Teachers Count

Issues in Educational Policy

Teachers & Teachers Unions

What’s it all about?
Arguments in Favor
Arguments Against
FYI: Further Reading

What’s it all about?

A teachers’ union is an organization of educators that works in coalition to ensure that all members have favorable working conditions. There are two main teacher unions in the U.S.: the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers.

Arguments in Favor:

Teachers unions protect educators against inexperienced principals and harsh or tedious requirements set by the school board or federal mandates i.e., exact duration of a lesson or the design of a bulletin board.
Teachers unions check the power of administrators who, increasingly, are non-educators and may not have the same experience as the teachers they oversee.
Teachers unions are a medium through which educators can speak out as a collective group in their interests.

Arguments Against:

Teachers unions have outdated contracts that, originally, protected teachers against unfair policies that are no longer practiced.
Teachers Unions block necessary changes to the school system, including the firing of incompetent teachers and the implementation of merit pay because of the stipulations of teachers unions’ contracts.

FYI: Further Reading

The National Education Association is the nation’s largest professional employee association, whose goal is to improve public education on a national level. They provide their opinions on the many issues facing teachers and their belief in the need for teacher organization.
The American Federation of Teachers is a teachers’ union that has been working for nearly nine decades to support the economic, social, and professional interests of teachers everywhere. They provide information about a variety of issues facing teachers today, and several studies about the increasingly difficult situation many teachers are dealing with.
Education World has an interview with Diane Ravitch, a research professor of education at New York University, where she defends the teachers’ unions very convincingly. Dr. Ravitch responds to the criticisms made by business leaders and the general public and sheds another light on the debate over teachers’ union reform.
The Teachers Union Reform Network is a teacher-led union reform effort that is working towards improving the organization of teachers’ unions and recognizes the role of teachers’ unions in raising the standard of education. They suggest some reforms for teachers’ unions, as well as background information on the subject.
Center for Union Facts: Teachers Unions Facts provides information about the role that teachers’ unions (specifically the AFT and the NEA) have played in different educational policies. There is a clear negative bias.
City Journal, a national urban-policy magazine, published an article in 1997 entitled “How Teachers’ Unions Handcuff Schools.” Obviously it is a negative perspective, focusing on the inability of school officials to reform the system because of the power of teachers unions.
The Hoover Institution has an op-ed by political scientist, Paul E. Peterson, which shows how the teachers’ unions are now the most powerful lobbying group in the country. Peterson also discusses some of the more controversial choices made by teachers’ unions; one example is insistence on uniform pay and, therefore, a resistance to merit pay.