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Smart List: 60 People Shaping the Future of K-12 Education
As an interested observer, Andy, I don’t get a sense that Governor Walker’s gives a whit about education reform. My guess is the only things he’ll push is blowing open the Milwaukee voucher program (look for the “cost savings” argument as part of it) and expanding charters, not contingent upon quality.
I penned this blog post back in December, offering a hopeful view of potential leadership from the new class of Republican governors. To date, Walker hasn’t displayed a collaborative bone in his body. He’s more the divide and conquer type.
http://eduoptimists.blogspot.com/2010/12/silver-linings.html
Collective bargaining is essentially a state granted monopoly. We’ve seen that monopolies are bad in education, they stymie the reform process in all sorts of ways. If teachers are allowed to join only one union, and that one union alone is supposed to represent their “collective” voice, that creates problems when you have a large diversity in a set of teachers – old, young, urban schools, suburban schools.
Ending a collective bargaining provision at the state level is not ending an association or a group of people’s right to strike or not show up at school if working conditions or salaries are terrible. People think ending a collective bargaining provision is like taking away your 1st Amendment right or worse. It’s quite different.
So in a sense, if Gov. Walker didn’t mean to, I think this is a step in the right direction for education reform as it allows teachers more free choice (and potentially greater earnings with lower dues to the association of their choice and not the one official legislated monopoly).
Mayor Bloomberg has some good thoughts on this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/opinion/28mayor.html