Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Wow...a magazine all about teacher's unions...

....and no, I'm not talking about one of the National Affiliate's monthly publications.

Apparently there is a journal called Education Next, which bills itself as a "Journal of Opinion and Research". I have just stumbled onto it, so if I am a bit uh....unseasoned in that respect, I apologize.

So anyhow, this whole issue (not the magazine, normally) is about teacher's unions. Most of the pieces are pretty negative, like this article about contract negotiations by Eva Moscovitz, a charter-makin' union hatin' New Yawker councilwoman (or something like that, I plead ignorance to NY politics). I do have to admit, however, that I really enjoyed reading about the lack of contemporary strikes, but I don't believe that School Boards will be able to implement the suggestions of the writer (those suggestions are found at the end of the article) until they actually somehow capture the public's trust-- their elections are so divisive and confrontational, how can they think to be able to negotiate for the public when they don't actually have the support of the educated people who actually went out and voted? Sheesh.

After all of what I perceived to be negativity radiating out of this thing, it was nice to stumble across this nugget of what almost seems to be uh....positivity (could it be) about teacher unions and the collective bargaining process.

So what'd you think, people?

3 comments:

ms. whatsit said...

Dr. Homeslice,

Thanks for the link. I will bookmark it and check it out more over the next couple of days.

Ryan said...

I was pretty excited when my copy came in the mail, too. Education Next leans so far to the right it's about to fall over, but it was still a really interesting read.

I thought the article by Rick Hess was the best of the issue. Evenhanded, and he's been good about making the point that two parties sign every contract--it's not something that the teachers write in a vacuum and then submit to the administrators for approval.

Dr. Homeslice said...

I'm going to have to check out the RIck Hess article. Anytime I see the word "standards" in a heading or a title, I go into brain-hibernation. I hate that word. Ugh.

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