Teachers Unions

[Sam Or I]

Do you believe teachers unions are good or bad for public education? I have been going back and forth on this issue.

Your opinions?

(BTW I graduated from Clovis Unified School District in California. It is often touted as an example of a successful medium sized district with out a union. I aboslutely hated going to school there, but they get results.)

[Joe]

Any union that makes it hard to nigh-impossible to fire incompetent employees is bad.

[Knife]

Any union that makes it hard to nigh-impossible to fire incompetent employees is bad.

*golf clap*


Incompetence needs to be fired.

[Stormbringer]

Do you believe teachers unions are good or bad for public education? I have been going back and forth on this issue.

Your opinions?

Like all Unions they're a mixed blessing. Yes, they have fought to protect the jobs of deserving teachers and secure them decent benefits. I wish them well in obtaining more for teachers, they deserve it. As far as I'm concerned that's all to the good provided it doesn't go too far.

But I also think there's just no question that they've blocked a lot of meaningful reforms and protected a lot of people that should have been fired. As a personal story, the teachers union in my school actually manage to protect a teacher that had threatened a student (and yes, he did, I was there) and he got off with a paid suspension. Things like that, not to mention the hordes of tenured and untouchable burn outs and assholes they protect.

Frankly, I think in most cases the latter happens far too much and even the former gets out of hand. So I think they're more a curse than a blessing.

[Darth Wong]

Teachers' unions serve an important role in the political process, but they should not have the ability to strike or to enforce the same kind of "seniority before competence and dedication" and "almost impossible to fire somebody" rules that unions traditionally impose upon their employers. The stakes are too high to allow that kind of bullshit. We don't allow certain kinds of employees (eg- police officers) to strike or negotiate arbitrarily strict rules upon their employers because the job is too important, and the job teachers do is equally important.

They can't have their cake and eat it too. They can't simultaneously claim they're really important when it comes to contract negotiations and then deny that very same importance when it comes to the issue of legislating away their right to strike.

[SyntaxVorlon]

I don't think they should be in the business of stupidity as Wong describes, but I like the fact that they fight to raise wages and make public school teaching jobs viable for intelligent candidates who want to actually earn a living.

[Petrosjko]

Leadership is an incredibly rare talent. In the simplest definition, a leader is the person who, when everyone else is standing around saying 'someone ought to do such and such' actually gets the task done.

Because there are never enough leaders to fill any organizational structure out properly, organizations have to resort to attempting to train for something that can't really be taught, and end up with managers instead of leaders, people who can organize an operation and keep it going, but lack the true spark to push it over the top into something truly dynamic.

Relevance? It's the same thing with teaching. There are a very few natural teachers in this world, people who have a calling to teach others, and the ability to do so in a coherent fashion whereupon knowledge is actually communicated and retained.

In lieu of that, they tend to use placeholders... (god knows, damn near every history teacher in the state of Texas has the same first name... Coach.)

Teachers unions will fight to preserve these placeholders, even when they're clearly incompetent. As Darth Wong said, the function of education is far too important.

Furthermore, they've obstructed clearance of one of the major issues of education, the money chokepoint that exists at the administrative level. We've thrown billions at education over the decades, and where does it go? It bottlenecks at administration, and we end up with schools lacking enough desks for their students.

As an example of this, in the school district I grew up in, that literally happened. They built a PLUSH administrative building, plush carpet, oak furniture and oh my, with poor schools on the south side lacking desks. I went to one of those south side schools on the Magnet program, a voluntary desegregation program, one that was alleged to specialize in science and math. Our 'science room' when I started there was a shoebox slightly larger than my current bedroom, into which we'd pack thirty-odd students so we could stare at pickled specimens and play with bunsen burners once a month or so.

One of our 'science' teachers was so damned incoherent that when I missed a week's class from illness, my mother took me in to discuss my makeup assignments with her, spent an hour talking to her and still couldn't figure out what my assignment was. I don't remember this incident, but my mother told me later that I told her (my mother, that is) that it was no big deal, she's always like this, but I knew what my assignment was. She also said that I told her we felt sorry for the teacher in question.

Yeaaaaaah. She also used to shut down science instruction in February so we could do a month-long study of Black History month, which would be fine... if it was a fucking history class.

While education was languishing and the high schools were being rated consistantly in the bottom category of school rankings year in and year out, the district administrator was gifted with a high-value annuity by the school board so he wouldn't jump ship for another district. A year later, he bailed anyway. Good riddance.

When they signed in a law requiring a competency test for teachers, the union screamed bloody murder, and so far as I know the test was only done once.

By and large I ended up educating myself, either by reading, a dirty and expensive habit I acquired from my parents, or by hanging around with the teachers who really knew their subjects. Unfortunately, I usually didn't end up in their classes.

