Teacher Unions

Teacher Unions and School Reform</H2>

Teachers’ voices are most often expressed through their unions. More than 83 percent of teachers in the United States are represented by unions (National Education Association, 2003). Teachers responded to the growth of educational management and bureaucracy in the 1960s and 1970s by forming unions. In the intervening decades, unions have become increasingly politically active, using their organization and money to protect their members’ interests. Organized teachers’ unions have often protected school funding in the midst of public fiscal crises. Serious effort at school reform must engage teachers through their unions, and teachers interested in school reform need to enlist their unions’ aid. Unions have the organization and political capital that can assist or defeat efforts to democratize public schools.

Teachers work in an environment that is often neither professional, free nor democratic. Particularly since NCLB and assessment based reform, teachers’ decision making has been restricted. When new teachers enter work in some districts, you leave many of your civil liberties at the door. We can hardly develop democratic behaviors if the teachers spend most of their time in an environment that closely resembles a dictatorship. Unions provide an important limit to the arbitrary power of administrators.

Teachers in low-performing schools are too often treated as unworthy people—a failure. They are blamed for the failures of the schools to educate, in spite of the economic/social structures that leads to school failure. Teachers are frequently reminded of their low status by conflicts with students, orders from administrators, and stories in the press. Compliance is demanded to a long list of rules, teach this material, give this test, monitor lunch counts, supervise the playground. Unions assist teachers with these matters. Too often the buildings are dismal, rundown, inadequate. The bathrooms are dismal, supplies are lacking, and most of all, time is lacking. Most teachers know how to teach much better than they presently perform, but they need time to prepare, to plan, and to support students. Many soon succumb to the environment of oppression. The literature may call it burnout, but defeat and oppression are more accurate descriptors.

New teachers seldom are supported in a significant manner. A doctor will spend two years as an intern, learning to help patients. A teacher will typically spend one semester, and usually with too little guidance because the host teacher is busy working with children. Teachers need time to learn, support, and coaching from skilled, experienced teachers. Quality teaching makes a difference. Low-performing schools tend to receive too many new teachers who are still learning their craft (Education Trust, 2006). Many administrators have responded during this cycle of “reform” by issuing more commands and setting up accountability systems. This strategy has failed to improve school achievement (Kober 2001, Valenzuela, 2004) . Many administrators are not selected or trained to guide and support new teachers, even though teachers are their most basic resource (Darling-Hammond and Friedlaender, 2008). They are managers. Only a few were skilled teachers themselves. They do not have the time or the skills to help and to coach new teachers.

While W While While unions have long led the efforts to protect school funding and to elect pro-education legislators, more recently they have provided substantial leadership in the struggle to improve the quality of education in our areas of educational crisis areas. When schools are under attack, unions provide a vital and vigorous defense.

Teacher-activists concerned with producing equal educational opportunity for children from urban districts can work with unions to reconceptualize the roles of their unions. A beginning was made toward union participation in education reform in August 1994, in Portland, Oregon, at a meeting of the National Coalition of Educational Activists. A document produced at this meeting, “Social Justice Unionism,” (National Coalition of Educational Activists, 1994) contains the following statement:

Public education is at a crossroads and so, too, are our unions. Our society’s children face deepening poverty and social dislocation, challenges and higher expectations with declining resources¼. As the organized core of the teaching profession, education unions remain central to resolving these crises. (p. 12)

The TURN effort has continued and currently supports a number of local efforts to improve schools including modifying seniority provisions, placing highly qualified teachers in low performing schools, and assisting with professional development (Taylor and Rosario, 2007).

The National Education Association has been a major and consistent advocate that a quality public education is essential to a successful democratic society, and that such an education should be accessible to every child. They have argued for equity-based reform in conferences, major media, through paid advertising, and in the Congress and legislatures. NEA works with state and local affiliates to improve low-performing schools by making fundamental changes—changes that will create a safe, orderly environment and that focus on high standards of teaching and learning for all students.

Both teachers’ unions urge an increased investment in current federal programs such as Title I and NCLB. And, both have been leaders in the efforts to amend NCLB to make it more supportive of teachers. The NEA and state affiliates have advocated proposals to provide additional resources and opportunities for improving the quality of poor-performing schools, including:

Class size reduction in the early grades.</ITEM>

School construction and renovation to help modernize school buildings and alleviate classroom overcrowding.</ITEM>

School-community partnerships.

The smaller and more urban-based American Federation of Teachers (AFL-CIO) represents teachers primarily in the East and Midwest as well as a number of teacher assistants and college faculty and advocates for similar school reform positions. It summarized its work in <ITAL>Improving Low-Performing Schools</ITAL> in 1999. The AFT, led by Edward J. McElroy, often has been an advocate of a more conservative teaching philosophy supporting standards and programs in math, phonics, history, and literature and a supporter of National Board Certification for teachers. The strongest critics of multicultural education, including Al Shanker, Diane Ravitch, E.D. Hirsch, and Arthur Schlesinger, and the strongest advocates for phonics approaches to reading are frequently featured in the AFT magazine, the American Educator</>. On the other hand the AFT has been a leader in several cities in pursuing educational reform. In New York City the United Federation of Teachers (AFT) has developed two charter schools to demonstrate how one can run a successful school serving high needs communities with high poverty rates that empowers teachers and parents while protecting the union rights of faculty. For more examples of school districts working cooperatively with teacher union members to improve schools see the Center for School Improvement at www.aft.org/topics/csi/index.htm.

From. Choosing Democracy: a practical guide to multicultural education. (2010) Allyn and Bacon.