Labor Day Message: Public School Teachers Are Losing a War They Don’t Even Know They Are Fighting

Before You Can Fight Back You Need to Know You Are In a Fight

A 2009 New Yorker article by Stephen Brill about was about “rubber rooms”.  A Rubber room was the place that New York City put teachers who were going through the process of being dismissed for cause.  This process took as long as three years, and during that time the teachers subject to dismissal reported every day to the rubber room where they sat and did absolutely nothing, while on full pay and benefits.

The story was devastating.  It illustrated in the starkest terms possible the Conservatives argument that teacher’s unions were solely interested in protecting their membership regardless of the costs to the public and the merits of their teaching. 

Public employee unions in general and teacher’s unions in particular need to be aware of the following logic.

 

1. Public school teacher are paid by tax dollars.

2. Conservatives hate paying taxes, feel that taxes are immoral and that lower taxes are always desirable and beneficial.

3. As a result, Conservatives hate public employees in general and specifically hate teacher’s unions, whom they see as unjustly taking taxpayer monies. 

4. The fact that these unions support Democrats at the national level makes them hated even more.



The Target of Conservatives

  
In order to turn this hatred into policy, Conservatives have taken the position that teacher’s unions are the sole cause of poor performance of public education.  Parents, physical facilities, culture, poverty, and any other factors are dismissed.

 That's right, according to Conservatives, unions and unions alone are the sole cause of all the problems in education, and so the position of Conservatives is that teacher’s unions must be destroyed if American public education is to be successful.

Mr. Brill has now written a book,

Sunday Book Review

‘Class Warfare ’By STEVEN BRILL
Reviewed by SARA MOSLE

that has the above position as its theme.  The review by Sara Mosle in the New York Times debunks this position, but it is not the point of this post to comment on the arguments.  Readers should read the review and/or the text and decide for themselves.  It will be an easy decision to make as to which side is correct.

Rather the point of this Post is to tell the teacher’s unions in the strongest possible terms that you are losing the public relations battle.  It is not enough for teachers to do great work, which most of them do, they must realize that they have enemies who are very powerful, very rich and very motivated to destroy them, or at least their unions and their benefits.

 The motivation of these people is not better education, (see the cuts in education that took place in Texas for example even though the state had a huge “rainy day” fund to fill in the budget gap and no income tax and huge mineral wealth).  They could not care less about education.  They only care about tax cuts and if teacher’s unions are standing the way of tax cuts, they will be demonized.

The American public is very sensitive when it comes to education.  Everyone wants the best for their children and if they perceive teacher’s unions standing the way of better education, they will be against teachers and their unions, regardless of whether or not that perception is true. Conservatives are winning the perception war.

The strategy for the unions to be successful is that they have show how they put education first and fully engage themselves in the public relations war that is being waged against them.  They have to recognize that only when the public perceives that their children are getting the best education possible will they be willing to support the tax levels necessary to continue that educational excellence and reward teachers accordingly.

The perception that a contract for a teacher’s union protects and rewards teachers more than it promotes excellence in education is a long term loss. And it is this perception that is being foisted upon the American taxpayer, and is in large part responsible for the hostility that teachers and educators feel today.