Students, Then Teachers

Picture it: Teachers unions giving a thumbs up or thumbs down on every decision about which textbooks to use in the public schools, about whether Dickens is to be covered in English and about whether students are to learn multiplication tables or fuzzy math. Gov. Gray Davis and the Legislature should stop this power grab by the state’s largest teachers union, an action that threatens statewide school reform.

A bill proposed by the California Teachers Assn. would require school districts to negotiate with the local union before making basic decisions now in the hands of the state, the local school board and the superintendent. These choices should not become bargaining chips in hardball labor talks. They should continue to be set by the Legislature, the state Board of Education and local districts with recommendations from others including teachers and parents.

Contract talks, never a pretty sight in the Los Angeles Unified School District, take place with an us-against-them tone behind closed doors. It’s debatable that this is the best way to set teacher salaries, raises and benefits; applied to academics, it would be a disaster.

Davis should protect California’s students by coming out against the bill and asking his fellow Democrats, all friends of the California Teachers Assn., to join him.

The bill, AB 2160, is not about respect for teachers, as its sponsors, Assemblywomen Jackie Goldberg (D-Los Angeles) and Virginia Strom-Martin (D-Duncans Mills), suggest. It’s about giving teachers veto power over just about anything in a classroom. The measure wouldn’t lead to better cooperation between labor and management. It would make it even harder to change what goes wrong in the classroom, which is why school superintendents like the LAUSD’s Roy Romer and Sacramento’s Jim Sweeney oppose it.

If textbooks are put on the bargaining table, would older reading teachers push for a return to the whole-language approach to instruction although scientific research has proved that phonics-based lessons are key to reading success for most children?

Or how about this educational innovation, brought to us by the teachers union in Los Angeles: For years, the LAUSD contract gave teachers the right to choose their classroom assignments based on seniority. A veteran teacher who had never taught reading could bump a junior teacher who excelled in the subject. When that happened, children lost. The current contract takes back some of that authority, but teachers still have much more clout than principals or students.

Unions are supposed to put their members first. It’s up to Gov. Davis and the Legislature to put California’s students first.