A Wisconsin Moment For Our Education Policy Debate
There is an obvious, albeit somewhat uncomfortable connection between what’s happening in Wisconsin and what’s been happening in education policy discussions.
A remarkably high proportion of the discussion is focused – implicitly or explicitly – on the presumed role of teachers’ unions. The public is told that our school systems are failing, and that teachers’ unions are at leastpartially to blame because they protect bad teachers and block “needed” reforms such as merit pay. In this storyline, unions are faceless villains that put the interests of adults above those of children.
Wisconsin represents a threat to this perspective in at least three important manners.
First, and most basically, it is illustrating the weakness of one of the most important concepts in our debate – the idea that one can support teachers, but hate their unions. To some degree, the distinction is plausible: Disagreeing with the organization that represents a given profession certainly does not imply animosity towards its members, and not all teachers agree with everything unions do (as is the case in any democratic