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Teachers: striking against students?

Talk about some perfect timing. The week before Labor Day, a teacher's union in Detroit pushed back the opening of a school year to strike. It is illegal for teachers to do so, and the city of Detroit was thrown into chaos as parents were forced to stay home, or find sitters for the city's many school-age children. The reason for this strike? The teachers did not agree to parts of their contract that stipulated a work hour increase from five to eight-and-a-half hours, and disagreed with a bonus system based on teacher attendance. These strong-arm tactics employed by the union has many people in this nation pondering whether or not organized labor is appropriate for school teachers. As long as unions bully the way through education and do not put an emphasis on the quality of their educating, they will not be well received by the public.

Ever since their emergence in this country , unions have been set up with the clear goals of organizing labor and providing workers with livable wages, benefits and safe working conditions. Teachers also deserve the right to assemble to fight for these all-important issues. In addition to acting on their own behalf, many teachers' unions also started to act as agents for the children they taught, demanding supplies, sound buildings and equal opportunities in education for all children.

Teachers have many reasons this day and age for outrage. There are places in this country where children are taught in old bathrooms, where children have no books, and where children feel so unimportant, they drop out in droves in junior high. Anyone familiar with Jonathan Kozol's wonderful book Savage Inequalities knows that these types of schools are scattered throughout this country, but are typically in inner city school districts not unlike the school district on strike in Detroit. Suburban school districts, such as around New York, will spend up to twice what the inner city districts can. In Great Neck, a suburb of New York City, $11,375 dollars was spent on each child. Compare that to the funds for one child in the city: a paltry $5,585 dollars.

Public education in many places is in crisis, and teacher burnout is a contributing factor to this decline. Without equipment, a sound classroom environment and a sensible teacher-to- student ratio, teachers cannot be expected to teach effectively if at all. On the other side of this issue are parents and a community that wonder why it is so hard to fire bad teachers, to become involved in their children's school, who wonder when the quality of their children's education will justify the pay raises they have given their school's teachers. In Detroit, while the average teacher in the middle of their career makes as much as $50,000, the dropout rate remains at 26.4% while the graduation rate is at 29.7%. Clearly, the greater Detroit community also has good reason to be angry. Parents want results from their communities' teachers, and they do not seem to be getting any.

Many question, as Jesse Jackson did, the teachers' "right to strike for more money when the employer-taxpaying parent-holds tax receipts in one hand and test results in the other prove that he's paying more and more for less and less." Anti-teacher's union advocates also estimate that the retention of one bad teacher can cost the taxpayers up to $100,000 because unions make teachers so hard to fire.

If teacher's unions are to get anywhere without being perceived as the bad guy, they must stop being so combative in their practices. They should not be at battle with the community at large, but rather in cooperation with them. Teacher's unions must also place an emphasis on quality teaching in their own ranks, or the public will never support them. Some local unions have already realized this and have instituted a system of peer review to ensure that bad teachers do not keep teaching. The community also has a responsibility to its children and its teachers. If teachers are demanding supplies and safer conditions of the buildings they teach in, the community must take this very seriously and examine what can be done to rectify these problems. Teacher's unions will never accomplish their goals unless they appear to care more about the children they teach, than themselves.