Now's your chance to help revitalize public education

Chris Rickert:

But it's clear that teachers are doing their part to keep one small, if important, piece of the public education reform movement alive: making sure they have an organized voice.

Now we should do ours.

Say what you want about his approach, Walker basically gave reform-minded school districts their chance by ramming through a collective bargaining law that drastically limits what's subject to negotiation.

So, if you think the school year should be longer, if you'd like to see your district have an easier time keeping that awesome first-year teacher and ditching the underwhelming 20-year vet, if you want more money put into recruiting minority teachers and less into teachers' generous health care and pension benefits -- now's your chance.

For despite what you might have heard from union backers, teachers union priorities and students' needs are not always the same thing.

Unions exist, appropriately, to protect their members. You can quibble about whether Walker went too far in lessening their power. But a grudge against a transitory public figure shouldn't take precedence over trying something new to improve public education.

Besides, it's not as if teachers won't have a seat at the reform table.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at October 15, 2011 9:38 AM
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