Company Unionism: The Case of the AFT

Company unions such as the UFT/AFT cannot be reformed . AFT support for the neoliberal privatization is conscious company union policy; not errors or mistakes by confused AFT national orlocals' officials. Our UFT company union must be transformed by organizing from the bottom-up by the ranks. Members must build a powerful democratic social justice union movement that could eventually wrest the power from our bureaucratic officialdom. Our formative school-based rank & file caucuses, organizations need to model what our new future progressive unions will look like. Angel

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Weekend Edition
January 22 - 24, 2010
The Case of the AFT
Company Unionism

By SHAMUS COOKE

The evolution of the company union in the U.S. is a history of both labor's progress and its missteps. It is a story that, at bottom, speaks to the battle of workers to find an independent, powerful presence on the job - and to push this clout into the community to help shape the broader public realm.

Unions came into existence organically wherever capitalism developed. As soon as workers were brought together by a small number of employers and compelled to make profits for them, the employees naturally sought to defend themselves. A living wage and decent working conditions failed to emerge through the good will of the employers, unfortunately, so workers took matters into their own hands.

They formed organizations that promoted their interests at the expense of the bosses' profits. And as soon as these fledgling unions became powerful, the owners sought to undermine them. When the unions were too powerful to be drowned in blood, the bosses sought other techniques.

The company union was typically a preventative measure initiated by the employers to lure workers away from real unions. Where workers became militant and bold in their demands, the company would offer a venue for them to voice their concerns and, sometimes, have these concerns properly addressed.

Of course, these company unions were totally controlled by the employer - they could be whisked away if the workers were impolite or too demanding. These fake unions automatically eliminated the strength workers would have had if they belonged to an independent, larger labor union. Some issues that workers sought to remedy were purposely kept "off the table."

During World War I, the growth of company unions was encouraged by the U.S. government, which sought to stem the growing surge of worker radicalism. Employer-employee councils were set up en masse, and where nothing could be agreed upon, the federal government would swoop in to try and smooth over the conflict.

The union labor upsurge before, during and after World War II was unprecedented, scaring the employer class stiff by exhibiting its organized strength and winning workers demands. F.D.R. used a combination of tactics to defuse the worker-owner conflict: compromise, the National Guard, and finally, appealing to the national patriotism needed to win workers support for WWII.

F.D.R. also set up the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in an attempt to "balance" the conflict between workers and their employers. The NLRB falsely claimed that it would remain objective in its work, but it functioned inside a government where giant corporations dominate the political system.

F.D.R.'s Labor Relations Act effectively banned the company union in practice, but the essence of the phenomenon would linger until the present, where it maintains its historic, poisonous influence. The fundamental aim of modern company union ideology is to promote the concept of identical interests between workers and the employers. It is a philosophy of cooperation and teamwork, where in reality bitter hostility and mutual distrust are accurate reflections of the attitudes of workers and owners - emotions based on the real antagonism between wages and profits.

The 1947 anti-worker amendment to the Labor Relations Act - Taft-Hartley - was a counter-attack on the organized workers' movement. In it, a surplus of anti-worker measures are outlined that to this day render the union movement toothless in conflicts with employers (since most union officials refuse to disobey the unjust law).

In addition to making it impossible for unions to support one another during strikes, a special provision of Taft-Hartley is often incorrectly viewed by some union officials as being "pro-labor." The bill cleverly outlined an organizational body that today encompasses bank accounts of hundreds of billions of dollars. Taft-Hartley "funds" are employer-employee financed accounts that help workers save for retirement, pay for health insurance and buy homes, etc.

These accounts are presided over by an equally-weighted labor-management team, where often the fund is managed like a corporate bank, and the employers and employees view themselves as partner shareholders. The Taft-Hartley bill was a very conscious attempt to disarm the labor movement. By merging the interests of workers and management into a pot of money, sections of the labor movement found it difficult to demand their "fund partners" pay higher wages, etc. Some workers identified themselves more and more as investors and used these funds to enrich themselves, or as stepping-stones into the corporate world of finance. In any case, the company union philosophy blurred the interests of workers, who sometimes found difficulty in determining if they should go on strike or merely consult an investment broker.

Another modern example of company unionism is the openly "collaborationist" grouping inside of the Alliance for American Manufacturers (AAM). Here we have labor unions - the Steelworkers, for example - and giant corporations in the same organization working towards identical goals, aiming at a common enemy - China. One of the AAM's most cherished tasks is to promote "fair trade," which they define as U.S. corporations out-competing other nations' companies - though most notably China - on the world market.

