Thanks for the exposition. Full disclosure: I have, at various points in my career, been part of collective bargaining units for teachers--which, of course, is true for nearly all public educators in my region, and actually the default. Some years ago, it became possible to opt out, but it requires a fair amount of initiative to do so, and the union will still take bargaining fees out of you.
I can point to specific exceptions in places I've worked, including currently--but I think we've established that my public school place of employment isn't entirely typical. (For example, the union agreed several years ago to tie certain teacher bonuses to student outcomes standardized test performance.)
The group data, though, are difficult to wave away. Interesting that Canada and USA teacher conditions are much more different than I would have expected. With reference to the earlier discussion on the miseducation thread regarding access to psychoed evals, it also sounds like the perennial shortage of school psychologists everywhere is dramatically more severe in CA than in USA. NASP, the largest US school psych org, recommends 500-700 students per school psych. The actual US average is about 1400:1. My very non-comprehensive survey of the Toronto board website (I recall that's where the private psych firm mentioned previously is located) suggests that school psychs there are running a ratio of around 2500-3500:1 (5-7 schools per person, with schools ranging from 200+ to nearly 800, clustered around 500, in my unscientific sample). That's more intense than the most intense job I've had, which was about 2000:1, with about 140 evaluations a year (yes, I did almost one every single school day). I wonder if psychs are in or out of the teacher unions in Canada. In my US experiences and observations, when there is a union, most school psychs are in the teacher union, with some districts classing them in a different, non-teaching staff union, and a few districts placing them on the administrator scale, or some other independently negotiated schedule.
