(Guest post by Greg Forster)
The Oklahoman carries my op-ed on why collective bargaining is a bad deal for teachers:
Teachers are like doctors and lawyers. Standardizing the work they do into a one-size-fits-all mold creates major headaches. But collective bargaining demands standardization, so processes and outputs can be negotiated.
The standardization demanded by collective bargaining is a major factor in all the complaints we’re accustomed to hearing from public school teachers — useless paperwork, unreasonable rules, rigid systems, dysfunctional bureaucracy. In a 2009 study of national data from the U.S. Department of Education, I compared public and private school teachers. The difference in teacher working conditions was dramatic.
Remember, you read it here first!
Jay P. Greene's Blog 
And Rudi Weingarten was on the picket lines with teachers shouting, “teachers aren’t widgets!,” but of course supporting a contract that makes them, well, widgets.
Lawd, lawd, lawd.
Right. When it comes to political control of curricula and that kind of thing, they never stop saying, “teachers are professionals, they should be treated like professionals!” Which is true, but it doesn’t stop being true when the issue is collective bargaining. I want teachers treated like professionals and paid like them. Which would mean more pay for some and less for others, probably a modest decrease on the whole, but with a corresponding freedom to teach that would more than compensate (as the private school satisfaction numbers indicate).
If I left my current charter school I could make at least 15-20k more in salary in say, LAUSD. I’m not leaving because the environment, support, the freedom to instruct as I see fit (in spite of our fascination with Project Based Learning), brew coffee every morning (I grind the beans), and that I can come into the school building on the weekend when I need to is something I would not have most other places, a large school district particularly.