To believe that the West Virginia strike was a natural expression of the correct alignment of social forces isn’t just wrong, it sells West Virginians short.
Union leaders hope that by organizing teachers and staff at charter schools, and giving them a voice to advocate for more resources through collective bargaining, the charter model will become less attractive to investors and public officials.
Rather than a problem, we wanted to start with a vision. We asked members three questions:
What brings you joy in the work you do with students?
What sucks the life and joy out of working with students?
What can we propose through bargaining that could increase the joy and reduce the stress in your work?
A draconian proposal threatened Massachusetts teachers. Here’s how they defeated it.
Unions exist in only a handful of schools, all of them Conservative movement-affiliated or pluralistic, and the number is dropping. Over the past year, three Conservative Jewish day schools have effectively eliminated their teachers unions. Perelman Jewish Day School, an elementary school just a few miles away from Barrack, and the Solomon Schechter School of Greater Boston have both declined to negotiate with their teachers unions.
Teachers unions are facing tumultuous times, grappling with financial, legal and public-relations challenges as they fight to retain their clout and build alliances, and deal with declines in membership.
Teachers at one of Chicago's largest charter- school networks - run by the United Neighborhood Organization - have voted to organize into a union. Public school teacher, responds to question - what is behind charter schools. Idea of a motivated community of adults - parents, teachers, administrators - creating a unique school from the ground up, designed to serve that particular community - are not charter schools. AFT calls for moratorium on Common Core testing.
Diane Ravitch upends the "bad teachers" narrative...The stakes for our country could not be more profound. The labor movement and the public education system are two critical institutions of American democracy. And they are two that go hand in hand. Teachers unions have played a critical role in advocating for public education, but you'd never know it from mainstream media coverage - there is a great need to lift up this tradition.
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