Background information - Which union is against the plans afoot?  It all depends on which side of the looking-glass one is viewing it.

In the Washington Post - “The emphasis on union corruption — almost universally acknowledged as a huge problem — has to some extent obscured other concerns of the teachers who traveled to Mexico City from some of the poorest states in the southern part of the country. The union that holds sway there is not the one directly targeted by the new education law, but a smaller one that controls jobs and state education budgets and is among the most radical in Mexico.”
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-08-28/world/41525786_1_michelle-rhee-mexico-city-teachers

Who is the smaller union?  I ended up spending 30 minutes to find this one out. Its obvious, that the powers to be in Mexico, really don’t want outsiders to explore the Mexican’s education structure, and who is in charge.

The largest teachers’ union - “The Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (SNTE), the national teachers’ union in Mexico, represents over 1.2 million members, and is the largest union in Latin America. “
http://sites.duke.edu/history136a_01_s2012_lmm44/

Of course, no mentioned of the smaller teachers’ union as I explored the site - http://sites.duke.edu/history136a_01_s2012_lmm44/historicalcontext/snte/
But it does give a pretty good background on the structure of the Mexican public education system. One just has to ignored the political slant.

Over at the Washington Journal - “Protests in the streets of Mexico City since mid-August led by the country’s most radicalized teachers’ union (known by the initials CNTE) could not stop the reform. Even deputies of the left-wing Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD) voted in large numbers for the new laws. “
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324123004579057310467988616.html

Getting a little bit closer….......to my quest. To the Globe and Mail, “The protests were being led by the National Education Workers Coordinating Committee, or CNTE, the smaller of the country’s two main teachers unions. The larger union has supported Pena Nieto’s reform.” http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/police-move-in-with-tear-gas-ending-occupation-of-mexico-city-centre-by-striking-teachers/article14322309/

The smaller teachers’ union leading the charge in the latest protests were the CNTE - “Then, in the late 1970s, a group of leftist union activists, many of them members of small revolutionary parties, came together to create the National Coordinating Committee (la CNTE).”  http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/print.php?id=1083

Confuse?  I am, because if truth were to be reveal - what is being played out in front of our eyes - the great war between the SNTE and CNTE teachers’ union. It has been going on for decades, where the Southern schools are left without the resources due to the antics and backroom deals of the SNTE, to get back at CNTE, based on politics. Who pays the price? The students.

“Teachers have been fighting what they see as an elite-imposed education reform now for almost six years. During the previous administration, President Felipe Calderón (2006-2012) of the National Action Party (PAN) formed an alliance with Elba Esther Gordillo, then leader of the Mexican Teachers Union (el SNTE), the Alliance for Quality Education (ACE). While the union leadership embraced the plan, the 35-year-old rank-and-file opposition group, the National Coordinating Committee (la CNTE), opposed it at every turn with protests by tens of thousands. While la CNTE proved unable to stop the plan’s implementation, in some areas of the country the teachers simply boycotted the meetings, examinations, and other elements of ACE.”
http://newpol.org/content/mexican-teachers-rebel-against-governments-educational-reform

A good way of looking at it - imagine if the Ontario teachers’ union decided to make a backroom deal with the Atlantic provinces’ and their government, to imposed the same type of structure and organization of the Ontario teachers’ union upon the smaller Atlantic provincial teachers’ unions?  A likely outcome, the Atlantic teachers’ union would merged into one union to fight the Ontario teachers’ union. The reason why, would be the same reasons as the smaller Mexican union, CNTE - don’t have the same resources as Ontario teachers have.

It won’t happen here in Canada?  Think again, and considered the curriculum across Canada, teacher practices, salaries, but more importantly where the educationalists and education gurus are located?

So is it all about the performance of teachers, or is it really all about gaining more political power since the largest teachers’ union in Mexico, is on side with the government, on the new performance tests for teachers?

