American Education is the next GM

Photo: Ted Fines

GM went bankrupt because they cared more about themselves than about their customers. Their primary focus was no longer on developing great cars. Their primary focus was on getting paid. So the Executives decided to invest their future in gas-guzzling SUV’s, and the unions demanded higher pay for less work. There was a strong sense of entitlement, they sought profit without production, and they wanted more money for less work. This will bankrupt you every time.

American Education is the next GM, and it is going to go bankrupt (unless something changes) for the exact same reason: because the people working in the company have an unconquerable sense of entitlement. American Education is a “company” filled with people who are seeking profit without production. I already told you what this causes.

Allow me to shed some light. Here in Indiana (and in almost every state in the country), the State Superintendent wants teachers to be evaluated based on student achievement. The idea is simple enough. Someone woke up and said, “Hey, there are many teachers who have never tried to improve and their students perform very poorly on all standardized tests and they just show up and babysit students instead of teaching students, and yet we continue to give them more money because they happen to have aged by one year. Well, this doesn’t make sense. Instead of giving money to people simply because they have aged, let’s give money to people who show results. Let’s give pay raises to teachers who have a demonstrative impact on student learning and show a commitment to professional excellence.”

It sounds simple enough. It’s logical. Yet, only in a crazy and foolish world is such a proposal resisted. Why is it resisted? Because people enjoy getting paid more money for doing nothing. If you feed that beast year after year, it gets complacent. It gets hungry. And it gets a very, very strong sense of entitlement.

That’s what we have here in Indiana: a resistance to this movement because of a strong sense of entitlement. The teacher unions are leading the cause, and this makes me writhe with nausea because they supposedly represent my profession. This is false. The teacher unions do not represent me and my profession. If they represented my profession, they would support initiatives that allowed me to get paid for doing good work and not just for getting gray hairs on my scalp.

If you are an effective teacher, you should be excited for the opportunity to get paid based on your performance. I'm not talking about just evaluating test scores. You would be evaluated on things that matter. Have you attended confercences? Have you presented at conferences? Are you involved in enhancing the school community? Do you dedicate your time to sports and extra-curriculars? I am talking about a system where you are evaluated on THE WORK THAT YOU DO and the impact you make, not on how old you happen to be. You would finally get the opportunity to be compensated for doing your job well! You mean I can be in a system where I can get paid for doing my job with excellence? Sign me up!

But that doesn’t happen. If you are an effective teacher, your only chance at receiving fair compensation is to wait for another year to pass. This is ludicrous. This is unjust. And the unions, who were initially formed around the idea of giving just wages to teachers, are now leading the cause to propagate an unjust system of pay. Any system of pay that provides "profit without production" is unjust. You get money for getting older, but not for performing? That is unjust, and the teacher unions are leading the charge.

You know why there is a deficit of great teachers? Because the great teachers won’t stay, not in this system. If you want to retain people with a dream, with a passion for excellence, with a desire to constantly improve, then you better be prepared to support them. Most schools don’t support them. Why? Because these teachers are looked down upon. People who raise the bar are looked down upon by all those who are used to striving for mediocrity.

Unless you build a culture of excellence. Unless you allow teachers (and administrators) to be exposed for who they are and who they are not. Then, in this situation, you have real transparency, which creates real vulnerability. This is what the unions fear. This is what the mediocre teachers fear: the vulnerability. They don’t want to be discovered. They thrive on being a cancerous lump on the school and on their students, and cancer resists all attempts to be eliminated.

Cancer is what killed GM. The cancer of entitlement and mediocrity continued to propagate itself and resulted in its collapse. It hurts to see cancer attack a company. It hurts even more when it is a “company” entrusted with the duty of nurturing and forming our next generation.

Also, if you think I am being harsh by using the word “cancer” to describe the effect of teacher unions, then read this article about the role of teacher unions in New York City. They have a building for all teachers who have violated conduct procedures, but the city cannot fire them. So these teachers just show up, sit in a building together from 7:30-3:15, and then go home. They do this every day during the school year, but like all teachers, they still get summer vacation. They are teachers without a class or a school, but they get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars because they performed poorly. My favorite quote: "Suspended with pay from her job as an elementary-school teacher, Brandi earns more than a hundred thousand dollars a year, and she is, she said, 'entitled to every penny of it.'" A cancerous parasite is the only way to describe this reality.

A special word to teacher unions (including ISTA): you do not represent me because you do not represent excellence. You represent mediocrity and maintaining the status quo. Sorry. I’m not interested. If you actually produce effective initiatives and constructive systems that allow for the proliferation of excellence, for the creation of just wages that are tied to performance and allow me to get paid for doing good work, then I’m interested. Until that happens, I declare myself officially aligned in direct opposition to your current actions.

Do the teacher unions actually care about the students? I see no evidence to support that claim. Do people who work for these unions actually believe they are helping teachers and students? Only a distorted version of reality would allow them to do so. They may have good intentions, but the current reality is nothing to be proud of. Fighting for unjust systems of pay must be exhausting.

I think about all the GM workers who trusted their union to act in their best interest. They followed the union to the end, and where did that lead them? To the streets. The cancerous parasite (combined with poor leadership) killed the host, and when that happens, there is nowhere to go. You get sent out into the cold, harsh world that has a much lower tolerance for “profit without productivity.”

In the end, there is only one group of people who continually lose in this situation: the students. And that is a great shame.

(Update-4/26: Read this excellent article about these exact issues being debated in Colorado. I bet you can't guess who's side I'm on! This op/ed article about teacher unions also helps shed light on the issue.)
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What do you think? Should teachers get paid for aging, or should they get paid for student performance? Also, is their any evidence that the unions are actually concerned about student achievement, or are they just concerned about maintaining mediocrity? I only know about them through their own words, and their words have brought chills down my spine.