Monday, May 12, 2008

Teachers quitting their labor union?

Reporting on "a really big development" in his front-page column in the current issue of Oklahoma City Friday, J. Leland Gourley writes that "teachers are beginning to quit the teachers union!"
Two teachers at John Marshall High School announced they were not joining the teachers union and said they were going to ask other teachers to do the same thing.

In Oklahoma, we have a right to work law, so that neither the union nor the school district can require teachers to belong to the union to have, or keep, their job. Good teachers get no benefit from the union. Only the bad teachers benefit, by being virtually guaranteed they won’t be fired. (There are ways, but difficult.)

The point of Leland's column is that weakening the union will lead to better reading instruction, but in my view a more important outcome will be greater possibilities for school choice.

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