Beyond Compensation: Empowering Teachers' Unions to Think Beyond Bread-and-Butter Issues is an incredibly important book that explores the value of union representation of teachers on the front lines of public education. After the 2018 Supreme Court ruling on Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), educators and other union members wondered why they should belong to a union. This book provides an answer and demonstrates that the role of teachers' unions goes far beyond bread-and-butter issues as shown in the myriad priorities they are involved in. Teachers' unions today are requesting additional funding for education to improve outcomes for all students--including those who are disadvantaged, as well as racial and ethnic and sexual-minority students and English-language learners. The goal of teachers' unions is not simply to represent the rights of their members, but rather to improve education on the whole. They are seeking smaller class sizes, safer schools, and the addition of nurses and counselors, issues that go beyond increased pay for teachers. The book explores in detail the role of one teachers' union, the Washington Teachers' Union and its parent organization, the American Federation of Teachers, and their priorities as a roadmap for how other teachers' unions might pursue these goals and the hazards they might face. The author discusses major educational issues such as teacher evaluation, merit pay for teachers, standardized testing, and community schools and warns about the dangers of vouchers and charter schools.
Beyond Compensation is a volume in The Badass Teachers Association Education Series. The series serves to contribute to educators' and educational leaders' understandings of the need for teacher education, activism, and leadership in these areas. It will provide a place for future and current educators to learn more about these issues and how they can build their classrooms and communities into the spaces all students deserve. The series consists of print books and e-books for current educators, pre-service teachers, parents, and others in the greater community.
Ngwa, Terence: - Dr. Terence Ngwa is a veteran educator and organizational leader with over 20 years of national and international professional service and expertise. He has worked for many years to ensure an effective voice for educators, parents, and students in the K-12 setting. His work has successfully and repeatedly brought together education stakeholders to collaborate on improving outcomes for students, especially group from historically marginalized backgrounds.
Dr. Ngwa earned a bachelor's degree in French and English from the University of Yaoundé in his native Cameroon before emigrating to the United States. He has since served in various education roles: in Washington DC as a middle school teacher, exchange student program coordinator, union representative and ultimately Washington Teachers Union Executive Director. While serving in these roles, Dr. Ngwa earned a master's degree in educational leadership from Trinity Washington University, a Doctoral Degree in organizational leadership from Southeastern University, and certificates in Diversity and Inclusion and Collective Bargaining from Cornell University.
In 2021, Dr. Ngwa was selected to lead a new graduate-level certificate program in school leadership in the School of Education at American University in Washington DC. He currently serves as a senior professorial lecturer and teaches various courses in curriculum design for the classroom, school improvement, organization, and administration at the graduate level. He also teaches social justice in urban education at the undergraduate level. Dr. Ngwa has designed and developed culturally responsive and inclusive content for school leadership preparation, supervised aspiring principals' internship experiences, designed and led experiential learning exchanges to Europe and West Africa. He currently directs the Antiracist Administration, Supervision, and Leadership Certificate Program and the International Training and Education Program within the School of Education. Dr. Ngwa is passionate about social justice, diversity, equity and inclusion and antiracist initiatives in education, and these are at the core of his commitment to education.
