Teacher
Unions: Dying dinosaurs or co-drivers of Democratic Decision Making?
A.
William Place
Director
of Doctoral Studies and Associate Professor
Department of Educational Leadership
The University of Dayton
Ohio’s
governor and state legislators believed the time had come to move past employee
unions, signing legislation which would have effectively done away with unions
for teachers, police, firefighters and other public employees in the
state. However, the voters signed a
petition to have the law placed on the ballot and it was defeated 61 percent to
only 39 percent. While many administrators felt Ohio’s law is too favorable to
unions and was in need of some revisions, the attempt to totally do away with
unions went too far. New Jersey also has
moved to limit the unions in terms of pensions and healthcare benefits. Other states appear to be taking similar steps
Olson (2011) notes “many states have taken swift action to limit the power of
organized labor in public schools.
Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Idaho and Michigan were the first, and
Tennessee added itself to the list” (para. 3).
Personally,
I find this to be incongruent with concepts of empowerment and democratic
leadership that many educational leadership programs espouse. Murphy (2002) proposed reculturing the field
using “three key concepts that provide new anchors for the profession—school
improvement, democratic community, and social justice” (p. 66). Furman and Starratt (2002) place even more
emphasis on the concept when they note,
In considering democratic
community as the center for
educational leadership, we make these claims:
·
Democratic
community is not a “marginalizing center for the field because it is based on
acceptance and appreciation of difference.
·
Democratic
community “recultures the profession” by focusing on what leadership is for—serving the common good in a
multicultural society and world.
·
Democratic
community is the most appropriate focus for school leadership in the
“postmodern” world of diversity, fragmentation and cross-nationalism. p. 129
Furman
and Sheilds (2005) caution that “democratic community is an ideal, a moral
purpose toward which educators strive, one that is never fully realized; thus,
democratic community is not a specific structure to be reified, defined, reduced,
observed, and replicated” (p. 120).
These conceptualizations of democratic community would move educational
leadership far from the traditional authoritarian approach used in schools for
most of the 20th century (the approach which these movements to kill
teacher unions seem to be reverting).
While
these scholars of educational leadership do not address the role of teacher
unions, I find it hard to imagine a real democratic community without an
important formal structure involving unions.
Employees must have a voice in the work place. I believe there is an important place for
unions as we forge a new way for education in the twenty first century. Some have suggested that the role of unions
should evolve. For example, Barnett
Berry (2011) states “unions must be transformed into results-oriented guilds in
which teaching and learning are paramount” (p. xiv).
Teachers
have a long history of caring deeply about students and the teacher unions,
despite what their critics claim have often, but not always demonstrated that
they are focused on improving education for all children. Administrators get frustrated when
traditional negations seem to move us away from improving education for all
children, but that, I argue, would be a reason to push for alternatives to
traditional barraging, rather than doing away with teacher associations
altogether.
References
Berry, B. & the TeacherSolutions
2030 Team. (2011). Teaching
2030. New York, NY:
Teachers
College Press.
Furman, G. C., & Shields, C. M.
(2003, April). How can educational leaders promote and support social
justice and democratic community in schools? Paper presented at the Annual
Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, IL.
Furman, G. C. & Starratt, R. J. (2002). Leadership for
democratic community in schools. In J. Murphy (Ed.), The Educational Leadership Challenge:
Redefining Leadership for the 21st Century (pp. 105-133). Chicago, IL: National Society for the Study
of Education.
Murphy, J. (2002). Reculturing
the profession of educational leadership: New blueprints. In J. Murphy (Ed.), The Educational Leadership Challenge:
Redefining Leadership for the 21st Century (pp. 65-82). Chicago, IL: National Society for the Study
of Education.
K Olson. (2011, June 5). Tennessee trumps Wisconsin: Kills teacher collective
bargaining. Dead.
[Web log post]. Retrieved from
wisconsin-kills-teacher-collective-bargaining-dead/
Please share your thoughts on how educational leaders might best
support democratic communities and should there be a structured role for
teacher unions.* Please participate in the poll below. Thank you!
Are teachers unions*
Are teachers unions*
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