[lbo-talk] More "school reform" nonsense

[socialismorbarbarism]

The best leader of a local teacher's union I've ever met was
uncompromising on this: 1) In fights with management, she defended bad
teachers according to the terms of the contract, resolutely and
without question; 2) She was always pissed off by these bad teachers
and wasn't going to go an inch further, because a) these teachers
politically undermined the position of the union and public education
in general, and b) these bad teachers usually managed to hang around
because they had some "in" with school management and/or the local
political establishment (when school management talks about "weeding
out bad performers," 90% of the time it's bullshit, bullshit,
bullshit), and c) these bad teachers were all but inevitably her
internal rivals, always challenging her leadership so that a more
"pragmatic," "realistic," "cooperative" union could be put in place
(very much related to point b, above).

On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 8:57 AM, Eric Beck <ersatzdog at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 1:39 PM, Chris Maisano <cgmaisano at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> The question of how to weed out poor performers while maintaining a
>> strong union is a really tough one to answer.
>
> Once unions take this function on they've become the boss and have
> nothing more to offer workers. (I was channeling Carrol there; I don't
> think I was that successful, but it felt good.)
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