Education Week - August 6, 2014 - 27

The Teachers' Unions Must Embrace the Future
PRESIDENT & EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Virginia B. Edwards
EXECUTIVE EDITOR Gregory Chronister
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 32
what happens (or doesn't) as a result.
We know that teacher quality is the single
biggest factor in how well children learn, yet
merely assigning a warm adult body to each
classroom is considered sound practice by
unions and management. Educators know that
assessments should inform
instruction, but
many of those same
educators resist efforts
to require the testing of
all students.
Where collective bargaining
exists, contract
protections should ensure
due process and
protection against capricious
or politically
inspired discipline or
dismissal. Where collective
bargaining doesn't
reign, state laws should
be enacted and enforced
to protect these principles.
But, and this is a
crucial but, in no state should the protections
be so stringent, so inflexible, or so cumbersome
as to allow ineffective teachers to continue to
inflict their incompetence on kids. And to argue
that such is not the case is a lie. It happens. I've
seen it happen. Teachers, parents, and students
know it is happening.
The unions also must couple their demands
for higher salaries with a commitment to enhance
the quality of their own ranks through
substantial changes in the way new teachers
are recruited, trained, licensed, assigned, mentored,
and supervised. Current policies and
practices have created a profession characterized
by, or certainly too tolerant of, mediocrity.
The unions should help schools transition from
relics of the past to institutions of the future,
and that should start with the total, or near
total, destruction of the stagnating "egg crate"
school design and the accompanying staffing
formula that insists on one narrowly defined
"teacher" per "X" number of kids. The antiquated
school calendar should be
discarded. We should extend
the school year and
the school day.
Finally, the nea and the
aft should merge, thereby
eliminating the impulse
to compete for members-
a competition that has
reinforced a blind adherence
to the defense of the
status quo.
We can only hope that a
Jared Boggess for Education Week
new, merged organization
would be at least as concerned
with the mission of
public education as with
the working conditions
within schools.
Americans are unequivocal in their belief that
educating each successive generation is central
to our nation's progress, and perhaps to our
very survival. For defenders of the status quo to
argue otherwise is to invite disagreement, then
disparagement, and eventually defeat. Public
patience will not last forever, and continued resistance
to reform will make the inevitable reaction
more strident and more destructive.
What we need in the public conversation about
education is not more false choices, but rather a
commitment to bold leadership on behalf of balanced
reform policies. Given the stakes, that really
shouldn't be too much to ask. n
ONLINE www.edweek.org/go/commentary
RACE TO THE TOP
At the five-year anniversary of the Race to the Top competition,
edweek.org and Education Week Teacher opinion bloggers
Jill Berkowicz and Ann Myers, Larry Ferlazzo, Nancy Flanagan,
Rick Hess, Stephanie Hirsch, and Matthew Lynch offer their wideranging
views on whether the initiative was a success.
www.edweek.org/go/rtt@5
EDUCATION WEEK TEACHER
In her blog post "The Dropouts No One's Talking
About: Teachers," which went viral last month,
teacher Ilana Garon considers why the profession
has such a high turnover rate. Read what she had
to say and why everyone's talking about it.
www.edweek.org/go/teacher-dropout
| WEB COMMENT |
"If test-makers are not going to consider the colorful tapestry
of diverse students in the classrooms of America, then highstakes
testing will never demonstrate the academic
achievements of diverse students."
-Chelle2014, responding to the Commentary "Here's Why We Don't Need Standardized Tests"
www.edweek.org/go/jouriles.
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COMMENTARY
U.S. Reps. Steny H. Hoyer, D-Md., and
Aaron Schock, R-Ill., recently introduced
the Full-Service Community School Act of
2014, a bipartisan bill that would help fund
K-12 wraparound services. Read their online-only
Commentary.
www.edweek.org/go/hoyer
Education Week is on a print publishing break for the coming
week, but look for Web-only opinion pieces and blog posts on
Commentary online, including recent essays by Arthur Camins
on the Next Generation Science Standards and Kavitha Mediratta
on zero-tolerance discipline.
www.edweek.org/go/commentary
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EDUCATION WEEK | August 6, 2014 | www.edweek.org/go/commentary | 27
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Education Week - August 6, 2014

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