When the Puritans settled on the East coast, in spite of many beliefs people nowadays find, well, puritanical, those men and women did believe in education for all members of the community. They arose against the idea that only children from wealthy families who could afford tutors and governesses would be educated.
It’s also true that by the 19th century the number of teachers graduating from normal schools and accepting positions in small mid-western towns put up with poor wages and behavior rules we citizens would still find puritanical.
Things weren’t equal for children, of course. Think of slave children, poor rural children hidden in Appalachian mountain valleys and deep in the French Louisiana bayous, immigrant children who didn’t speak English crowded into urban schools.
No wonder joining together to put pressure on the powers that be to improve conditions became a choice many shared. For teachers, as well as miners, train conductors, factory and construction workers, the changes came by supporting each other.
Eventually heroic efforts gained job security, improved salaries, safe conditions for school buildings, and health benefits. Can anyone discount the improvements for teachers and students? The National Education Association (NEA) locals and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) affiliates are proud of solidarity, mutual assistance, and well-established worker’s rights.
Today, however, schools are at another precarious stage and trouble is brewing. Today the monumental concern is not over salaries or benefits for teachers, but how to improve the curriculum for students so they achieve academically and succeed in the 21st century. Why are unions still standing on the achievements for teachers’ rights gained 50-60 years ago?
It is hard to grasp why the teachers unions have not taken the upper hand in the current debate. After all, the overarching purpose of the teachers unions is to set conditions so students succeed.
Teacher evaluation is the highest priority of most states and the bane of teachers unions. Since the 1980’s numerous proposals have appeared in the education world to evaluate teachers: Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) programs, “value-added” models, point scales of performance to name three. Why don’t teachers unions with all their resources take on the job of designing a fair evaluation system, including pay? A change in evaluation procedures will not help every teacher. Some will have to go and part of the teachers union expertise would be better used to help teachers make the transition.
The Common Core Standards Initiative (CCSI) has already developed and state departments of education have voted on Core Curriculum Standards to help teachers design their curriculum. Teachers, countrywide, should be happy. Now texts will actually be organized to help set up pertinent lessons, not be arranged to support purchase by 50 different states with 50 different curriculums. And one day tests will actually assess what students have learned so teachers can spend their time and effort helping low-performing students achieve. Unions should be advocates for such testing changes, setting forth guidelines for the tests, offering personnel to help design the tests. Don’t fight with Education Testing Service (ETS), join them to make sure the tests reflect what teachers want.
Last, as teachers unions represent a professional group, it would seem better for NEA and AFT newsletters to address the best-researched curricula; highest assessment successes; fairest evaluation models; strongest plans for infrastructure; most professional school boards. No longer write articles and press releases only about how a local has stood up against some stupid school district regulation. Good to know, but the thrust should be to ensure the schools supported by teachers unions are the best schools that have turned around.