NYC Educator is unhappy with his union’s leadership in New York City and I think unhappy with me for telling the NY Sun that it’s a good thing his union leadership is looking at Green Dot Public Schools for ideas. He writes that the leadership’s “job, ostensibly, is to improve the lot of working teachers.”
This sort of gets at the nub of part of the discussion about teachers’ unions today. While it’s preposterous to say that the interests of the teachers’ unions are always at odds with those of the kids in schools, it’s equally preposterous to say that they never collide. Some policies are good for teachers, but not so good for kids. The challenge for teachers’ union leaders going forward is to keep the members on board while helping improve the industry. Not easy, and sometimes quite a balancing act, but ultimately necessary for the unions and for the schools.
Update: Paul Manna, via NACSA, gets fresh over this issue here (pdf).