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Teachers should be treated like professionals
Another small mystery solved! I have long wondered why unions cling so hard to their beloved grid, insisting that their members be paid in a lockstep fashion regardless of merit. How could this possibly matter to them? Well, here is the answer, courtesy of Steven Brill’s Class Warfare (p. 199).
“As a general matter, union leaders depend on the union contract being the most important thing in their members’ work lives. Treating all teachers the same, regardless of performance, as if they were workers on an assembly line, gives union leaders exactly that lead role. Letting teachers determine their own fates based on their performance would give each teacher - or management, if you believed management was capricious or unfair - the lead role.”
This is another example of a policy that is good for the union, but not for its members.
Steven Brill’s Class Warfare is full of fascinating little nuggets. The Teachers Union Contract is king, especially in Canadian provincial education systems.
That lock-step salary grid may ensure a measure of “labour peace” in the public system, but it does come with consequences. Originally intended to raise salary levels, it has morfed into a salary rewards system that tends to undermine professionalism and to promote mediocrity.
With the exception of Gary Mason of The Globe and Mail, education commentators in Canada seem blind to the constraints imposed by existing contractual. obligations. We should make it a higher priority in our larger reform efforts.