Teacher unions such as TSTA and Texas AFT always want more pay for teachers but when you suggest more pay for those who perform better than their counterparts the same groups do what most unions do and say “heck no!”
In testimony in a Texas House interim committee hearing this week, TEA Commissioner Morath suggested that the way to recruit more top college grads into public school teaching would be to pay some teachers more based on their performance.
And, as you’d guess the Texas American Federation of Teachers president Louis Malfaro was having none of it and claimed that “independent” research says the idea is terrible. He said measuring a teachers’ performance by how well students perform on tests is wrong, wrong, wrong.
You’re just saying, ‘Well, you can’t do this. You can’t use this metric.’ But you’re not telling us what to do.
Malfaro’s position is typical of the union mentality and one of the reasons that unions have a history of destroying industries from a quality and economic performance perspective. If every measurement tool is objected to then there can be no measurement and thus no pay differential for people who do better work than others. And, that’s the union way.
Rep. Dan Huberty, chairman of the House Public Ed. Committee said to Malfaro: “We’re here to talk about a real problem, … but you’re not telling us how to do it. You’re just saying, ‘Well, you can’t do this. You can’t use this metric.’ But you’re not telling us what to do.”
And there you have a century of union negotiation summed up. The role of the teachers’ unions isn’t to improve education, it is to improve teacher pay while lessening the amount of productivity required of the same. It was true of automotive workers’ and steel workers’ unions and it is little different with public sector unions like AFT or TSTA.
Texas teacher union opposes higher pay for higher performing teachers
In testimony in a Texas House interim committee hearing this week, TEA Commissioner Morath suggested that the way to recruit more top college grads into public school teaching would be to pay some teachers more based on their performance.
And, as you’d guess the Texas American Federation of Teachers president Louis Malfaro was having none of it and claimed that “independent” research says the idea is terrible. He said measuring a teachers’ performance by how well students perform on tests is wrong, wrong, wrong.
You’re just saying, ‘Well, you can’t do this. You can’t use this metric.’ But you’re not telling us what to do.
Malfaro’s position is typical of the union mentality and one of the reasons that unions have a history of destroying industries from a quality and economic performance perspective. If every measurement tool is objected to then there can be no measurement and thus no pay differential for people who do better work than others. And, that’s the union way.
Rep. Dan Huberty, chairman of the House Public Ed. Committee said to Malfaro: “We’re here to talk about a real problem, … but you’re not telling us how to do it. You’re just saying, ‘Well, you can’t do this. You can’t use this metric.’ But you’re not telling us what to do.”
And there you have a century of union negotiation summed up. The role of the teachers’ unions isn’t to improve education, it is to improve teacher pay while lessening the amount of productivity required of the same. It was true of automotive workers’ and steel workers’ unions and it is little different with public sector unions like AFT or TSTA.