Debating pros and cons of teacher unions - Lancasteronline 03/19/2011

Debating pros and cons of teacher unions
Sunday News

Updated Mar 19, 2011 23:22

By SUZANNE CASSIDY, Staff Writer

Much of the swirling rancor toward teachers has to do with the dislike some people have for teachers' unions.

Nathan Benefield, director of policy research at the conservative Commonwealth Foundation in Harrisburg, contends that teachers' unions "are detrimental to taxpayers, to their students and to good teachers. ... They say schools are under-funded. You ask them how much they need, and they just say, 'More.' "

Last week, though, in response to a budget crisis in the Hempfield School District, the Hempfield Education Association voted in favor of a pay freeze next year. Hempfield's teachers had been slated to receive pay raises averaging 3.725 percent.

Also last week, Pennsylvania State Education Association President James Testerman called on all PSEA locals to "seriously consider" talking to their school boards "about a pay freeze or other cost-saving measures to maintain class sizes and academic programs."

In a news release, Testerman said that "the educational professionals in the Pennsylvania State Education Association have been willing to be good public partners and tackle tough issues before, and we're willing to do it again. We hope to prevent a $1 billion cut in state education funding, but we also realize that tough economic times have hit many of our public school districts."

In the Manheim Central School District, the situation remained uncertain on the teacher-pay front.

That district's school board issued a news release last week, saying that while contract talks with the Manheim Central Education Association had been "amicable and professional, the district sincerely hoped these talks would have been concluded by now."

The teachers' opening bid, submitted a year ago, asked for annual pay raises of 4.2 percent in a new six-year contract. School Board President Nancy Sarley said she could not comment on whether the teachers had lowered their demands. And attempts to reach the leaders of the Manheim Central Education Association were unsuccessful.

Chuck Trupe had his own clashes with the teachers' union, when he was a member of the Eastern Lancaster County School Board. He said he was "shocked" by PSEA's willingness to accept pay freezes.

"It's a hopeful first step, but definitely it's just the first step," Trupe said.

Trupe, like Benefield, of the Commonwealth Foundation, still wants to see PSEA concessions on teacher tenure, merit pay and the furloughing of teachers, without regard to seniority.

Benefield said he believes that tenure is "an unnecessary rule," which does not exist in other professions.

"I've never heard of doctor tenure, or lawyer tenure, or reporter tenure," he noted. "Teacher retention and compensation should primarily reflect performance in the classroom."

But Floyd Montgomery, a retired PSEA negotiator in Lancaster County, said other professionals, such as attorneys and doctors, set their own salaries and, often, determine their own working conditions.

Without tenure, teachers would be, as they were in the past, at the mercy of school administrators and elected school board members, he said.

In Benefield's view, however, tenure only serves to protect bad teachers.

Hempfield School District Superintendent Brenda Becker said she often hears that "once someone has tenure, you can't touch them. That is not true. If someone tells you, you can't remove a bad teacher, you have an administrator who is not doing his or her job."

A teacher found to be "doing something egregious" can be terminated immediately, she said. It takes more time to remove a teacher for incompetence, she said, but "it can be done."

The process requires that a teacher be given an improvement plan, and get regular monitoring, support and feedback. If these steps don't lead to better performance, the teacher can be fired, she said.

Becker, who is in her fourth year as superintendent at Hempfield, said teachers have been let go — or have resigned, prior to termination — every year she's been there.

Michael Leichliter, superintendent of the Penn Manor School District, said his district also has had cases "where we've let teachers go who were underperforming."

He said the Penn Manor Education Association "always protects the legal rights of educators but does not make excuses for ineffective teachers."

When evidence showed a teacher was not performing, or had "clearly violated another area of the school code ... we have not encountered challenges with our association," Leichliter said.

Montgomery dismissed as ludicrous the notion that tenure was "a license to be a loafer for the rest of your life."

He said that tenure was instituted decades ago to protect teachers from being hired and fired at will by capricious school board officials and administrators. If a superintendent's daughter, or a school board member's niece, wanted a certain teaching job, the teacher who already had the job was "out of luck," Montgomery said.

He said that when he began working for the PSEA in Lancaster County in 1971, some school officials were ousting teachers who got pregnant (or pregnant teachers would be allowed to take unpaid leave, but not sick leave, he said).

In those days, he said, teachers also were "grossly underpaid."

Things have changed on that score. According to the PSEA, the average starting teacher salary in Lancaster County, for last school year, was $41,482. The average teacher salary was $57,037. Lancaster County teachers have an average of 11.4 years of experience; nearly 46 percent have master's degrees, or even more advanced degrees.

When salaries were low, "the way we attracted people to the field was to have a good benefits plan, and good pension plan," Becker said.

Now, public pensions, including those for teachers, have become a source of anger among taxpayers.

PSEA spokesman Wythe Keever said pensions for public school and state employees are "set by law — that means the General Assembly passed bills and the governor signed them into law."

Teachers' unions may not have negotiated those pensions, but they have been "a roadblock" to reforming them, Chuck Trupe asserted.

But Keever pointed out that the PSEA applauded a bipartisan pension reform bill, which was signed into law in November. That law, which will apply to school employees hired on, or after, July 1 of this year, raised the retirement age to 65; increased the vesting period from five to 10 years; reduced the maximum pension benefit; and added a shared-risk requirement for employees.

The PSEA, however, is not likely to applaud efforts by Republicans, including Gov. Tom Corbett, to institute merit pay for teachers.

Montgomery said that merit pay "has been batted around for years and years and years," and has been found to be unworkable by school boards and administrators, as well as by teachers.

Benefield said he believes, however, that a merit pay system could be based on peer and administrator reviews and parental surveys, as well as on value-added test scores, which indicate growth in students' academic achievement.

Becker, of Hempfield, said she would support a merit pay system, if someone could come up with a system that is "equitable."

But "when you deal with pay based on achievement in private business, you're all starting with the same raw material," Becker said. "With us, the raw material varies greatly."

Penn Manor's Leichliter concurred, noting that "when you're a car salesman, and you sell a car, you receive a bonus." But how do you compare the performance of a teacher who is teaching a required course to learning disabled students, with that of an educator teaching an Advanced Placement elective to gifted students?

Leichliter said that Penn Manor used to have a merit pay system in the 1980s, but it just "did not work." And he said he has not seen "a system that works yet for schools."

Good teachers are "not going to be motivated by higher pay for higher performance," he said. "They're going to help children no matter what."

Suzanne Cassidy is a staff writer for the Sunday News. Her e-mail address is scassidy@lnpnews.com.

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