/union bashing obscures the realities about public education.