What has happened with education in America is bordering on criminal, and the NEA et al have not been part of the solution, because their answer has consistantly been 'more money!'

They fight against standardized testing, why? Yeah yeah, students spend all their time studying to take the tests... well hell, if the tests include the basic knowledge that should be disseminated in elementary school, and students can't pass those tests, then they shouldn't be advancing. Test anxiety, blah blah, yeah, what are the precious dears going to do when they face their first job interviews out in the real world?

It's something of a bitter topic for me, because by high school I was so sick of knowing more about history than my history teachers and otherwise being so intellectually unstimulated by my surroundings that I went from being regularly truant to dropping out and eventually heading for college.

But on the plus side, I did learn a healthy disrespect for authority. Just because some dipshit has a fancy title and the backing of the powers that be does not make them any more competent or worthy than thee or me.

[LordShaithis]

When I become King of America, I will crush the teacher's unions so ruthlessly that Reagan will rise from the dead to applaud me.

[Iceberg]

Maybe it's because I lived in one of the better school districts in the country (ISD 196, Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan, MN), but I never really had a problem with underequipped buildings or lousy teachers. We had a few fossils, yes, what district doesn't, but they were the exception. I seriously can't remember having any teachers who were just going through the motions.

Odd...

[Master of Ossus]

Teachers unions are horrible. They're one of the examples I bring up constantly when describing how unions have largely served their purpose.

Not only do teachers unions prevent schools from firing inept teachers, but they also artificially raise teachers salaries, preventing more teachers from being hired, and they prevent proper wage negotiations from taking place. Their strikes are ridiculous, and their immense power over the school board prevents any sort of impartiality.

[phongn]

Maybe it's because I lived in one of the better school districts in the country (ISD 196, Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan, MN), but I never really had a problem with underequipped buildings or lousy teachers. We had a few fossils, yes, what district doesn't, but they were the exception. I seriously can't remember having any teachers who were just going through the motions.

I wish I could say the same here. I've gone to magnet schools and thus generally have had excellent teachers (and my elementary school had benefitted from a competent principal ... a new one came in and began subtly screwing over the school, but the real damage was done after I left). But I've seen enough incompetents and 'punch-card' teachers that one simply couldn't get rid of. Enormous sums of money are wasted on the 'Administrative Bottleneck' and the technology bandaid.

As for Minnesota, though, they've always had an excellent public school system (at least compared to most of the US) and perhaps a good balance has been found between union and government (in addition to an electorate who seems to value education funding).

Not only do teachers unions prevent schools from firing inept teachers, but they also artificially raise teachers salaries, preventing more teachers from being hired, and they prevent proper wage negotiations from taking place. Their strikes are ridiculous, and their immense power over the school board prevents any sort of impartiality.

Fortunately, FL teacher unions may not strike.

[Master of Ossus]

Fortunately, FL teacher unions may not strike.

That's the right way to handle them. It doesn't really make sense for a teacher's union to be able to pull a strike on the district, anyway, since protracted strikes can seriously hurt the kids.

[Darth Wong]

Fortunately, FL teacher unions may not strike.

That's the right way to handle them. It doesn't really make sense for a teacher's union to be able to pull a strike on the district, anyway, since protracted strikes can seriously hurt the kids.

What drives me crazy is that the teachers' unions and even the support-staff unions (janitors etc) go on strike here all the time, and whenever they do it, they accuse the government of "not caring about the children" if they won't immediately cave to their demands. The fucking hypocrisy of that accusation astounds me, but the local media invariably sides with them.

[Wicked Pilot]

I think if we didn't pay teachers peanuts there would be less incentive to participate in the union. I mean a lot of these people are paying off student loans for their masters degrees and yet they're still getting shitted on pay wise. This union bullshit strikes me as them trying to get even with the public for all the bullshit we foist upon them.

[Darth Wong]

I think if we didn't pay teachers peanuts there would be less incentive to participate in the union. I mean a lot of these people are paying off student loans for their masters degrees and yet they're still getting shitted on pay wise. This union bullshit strikes me as them trying to get even with the public for all the bullshit we foist upon them.

That varies from region to region. Teachers here in Ontario are paid quite well when you consider their benefits packages. And to put it bluntly, what makes them so fucking special? Do they think that engineers or accountants all got free schooling? We don't get higher starting pay than they do in Ontario, so they really have no justification whatsoever to whine about their student loans.

[tharkûn]

I think if we didn't pay teachers peanuts there would be less incentive to participate in the union. I mean a lot of these people are paying off student loans for their masters degrees and yet they're still getting shitted on pay wise. This union bullshit strikes me as them trying to get even with the public for all the bullshit we foist upon them.

