<p>It’s beyond argument that consumers benefit from competition. Since union’s oppose competition, they are working against the interests of students.</p>
<p>So, I contend that teacher’s unions lower the quality of education and hurt students.</p>
<p>Care to disagree?</p>
<p>No brainer. HARM!</p>
<p>Another school of thought- my union has bargained for a contract that provides me with salary, retirement plan, and health care. Therefore, I can go in and give my all to my students knowing my needs are being met.</p>
<p>Well, I’m not really sure they are “working against” the best interest of the students so much as protecting the interests of the teachers. In a perfect world, these interests would be one and the same.</p>
<p>I’ve known too many teachers who do not think the unions policies are pro teaching to believe that the way unions operate right now is in the best interest of education, but I don’t think that anybody else is really operating in the best interest of education, right now, either. Unfortunately.</p>
<p>Schools have too many missions. There is too much work to be done on poverty and hunger and then they are tasked with being mandatory reporters, so that the social workers at school see themselves as having a mission of finding out what is “wrong” at home. </p>
<p>There is too much separation between teachers and parents, nowadays, both on the part of parents not working with teachers, but also on the part of teachers putting too much “blame” on parents when the learning isn’t taking place in the classroom. </p>
<p>It’s become too much of a “blame game,” and that never really works in favor of finding cooperative solutions for teaching. Too many rules and tests and curriculum feuds to have the kind of education that will benefit the kids, imho. But, I think a large part of that has to do with the fact that schools are expected to operate on too many levels and so they don’t have the primary mission of teaching, anymore.</p>
<p>The unions just seem to be operating in this particular climate, and it probably hamstrings teachers, as well. I’m glad to be done with the “system.” I don’t think it’s working very well, anymore, if it ever really did.</p>
<p>JMO</p>
<p>I think it’s a mixed bag. When it comes to teacher evaluations, I think unions help keep bad teachers working. On the other hand, I think public school salaries are much too low to attract the kind of teachers we need, and so unions might be helpful in pushing salaries up.</p>
<p>I agree that teachers should be paid more, but so long as the unions continue to protect the bad ones, people are not going to support putting more money into teacher salaries.</p>
<p>If not for the unions who is their right mind would go into teaching? It’s a thankless job and it requires not just a bachelors degree but a masters and continuing education beyond that in a lot of cases. No one gets rich teaching but they deserve a decent salary and benefits and, imo, without a union I can see wages falling pretty far and big cuts in benefits. </p>
<p>But I suppose if people want the type of “teachers” generally found in day care centers you’d be happy with a non union workforce.</p>
<p>Teachers are paid well in the Chicago area and surruoundings. I don’t feel sorry for how the teachers are paid around here. I’m glad they are well paid. It’s an important position. But the unions are programmed to fight and sometimes they fight things, imho, just because that’s what they do and not because it makes any real sense.</p>
<p>This is really a problem with all unions: the union is needed to get decent pay and benefits for its members–but it also has to defend all its members, including those who don’t do a good job, or who have disciplinary issues, etc. I don’t know of a good way to separate these things.</p>
<p>Although I am certainly pro-teacher and not generally anti-union, it seems clear that teachers’ unions have created a great deal of ill-will and public mistrust. The worst stories are very bad indeed. [Joel</a> Klein vs. New York City teachers : The New Yorker](<a href=“http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/31/090831fa_fact_brill]Joel”>http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/31/090831fa_fact_brill) .</p>
<p>However, I believe that capable teachers certainly need and deserve job protection, perhaps more than in other professions. I’ve read many a CC thread decrying an incompetent teacher when the situation seemed to be, instead, unrealistic expectations (to put it kindly). I do not doubt the existence of bad teachers, though I often wonder at my sheer luck in having been exposed to so few of them.</p>
<p>I would like to see less dependence on the schools to address a host of social ills, which means less time for actual teaching, but we don’t seem to be headed in that direction.</p>
<p>I know, Hunt. That’s why I say I don’t think the “problem” is the unions, but the educational climate today.</p>
<p>I think it’s reached a tipping point. You can point to the unions, if you want, but I think there are far too many other factors working against the mission of education in the school system, today.</p>
<p>ETA: completely agree Frazzled: less time on societal issues, more time on calculus.</p>
<p>Did you not watch the documentary film ‘Waiting for Superman’?
<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_“Superman”[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_“Superman”</a> </p>
<p>Lest you suggest this movie which excoriates the teachers unions was made by the right-wing lobby, it was made by Davis Guggenheim, the same director who made the documentary ‘An Inconvenient Truth’.</p>
<p>If salaries were an issue for attracting teachers, then there would be no teachers at parochial schools (which outperform public schools by a wide margin by the way).</p>
<p>No question. Harm schools. Their one focus is union dues. And, unions protect bad teachers short of sexual abuse.</p>
<p>I am pretty sure large corporations damage the quality of public education.</p>
<p>Trade unions have lost much of their raison d’</p>
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<p>My kids have had quite a few excellent teachers in private schools, where the teachers are not unionized.</p>
<p>oh snap mini, that was a great line…</p>
<p>Bay…that’s the exception. I imagine the teachers in private schools did not specifically take the position because it was nonunion.</p>
<p>xiggi, that 9 month thing…our teachers work from mid-August to mid or late June. 8 weeks off, not 12. But splitting hairs :)</p>
<p>Most teachers’ unions don’t direct curriculum, state BOE and the DOE “direct” it, if what is meant by “direct” is hire consultants, take lobbying trips paid for by educational test making companies, wine and dine with textbook companies and pander to howling parents and voters. While having little to no actual classroom experience. But that’s not the question.</p>
<p>Unions serve the good purpose of protecting good teachers from bad administrators and poor parents. They do a good service of continuing to challenge Americans to rethink their disinterest in education as global education outpaces our own. They do a bad job updating their outlook and of policing the ranks and removing poor teachers, but that is changing — not because of unions, but because of the competition for open teaching positions. Tends to allow schools to have more candidates to choose from.</p>
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<p>Not following you here…what’s the exception? That there are good teachers in private schools?</p>
<p>“If salaries were an issue for attracting teachers, then there would be no teachers at parochial schools (which outperform public schools by a wide margin by the way).” </p>
<p>As of 2010 there were 132K+ pubic schools versus 7400 parochial schools in the US. Good luck finding enough teachers willing to work for the small salaries parochial teachers are paid especially since, unlike public school teachers, teachers at both parochial and private schools don’t have to have anything other than a bachelors, they are not required to get further degrees and credentials, nor do they have to follow any of the stupid testing mandates and curriculum requirements, plus all the other nonsense required of public school teachers. </p>
<p>[K-12</a> Facts](<a href=“http://www.edreform.com/2012/04/k-12-facts/]K-12”>K-12 Facts - The Center for Education Reform)</p>