Over the course of
the last few weeks in class, we have been talking about charter schools and
what factors and variables are contained in charter schools. From watching the
movie Waiting for Superman, one of
the biggest things that caught my attention was the differences in teacher
unions. Charter schools do not have a teachers union whereas public schools
have teacher unions. If I’m being honest, even as a future educator I do not
have much knowledge on teacher unions and whether they are positive or negative
for the school system. After reading a couple of this week’s blogs from other
students, I noticed that some were saying maybe there should be no teacher
union because of the idea of tenure keeping the incompetent teachers in the
school and that unions are not necessarily out there to help the students, but
only to help the teachers. However, is there a way to not get rid of the
teachers unions, but to improve it so it is beneficial to the teachers and to
the education?
The article I
found http://educationnext.org/a-different-role-for-teachers-unions/
highlights on the background of teachers unions and explains that teachers in
the unions these days are being blamed for many of the failing school systems.
Many portrayals of the United States teachers unions are negative. It says that
the unions stand in the way of reforms that are needed for the schools and
protecting bad teachers who do not need to be in the classroom. As we have
looked upon how education is viewed in other countries, this article suggests
that the United States look to the countries with powerful and effective
teacher unions and learn from them on how to make our union system better. The
article says that Finland has one of the strongest union systems, with no “top-down”
accountability, meaning that the idea of “seniority” is non-existent. It goes
on to state that Finland teacher unions have “been at the reform table for
years as essential social partners.” In Canada, teacher unions are the same in
that the Canadian government allowed the unions to discuss the education reform
strategy and listened to what the unions had to say and providing support for
them. These examples in this article show that it is possible to have teacher
unions that are supported by the government and work hand-in-hand with
education reform. In the United States, it would take trust between the
government and the educators to come together and the government would have to
provide the support that teachers need. This would not be an easy bridge to
cross for the United States, because one party would have to be the ones to
step up and go first in fixing the gap between the government and the teachers.
I personally feel that if the United States wants to improve their education
system, the first step may be to bridge this gap between the government and
teacher unions, just as Findland and Canada have done. Working together, they
could work to compromise on compensation, tenure, and work to figure out what
needs to be done in the classroom to improve the educational lives of students.
I agree so much with the way teacher unions in America need to figure out the best way to coexist and work together instead of fighting each other. Obviously this isn't something that would be easy because it's something that our country would have to collectively agree on and we all know that's a process. But if we don't work towards something like these other countries I feel like we'll just be stuck where we are. Education reform seems to be something important to so many people, but they must not be willing to take this big leap to make a compromise. Hopefully someone will start looking at our blog posts and get the hint!
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