Teachers unions: the good, the bad, and the ugly - Book Review

Education Next, Spring, 2004 by George Mitchell, Julia E. Koppich

The Worm in the Apple: How the Teacher Unions Are Destroying American Education

by Peter Brimelow

HarperCollins, 2003, $24.95; 320 pages.

Peter Brimelow aims high. In The Worm in the Apple, he seeks to emulate The History of Standard Oil, the legendary effort by Ida Tarbell that helped to usher in the antitrust movement a century ago.

While Tarbell's villain was Standard Oil, Brimelow's culprits are the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). However, though many of his concerns are valid and well documented, Brimelow is unlikely to earn a spot on bookshelves next to Tarbell. Unlike the self-effacing Tarbell, Brimelow overreaches with his rhetoric, distracting from and often obscuring his message.

For example, Brimelow considers teacher union leaders "commissars of [an] American Red Army." The NEA "has chosen to metastasize into the National Extortion Association." It exhibits a "persistent streak of left-wing loonyism." Brimelow cites the words of "Chairman Mao Tse-Tung" to demonstrate that K-12 schools reflect "the most prominent outbreak of socialism on the American scene."

Framed this way, Brimelow will at best reinforce the sentiments of those readers who already accept his basic premise. At the same time, he will be largely discounted by those whose support is required for real change to occur.

Brimelow is at his best in describing the broader historical context in which the teacher unions operate. He demonstrates how collective bargaining for teachers has produced labor agreements that stifle innovation and risk taking. He makes it clear that the dramatic rise in influence enjoyed by the teacher unions has coincided with stagnant and unacceptable levels of student performance.

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Brimelow laments that little of this is understood by mainstream America. He correctly singles out the news media, where reports of the teacher unions' activity and influence are woefully inadequate. He is on the money in claiming that "the teacher/school board conclave," lacking such independent scrutiny, "effectively excludes other interested parties, such as parents and taxpayers."

But what to do? Brimelow's principal remedies involve a menu of antiunion legislation: repeal collective-bargaining laws for teachers; eliminate teacher tenure; enact "right to work" laws; and so on.

Brimelow lets these suggestions crowd out his other proposals--proposals that might be both more feasible and more effective. For example, rather than questioning the right of teacher unions to exist, Brimelow could have shown how effective unions are not inherently at odds with the creation of high-quality products. The auto industry, a leading example, illustrates how a market driven by real consumer choice, but with a heavily unionized work force, can function well. Instead, Brimelow's concluding chapter seems to instruct readers to support school choice not so much because doing so might improve the schools, but because it will annoy teacher unions.

In the context of my own study of Milwaukee's teacher union (with Howard Fuller and Mike Hartmann), Brimelow's dire description of the national scene rings true. All the more disappointing, then, that his book reads more like Ann Coulter than Ida Tarbell.

--George Mitchell is a public policy consultant in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

As reviewed by George Mitchell

Will The Worm in the Apple someday become the answer to a question on the Advanced Placement exam in U.S. history? The author, financial journalist Peter Brimelow, hopes so. Brimelow considers himself a muckraker, the term coined by Theodore Roosevelt to describe writers who highlighted corruption in government. In a 1906 speech, Roosevelt branded some of the muckrakers' methods sensationalist and irresponsible--an apt description for Brimelow's book.

Brimelow uses the plural to refer to teacher unions, calling them collectively the "Teacher Trust." But he focuses on the National Education Association (NEA) and especially on that organization's California affiliate--for which, conveniently for him, reform is often anathema. To be sure, Brimelow makes some valid criticisms of unions--the bargaining of sometimes too-rigid employment contracts; some unions' "just say 'no'" attitude toward reform; proposals for more authority without accompanying responsibility for results. But he also could have found counterexamples. He just didn't look very hard.

Teachers embraced unionism for a simple reason: they wanted to be involved in shaping the conditions of their employment. In a recent survey by Public Agenda, more than 80 percent of teachers said that without unions, they would be vulnerable to the vagaries of school politics, and their salaries and working conditions would be much worse.

Brimelow suggests repealing collective-bargaining laws so that "school boards would no longer be forced to deal with the union just because a majority of the teachers voting in a certification election supported it." He is half right. Collective-bargaining laws do need to be revamped, but not as an exercise in limiting democracy.