Teachers’ Unions are Destroying the Government School System

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There was a time when people entered the teaching profession driven strictly by a mission of service to the next generation; the job was more a spiritual calling than a manner of putting food on the table. Parents retained close involvement, whether that meant reinforcing disciplinary measures or holding under-achieving teachers accountable. The birth of teacher’s unions created an additional factor. Teachers had always held a position of high esteem based upon their effective tutelage of the community’s youth, but going forward, they would need to shift their primary allegiance from the parents to the union administrators. Randi Weingarten, chief executive of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), bluntly expressed the agenda of unionized teachers going forward when she said that the interests of teachers were just as important as the welfare of children. Although these unions claimed teachers would be inadequately represented without teachers’ unions, these massive institutions have become harmful due to their opposition of free market incentives such as a merit based pay system and tuition vouchers, which promote excellence through competition.

The first overriding problem caused by a unionized teaching system is the lack of incentives for teachers. Teachers’ unions have traditionally held a skeptical view of merit based pay systems, and have instead favored a seniority based pay scale in which effectiveness in the classroom is encouraged, but not rewarded. Their biggest objection is that a student can not be effectively evaluated by a simple, standardized test. They argue that a teacher’s task is to meet students on the level at which they find them, and to guide them from that point onward. Unions contend that no single test can accurately gauge student’s progress since so many different factors must be accounted for.

The obvious question must then be asked: “Why have teachers not submitted an evaluation method which meets their criteria?” Proponents of performance based salary systems are eager to grant a higher wage in exchange for a more productive classroom. If testing methods are the only obstruction to appropriate compensation, then it seems that the onerous would be on the unions, in the interests of their constituency, to supply an evaluation medium that is acceptable to all parties.