Perhaps the most important way to improve students’ educational experience is to elevate the teaching profession. However, where teachers’ unions hold sway, that task is extremely difficult.
The heart of the problem is that collective bargaining agreements, in effect throughout most of the country, ensure that teachers’ unions treat teachers not as professionals but as interchangeable widgets, all of equal value and competence. Differentiating between effective and ineffective educators based on what their students actually learn would require eliminating the union’s industrial-style work rules. These include one-size-fits-all salary scales, tenure (contractually known as “permanence”), and seniority, or “last in, first out (LIFO),” under which, if a teacher must be laid off due to budgetary belt-tightening, the newest hire is on the chopping block rather than the least talented teacher.
Read Full Article: https://amgreatness.com/2026/05/20/creating-meaningful-classroom-reform/
