Monday 19 September 2011

A Successful Lobbying Campaign--- The Connecticut Education Reform Bill Watered Down

The second biggest teacher's union is the AFT, the American Federation of Teachers (the biggest is the National Education Association, made up of state unions such as the CEA, Connecticut Education Association). They put a powerpoint presentation, "How Connecticut Diffused The Parent Trigger" on their website (in pdf) explaining in detail how they gutted a bill that would have given parents more power over poorly-performing schools. Rather than kill it, they purposely kept it alive but made it empty of meaning.

This is standard stuff, and a good case study for how a business can affect legislation, but the webpage "The AFT’s Real Feelings about Parent Power" criticized it, and it didn't look good that prominent on the slide "What Helped Us" was "Absence of charter school and parent groups
from the table". As I said in class, though, that's central to politics--- if you're unorganized or rationally ignorant, your surplus is weighted less heavily or not at all in politics.

20 comments:

  1. It is alarming that more national coverage has not been given to issues such as this one over the past year. Unions have gone to battle with the public and private sector to maintain the status quo, which is troubling considering our nation's current economic situation.

    Right-to-work states, such as South Carolina, are being denied manufacturing jobs because Boeing intentionally left a union-heavy Washington state. Teacher's unions are denying parents the opportunity to provide their children with the absolute best education so that they can become competitive applicants to the workforce.

    It must be brought to the public's attention how detrimental unions have become to this nation's job force and entire economy. Without this attention, unions will continue to alter legislation and prevent our economy from the free-market mentality that has made it so competitive and successful.

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  2. It's interesting to analyze this situation, and certainly easy to exploit the union for removing the parents influence. However, I think it is unfair to paint the union as the bad guy in this story. The unions exist to protect workers rights, that is there sole published intention. Yes, there is corruption, and yes they are worried about their own pay checks, but that is why unions were established. The educational system is there to provide the best education possible. As it is with most things, the union and the educational system cannot achieve both of their goals without infringing on the others. With these differing goals and asymmetric information for the parents, the unions won their game, they achieved their goal. If there had been a better parents association. there may have been better dispersion of the information.

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  3. It’s a sad example to see (especially as the audience of this class consists entirely of students), but it is yet another example of what we highlighted in class today: a small group of organized, passionate individuals (e.g. AFT) can promote policies that serve their self-interest, but not the majority (the parents/community). In this specific example, however, I think both parties blew the situation out of proportion. I’m very surprised at the language that the AFT’s power point uses. It attacks the parents, when in fact the opponent is the pro-charter school organization. I think every organization should have the right to defend its self-interest, but this power point seems to be in poor taste. On the other hand, I do think the union is justified in its action. They didn’t take any power away from the parents as is – rather, they prevented them for obtaining additional power. I think that under performing schools need incentives to increase performance, but legislatively giving a petition the power to reconstitute a failing school seems to be a large concession. Other mechanisms already exist to concerned parents involved in public schools, such as monthly board meetings and the opportunity for parents to run for trustee positions.

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  4. As mentioned in other comments, the central problem here was the lack of organization on behalf of the parents. It is difficult in many communities, especially communities with weak school systems, to actively encourage parent involvement. In my opinion, both parties involved have lost sight of their true goal, which is to actively encourage student learning. It seems to me that the AFT has spent more time campaigning against the Parent Trigger than they have spent working to improve their own schools.

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  5. I agree with Danielle and others that disorganization on the part of the parents was largely an issue here. However, to me it seems that the benefits of having a stake in the quality of your child's education would be of the utmost importance to a parent. Therefore, the parents' lack of perceived surplus to potentially be gained from fighting for this bill is puzzling. It is rather disheartening that in the world of policy, people often feel so removed that they don't believe they have the opportunity to make a difference (without the backing of an interest group). But once again, it all comes down to weighing the opportunity costs of getting involved versus remaining rationally ignorant.

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  6. I would argue that this case is not about the parents being rationally ignorant nor organized. There are plenty of parent groups both locally and nationally, however in this situation it seems the union did their best to disguise what they were doing by keeping the bill alive but changed the intentions. They may have been able to destroy surplus without having other groups know it.

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  7. I think this is a good example of maintaining equality and fighting the possible oppression of minorities in public schools.  Allowing a simple majority of parents to take control of a school is an impractical solution to a deeper problem.  At worst it could breed opportunism and at best you would have replaced one inefficient system with another.  

