Israeli Teachers' Unions Urged to Focus Beyond Salary on Teaching Quality

The ongoing debate surrounding teachers in Israel has long centered on salaries, working hours, and vacation days, which are crucial for attracting and retaining educators. However, the discussion must extend to the quality of education students receive and the type of graduates the system aims to produce. Teaching is a public service profession impacting students' societal and employment integration, critical thinking, and civic responsibility, meaning teacher organizations cannot solely focus on employment conditions.

While Israel's two main teacher organizations, the Teachers' Union (representing pre-school through middle school) and the Secondary School Teachers' Association (representing high school), engage in professional development activities like workshops and conferences, their public negotiations and discourse typically prioritize salary, vacations, workload, and job security. Issues concerning teaching quality improvement, innovation, closing achievement gaps, and addressing teacher shortages or substandard instruction are less prominent in public discussion, often perceived as secondary to the organizations' core identity.

However, placing the sole responsibility on teacher organizations is deemed unfair, as the primary responsibility lies with the state. The Ministry of Education is tasked with setting long-term goals, ensuring relevant curricula, nurturing principals, and allocating resources. Yet, the system suffers from frequent reforms, shifting directions, centralization, fragmented authority, and weak execution, with responsibility dispersed among the state, organizations, and school principals.

International comparisons show no simple correlation between teacher union strength and student achievement. In Finland and other Nordic countries, strong unions coexist with high-quality training, professional autonomy, and policy input. Organizations like Finland's OAJ define their mission as advancing education, teaching, and research, not just representing working conditions. Similarly, Scotland's EIS and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) run professional development programs, including training for the AI era.

Research suggests that while unions can improve salaries and resources, student achievement gains are not always guaranteed. Professional collaboration between unions, management, and teachers has been linked to improved cooperation and outcomes. A study of strikes found improvements in conditions and student-teacher ratios, with no significant impact on achievement, except for short-term disruption from prolonged strikes. The key is not the existence of a strong organization, but how it wields its power. An organization fighting for fair pay, reasonable class sizes, quality training, and professional time can contribute to achievement. Conversely, an organization that broadly defends the status quo, resists fair evaluation, or hinders addressing persistent failures may harm the profession it aims to strengthen.

Five key steps are proposed: 1. A long-term national education agreement defining desired graduate profiles (knowledge, critical thinking, digital literacy, lifelong learning, resilience, civic responsibility) with stable goals. 2. Salary agreements linking fair compensation to professional development, rewarding experience, excellence, and work in shortage areas or the periphery, while requiring effective training and feedback. 3. Establishing a professional council for teaching, involving the state, unions, principals, training institutions, and the public, to set standards, assess training quality, and report annually. 4. Enhancing school self-management by gradually expanding principals' authority over staffing, resource allocation, and teacher support, with clear criteria for improvement and potential mobility or termination. 5. Measuring what truly matters, including student progress, gap reduction, dropout rates, skill acquisition, school climate, teacher shortages, and lost instructional days, using data for shared responsibility and continuous improvement rather than blame.

Protecting teachers and students are not competing goals. Strong teacher organizations can be a national asset if their power is coupled with professionalism and responsibility. The state can demand accountability only if it sets goals, provides tools, and maintains consistency. The ultimate measure of the education system is not just investment, but the readiness of its graduates for life, work, and citizenship in a changing world.