I read an article in the New York Post, that indicates, and in reality, there is a big shift occurring in the Democratic circles. Teachers unions now have to worry about the Democrats that are now reformers, who are sitting in key political positions, and as well as their tradition enemy, the Republicans.

Choice and teacher accountability is coming down the pipe line, at least in the United States. It is too bad, we really do not have any savvy provincial politicians, who are willing to make massive reforms needed in the public education system. I would think they are a little tired of hearing from the teachers’ unions, with demands of more money with conditions of no accountability, yet still promote public education as the only route for the masses, and than say, as afterthoughts, it is really up to the parents to ensure their child is educated, Hard to do, when the options are so limited, and public schools provide very little leeway for parents, to have the final say.

Here is a quote from the NY Post article. It is all about entitlement, and not about the kids.

“Perkins himself benefited from parent choice; he graduated from Collegiate, the prestigious West Side private boys? school, something he says ?is irrelevant.? ?There is nothing wrong with a mother wanting her children to get the best education,? he says. “

Even people who wish the choice movement well including Arne Duncan are saying that you cannot move fast and produce quality schools at the same time. The “market” is not some miracle machine that produces good products only as we have seen with BP, Wall Street hedge funds and derivatives, tainted meat, the list goes on and on.

Two trends are emerging, one is a group of fly-by-night fraud oriented charters of low quality and another is an increasingly corporate model by KIPP, Imagine schools, and imitators. This model takes on all of the worst bureaucratic and distant aspects of public schools without the democratic accountability aspect. Nothing could possibly be worse.

Recent studies have pointed out that ANY advantages that charters have in any locale, and they are few is based almost 100% on longer hours.

Local public schools outscore charters in most cases but in the few cases where they do well, extra hours is the sole reason. Public schools can easily do more hours but it will be expensive. More hours for the same money you say? Ya right.

Here is the NY Times article
The Teachers’ Unions’ Last Stand.

Of interest, where some insist that charter schools are of the fly-by-night operation and the corporate charter schools. The majority of them in the United States are not either of the above.

The article, is of interest, where it shows the politics between the reformers and the public school supporters. Plus it has an interesting comparison, of a charter school and a public school, located within one building.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/magazine/23Race-t.html

When parents have a choice between a system that keeps making promises but failing to deliver the education that their children need, this is the outcome

http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/christina_blizzard/2010/05/25/14087091.html

Choice is indeed on the move in Ontario and there’s not much the unions can do about it. Peddling programs that guarantee jobs for well-paid bureaucrats just isn’t going to cut it in a system of continued declining enrollment which thanks to the glut of unions is becoming unaffordable.

Choice within the public system is 100% unionized Chuck. Unions are also organizing rapidly in private schools in Canada and the USA. Anybody who thinks private or even choice means no unions better think again.

“Anybody who thinks private or even choice means no unions better think again.”

Um…no Doug. You can generalize with your blanket statements all you want but the truth is that many educators choose private and alternatives to get as far away from those union tentacles and social Gulag as possible.  In fact, just this past weekend I met a new teacher grad unable to find work in Ontario heading to a private school in Japan - no union.

I have a family member who teaches at combination public/private school - no union and no teacher certification necessary.

Unions are looking to expand their market share.  They work on a business model too—they don’t make any money if there aren’t any members paying dues.

Private sector unionization has been shrinking for a quite a while now.  The public sector has been affected by the economy as well (hiring freezes & layoffs), so unions are looking to keep up their numbers.  In order to do so, they have to either lobby for programs that need more hires, like all day K, or try to organize non-unionized environments.

This is another way to fill the ranks of dues-paying teachers—change the criteria for qualifications.
We have a teacher surplus and the Ontario College of Teachers has just made it easier to be a teacher in Ontario:

http://www.oct.ca/news/tqr/?lang=en-CA

Apparently teacher union dominated college board consulted for four years with their stakeholders to figure this all out.

Yes, it started back from 2006. Yet the new changes, made no changes to have teachers take courses of reading and writing, that is based on science. Would it not be refreshing, to see one general teacher in the elementary schools, be well versed on reading and writing?  As it is now, a special education teacher does not need to take one course on learning disabilities. Of course even one course, would never be able to cover all of the aspects, but it may certainly help in answering questions of parents, that often goes unanswered.

Chuck, you can use anecdotal one off examples that can’t be checked and examples from Asia all you want, schools of choice in the public systems are guaranteed to have unions and increasing numbers of private schools will be unionized in the future. AFT/NEA are out to unionize all the charter schools.

Non union does not follow from privatization, non-union just means lower quality.

Apparently, the American teachers’ unions are going after the charter schools.

“Before all this is over, the NEA and AFT may echo the same complaints about teacher contracts that school reformers and superintendents have been making for the past three decades. Now that would be ironic, don’t you think? “

http://spectator.org/archives/2010/03/16/union-run-schools

IT would be ironic to say the least.

That’d be why “schools of choice in the public system” are pretty much a waste; they’re governed by the same workrules, seniority lists, salary lists, etc as any other school in the public system.

On the issue of the teacher unions trying to organize chartyer schools I suspect that’s what drives them crazy; they don’t have mandatory unionization of the charters.  They’d have to compete for the teachers and those who aren’t required to join may choose not to.  Monopolies don’t like competition.