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Wednesday, February 8, 2012

The Teachers Union and Quality Teaching « InterACT

The Teachers Union and Quality Teaching « InterACT:

The Teachers Union and Quality Teaching

Brown, Heins

Shannan Brown (SJTA President) and Eric Heins (CTA Vice-President) are union leaders who promote quality teaching. (Photo: Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education; 1/20/12)

Some people would say that “the union” and “quality teaching” don’t belong in the same sentence, or blog post title.

My bet is that those people don’t know about the two Quality Teaching Conferences run by the California Teachers Association (CTA) each year. The Northern California conference took place in San Jose last weekend, and the Southern California conference is coming up next month.

I don’t mean to suggest that because CTA has conferences about quality teaching that they are therefore immune to criticism – but I would expect any fair-minded critic to consider whether or not their image of the