Hot off the Brookings Institution press is Terry Moe’s magnum opus on teacher unions, Special Interest – Teachers Unions and America’s Public Schools. At more than 500 pages, it is deeply informative, profoundly insightful, fundamentally depressing, and yet ultimately somewhat hopeful about our children’s educational futures due to the combined forces of technology and changing politics. Insights along the way include the gaps between teachers and their union leaders, the false promise of “reform unionism,” the strength of union influence even where there’s no collective bargaining, and the mixed bag that is Race to the Top.
This is a book that union supporters and detractors alike should read, simply due to the fact that despite their importance, the teachers unions have barely been studied. Special Interest fills that gap with an extraordinarily detailed analysis —shedding new light on the union’s historical rise to power, the organizational foundations of that power, the ways it is exercised in collective bargaining and politics, and its vast consequences for American education. Moe’s conclusion is anti-union: as long as the teachers’ unions remain powerful, the nation’s schools will never be organized to provide kids with the most effective education possible. The author, however, sees light at the end of the tunnel due to two major transformations. One is political, the other technological, and, he predicts, the combination may weaken the unions considerably in the coming years.
Certainly this book will inspire re-analysis of the information presented from the pro-union side of the camp — which is a good thing. It is time to engage in conversation about the ways in which all systems that support educators (including unions, staffing ratios, organization of children by age, seat-time requirements, and compensation) affect the students in schools. This conversation should include policy makers, teachers, and union leaders alike.
