It's Time for State, Teachers to Start Dealing
It’s time for state, teachers to start dealing
For four years, the state has kept a tight lid on pay raises for public
school teachers. Now the question is: How much longer can the state keep
teacher frustration over measly wage hikes bottled up?
Anger and discontent run wide and deep in the profession. The virtual
cap on pay raises is preventing the settlement of labor contracts in scores
of school districts. Protests - thus far lawful - have erupted. In the
distance loom the almost unspeakable: illegal strikes.
Is there a way out of this mess? Yes, but the trick is finding it. The
best way to do so, in our judgment, is to get the key parties together.
A pay-raise summit may be in order.
The state has what it wants, you may argue: a brake on spending. So why
should it bother to talk about a new deal? To avert labor strife, of course,
but here are two other reasons:
- Over the long haul, so tight a clamp on wage increases harms education
by lowering faculty morale, driving good teachers into either retirement
or more profitable lines of work and discouraging promising candidates
from entering the profession.
- Talks could lead to concessions in the public’s interest from
teachers’ unions. For instance, perhaps the vise on teachers’
pay could be loosened in exchange for an agreement to act on the problem
of bad teachers, who right now are next to impossible to weed out of
a typical school system.
There is a history to all of this: Teachers used to get hefty pay raises
in arbitration. In 1993, however, when the state imposed revenue caps
on school districts, it exempted pay and benefits from arbitration so
long as school boards offered increases that met certain requirements.
The formula is complex. You may have heard that an increase of 3.8% in
pay and benefits meets the requirements. That’s true roughly, and
in the aggregate. For individual teachers, though, that figure can translate
into pay hikes of less than 1%.
By the way, the old epoch of hefty pay increases was itself built on
a history - of poor teachers’ pay, particularly in light of the crucial
role the profession plays in society. So the big hikes brought teachers
closer to what they should have been making.
OK, maybe raises can’t be as large as they once were. But must they
forever be as tiny as they are today? Surely, there’s room for some
rethinking here.
The wage squeeze is all part of Gov. Tommy Thompson’s plan to provide
property tax relief. He stepped up state expenditures to finance two-thirds
of local school costs - a target he feared he might miss if costs kept
rising dramatically. But, on the downside, property tax relief is coming
out of the teachers’ hides.
The state should view this problem as an opportunity. Higher wage increases
for teachers are, in our judgment, in the public’s interest. But
the unions have been standing in the way of other measures that would
be in the public’s interest. For instance, peer review - in which
master teachers judge fellow teachers - promises to be a superb strategy
for lifting the quality of classroom teaching. But so far the unions haven’t
been willing to touch it. Higher pay in exchange for peer review?
Or in exchange for dropping opposition to independent charter schools,
which are important for helping to revitalize public education in Milwaukee?
Or in exchange for concessions on seniority, which sometimes results in
mismatches between a specific educational purpose and personnel?
The widespread discord among teachers over pay is an opportunity to deal.
Posted December 8, 1997