I remember that I just said the other day that we can train and retrain law enforcement all day long but we won't see any meaningful improvement without enforcement with "teeth" and that unions are actively hurting their members if not because of what they do then because of the "optics" of what they do. I think the same applies for teachers' unions as well.
We talked about the case of interns being fired en masse a little while ago and some of not many people in that discussion agreed that it didn't look good that the interns were riled up over something (dress code) that didn't help the business much. When teachers bring up the issue of low pay, I can't help but feel a lot of parents and voters see it as selfish in the same way. "The teachers should not spend so much time thinking about their own pay but rather about the students and what they can do to help students."
> I think the NAACPs primary agenda here is that they feel Charter schools create a policy "out" for the history of being unwilling to take the steps necessary to make public schools work (and union reform is high on that list).
Absolutely! I kind of want to go back to the topic of tap water versus bottled water. The people who can't afford to buy bottled water are unlikely to have much of a voice in local government to have their issue fixed. The parents who can't get their kids in chartered schools or who don't care enough to get their kids in chartered schools are unlikely to have much of a voice in local government to make public education better either. Now that I think about it, it sounds just like segregation. The only difference is that instead of an official policy, it is a little more latent.