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  • Do Teacher Unions Deserve the Bashing?
    Shantanu commented on the article | almost 3 years ago
    Do Teacher Unions Deserve the Bashing?

    Interesting thought, Carl. I have a word for the system you are proposing. It is called TENURE. Tenure was never designed to be a "job for life" for teachers, it simply makes the removal of teachers a process that requires evidence of a teacher's ineffectiveness. Just because many school administrators are too lazy to use the procedures established under tenure to get rid of bad teachers, and prefer simply to transfer them to other schools (thus making them someone else's problem), does not mean that bad teachers aren't weeded out under this system. A good principal will do what is necessary to improve his school, whatever strictures union rules puts on him.

    Remember, that it is bad teachers we want to get rid of. Mediocre teachers, like mediocre workers in other areas, are a fact of life. Do you think every highly paid lawyer is great? The lower you pay them, and the more you make their lives hell just for choosing to work in a noble profession, the more mediocre teachers you are going to get. Excellent teachers, who by their skills and knowledge would be employable in other jobs where they would make a lot more money, will start leaving schools in droves if the modicum of career security offered by tenure stopped offsetting the opportunity cost of relatively low pay and rigid work schedules. Good and excellent teachers try new things in their practice in order to improve it, and these experiments do not always work out. And teacher effectiveness isn't always measured in standardized test scores. If I teach my students in such a way that they become active, historically aware citizens who can pass the state history test, am I a better or worse teacher than one who spends 50% of her time drilling students to take that test and gets high scores, but also students who think history is useless?

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