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Today on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush singled out Hillsborough County, Fla., as a school district where the teachers union didn't go the Chicago route over teacher evaluations: “In Hillsborough County, which is Tampa, thanks to the Gates Foundation, labor and management’s working together where there is an assessment of teachers based on learning gains of students. And it’s a thoughtful process. There was buy in by the union. I don’t think everybody is happy with it but most people are. And the net result is Hillsborough County has significantly higher achievement levels for kids in poverty for example than what takes place in Chicago." 

We're based in Tampa, and as we've noted before, Hillsborough is different. After Hillsborough teachers union president Jean Clements won re-election this year, Doug Tuthill wrote in part: "Teachers in school districts today are understandably skeptical of reforms given all the change that has occurred in public education over the last three decades.  Before they’re willing to embrace meaningful systemic changes, they want trusted leaders to explain why these changes are truly improvements. But as Jean has shown, once leaders lay out a vision and a believable strategy for accomplishing that vision, public school teachers are willing to roll up their sleeves and give it a try." Read his full post here.

Editor's note: Corporate greed! Profits! Privatization! Shout the same, alarming buzz words enough - as critics of education reform are doing - and it defines the debate. But as Doug Tuthill, a former teachers union president, argues in this post, businesses benefit more from the status quo in education than they will from expanded parental choice.

Public education would not exist without the products and services provided by for-profit corporations. Every year, for-profit corporations receive billions of tax dollars from school districts to build schools and supply them with desks, books, computers, pens, pencils, paper, calculators, buses, crayons, and power to turn on the lights. And yet school choice critics continue to assert that giving parents more schooling options is a plot by for-profit corporations to make more money.

I don’t buy it.

The profit margins of businesses providing goods and services to public education are greater under the current command-and-control system because the costs of sales and servicing contracts are lower when the customers are large, centrally controlled organizations.  My friend Jean Clements, who is the teachers union president in Hillsborough County, Florida, was the first person to explain this to me.

Four years ago, I asked Jean why her union refused to sell union memberships to private school teachers. Her answer? She would lose money. Jean said the membership revenue she would receive from teachers in small, non-district schools would not cover the costs of negotiating and servicing their collective bargaining contracts.

Large school districts allow teachers unions to spread their costs across a large number of members, which is why large districts are their preferred market. It’s also why unions are so opposed to public education occurring in schools not owned and managed by school districts.

I suspect the same economy-of-scale issues influencing Jean’s business decisions are also relevant for Dell, Pearson and Apple. (more…)