Teachers' unions

[Indy Texas]

People often blame teachers' unions on failing public schools.

But laws regarding collective bargaining and teacher pay are generally set at the state level, so if teachers' unions are the problem, why are there still plenty of good school districts?

Why are teachers' unions a problem in inner city Chicago but not in Winnetka or Evanston?

[Mercenary]

Unions aren't the reason for failing schools and I don't see how anyone could make the argument they are. If most of the failing schools tend to be urban schools as opposed to suburban, I don't really think it is necessarily a teacher issue at all but rather a student issue.

You have the rich district where the kids are all raised in an environment where they are expected to stuff and heavily monitored by their parents.

You have the poor district with the kids who have only one parent and that parent works so they have no time to really devote a lot of attention to their kids study habits and school life.

Is it any wonder the poor or inner city schools fail?

I don't think teachers are the problem at all.

In regards to teachers I think the best thing we could do is increase their pay to draw in more people to the profession and increase the number of teachers so that there are less kids in the classroom. That isn't enough but I think it'd help a lot. But we have to be ready to pay for that in taxes.

For the rest of the issue well that is a parent issue, but perhaps if we had more programs in place in society to aid with situations outside of school that it'd help situations in school too. After school programs in inner cities and rural areas including both academic help and other activities like sports.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Tenure is killing the schools more than anything else.

[Indy Texas]

Tenure is killing the schools more than anything else.

Plenty of terrible schools in states that don't have tenure.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Tenure is killing the schools more than anything else.

     Tenure is part of it, but there is also the issue of stifling top-down control over curriculum and a general lack of classroom discipline resulting from administrative meddling. Having spent some time substitute teaching, I can see why talented people avoid that profession like the plague. I used to think it was just substitutes that got it, but then I shadowed a couple of regular teachers and they couldn't control their classes either.

[OSR stands with Israel]

The unions themselves are hp as they try to defend bad teachers from getting fired

[Indy Texas]

The unions themselves are hp as they try to defend bad teachers from getting fired

Unions represent their members in any negotiation with their employer.

If your employer is trying to fire you, you are entitled to have a union representative advocate for you. I'm sure many non-union workers would love to have that resource available to them.

[dead0man]

That doesn't make the practice good for the district or, you know, the kids though.  Of course it's good for the sh**tty employee, nobody is arguing that.


edit-but everybody knows Teachers Unions care about teachers more than students, as they should, I suppose.  The rest of us want what's best for the kids though.  Which means firing bad teachers.

[Devout Centrist]

One of the problems with public education in the United States is the fact it's funded by property taxes, specifically schools that rely heavily on local property taxes. This leads to widespread funding disparities in states like Illinois and New Jersey.

For example, let's compare two public high schools and their districts in Illinois. The first, being New Trier Township High School. New Trier has excellent proficiency rates when compared with the state of Illinois. The school also spends far more per pupil.

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Now let's look at Farmington Central High School, a school in a rural part of Central Illinois. Proficiency is far lower here than at New Trier. Despite being slightly above the state average, there is a clear disparity between the two schools in proficiency and per pupil spending.

Is this a silver bullet to fixing education? Hardly. But equalizing funding and accounting for disparities in local funding could help fix some issues.

This is a good link that goes into more detail.

[ingemann]

That doesn't make the practice good for the district or, you know, the kids though.  Of course it's good for the sh**tty employee, nobody is arguing that.


edit-but everybody knows Teachers Unions care about teachers more than students, as they should, I suppose.  The rest of us want what's best for the kids though.  Which means firing bad teachers.

If the unions didn't care more about the teachers than the children, they would just be f**ked over by people who said it was about the children, because not everybody of the rest of us care more about the children, through everybody says they care more about the children, a whole of people care more about saving money on education or the children getting the right indoctrination. Union are the worker's interest organisation and defender and it's all it should be. It may cooperate with the employers to improve the organisation or product, but it should never bent its head to employers. That result in this case in sometimes bad teachers keeping their job. But let me tell you one thing, bad schools creates bad teachers, bad teachers doesn't create bad schools, and you can fire as many of them as you want, but unless you change the school you just create more of them. 

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

Unions aren't the reason for failing schools and I don't see how anyone could make the argument they are. If most of the failing schools tend to be urban schools as opposed to suburban, I don't really think it is necessarily a teacher issue at all but rather a student issue.

You have the rich district where the kids are all raised in an environment where they are expected to stuff and heavily monitored by their parents.

You have the poor district with the kids who have only one parent and that parent works so they have no time to really devote a lot of attention to their kids study habits and school life.

Is it any wonder the poor or inner city schools fail?

I don't think teachers are the problem at all.

In regards to teachers I think the best thing we could do is increase their pay to draw in more people to the profession and increase the number of teachers so that there are less kids in the classroom. That isn't enough but I think it'd help a lot. But we have to be ready to pay for that in taxes.

For the rest of the issue well that is a parent issue, but perhaps if we had more programs in place in society to aid with situations outside of school that it'd help situations in school too. After school programs in inner cities and rural areas including both academic help and other activities like sports.

^^^This. All of this.

I would also like to add, especially with regards to the part about poor districts, that investing in the broader communities (not only the schools themselves) can help solve many of the background problems that the schoolkids face. Better jobs with better hours = family/household stability, criminal activity and "bad behavior" become less attractive, more involvement with kids' lives, creates a sense of stability and opportunity, improved health and well-being, less stress, etc.

Obviously not a magic bullet, but IMO the worst schools tend to be in economically struggling areas, whether they be rural areas, small industrial towns/cities, or big cities.

