The teachers unions are under attack -- and not just from Scott Walker. In a recent white paper, Mitt Romney blamed the unions for gridlock and stagnation in American education. In the public discourse, films such as Waiting for Superman vilify union leaders and frame the unions as enemies of education reform. It's fair to say even President Obama and the unions have a rocky relationship, as the administration has supported initiatives that unions have long opposed, such as charter schools and tenure reform. Public dissatisfaction with the unions is mounting, and the ways in which teachers and the groups that represent them respond will shape the profession for years to come.
In addition to attacks from politicians, media, and the public, some teachers have also voiced criticism of their unions. Unsatisfied teachers can respond in one of two ways:
1. Teachers can leave their union. Though they may still need to pay union dues in states without "right to work" laws, teachers are not forced to be union members. This trend has certainly begun, as the NEA has recently lost 100,000 members. Of course, losing 100,000 bodies for the 3.2 million member powerhouse isn't that big of a deal. But this news has certainly riled up the NEA, and rightfully so. Losing members means losing money -- $27 million to be exact -- and that's money that can't be used for staff benefits or to reelect Barack Obama.
2. Teachers can change their unions. Teachers can become more involved in union activities and voice their opinions in union decisions. Teachers can also try to change their unions' structures by becoming more involved as leaders themselves. For example, teachers in Boston recognized that union rules, including the location and timing of union elections, made it difficult for teachers to vote. In response, they mounted a campaign for mail-in ballots called BTU votes that represented a huge step forward for teacher organizing and advocacy.
As evidence of these trends, new organizations have emerged to ensure teachers have a place at the policy table. Teach Plus and Educators 4 Excellence (E4E) are smaller, more streamlined "teacher voice" organizations. For example, Teach Plus empowers current classroom teachers to impact policy, growing from a network of 16 teachers to over 8,000 in just four years. E4E emphasizes grassroots organizing and mobilizes teachers to change policies at the school, district, and state levels.
These organizations don't claim to speak for all teachers. Educators for Excellence uses a declaration of principles to recruit teachers in the "rational middle." Teach Plus does not ask teachers to sign a pledge, but targets teachers who identify as "solutions-oriented." Previous Teach Plus fellows have impacted policies such as removing "last in, first out" provisions and created staffing models to place the best teachers where they're needed the most. These organizations only exist in a few cities. But for the teachers that participate, these organizations serve as an effective outlet for voicing their opinions in policy discussions.
As new organizations in the advocacy space, they could also work with the unions and challenge them to become more reform-minded. In Massachusetts, Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) President Paul Toner recognized that if the MTA didn't act, reform would be done to them, not with them. As Toner mentioned in a 2010 campaign speech, "We have to be the architects of reform, rather than the subject of it." The MTA took the lead in developing a new teacher evaluation system, taking into account student test scores, an idea that unions had traditionally opposed.
Don't get me wrong, the unions are still powerful -- and they aren't going away any time soon. Unions still hold a monopoly in funding political organizations and securing valuable collective bargaining rights. But as for representing the interests of teachers in policy discussions, new organizations have emerged to involve teachers as leaders in reforming and creating policies that will change the profession. With this, they are challenging the unions to become more reform-minded, and incrementally improving the market for "teacher voice" in policy decisions.
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While we do appreciate our initiative being called “a huge step forward for teacher organizing and advocacy,” we are NOT a group of “unsatisfied teachers” and are not “attacking” our union. We do NOT reflect the current unfounded criticism of teacher and public sector unions.
Far from it. We are proud union members and passionate that our union continues to be a strong voice for students, teachers, and public education. We undertook our campaign to increase involvement in, and the strength of, our union, and we support similar efforts across the country.
We believe that stronger union involvement leads to better outcomes for students. For example, the highest NAEP results in the country are correlated with the most heavily unionized states. Unions create safeguards for teachers so they may advocate for students and families in an often-dysfunctional bureaucracy. In addition, unions create working conditions that allow teachers to be effective and fight for a competitive wage so to attract and keep talent in our profession.
Again, the work of BTUVotes was, and continues to be, predicated on the belief that our union must increase involvement so to continue to be a strong voice for students, teachers, and public education.
In the future, please reach out to us for clarification of our beliefs before presenting our work as being part of a movement against teachers unions. It is not.
K. McCarthy
I supported my local office which dealt with school related issues only. Union officials make huge salaries, have big expensive offices and continue to get raises when teachers are getting cuts in pay. We have asked repeatedly for better discipline and security on our campuses, we would rather have that then higher pay, but they never advocate for that; that does not add money to their accounts.
They are all about them, which is why they wanted all the illegals, more students, more teachers, more money.
Regarding negative experiences with unions, I wish people would say, "my local union/association" rather than "the union." I've worked in two districts that demonstrated some clear differences for me, and I've read about and heard about a wide, wide variety of experiences with local unions; there is no monolithic truth about "the union."
