In a long and mostly thoughtful letter to the editor of the New York Times , American Federation of Teachers President Edward McElroy takes issue with David Brooks's recent column about the dueling education policy statements ("Broader, Bolder " vs. "Sharpton Attacks "). He writes, reasonably, that
According to [Brooks], reformists "insist school reform alone can make a big difference." This verges on a Talmudic debate over the word "alone" when the real issues are what actually goes into that reform. The question of how teachers should grapple with the enormous social problems brought into the school every morning comes immediately to mind.
Further, he talks of how the reformists want to put the children first. Well, so do those who signed the E.P.I. statement, and so do teachers. What matters is whether what you try actually works for the children.
OK, we can debate whether there's any evidence that what the E.P.I. crowd wants actually "works," but I'm happy to concede that teachers (if not always their unions) want what's best for children. But he couldn't stop there. He goes on:
Blaming "ineffective teachers" and union contracts may be ideologically satisfying, but at the end of the day it does little to solve the problems facing our schools. If our problems did lie here, states without collective bargaining should not lie at the bottom of the educational achievement scale, and charter schools should by now have produced some greater returns. Yet the lack of evidence does not stop the "reformists" from assailing unions, or any public servant who may agree with our solutions.
Mr. McElroy, it might be "ideologically satisfying" to defend union contracts and attack charter schools, but you're on shaky ground. First, everybody knows that "states without collective bargaining" are mostly in the dirt-poor South. We also know that achievement is related to poverty. (Finding a way to end that relationship is what this debate is all about!) So it's fairer to look at which states have made big gains over time. And guess what: the three states where collective bargaining is illegal--Texas, North Carolina, and Virginia--are among the nation's leaders when it comes to strong growth on the Nation's Report Card (especially for poor and minority students) since the early 1990s. Perhaps this isn't a coincidence.
As for charter schools, a fair reading of the research shows that charter schools, by and large, do outperform traditional public schools over time, particularly once they've been up and running for a few years.
But the evidence does not stop the "status quo" crowd from assailing reformers who disagree with them.
