The Future of Education

After the recent protests and media up-rise of Governor Scott Walker's abolishment of collective bargaining in Wisconsin, I decided to ask my grandmother, who was a teacher, what she thought about this decision. Though she did disagree with Governor Walker's decision, she did admit that many teachers took advantage of the Union and received more than they gave to the school and to their students. Before I asked her, I had heard about an incident in Rhode Island where all of the teachers of a certain high school were fired. If you want to read further into this, I have posted the link to the article here. After reading this, I started to see what my grandmother was saying. The article states that the firings "came after the district said it failed to reach an agreement with the teachers' union on a plan for the teachers to spend more time with students to improve test scores." With this plan, the teachers were asked to work a longer school day of seven hours, tutor the students weekly for one hour outside school time, have lunch with students more often, meet for 90 minutes a week to discuss education, and set aside two weeks during summer vacation for paid professional development. To me, this conditions seem reasonable, because many of these things are already done at New Trier. Also, with the school's low graduation rates (half the students are failing every subject), one would think that the teachers would want to improve their teaching methods for their students, and give them more motivation. From the information I was given, it really does seem like a change in the union is necessary for the future of education.