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Are you talking universities or K12? Because everything the parent said is true in K12. Spend 10 minutes at a Jersey City School Board meeting and you’ll see ju
by briandear 8y ago
Are you talking universities or K12? Because everything the parent said is true in K12. Spend 10 minutes at a Jersey City School Board meeting and you’ll see just how aggressive the union is if you even hint at reform. Can’t speak to higher ed though, except tenure for classroom instructors is a real problem. Since they have absolutely zero incentive to be good teachers but instead only engaging in activities that bring in research money for their area of interest.
- joe_the_user 8y agoThe OP is about college teaching and what I've written is applicable to that. Folks seem to have segued to K12 for some anti-union speechifying in the meantime. As far as that goes, look at the condition of teachers in Kentucky if you think unions are the problem. Unions have a fairly inflexible response to most "reform" plans but the problem is most reform plans, as can be seen here, aim to make teacher more insecure, more constrained, more "flexible" but without compensation for that flexibility. Sure, LA, Oakland or New Jersey might look bad but compared to strongholds of non-union teaching, they are paradise. It would be great to come up with a reform plan that empowered teachers. The unions might fight that but individual teachers probably wouldn't. But the kinds of reform that come often from people lips - more testing and less job security, are rightly resisted by both unions and individual teachers.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoYup. If a reform plan included things like "let's actually pay teachers more", "let's give them more freedom to apply good teaching practices", "let's give them saner working hours" and "let's reduce the red-tape a bit", I doubt any union would complain.