Teachers' strike

On Sunday, the West Shore Education Association took a symbolic step toward sending Cedar Cliff and Red Land careening toward the first major teachers' strike in Cumberland County in over twelve years.

Ideas for improving school performance range from increasing government spending to instituting school vouchers, but it's hard to see how any of these proposals would make employment negotiations work in favor of the students. Rep. Will Gabig has even floated a proposal to outlaw teachers' strikes, which is probably unfair and possibly illegal, as refusing to work is really the only leverage a union labor force has. It also targets a symptom rather than the underlying problem - the unionization of public educators has made it impossible to link performance with compensation, which is the lynchpin of efficient labor markets. Steve Jobs, true to form, has done a great job of cutting through the rhetoric and identifying the problem:

I believe that what's wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way.

What kind of person could you get to run a small business if you told them that when they came in they couldn't get rid of people that they thought weren't any good? Not really great ones because if you're really smart you go, ‘I can't win.'

This unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers is off-the-charts crazy.

Quite simply, some teachers are much more effective than others, but forcing them to negotiate their salaries en masse sacrifices the rights of the best ones in favor of the rights of the worst.

Of course, nobody pays attention to self-made billionaires when it comes to matters of education - one needs several degrees and decades of bureaucratic credentials to be taken seriously in that arena. Fortunately, Cedar Cliff and Red Land are among the best school districts in the area, and these students will be fine no matter how this particular contract negotiation plays out. Still, it's worth taking note of this story and wondering who exactly could benefit from the struggle.