[TrumpCard]

Unions are good for keeping wages up but things need to be left up to the parents who are just as much to blame.  There's no reason we can't have teachers unions and allow parents whose children attend schools failing for 5 years or more to choose a different location within their county.  Part of this problem is there are less parents involved compared to previous generations.  One factor is the number of hours needed to work just to put food on the table and pay the bills.  Higher wages would help for a start.  Society's values have also plummeted leading to parents who want to be friends with their kids resulting in kids thinking they're entitled to everything. 

[RFayette]

The single programmatic change that would make the largest difference for students in poor school districts in the United States would be abolishing summer vacation.

The second would be lengthening the school day. And, no, improvements in learning outcomes and overall well-being would not be limited to the poorest districts.

The most important benefit of public schools for most students - whether they are rich or poor - is that it keeps them away from dysfunctional families and dysfunctional neighborhoods for at least 35 hours per week, 40 weeks per year. (There's surprisingly little evidence that schools are effective at teaching anything aside from basic literacy and basic numeracy, and there are plenty of high school graduates in the United States who aren't even getting that much.)

Out of curiosity, do you support the traditional incarnation of "year-round schedules" in lieu of a summer vacation?  My cousins went to a public school district with a year-round schedule and they had a month off during summer and 2 weeks off during every other season (plus a week for Thanksgiving).  Or do you favor abolishing weekly breaks altogether in order to increase days in school per year to 220+?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It's odd that teaching unions get so much hate in the USA when there are way more objectional forms of public sector unionism (I don't just mean 'hur dur police unions' either).

[Taco Truck 🚚]

It's odd that teaching unions get so much hate in the USA when there are way more objectional forms of public sector unionism (I don't just mean 'hur dur police unions' either).

If your kid is a disaster it is a lot easier and acceptable to blame teachers than yourself or "hur dur police unions".

And politicians aren't going to tell their constituents they are terrible parents.  Just like they won't tell them they are fat and lazy.  No we will blame doctors, hospitals, insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies.

It is actually pretty amazing how much of our individual medical costs we have direct control over.  Instead of eating right and getting a little exercise we will eat ourselves into a coma and then expect everyone else to pay money to fix us.

[DC Al Fine]

That doesn't make the practice good for the district or, you know, the kids though.  Of course it's good for the sh**tty employee, nobody is arguing that.


edit-but everybody knows Teachers Unions care about teachers more than students, as they should, I suppose.  The rest of us want what's best for the kids though.  Which means firing bad teachers.

This. Unions look out for their members' interests. Sometimes the teachers' interests lines up with the kids' (class sizes), other times they conflict (firing bad teachers, pensions)

[Associate Justice PiT]

It's odd that teaching unions get so much hate in the USA when there are way more objectional forms of public sector unionism (I don't just mean 'hur dur police unions' either).

     Teacher unions can strike, whereas most other public sector employees lack that right. It makes the teachers' activities much more visible, even though the work of, say, prison guards has been far more harmful.

[Indy Texas]

My aunt is a public schoolteacher in Texas. Last year she had a kid in her class with severe developmental/behavioral issues who had no business being there and needed to be in special ed.

The kid's parents insisted their son needed to be "mainstreamed" and basically showed up in the principal's office nonstop demanding this be done. (This was a very well-to-do district with lots of stay-at-home moms and parents who could leave work in the middle of the day to browbeat administrators.)

My aunt got cut on her arm by this kid when he was trying to attack another kid with a ballpoint pen and she tried to intervene. She demanded the administration take him out of her class because he was a threat to her safety and the other students' safety. The parents insisted it was all her fault and tried to get the school to fire her.

Do you see why it's not so unheard of for teachers to want representation and why education can't be all about "the children?" In practice that ends up being "We're going to do whatever the parents want."

[dead0man]

sh**tty parents* are much worse than teachers unions and do a lot more to hold back our kids than any other single thing you could point to, I doubt anybody would argue that.  Most of us would even agree that teachers can unionize, and that that union should look after the teachers before anybody else.  But I also believe the Chicago Cubs should exist and try their hardest to do what's best for them, that doesn't mean I want them to win


*the ignore the kid kind and the pay way too much attention to the kid kind, and of course the regular asshole parents

[All Along The Watchtower]

It's odd that teaching unions get so much hate in the USA when there are way more objectional forms of public sector unionism (I don't just mean 'hur dur police unions' either).

Well, I can think of one obvious reason:

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[angus]

It's odd that teaching unions get so much hate in the USA when there are way more objectional forms of public sector unionism (I don't just mean 'hur dur police unions' either).

Sons and daughters are more important than toilets and automobiles, and harder to replace.  It doesn't really matter that much if an overpaid bum and damages your car or your plumbing.  Not in the grand scheme of things, but if a teacher bullies and antagonizes your child, but can't be fired, it will bother you.  Deeply.  You may one day understand this.

[Storebought]

I know it's probably off-topic and will get shat on/ignored in any event, but I will say it anyway:

I have come to a realization that the job title "teacher" is misleading and should be renamed. Instead, they should be called "assessors", since professional classroom teachers at all education levels spend most of their class day assigning tasks and their evenings assessing student performance. That much is required of them. Whether the teacher demonstrates to the students in class the task that he/she will eventually grade them on is under question -- there is no rule saying they must, but "good teachers" generally do and "bad teachers" don't, or can't.

As such, classroom teachers are not required to actually teach anything. Teaching is left for the parents or the caregivers of young students, otherwise to tutors.

School systems in foreign countries, especially in Asia, recognize the true assessment nature of classroom teaching, but we in the US don't. We simply expect too much out of them, using them as ersatz guidance councilors, mental health practitioners ... or just as baby sitters and lion tamers, and then become disappointed at the fully expected result.