PTA serves teacher unions, not parents

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 27, 1995 | by Charlene K. Haar

Millions of American parents concerned about the skyrocketing costs and dismal educational results of public schools cannot count on parent-teacher associations, or PTAs, to be an advocate for their views -- or even as a forum for airing their views. Instead, policies of the National PTA, which are adopted automatically by state and local PTAs, reflect the dominant influence of the teachers unions, especially the National Education Association, or NEA. Consequently, the PTA vigorously opposes any market-oriented reform measures opposed by the teacher unions, such as contracting out school management or providing educational vouchers to parents wishing to send their children to the school of their choice.

Part of the PTA's ineffectiveness as a parent-advocacy organization is illustrated by a 1968 position statement on "teacher negotiations, sanctions and strikes." The resolution, reaffirmed in 1987, identifies the "dilemmas" that teacher militancy and union negotiations impose on local PTA members:

"1. If the PTA provides volunteers to man the classrooms during a work stoppage, in the interest of protecting the immediate safety and welfare of children, it is branded as a strikebreaker

"2. If the PTA does not take sides in issue[s] being negotiated, it is accused of not being interested.

"3. If it supports the positions of the board of education, which is the representative of the public in negotiations, the teacher members have threatened to withdraw membership and boycott the local PTA activities."

What are PTA members permitted to do? The resolution urges them to be alert to symptoms of teacher dissatisfaction (abnormal turnover, complaints and "teacher-supported legislation defeated by state legislature" before a strike's onset and to promote the public airing of issues.

In attempting to be neutral on labor and education policy matters that should be of utmost concern to parents, the PTA position clearly defers to the unions. As a result, the PTA places itself outside the arena of debate about education issues regardless of the impact on students, parents or the public. Clearly, as the PTA's position statement recognizes, a significant threat to the PTA is the teachers' threat to leave the organization. Obviously, if such a threat were carried out, it would jeopardize the 60 National PTA staff positions in Chicago and Washington.

That teachers might have the upper hand in the PTA was not apparent at first. PTA membership, at 1 million in 1927, began to rise after the Depression and nearly doubled in the five years after the end of World War II. Membership peaked in 1966, when more than 12 million teachers, administrators and parents were members of the National PTA.

While the baby boom was contributing to the increase of parents in the PTA, teachers were discovering other ways to secure their interests. Many teachers looked to unions and collective bargaining to achieve higher salaries, job security and increased benefits. As early as 1935, the American Federation of Teachers, or AFT, had called for collective rather than individual negotiations between teachers and school boards. Since 1961, the NEA also has advocated collective bargaining, although many NEA members feared unionization would lower their professional status. Notwithstanding, NEA membership has increased in all but four years since a 1978 federal court ruling held that the NEA is a union. Today, almost 70 percent of America's 3.5 million public-school teachers are NEA or AFT members.

PTA activists and officials often are former teachers; state and local PTA presidents frequently are classroom or substitute teachers, many of whom have teachers-union backgrounds. Unfortunately, the alleged absence of demographic data, such as union affiliation, age and occupation, enables the National PTA to avoid facing the painful facts about who is leading, joining and leaving the organization. It also prevents the PTA from measuring the differing attitudes of the parents and teachers who comprise its membership. Although coalitions among the PTA, NEA and AFT are common to shield public education from competition, the teachers-union agendas, especially the NEA's, have embraced positions on social issues, such as condom availability in the schools, which are anathema to many parents.

Ever since the 1960s, the NEA and AFT have lobbied vigorously for state legislation requiring school boards to bargain collectively with teachers unions about terms and conditions of employment. Collective bargaining is used in most school districts to resolve issues such as teacher compensation for extracurricular activities, class size, parental-grievance procedures and frequency and scheduling of parent/teacher conferences. Paradoxically, collective-bargaining laws greatly strengthened the political power of public-sector unions, while public accountability has decreased.

As pointed out by Cornell University law Professor Robert S. Summers, public-sector collective bargaining "redistributes governmental authority to one major participant -- the union -- which is not publicly accountable at all for its actions. Under a bargaining statute, the voters of a school district, for example, do not elect a union, nor can they vote a union `out of office' after it has successfully negotiated a collective-bargaining agreement objectionable to the voters. This particular law-making and budget-creating entity is neither elected by nor accountable to the public."