The AAM uses its corporate money to "lobby" Congressmen, who oblige by putting up taxes (tariffs) on Chinese imports, an action the Chinese accurately view as "economic warfare." Of course, if workers are being taught to work with their bosses against the Chinese, the ability of workers to fight their bosses to win a good contract is greatly diminished.

A broader, political example of company unionism is labor unions' continued involvement in the Democratic Party. The Democrats have always been dominated by big business; it's a party where corporations come together to have their needs met, though less explicitly - and therefore more dangerously - than the Republicans.

The few crumbs that Democrats threw to the unions have long since dried up; both Clinton and Obama are blatantly pro-corporate Presidents, with Obama presiding over a very pro-corporate Democratic controlled Congress.

And although the Democrats have snubbed labor a thousand times, most top labor officials seem desperate to maintain this worthless "alliance," something that requires them to constantly make "compromises" with the Democrats that are against the interests of the working class. The most recent one is the acceptance of the Democrats' "Cadillac" tax on workers health care plans.

Another recent example of labor officials practicing dangerous cooperation with the corporate Democrats is the actions of the President of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Randi Weingarten.

Instead of preparing teachers for a battle against Obama's anti-public education "reform," the AFT President has decided that "working together" would be more effective. Both the Democrats and mainstream media are attempting to adopt many long-time conservative notions regarding education. Obama calls his plan the"Race to the Top" campaign (a name as misleading as Bush's No Child Left Behind).

The Democrats attack on public education requires undermining the power of teachers' unions, a task done by instituting teacher-specific, conservative reforms, including tying a teacher's pay and job status to a student's performance or closing down "failing schools" and opening non-union, private charter schools. Both of these schemes are integral to Obama's education reform and have already been ruthlessly implanted in New Orleans and Chicago, to the huge detriment of both teachers and students.

In response to future, potentially crippling attacks in Obama's plan, the AFT President is disarming her membership while walking them into a war zone.

Weingarten has not only failed to condemn the President's plan, but has spoken positively of it, and how teachers could best work with the Obama administration.

In a recent speech to the U.S. Press Club, the AFT President cited two recent examples of teacher collective bargaining retreats - including an especially bad defeat in Detroit - and proclaimed the outcomes as victories of "collaboration", to be mimicked throughout the country in accordance of Obama's anti-teacher plan. Weingarten admits that one of the contracts included classic conservative reforms like "rigorous evaluations, more flexible hiring authority, and performance pay on a school-by-school basis."

In a classic example of company union ideology, Weingarten states: "We must transform our mutual responsibility into mutual commitment. Our relationship should be a constant conversation that begins before and continues long after we meet at the bargaining table."

This would be a fine statement if not for the fact that Weingarten's partners in "mutual commitment" are out for teacher's blood.

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org). ; He can be reached at shamuscook@yahoo.com

Can AFT president Randi Weingarten satisfy teachers and reformers at the same time?

The New Republic

Making the Grade

Can AFT president Randi Weingarten satisfy teachers and reformers at the same time?

Andrew J. Rotherham and Richard Whitmire, The New Republic Published: Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Randi Weingarten, the notoriously feisty president of the second-largest national teachers' union, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), received a hero's welcome at the National Press Club last November. In her speech, she vowed to give ear to almost any tough-minded school reform, and, in a line that thrilled many reformers, promised that the AFT will not protect incompetent teachers: "Teachers are the first to say, 'Let's get incompetent teachers out of the classroom.'"

Weingarten would seem to be donning the reformist mantle of a previous AFT president, Al Shanker, a highly regarded reformer who shook up pro-union liberals by reminding everyone that tough school discipline and achievement standards were civil rights fundamentals. But an approach that worked during Shanker's tenure is more difficult now, with the reformers and unionists pitched in a bare-knuckled fight that is not about lofty, system-changing goals as much as about the thorny specifics of state and local education policy. Caught up in a contentious situation with the Washington, D.C. school system that has challenged her reformist credentials, Weingarten's attempt to satisfy both sides of the debate is being put to the test--the result of which could dictate the future of education reform across the country.

Fairly or unfairly, Washington, D.C. has become ground zero for the national school reform debate. D.C. spends more money on education than most other cities but still sees only nine percent of its freshman students graduating from college within five years of leaving high school. Michelle Rhee, a hard-charging and high-profile reformer now serving as the chancellor of the city's schools, has taken on the system with a strong hand, vowing to ramp up teacher-training and shuffle low-performing teachers out of the system. Her offer to teachers, buttressed by pledged funding from several foundations, is this: Give up tenure, and you will receive dramatic salary boosts measured in tens of thousands of dollars--or keep tenure protections, your salary increases will be far smaller, and you will still be subject to dismissal if you fail to reach performance standards.

