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I think a lot of people have problems with teachers unions because they think of teaching like any other job. It's not - here are the important differences: Pay raises. It's a fantastic idea for a company to increase the pay of individuals based on performance. If individuals do well, the company does well and makes more money, and can therefore afford to pay the employees more, so this reward system is great. In schools, there is no profit. So if teachers do better, their students perform better, and the teachers should get paid more. But they don't, since this has not brought any more money into the school. In fact, if schools are doing well they are less likely to have their budgets increased, since people will see no need to increase the budget of something that is functioning well. This fixed-budget kind of thing is the root of the difference between the education system and private enterprise. In a business, if you are not making enough money (that is, if you have a spending problem), you cut back on things: often you may lay off employees. You will have fewer employees now, but since your business isn't doing well you probably have less work to do, so it can even out. Or, if it doesn't even out, your business closes down. Neither of these is true of education. Except for rare cases, it is unthinkable to close down a school. Obviously closing would bad for students and education in general, so it is avoided. More importantly, workload doesn't flex as easily in schools. That is, if you run into budget problems and have to cut teachers, the other teachers must work harder to pick up their slack, since the student body population remains unchanged. Thus it is in the interest of both the teachers and the students to keep budgetary layoffs to an absolute minimum. So what do you do with a tight budget? Who knows? Removing teachers decreases the effectiveness of education severely. So does the numerous other things I've seen schools do - stop providing textbooks, make the quality of food go down, shorten the school day, remove planning time of teachers, stop giving teachers their own offices, stop plowing the parking lot, etc. In other words, make schools suck in every way possible. I don't have a good solution for this, beyond the obvious "spend more on education". Personally, I think this is our best bet, but that money would have to come from somewhere else, and people are not willing to pay more taxes for it. |