POSTED ON BEHALF OF DOUG

BTW the answer to the question “Is what is good for teachers good for the nation?” is yes. Some nations understand this. Finland figured out a while ago the best place to control for high quality teachers is at the very start. Demand 1-2 MAs to even qualify for teacher training. Then pay teacher candidates during the year they are being trained.

Make it hard to become a teacher and then let them teach. How has it worked? The answer is obvious.

Highly paid teachers with outstanding pensions benefits and very small classes is in the national interest. Nothing is more important. This attracts the best to become teachers.

It should be as hard to become a teacher as it is to become a doctor but then teachers should be paid like doctors.

If true Doug, than why are Finland teachers at the bottom of the pack when it comes to salaries. You forgot to add, since post-secondary is free in Finland, it is very difficult to be admitted into university. And yes even for the students with the high B averages. The secondary factor, that is always omitted by Doug, is the teachers’ union has to work together with the municipality in all things education. No such thing as a school board, and in reality the union plays no part in the organization of the public education system. Ergo, one will never see the Finland teachers going on strike because of exams, religion in schools, graded report cards, or extracurricular activities.

However, the opposite is the situation in Canada. The higher the pay is in the K to 12 education, the higher the number of free internships to learned the art of washing dishes and being a busboy or busgirl in a fine dining establishment. Only in BC, where the teachers’ union are remaining very silent, while the teachers’ members are defending the free internships. ““Even dishwashing, it’s education,” he said. “It’s a lower-end job, but from there it stems to many other things.”
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/unpaid-bus-person-internship-offered-at-vancouver-hotel-1.1705150

The response from the hotel - “CBC News contacted the Fairmont Waterfront for comment, and a spokesperson replied with an emailed statement: “As a leading hotel in the city we actively support local schools and work in partnership with them to provide opportunity and access to practical workplace experience.”

More like working hand in hand with the teachers’ unions…....to justify their salaries. Over at the New York Times: “Colleges and universities have become cheerleaders and enablers of the unpaid internship boom, failing to inform young people of their rights or protect them from the miserly calculus of employers. “
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/opinion/03perlin.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

But here in Canada, they have taken free internships to the next step - dishwashers and bus-persons. What will be next? Having a housing development where all the labour is under free internships with the teachers with the education degrees looking on as the overseers? Will that be the next fight at the negotiation tables - demanding higher pay to get the K to 12 students ready for free internships??  No need to have students well grounded in the 3 Rs, when the colleges be quite willing to take on the students for a $2000 yearly tuition price.

One should be watching, the local BC public is not at all please about the K to 12 education system. Quite the collective running across the political spectrum, who are becoming quite dissatisfied with the public education system. I can’t wait for the next story to appear - all the free internships in Toronto for doughnut servers, busboys and dishwashers. The silence is deafening from the teachers’ unions…........

What’s Good For The Teacher UNION Is NOT Good For The Nation

Let’s face it — public education problems in the last 50 years can generally be traced to the growth and dominance of teacher unions.  They are a large part of “producer capture” of the industry. A one-sided monopoly government service dominated by its public service unions and without accountability is definitely NOT good for the nation.

Sure, teacher unions are not alone in producer-capture — a condition where you, as consumer, are told: “Take it or lump it!”.  The rest of the ingrained establishment — the school boards, the bureaucrats — are also complicit in obstacling reforms in that they conveniently hide behind and scapegoat the unions as the problem.  Their capitulating to union pressures is really gross failure in oversight.

As well, a big factor is government collaboration and appeasement in the matter of teacher unions.  For the sake of re-election and “labor peace” politicians-in-power hesitate to ruffle the feathers of teacher unions.

