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Terms Matter: Reflections On The Wyoming Debate Over The Teachers’ “Union” And Teacher “Tenure”, Michael C. Duff

All Faculty Scholarship

Invariably, in Wyoming, as in other states, the educational debate swirls around two topics: the extent to which school teachers’ unions influence educational policy, and the related, but distinct, question of whether teachers are unreasonably entrenched in their jobs through systems of “tenure.” These questions in turn are closely intertwined with the broader national debate over public employee unionism. In Wyoming, however, the broader debate is not at issue, a fact that will be revealed in this article through close scrutiny of the terms “union” and “tenure.”