I don't know much about teachers unions, but do they have any say over what curriculum is taught?
No they don't, that is decided by the state (if it is a public school).
For that matter, I don’t know what limitations most (or any) schools put on their curricula.
If they're private schools, they can put whatever limitation they want to.
Personally, I think schools should be more focused on results. If a teacher can teach his/her students the subject, and they pass a test on such (obviously without any teacher knowing what the test questions will be), that should be the end of it.
Pedagogy is so much more than knowing the content material. Teaching strategy and methods is necessary. There aren't any "tests" that can analyze any single teacher's pedagogic style, simply because each teacher have their own different style.
Perhaps teachers should be given a budget, some reasonable “don’t go here” guidelines, and let loose upon the various providers of school supplies.
A few checks during the school year, via tests…
And teachers should have ongoing classes/seminars that they must attend, put on by various persons who study the art of teaching (and it is an art).
Just a few ideas off the top of my head.
Thoughts?
Speaking as a teacher, we already go to seminars about once a year, and usually these seminars are a waste of my time. It's just a rehash of the information that we already know: "we need to motivate our kids", "we need to come up with more creative lesson plans", "we need to incorporate technology in our lessons", all of these things we already know.
Most of the teachers I work with are what I would call "good teachers". And there are a few "problem teachers" too, who makes things very difficult. There are many reasons why they are the way they are. I wont give out much detail, but one teacher here is waging a war with the administration and has been doing so for over 7 years (as far as I know). S/He feels that she has been mistreated and out of retaliation s/he is not cooperating with what the administration wants. So as a result, the previous principal and superintendent decided to assign the "worst" students (as s/he calls them, and actually it's not far off from the truth) for all of her classes. This forces s/he to have a hard time, and the result of that is forcing her classes to have more failing students.
I understand why s/he would put those students in the middle of this war, because what happened to him/her was indeed unfair. But the administration is also at fault for putting those students in the middle of this. This is just a cluster**** of a situation. However, the administration changes every 3 years or so, which makes them weak. Incoming principals takes 1 year to get to know the teachers, 1 year to propose a solution, and the final year the problematic teacher just has to wait through before taking on the next principal.
The origin of this problem isn't from the teacher, but it's a part of it. A lot of situations are like this, as I've heard. The war between teachers and the administration gets very vindictive, and the students are simply collateral. I think the first step to a solution is to realize that the problem in public education isn't always within the classroom. A lot of things are going on outside of the classroom and elsewhere on campus.