I don't know about your local conditions, but around here it is a closed shop. Even if you opt out of the union, they still deduct money straight out of your paycheck. Non-participation in the union by the decent teachers ends up with a union run by the moronic ones.

Unions are a necessary check in the labor market; however when they become monopolies they tend evidence all the flaws of monopolies, but never get called on it.

Personally I'm still looking for a teacher's union rep who will actually say, "Yes we have sufficiently small student:teacher ratios, our classrooms are well equipped, and our pay is fair and competitive." Hell I'd be satisified if I could find one who would actually state some firm objective numbers about when the above goals would be met.

[aerius]

The teacher's union here can go fuck itself. Thanks to those dicksmacks I lost the equivalent of almost an entire semester thanks to their stupid ass strikes. The union makes the more senior teachers damn near untouchable, once they're in the system for 5-10 years they're in there for life and you can't do shit about them. Wages go up dramatically then as well, it's not unusual for their wages to double. Did I mention striking and getting pay raises almost as often as MPs?

The system here is pretty bad. A lot of the young teachers coming out of college are actually pretty good, but the low starting wages combined with the union & school politics sours them of teaching pretty fast and quite a few of them stop teaching after a few years. The ones who are left are mostly mediocre to incompetant, and these are the ones who get promoted up the union ladder until they're untouchable. I have several friends who are teachers, none of them teach in Toronto anymore thanks to school & union politics.

[Wicked Pilot]

That varies from region to region. Teachers here in Ontario are paid quite well when you consider their benefits packages.

I'm from a state that fluctuates between 1st and 2nd worst in the union at education, so perhaps things are a little bit different. With just a bachelor degree I made slightly more my first year out of school than the average teacher in my home state, and 30% more than someone during their first year, and many of them have masters. We are of course hemmorraging good educators for that reason, perhaps they'll find a good home in Ontario.

[Jetfire]

I think if we didn't pay teachers peanuts there would be less incentive to participate in the union. I mean a lot of these people are paying off student loans for their masters degrees and yet they're still getting shitted on pay wise. This union bullshit strikes me as them trying to get even with the public for all the bullshit we foist upon them.

That varies from region to region. Teachers here in Ontario are paid quite well when you consider their benefits packages. And to put it bluntly, what makes them so fucking special? Do they think that engineers or accountants all got free schooling? We don't get higher starting pay than they do in Ontario, so they really have no justification whatsoever to whine about their student loans.

My Mom's a teacher (High School English/Humanities teacher with lots of senority) in New Brunswick; and in her opinion (and an opinion that she says a lot of teachers in her school/district agree with), the Ontario Teachers Union is spoiled rotten, got too huge an ego and has too muhc pull. She does support the Teachers Union and feels the NB system is better because of it, but the NB union hasn't pulled anywhere NEAR the level of crap the Ontario Unions have done. (Janitors/Bus drivers striked maybe twice when I was in the system in the 80's/90's, but the Teachers never did)

Anyways, IMO, the Unions do serve a purpose and are still useful... but they need to be depowered a bit to bring in more flexibility into the system. On the one hand some protection is needed to let new teachers find their niche and methods that work best for them. On the other hand, sometimes you have to cut the bad ones loose, and the ones that just aren't adapting throuhg the years, and the Union has to be flexible enough to do that.

[Ender]

2nd worse thing to ever happen to the education system (first being fundie PTAs). But then I'm biased because of all the horror stories my aunt has told me (she is a teacher who refuses to join the union)

[The_Nice_Guy]

Personally I'm still looking for a teacher's union rep who will actually say, "Yes we have sufficiently small student:teacher ratios, our classrooms are well equipped, and our pay is fair and competitive." Hell I'd be satisified if I could find one who would actually state some firm objective numbers about when the above goals would be met.

If you want the above, welcome to Singapore, where the teacher union is just another instrument of the government. No strikes, not even a squeak when the government announced pay cuts for teachers a few months ago. Teacher student ratios are fixed, standards for teachers tightly regulated with a strict performance rated bonus(EPMS), classrooms with projectors and other amenities, and good starting salaries compared to the private sector.

"We cut your pay to reduce our budget and enhance our efficiency!"

TWG

[Petrosjko]

Personally I'm still looking for a teacher's union rep who will actually say, "Yes we have sufficiently small student:teacher ratios, our classrooms are well equipped, and our pay is fair and competitive." Hell I'd be satisified if I could find one who would actually state some firm objective numbers about when the above goals would be met.

Give me an example of any political organization that would ever announce 'all is well'. No matter how well they're doing on pushing their agenda, they all have to maintain a sense of crisis in order to maintain their funding and justify their continued existance.

[Jawawithagun]

Where I grew up the teachers union did another job not yet discussed here. They provided further training and qualification for those working in the peaching professions.