Standards for Responsible and Responsive Teacher Unions

Responsible and responsive teacher unions are committed to:

• consider students’ learning as our primary goal and assume professional accountability for students’ progress

• take responsibility for teaching quality, support teachers’ professional learning and ensure that teachers are empowered at the school and classroom level

• improve the terms and conditions under which both adults and students work and learn

• expand the scope of collective bargaining to include instructional and professional issues and teacher involvement in educational decisions

• organize members by promoting quality and create ways for excellent practitioners to become leaders in our schools and in our unions

• collaborate with other stakeholders as equal partners and involve families and communities in students’ learning

• protect the right of collective action and collective bargaining

• engage in democratic and transparent practices that are equitable and ethically and fiscally responsible

• honor dissent and promote social justice, self determination, fairness and due process

• preserve and improve public education maintain an open mind to new and promising ideas and changes