Teachers and Unions Fight Over Who Controls the Classroom


Teachers want more control over their classrooms? How dare they! Who do they think they are? Our public school systems are no place for classroom specific teaching strategies created by teachers who best know how to meet the needs of their students!

Wait a minute. Isn’t that type of school system and teacher exactly what our children need?

Not according to teacher unions in Denver who convey this message as they abuse their control over how classrooms are run through their strong-arm hold on teacher contracts. Often the contracts made available to teachers systematically give the unions control not only over teachers' pay, health care and retirement packages, but also over how they are and are not allowed to structure their classroom activities, according to a New York Times Op-Ed written by Andrew J. Rotherham. Rotherham is co-founder and co-director of Education Sector, an independent national education policy think tank

Frustrated teachers simply want more control over their classrooms. That is, they want less control given to certification boards, one-size-fits-all federal stipulations and last but certainly not least, their unions. According to Rotherham, groups of teachers in both L.A. and Denver are struggling to win more control over teacher hiring, pay and how they may utilized their work day.

This tug-of-war, both in and out of the classroom, is just one more of the seemingly endless examples of road-blocks that teacher unions pose for teachers, parents and children -- or anyone trying to forge real and significant change in our school systems.

Rotherham suggests that providing a broader range of contracts to teachers that better fit their their schools' specific characteristics and their students' instructional needs would not leave unions obsolete. Rather, it would allow them to become an “agent of progress.”

Surely the chances of teacher unions becoming true academic stewards by simply diversifying teacher contracts is minute. However, any footing that teachers can regain, in the fight over who runs their classrooms, would be a tug in the right direction.