Teachers Unions: Good, Bad, or???

Matt Yglesias says teachers unions get a bad rap. To a degree, I agree with him. Teachers unions have been a force for good in education policy in many ways, particularly in defending public education and maintaining or increasing funding for it. And, the availability (and abuse) of teachers unions as a scapegoat does allow too many folks, especially on the conservative side of policy debates, to slip off the hook without addressing their own responsibility for many tough problems in education.

But Yglesias is wrong to dismiss this issue or the idea of union power out of hand. Part of the problem is his DC-centric perspective. If you follow education policy and politics at the state and local level (where most of the decisions that really matter for kids are made), there's plenty of evidence of union power, as well as examples where the positions teachers unions have taken seem questionable from a social justice perspective. And drawing attention to this oughtn't to get one labeled as "anti-union," "conservative," or "anti-public education." After all, there's a reason SEIU's Andrew Stern is quoted on the back of this book.

Update: Yglesias says more here. Key quote:

People sometimes talk about this as if there was a brilliant will-solve-all-our-problems school reform agenda just waiting to be implemented that's being stymied purely through the awesome might of the teachers' unions. That's just not the case. The policy questions here are genuinely different, lots of different actors have interests and priorities pulling in all sorts of directions, etc., etc., etc.

Yup. That's why education policy is an incredibly intellectually interesting but often heartrendingly frustrating field to work in.