Union Dues

Union leaders have started to wise up. They know that teachers think their membership fees should cover more than contrtact negotiations and benefits packages. Their members want help becoming better teachers, too.

This summer, both the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers plan to make a splash with major policy recommendations for how unions can increase their role in professional development.

The question for national leaders is not whether unions should take more responsibility for developing their members' knowledge and skills, but how. They know full well that education reform is putting unprecedented pressure on teachers. Increasingly, they hear requests for assistance from members looking to unions for help with problems of practice, not just benefits and grievances.

And by embracing professional development as a new role, the national unions could take another step toward forging new organizations that reflect the complexity of teaching. Leaders acknowledge that in the late 1990s, industrial-style unionism is a poor fit with the movement to give teachers more leadership and decisionmaking roles in...