One common conservative criticism of teachers’ unions is that they harm students by protecting bad teachers. If these unions could be changed or eliminated, then bad teachers could be replaced, and students would benefit. A specific version of this criticism is about the practice of last-in first-out: those hired last are the first fired. The concern is that teachers are retained based on seniority rather than ability, which can mean that bad teachers remain while good teachers are fired. These criticisms do have some appeal since most institutions tend to devolve into systems that protect certain bad members. Churches and police unions provide two example of this phenomenon. It is especially informative to compare conservative stances on police unions and other unions.
On the face of it, this criticism fits a plausible narrative about unions: since they exist to protect members, the leadership might not be overly concerned about their quality. So, unions do their best to keep teachers from being fired and thus bad teachers remain in the system. These bad teachers do a bad job at teaching students and this harm can impact them throughout their life. Being able to fire bad teachers would open positions for good teachers and send a message to bad teachers. The good teachers would do a good job, thus benefiting the students. From this it is inferred. that eliminating unions would be good for students. Critics of police unions have made a similar argument to address the problem of bad and even dangerous officers being able to continue to work as police.
In the case of the policy of first firing the last hired, the claim is that eliminating unions would result in merit-based hiring and firing, so that when there was a need to fire teachers, the bad teachers would be eliminated regardless of seniority. As such, being rid of unions would improve things for students.
One easy and obvious reply to these criticisms is that they are not general criticisms of unions. Rather, they are criticisms of specific practices: retaining bad teachers and retaining based on seniority rather than quality. There is nothing essential to a teacher’s union that requires that it mandate the retention of bad teachers nor that it mandate a seniority-based retention system. To use an analogy, there are countless examples of bad policies followed by corporations that do not arise simply because a corporation is a corporation. Roughly put, bad corporate policies are bad not because they are policies of corporations but because they are bad policies. As such, they do not provide grounds for the elimination of corporations. Rather, the badness of a corporation’s policy provides grounds for changing that policy. The same applies to teachers’ unions: the badness of a union policy serves as grounds for changing that policy, not eliminating unions.
It could be argued that by their very nature unions must protect bad teachers and it is impossible for them to do otherwise. Likewise, it could be argued that corporations by their very nature must have terrible policies that harm the public. If so, then solving these problems would require eliminating unions and corporations. However, this view seems implausible for both unions and corporations.
A second reply involves considering the facts of the matter. If unions protect bad teachers, then highly unionized districts should retain more bad teachers than districts that are less unionized. But, if unions do not protect bad teachers, then districts should have comparable percentages of bad teachers (adjusting for other factors, of course).
As should not be surprising, the debate over the facts usually involves anecdotes about bad teachers and intuitions about unions. While anecdotes can provide some illustrative examples, they do not provide a foundation for general conclusions. There is, after all, the classic fallacy of anecdotal evidence which involves doing just that. Intuitions can provide some guidance, but by they are feelings and thoughts one has prior to considering the evidence. As such, anecdotes and intuitions do not suffice to show whether unions are good or bad.
Fortunately, Professor Eunice Han has conducted a study of the claim that unions overprotect bad teachers. While it runs contrary to the anecdotes about bad teachers that cannot be fired and intuitions about overprotective unions, the evidence shows that “highly unionized districts actually fire more bad teachers.” Somewhat ironically, districts with weak or no unions retain more lower quality teachers than highly unionized districts.
As Han notes, stronger unions reduced the attrition rate of teachers and increased teacher wages. Because of the higher salaries, there is a greater incentive to remove bad teachers and good teachers have a greater incentive to remain. This nicely fits the conservative mantra that top talent can only be kept by paying top salaries, although this mantra is usually just applied to people like CEOs and not the people who do the work.
In contrast, weak unions (and the absence of unions) increase the attrition rate of teachers and decrease teacher wages. So, good teachers will tend to leave for areas with strong unions while bad teachers will often end up in areas with weaker unions or those that lack unions. The statistics show that unions have a positive impact on teacher quality and that the myths of the overprotective union and the irremovable bad teacher are just that, myths unsupported by facts. This also nicely matches the conservative mantra about compensation: lesser talent will settle for lower salaries. Ironically, teachers’ unions should be supported by conservative who profess to worry about teacher quality.
As this issue is so ideologically charged, those who oppose unions will tend to see the study as biased and might offer “alternative facts” of their own on the grounds that what they believe must be true. Likewise, those who favor unions can be accused of accepting “facts” that match their views. This is, of course, a much larger problem than the debate over unions: if there is not a shared set of facts and methods, then no rational discussion is possible.
Before proceeding with the discussion, I am obligated to disclose that I am a union member. My arguments should be checked for the influence of unconscious biases on my part. While some might think that I must be blindly pro-union, I will endeavor to give an objective assessment of the arguments for and against teachers’ unions.