Talking Loud and Doing Nothing
We need a revolution when it comes to labor and management negotiations in our school systems. Somehow, the adults in the room have got to adapt their priorities to fit the budgetary frameworks and constraints that define today’s education landscape. School districts and teachers unions have got to get serious about making real sacrifices and compromises if we’re ever going to be able to focus on the obvious tasks of educating our students. Too much time is wasted on labor-management decisions that tend to always end up with no real improvements in how teacher training, evaluation, and benefits are executed. The net result of bad labor agreements is that the excellent teaching professionals don’t get rewarded for the value they add, while the lesser teachers reap benefits that they do not deserve. The unions need to be willing to experiment with new systems of evaluation and compensation that are being designed to match teacher effectiveness with appropriate rewards. School officials must ensure that they introduce improved systems and processes that integrate priorities that are espoused by rank and file teachers and their union leadership. Even as both sides operate in good faith, it’s going to require courageous leadership and real trust in order to achieve the kind of collective bargaining agreements that are at once equitable for teaching professionals nationwide and fiscally responsible for school districts. Both sides are going to have to step up their game and be willing to move beyond tradition and the status quo to embrace new ideas about how to train, evaluate, and reward teaching professionals in ways that promote academic excellence in our schools.
All stakeholders agree that we must be about the business of educating young people who are critical thinkers and problem solvers, which means the old teaching and learning paradigms and pedagogies will not suffice. Teachers unions and school leaders have finally reached a consensus about the urgency of so many low performing schools and appear to have accepted that business as usual won’t cut it in the eyes of parents and everyone else who cares about K-12 education. While most agree that reform in a lot of areas is inevitable and imminent, the real challenge for the two sides is how to get there. Which side will be the first to relinquish old arguments for the sake of producing school and work environments for students and teachers that are responsive to their academic and professional needs? Can district leaders and union leadership agree to defer priorities that may not necessarily fit within existing budgetary constraints? In order for labor-management negotiations of this era to produce a reformed framework for supporting, evaluating, and rewarding teaching professionals, the rhetoric and intransigence that has stymied collective bargaining in the past has to be replaced by a commitment to developing new systems that can be effective for master teachers as well as those with less experience. We can’t keep going around the same mountain.
All stakeholders agree that we must be about the business of educating young people who are critical thinkers and problem solvers, which means the old teaching and learning paradigms and pedagogies will not suffice. Teachers unions and school leaders have finally reached a consensus about the urgency of so many low performing schools and appear to have accepted that business as usual won’t cut it in the eyes of parents and everyone else who cares about K-12 education. While most agree that reform in a lot of areas is inevitable and imminent, the real challenge for the two sides is how to get there. Which side will be the first to relinquish old arguments for the sake of producing school and work environments for students and teachers that are responsive to their academic and professional needs? Can district leaders and union leadership agree to defer priorities that may not necessarily fit within existing budgetary constraints? In order for labor-management negotiations of this era to produce a reformed framework for supporting, evaluating, and rewarding teaching professionals, the rhetoric and intransigence that has stymied collective bargaining in the past has to be replaced by a commitment to developing new systems that can be effective for master teachers as well as those with less experience. We can’t keep going around the same mountain.
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