The Los Angeles teachers union is demonstrating the difficult and complex ethical dilemmas endemic to all teachers unions. Because the unions represent teachers rather than their students, the unions can, and often are, placed in the position of supporting their membership to the detriment of the children the members have a duty to serve. And because the teachers who need the most protection from adverse employment actions are usually the worst and least dedicated teachers, a moderation of the unions’ priorities to recognize a duty to the students is less likely to occur.

The L.A. union’s president just announced that he was organizing a “massive boycott” of The Los Angeles Times because the newspaper has begun publishing a series of articles that explore student test scores to assess the effectiveness of Los Angeles public school teachers. In a remarkable example of  investigative journalism at its best, the Times examined test score data covering seven years, and assessed the results of more than 6,000 elementary school teachers  on their students’ progress. The paper found huge disparities in the test results of classes among individual teachers, some of whom taught in adjacent classrooms. After a single year with teachers who ranked in the top 10% in effectiveness, students scored an average of 17 percentile points higher in English and 25 points higher in math than students whose teachers ranked in the bottom 10%.  The scores showed that students often regressed in the classes of ineffective teachers.

This is, of course, valuable information for parents, the school, educators, the city and the nation. The union, however, wants it buried. “You’re leading people in a dangerous direction, making it seem like you can judge the quality of a teacher by … a test,” said A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles. Duffy said he would urge other labor groups to ask their members to cancel their Times subscriptions. Who is the union protecting here? Certainly not the students. It is protecting the most incompetent of its 40,000 members, to the detriment of children. Duffy’s statement is desperate and nonsensical. How else can we measure teacher performance? Even if there are other means, this data is obviously useful. Never mind: he just wants the paper punished for reporting the facts, and he wants to bully the paper into backing down by using the unethical coercive tactic of a boycott designed to suppress information the public really does have a right to know.

The union wants the Times to back down or be shut down fast, because the newspaper plans to publish an online database with ratings for the more than 6,000 elementary school instructors later this month. Yikes! Can’t have that: then parents will know who the lousy teachers are. Then they might start pressuring the schools to do something about it. You see, the Times also discovered that the Los Angeles school district has had this data for years, but has refused to use it—because it was afraid of the union.

The teachers unions’ desperate screams of outrage and blatant effort to use economic extortion to suppress proof of its members’ failings prove that the Times has struck a nerve that needs to be struck. We can only hope that the citizens of Los Angeles back the paper and stand up to the union, for the sake of Los Angeles students, the integrity of journalism, and the soul of the teaching profession itself. As for the union, its action crosses the line between loyalty to its members and betrayal of the values of the teaching profession. The L.A. union and teachers unions generally have to find a way to ensure that their objectives always include the welfare of students and the excellence of their education, even if it means losing a significant number of members.  An organization that is supposed to look out for the interests of a profession cannot take public positions that are contrary to that profession’s mission and duties, without doing terrible harm to the profession over time.

A responsible and ethical  teachers’ union would to be applauding the Los Angeles Times, not attacking it. It is time for the effective teachers identified by the data to take charge.