RI teachers union leader arrested

By Dan McGowan, WPRI.com

The secretary of Rhode Island’s largest teachers union was arrested last Friday after allegedly assaulting a man at the Harborside restaurant in East Greenwich.

NY imposes teacher evaluation plan for NYC

By Karen Matthews, timesunion.com

The New York state Education Department imposed an evaluation system on New York City teachers Saturday after the city and the teachers’ union failed to agree on a way to measure teacher effectiveness.

New Cleveland Teachers’ Contract Would Tie Pay to Performance

By Molly Bloom, StateImpact.NPR.org

A tentative contract between the Cleveland school district and its teachers union would replace the annual pay raises teachers get for accumulating years of experience or additional education with raises tied to their performance, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports.

How a high school band triumphed over a bureaucracy and union that tried to kill it

By Dave Duffy, backwoodshome.com

This is a story that comes out of my own home town of Gold Beach, Oregon. It pits the high school band, consisting of 15 teenagers ranging in age from 15 to 18, against the powerful local teacher’s union that tried to shut the band down because their unpaid volunteer band director, who everybody agreed was doing a good job, did not possess an Oregon teaching credential.