Teacher Unions Argument Essay

Teacher unions are very powerful in American education. Two primary teacher unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and the National Federation of Teachers (NFT), together represent a large majority of teachers in our country. Teacher unions such as these have grown tremendously in membership and political influence over the past few decades. As a result, they have acquired a vast amount of resources that are used to their advantage; examples include using their funds to affect political elections and influence key decision makers and school districts. Teacher unions evolved in order to protect and support the rights and benefits of those public servants who dedicate themselves to society most precious commodity; our children.
While
Teachers’ unions can be said to hinder education reform by misallocating the scarce resources. Teacher unions advance the notion of mandating teacher tenure within public schools. This is problematic and controversial because it severely inhibits many school districts from effectively evaluating their teachers and from dismissing them for performing poorly. Teacher unions also hinder effective teacher evaluations. Teacher evaluations, teacher disciplinary procedures, and terminations are largely governed by state statute. Teachers must be given notice of the observation and an opportunity to reschedule. Even when teachers are given poor ratings on their evaluations, school administrators cannot terminate a teachers’ employment or immediately remove them from the classroom. Teachers that have been granted tenure are given the opportunity to schedule formal meetings, often with a union representative present, and draft lengthy responses to their negative evaluations which inevitably prolongs the process of terminating that
It becomes more and more evident that these problems will not be fixed within one presidential term, nor can they be fixed with one simple legislative act. It appears that the only way to solve the education crisis in our country is for bipartisan comprehensive reform. Problems with funding, dropout rates, and low reading and math scores, among other things need to be seriously addressed. However, many of the problems that exist can be improved by repairing the relationship that teacher unions have with their school districts. One of the most important issues teacher unions can address to improve the quality of education in America is to disallow teacher tenure. When teacher unions disallow tenure the ability of schools to effectively evaluate their teachers opens up. Teacher unions need to allow for more thorough and periodic teacher evaluations and increase accountability. Thus, a summary of the action steps that can implemented immediately are as follows:
1) Abolish teacher tenure
2) Establish more thorough and consistent teacher evaluations
3) Increase accountability for teachers by utilizing multiple forms of assessment, not solely test scores.