STUDY ATTACKING
TEACHER UNION CONTRACTS 'MISSES THE MARK'
A new report that claims seniority rights and other employee protections
in teacher union contracts get in the way of improving schools in
big cities "completely misses the mark on the challenge of
retaining new teachers in urban schools," says the AFT. The
New Teacher Project (TNTP) report, "Unintended Consequences:
The Case for Reforming the Staffing Rules in Urban Teachers Union
Contracts," released Nov. 16, wrongly implicates union contract
language as an obstacle that prevents urban schools from hiring
good teachers and lacks real solutions for hard-to-staff schools.
"Almost half of new teachers leave schools within five years,"
says AFT executive vice president Antonia Cortese. "If we want
to solve this problem, we need to spend more time on retention strategies
like peer mentoring and other supports, and less on human resource
management issues, like how the districts are managing teacher transfers."
The study is not only short on constructive answers to teacher shortages
in urban schools but it also lacks merit because of flawed research
and hazy reporting. Among the more glaring deficiencies are failures
to provide specific examples of contract language, to compare districts
in states both with and without collective bargaining, or to interview
any union representatives for the study.