Well, the State of Wisconsin may be a model to watch.  Under new legislation unions can be decertified if 51% of members don’t support the union.  See more of the details here — Wisconsin teacher union decertified: 

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/09/14/wisconsin-teachers-union-decertified-in-latest-blow-to-labor-under-walker-law/

And lest we think the teacher unions in Finland have much to take credit for regarding their high international school scores, one in their midst disagrees:

*** “Finnish academic Hannu Simola says a key reason Finnish schools do so well is that “radical labour-union politics, and the extreme Left, have been virtually non-existent in the Finnish teaching profession”. ***

http://educationviews.org/we-can-learn-from-finland-and-sweden/

This story linked above ends with this foretelling conclusion:

*** “In his book Battlelines, Tony Abbott argues that the education agenda has been hijacked by unions, bureaucrats and professional associations that put their interests ahead of communities and students. Schools must be freed from this provider capture so that they can strengthen and raise their standards.” ***

As of Saturday, September 07, 2013, this same Tony Abbott is now the Prime Minister of Australia.

I`ve said this before, it certainly doesn`t let me win a popularity concert on this site:).

I believe superficial and professor ego based teacher training is the root cause of poor instruction in schools.

What I feel very badly about is rumours that teachers who want to help kids after school or early in the am are scorned by other teachers due to union rules.
The soul has left the buildings, for that I blame the unions entirely!

POBOD

his article by Diane Ravitch, singlehandedly tears the smiley mask of the American Reform movement and reveals its sinister privatizing, profiteering core.

It is must reading for pseudo reformers and progressives alike. Her new book here soon will do far more damage to the Reform movement than the last one which exposed testing and charters for the fraud that they are. What is good for teachers argument is contained within.

http://www.salon.com/2013/09/15/diane_ravitch_school_privatization_is_a_hoax_reformers_aim_to_destroy_public_schools/

Doug,

Diane Ravitch hassn’t got that kind of power.The billion dollar publishers have much much more.The needle won’t move an inch.
She has influence over teachers who want to hear her song.

Another tirade that privatization will be the death of the public education system. Meanwhile, the education stakeholders including the teachers’ unions have systematically fought tooth and nail over issues such as reading and math instruction but more importantly the IDEA laws that had given students rights that overrides the agendas of the public education stakeholders.

“Thus, those who now sharply criticize the public schools speak fondly of an era when most schools were racially segregated; when public schools were not required to accept children with physical, mental, and emotional handicaps; when there were relatively few students who did not speak or read English; and when few graduated from high school and went to college.”

Ravitch loves to cherry-pick the evidence to suit her audience, the teachers. I am sure places like New York City, Boston or Los Angeles or Chicago have and still do today, the public schools educating the newly arrived immigrants. Likewise in Canada, where the education needs of the ESL students is the siren call of the education stakeholders while blocking all reforms to reading and mathematics instruction based on the science. Apparently in the view of the progressive educators, its just not morally right to change the focus from the ‘we know what is best, because we are the educators’ - a 19th century concept.

In a 2010 article - “If public-education supporters hope to counter the success of market fundamentalism, they must stop denying the free-market frame and start constructing a frame based on social justice, and they must be prepared to do this consistently for many years.” http://www.straight.com/news/war-public-schools-rages/page/0/1

As the title of the article suggests - the progressives are indeed losing the war, especially when the progressives insists on a social justice framework, that insidiously undermines the full academic potential of each student. The CEA 2012 survey, over 80 % of the respondents are calling for change in the public education system.  http://www.cea-ace.ca/sites/cea-ace.ca/files/cea-2012-public-survey-results.pdf

Change indeed should be on the menu in Canada. Especially, when the public education stakeholders are determined to keep the status-quo of the 19th century mind-think. The latest from the school board that fought tooth and nail all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada - the Moore case, another denial of education services but with a twist. Canadian citizen forced to pay for school - it should read - forced to pay for high school. http://bc.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=1003833

Again, the same school board picking on the dyslexic students to waged their progressive agendas based on the 19th century knowledge matrix of citizenship, labour and legal authority of the public education system.

I guess it’s much more fun, and less stressful, to throw petrol bombs at police and to camp for weeks at a time, in Mexico City’s main square, than to study for a competency test, which would determine if you’re up to doing your job.  Way to go teachers!!