I'm struggling with this one. I'd love to hear the opinions of others.
I'm a graduate student in education, and whenever my classmates and I get into education reform, the roadblock we always hit is......SCREEEEECCCCHHHH!...Tenure! It is an important safety measure for teachers. Without it, thousands of teachers would have been forced out because of some belief or political stance that chaffed their administration or community, but because of it, there are a lot of teachers out there who should have left a long time ago. There is no way that the teachers' unions will let the government do away with tenure, but with such protection for underperforming teachers, how do we clean house and start over? Education needs a major shot in the arm (and NOT NCLB, which was more like a shot in the a**).
In any business, when the workforce is not performing up to snuff, they are replaced with people who will perform. Not so in education. I don't mean to argue that education should be run on free market principles, but it does seem there should be some consequence for bad teaching.
Then again, workers need protection, which is what the unions provide--safety in numbers. I don't have a very nuanced understanding of the issue yet. Opinions? I know you people have 'em.
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I'm not sure that, throughout all of my shifts in radical political ideology (socialist, anarcho-communist, libertarian, anarcho-capitalist) I've ever supported the idea of stagnant unionization. I like the idea of collective bargaining and striking, but having a separate entity to have to get around (it provides a problem for the educators/union members as well) is absurd when it isn't needed.
I would like to see education offered in the free market. Remember, if teachers know that a certain institution would likely fire them for teaching a certain ideology or whatever, they likely wouldn't seek employment in the first place. Employees have more power than you might think.
--Mike
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Good point. My one concern with that idea, though, is that teachers who are trapped in a region that is predominantly of another idealogical ilk would have no options for employment, especially those in small rural communities. A variety of factors could trap them there, like family or lack of funds to pick up and move somewhere else.