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  8. As the child of a teacher, this case peaked my interest as it highlighted the interesting dynamic that exists between a community and its educators. At its essence, the situation that arose was pure rational ignorance on behalf of the parents in the community, a mindset that is not uncommon in schools in lower income areas. The ATF clearly demonstrates what can happen when a small group of individuals actively champion a cause, but it’s only a tragedy in this circumstance that their surplus comes at the sacrifice of children in need of a quality education.

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  9. I agree with the above comments that this case is a tragedy caused by unorganized masses and rational ignorance.Additionally, because in this case the AFT devoted effort into making the bill empty of meaning rather than blocking it right away, it further added to the dead weight loss incurred. The AFT is morally unjustified in doing this because their ultimate goal should be to improve the nation's education system instead of hinder the process. May be to play fair, the government should help in this case by sponsoring the parents in their campaign to pass the law since they are underprivileged compared with the AFT.

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  10. I can't really understand this teacher's union called AFT. I am really surprised at what AFT said on the webpage saying that what it helped them was absence of charter school and parent groups from the table. Parents supposed to have enough power to keep an eye on their kids' education. They desire a better education system for their children and that's the right thing to do in my opinion. AFT shouldn't just criticize the parents, instead, they should fix and improve as possible as they can do to have a better school that parents desire.

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  11. Unions are highly organized powerful bodies that can influence policy makers in a strong way. The lack of organization on the part of parents reduced their contribution and control over poorly performing schools. The AFT continues to maximize their surplus while parents lose out due to lack of lobbying or a possible lack of interest. It seems that the perceived value to the teachers union is much more than the perceived value to the parents.

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  13. In China there is an old saying: Know your enemy and yourself completely and you will never lose a war. That is part of what this story tells us. The parents are poorly collaborating and they don't even know what the teacher's union is doing. If they realized that the AFT are acting with their unjustifiable "dual strategy", it would be another story. At least they would have been alarmed to read the "final outcome" and think of their real rights added by the bill instead of a misnomer name.

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  14. It appears, by posting the presentation on their website, that the union is proud of denying the parents power. This is upsetting to me because unions and parents should be working for the same end goal, which is to better educate our future.

    In my opinion, I believe that parents should have every right to have power in controlling their child's education. Some of the fastest growing educational systems in the world are in countries that do not have a large federal system. Education is controlled too much by the government and unions, and this is resulting in children not being educated properly. Parents know their children best, not unions, and should have more power in dictating educational policy.

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  15. Speaking of rationally ignorant though maybe it can be said that parents are not as informed and active regarding their child's education as they should be. The teachers union may fear that by giving parents more control over failing schools they will only drive them farther into the ground.

    The motivation behind the union's behavior could be selfish, but it could also be an attempt to maintain control of failing schools in their best interest, and to do so without upsetting parents further. By allowing the empty legislation to pass, it eases parents' apprehension, while keeping the union's objectives of course.

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  16. Disorganization on behalf of the parents is the primary issue at hand here, and a rather big one at that. It is the fault of the parents' that this is occurring. Their overall lack of organization has led to the failure of these schools. It is an unfortunate situation because the primary sufferers are the students who are not receiving a proper education.

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  17. While it has been mentioned above numerous times, I believe that the main problem is disorganization on the part of charter school and parent groups. If those two groups could've been a little more unified they could have fought the reforms that the the bill "empty of meaning." This could be related to class by the fact that this is a market failure by the charter schools and parents groups because the public schools have no opposition against them causing the schools to fail.

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  18. The lack of political savvy on the part of the charter schools is surprising. As for the parents, that is less surprising. Think about the situation of a mother and father. If they want to improve their child's education, they could invest many hours in lobbying for a change that would help lots of children a little, or the same number of hours tutoring their own child very well. It takes a lot of altruism to choose the lobbying.

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  19. I agree with Jordan, I find it a little bias to be completely against the union's actions. It's understandable that the union would want parents out of the way in order to get what they need or want. In this situation I would actually compare parents to this union; however the union did a better job of protecting their workers more-so than parents did for their children's education. The union took initiative to protect its members although it did so in a distasteful way. Maybe the situations wouldn't have gotten so out of control if the parents took more initiative to protect their right as tuition payers (tax payers) to ensure the best education for their children.

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  20. Because the kid of the trainer, this example actually peaked my own attention because it pointed out the actual intriguing energetic in which is out there from a neighborhood and it is school teachers. With it's substance, the specific situation which came about has been genuine logical lack of knowledge for the oldsters locally, any attitude that isn't unusual within colleges within low income locations. The particular ATF plainly shows so what can take place whenever a little band of people make an effort to winner an underlying cause, nonetheless it’azines just a catastrophe within this situation in which their own extra arrives in the give up of kids needing a good training.

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