Regarding the idea that unions have not stepped up to help provide solutions, please look at:
http://neapriorityschools.org/
Or, read:
http://accomplishedcaliforniateachers.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/the-teachers-union-and-quality-teaching/
God forbid somebody actually suggest that anything be changed. As an example, a teacher of my acquaintance once complained about the weeks spent reviewing material that students forget over summer break.
I asked if, perhaps, a year-round program might be better--
You would have thought that I was suggesting human sacrifice! She railed about how badly teachers needed their summer break, how the economy would go down the tubes if the sanctity of the summer break were ever threatened, and how it was incredibly important that students be free over summers to pick crops (She taught in Los Angeles).
By the way, I teach at a JC, but my parents, sister, and several other family members are all K-12 teachers.
Nevertheless, I still believe teachers needs a medium to express their professional voice. If the unions aren't doing it, start your own organization. The ed reformers, who are pushing for corporate privatization of our public schools, have been winning the PR battle for some years now. To reverse the turn, teachers, with the support of parents and students, will have to step their activism game up and start holding their own accountable.
Deciding who the poor teachers are should be decided, in my opinion, through observation by multiple administration and peers (from different buildings) to prevent bias, combined with some test score information based upon growth only and not arbitrary one-size-fits-all achievement marks, and a narrative by the teacher outlining the challenges they face with their current class and what they have done (curriculum development, implementing strategies, etc.) to improve achievement in their classroom. But of course all of this would cost more money. Student and parent surveys could also be, and have been, used, but personally, I would trust the response from students before parents, as the students are in the classroom.
I am aware of the condition that administration holds all of the power in the hiring and firing, because I am a public school teacher and member of my local education association.
Second, would I want ANYONE to go to the police if something ILLEGAL was being done. Hmmmm.... I'll let you retract that question.
Finally, let me lay out two scenarios. With Union A, the union protects all members with their best ability regarding the contract. Because of said contract language, there are a number of teachers whose conduct is far less than average. Because the union has not done anything pro-active about reform, that reform is dictated to them and the teachers are stuck with an evaluation system based mostly on raw cut score from state (and soon national) tests. The test scores, which are public knowledge, allow individuals and schools to be vilified in the media and the public, questioning why teachers deserve the salary and benefits they have. All teachers, the vast majority of whom are high quality and hard working, are hurt by local and state policy created to correct "issues" which are the result of a handful of people who are far below average in talent and effort at their job.
The states with strong teacher unions are at the top of the list.
The right to work states are consistently at the bottom.
Unions do much more good for education than they do harm.
When confronted with bad news, teachers' unions invariably chant that we need to be throwing more money into the K-12 money pit.
K-12 education consumes about 55% of most state budgets...Up from about 35% in the 1970's--Yet by any objective measure, students are no better educated than they were 40 years ago.
I agree that the unions should be much more pro-active with suggestions to improve education. I also believe more should be done on their part to weed out the poor-performing teachers. I don't know what the funding structure in state budgets looked like in the 1970's, but I'd guess there are different needs 40 years later. One need for high funding is that the most influential classroom factor linked to student achievement is a quality teacher. That means that pay and benefits should be such that they attract quality candidates. If you pay peanuts (total compensation), you'll get monkeys.
Second is the increased reliance on technology in our society, and the need for that to increase in our schools in order to prepare students for technology-based careers. Here in Michigan, the legislature sacked our School Aid Fund for $900million last year. We lost all technology support in our buildings in my district, and instead have a "help" desk to call for assistance, which often takes days or even weeks to arrive. I have 3 computers in my classroom, and there are 4 carts of 16 laptops that 25 classrooms must share. All that technology is expensive and needs support staff, as technology often lets you down with unexpected issues. Just found out today that my high-needs school is losing our counselor due to budget cuts, and that's on top of the cutting of our assistant principal that handled the discipline.
You've provided me a good example of how teachers unions are killing themselves: Given your assertion that the teacher is the most important factor, why should't they be blamed when things go wrong?
I actually don't agree with this assertion. I think that most teachers are competent, and that the even the best teachers are no match for parental apathy and behavioral problems in the classroom--But I have never heard a union proposal for making parents accountable for their children, or separating recalcitrant children from their more motivated peers.
I'm a JC math/engineering instructor. Most of my students are recent HS AP/Honors students. Their schools are brimming with computers (Every HS student in my state gets a laptop), and the local high schools assure me that their graduates are proficient in MS Office, yet I still have to teach them the basics--
Every semester, I give my engineering students a simple EXCEL data set, ask them to make a scatter plot, cut/paste their graph into WORD, write a paragraph interpreting the data, and e-mail it to me. Most report that they have never made a graph and don't know how to open EXCEL, and about a third don't know how to attach their document to an e-mail.
Technology is a cost driver--But the students haven't benefited from it. This is why inflation adjusted per-student costs have more than doubled over the last 30 years--With no measurable improvement in student performance.
But the union is the first one they run to when they find out that education is a political game and teachers are the football.