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Comment by philk | Hacker News Reader

One of the most promising things in that article is how the government is using federal money to get legislative changes through that enable the performance of teachers to be measured, and, potentially fire low performers.

Obviously the unions aren't happy about it, but really, the teachers unions seem to think that school is run for the benefit of their members rather than students. If we could break them it'd be a great day for kids and a great day for America.

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the teachers unions seem to think that school is run for the benefit of their members rather than students.

This is well known to the most eminent economists of education. "The education system is a formalised, bureaucratic organisational structure and, like any bureaucratic organisational structure, it strives for maximum autonomy from external pressures as its cardinal principle of survival. While ostensibly devoted to the education of children, teachers, school administrators and local education officers must nevertheless regard parents acting on behalf of children as a force to be kept at bay because parental pressures in effect threaten the autonomy of the educational system. . . . I would hold that the stupefying conservatism of the educational system and its utter disdain of non-professional opinion is such that nothing less than a radical shake-up of the financing mechanism will do much to promote parental power." -- Mark Blaug, "Education Vouchers--It All Depends on What You Mean," in Economics of Privatization, J. Le Grand & R. Robinson, ed. (1985)

I'm no great fan of unions in general but teaching unions do provide important advice, support and representation to teachers. There have been enough cases of teachers being wrongly sacked over false claims by children of abuse etc. that I can understand teachers wanting to belong to an organisation which will help defend them if they're ever in that situation. You could argue that that could happen in any profession - I could be wrongly accused of stealing from the office I work in - but child abuse is a more sensitive issue than most and schools can feel pressured to appear to be 'protecting children' and perhaps more cynically to not want to take the risk of a repeat incident bringing more bad publicity.

It's a fair point but unfortunately the unions have greatly overstepped defending teachers against wrongful allegations and moved into advancing teachers rights at the expense of students.

The following article:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-teachers3-2009may03,...

contains a few examples of just how hard it can be to fire a bad teacher, including one who mocked a student's suicide attempt to the rest of the class yet was reinstated in his job.

Additionally, a bad teacher will potentially damage the futures of hundreds of students throughout their career; because of the high cost I'd say that erring on the side of dismissal is worth the risk.

As with most every human organizational construct: They were created for good reason and have done good things, but are inevitably perverted over time.

Teaching under unions is a middle-class, family friendly occupation.

Teaching under Teach for America is a 2-year volunteer gig with unsustainably long hours.

If the unions were to disappear tomorrow I just don't think you'd be able to generate enough enthusiastic effective young people at that burn rate to fill out the entire system.

In many suburban schools, it's actually pretty easy for a group of involved parents to pressure the district to not renew the next year's contract of a new teacher they don't like, as long as it's done before the teacher is tenured (~three years in my state). Maybe this is one reason schools without a critical mass of involved parents suffer under the current system.

It's very misleading to say Teach For America is a volunteer gig. TFA teachers are paid salaries and benefits by the districts they work in, just like every other teacher.

The TFA program itself is volunteer, but it's not like these people are teaching for free.

As anyone who's been there knows, the great majority of teachers volunteer half the time they spend working anyway.

Bashing unions is a popular right-wing ad hominem, but there are two equally recalcitrant partners in education equally to blame for educational deficiencies: school boards and parents.

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