Moe v. Meier on Teacher Unions
by Frederick M. Hess • Jun 9, 2011 at 10:14 am
Cross-posted from Education Week
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ShareYesterday, at AEI, I hosted a lively panel to discuss Stanford University political scientist Terry Moe's new book, Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America's Public Schools. In addition to Moe, the panel featured TFA director of research Heather Harding and Central Park East impresario (and Ed Week blogger) Deborah Meier. You can watch the 90-minute conversation here. Speaking to a full house, the three powerfully elucidated and clarified some of the fault lines in the heated debates about teacher unions.
To me, it looked like two key fault lines ran through the discussion. One was the notion of "reform unionism" and professional voice. The second was how to judge whether schools or teachers were doing well. Moe, for reasons I'll explain in a moment, thinks "reform unionism" is a pipe dream and that the only effective way to drive school improvement is by getting the system incentives to emphasize performance--which requires measures of student learning. Meier argued that collaboration has repeatedly proven successful, in locales such as New York's district four, and that it has been management and policymakers who have squelched it.
