After sitting in class today and watching "Waiting for Superman", more and more ideas went through my head. I'm sure like many other of you, some of the facts and statistics stated in the documentary were quite shocking. The fact that as a country we're spending more money per student and we're basically flatlining in scores is unbelievable. This can be one of the biggest red flags as to the reasons we need to start making some sort of change in our school systems. The big question is, are charter schools this answer? are they the "superman" we've been waiting for?
The major benefit I see with charter schools is the fact that there is no teacher union involved. This may not seem like it would have as much of an impact as it actually does. Take a look at it this way, we always discuss and wonder the reasons why teachers are looked at so poorly in our country. Perhaps the unions are to blame. Unions were originally meant for careers of "lower" standards like factory workers, therefore, when you tag along that label maybe people being to associate teachers with a lesser importance. I can see charter schools breaking this union apart and building the teaching career back up. As stated in the movie, "it all comes down to the teachers", the best teachers have the students with the most positive results and the worse teachers have students portraying poor results. So many people want to help this problem and make the change, but, 'the contract' is always standing in the way. I think that's the best part about charter schools, there's no need to worry about 'the contract', you can focus on creating the best opportunities for the students. If there's a bad teacher in a public school it's basically hopeless to try and fire them, however this is not the case in charter schools at all.
I found a video online digging deeper into this idea of unions and charter schools. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Xr4KC251pU) The video looks at a specific charter school were they view there teachers as athletes. This promotes competition; competition is a great thing. With competition comes the mindset to work as hard as you can or you won't win. For example, if the quarter back of the football team isn't making the right plays and winning then he's taken out, he won't play. Why isn't this the case with teachers? Well, it is in charter schools; the ability to fire any teacher at anytime fuels the sense of importance in good teaching. In the video, teachers are interviewed in their view on this idea. They enjoy it, and one teacher even compares it to being a doctor (if you aren't a good doctor well then you can't be one). A portion of the video interviews actor Matt Damon on his view of teacher unions and charter schools. He states that in his acting career there's always competition and without it he wouldn't do nearly as good of a job as he would do without it; so why aren't teachers treated the same way?
I think my conclusion to all of this is my view that we'll be forever waiting for superman until we can figure out the best way to balance the union in a way that can coexist with the competition aspect. If this means totally breaking apart the union, then so be it.
I totally agree that there must be a better way to balance unions and the interests of children. I feel that some teacher unions might have lost sight of why they were originally created; they just see themselves as a cover to protect all teachers. I don't agree with their ability to protect failing teachers and prevent them from being let go. I was disgusted during the movie at the stories about the inability to fire the teachers in Wisconsin because of their contracts. Unions and teachers need to sort out their priorities and set them back on the education of the children.
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