The Washington Teachers Union (WTU) at first seemed willing to work with Rhee to craft a deal on her two-track system. But, in the end, the WTU rejected the offer without even putting it to a vote of teachers. Rhee certainly made some mistakes in the process, most notably failing to produce a detailed plan for how teachers would be evaluated, but that's not what scotched the deal. Rather, compromise with Rhee, who has become such a touchstone that both candidates mentioned her in the last presidential debate of the 2008 campaign, became toxic in teachers' union circles.

When exactly Weingarten got directly involved in the Washington negotiations remains a matter of some debate, but there is no doubt that she has been deeply involved and that a counter-offer submitted to Rhee in late January by the WTU comes with her approval. As her Press Club speech would suggest, Weingarten is open to firing bad teachers. But the counter-offer, which hasn't been made public, would complicate rather than streamline that process in D.C. Among those who have seen the details, there are two views about what it means for the negotiations. Some say it is what it appears to be--at odds with the spirit of what Weingarten promised in her Press Club speech, wrapping teachers even more tightly in tenure protections and extending the termination process. Others say that in the coded language of labor negotiations it's actually a signal from Weingarten that she's open to negotiating and moving in Rhee's direction if Rhee can give her the necessary political cover. If adopted as currently proposed, however, Rhee's hurry-up reforms would be throttled back to a glacial pace and students would suffer.

Weingarten's supporters say that, because of the politics and Rhee's take-no-prisoners style, D.C. is not a fair test of her reform commitment. But her actions in New York, where she formerly served as president of the local AFT affiliate, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), may suggest a pattern. While New York school reformers praise her political skills and acumen and admit they were often beaten fair and square, many note that, while Weingarten was emerging as a national reform leader, she was vigorously fighting a variety of reforms in the state. She worked against the state's original charter-school law and also against efforts to lift the cap on the number of charter schools unless that move could be tied to union-friendly concessions. And she resisted efforts to significantly address the pool of teachers who could not find jobs in the city schools but were nonetheless still on the payroll, at a cost of tens of millions of dollars annually.

Critics also point to some of her actions in New York that are seemingly at odds with school improvement efforts. In 2006, the district's convoluted dismissal process, negotiated by the UFT, allowed only eight teacher firings for incompetence (out of 55,000 tenured teachers). And she lobbied the New York legislature to pass a law prohibiting, at least for two years, the use of student testing data in making decisions about whether public school teachers should be granted tenure.

It's not that Weingarten is duplicitous. On the contrary, by all accounts she is sincere in her desire to improve American public education, as well as to restore her union to the position of national respect it held when Shanker was at the helm. The reality, however, is that Weingarten represents a teaching force fearful of reform. As a result, she juggles public reformist speeches and pitches to the increasingly powerful school reform movement with behind-the-scenes jabs like the protectionist counter-offer made to Rhee and the various policy fights in New York.

There's still a way for Weingarten to square the circle in D.C. If she's wise, Weingarten will see what Shanker likely would have concluded: Rhee is not the enemy. Rhee faces an array of independent charter schools that now educate more than a third of the District's public school students. If Rhee can't compete with charter operators who can fire incompetent teachers, the local teachers' union will become irrelevant, because there will be few unionized public schools left in the district. Giving Rhee the tools she needs may strike fear into the WTU, but in the long run it helps them maintain the one thing that the union can't live without: members. The Al Shanker move in this situation would be to save the WTU from itself, helping put in place the kind of bold reforms it will take to turn cities like Washington around. It won't be a popular move among her union colleagues, but, if Weingarten fails in D.C., she could lose any national cachet she's won as a mediator between the unions and the reformers.

And that would be bad news for reformers, too. Weingarten's balancing act should not obscure the fact that she is among the most reformist union leaders on the national scene today and certainly the most influential; her success or failure will have a broader impact on school reform and education politics nationally. Nor would the biggest national union, the National Education Association (NEA), fill the gap Weingarten would leave. It's hard to find an elected official or policy analyst in Washington who won't privately acknowledge that the NEA is bereft of real ideas about how to improve schools, whereas Weingarten is at least full of ideology-bucking plans.

But, as the D.C. example shows, even a politician and tactician as good as Weingarten won't be able to forever serve the dual masters of a change-averse union and the national imperative to fix our urban public schools and improve public schools overall. A lot more than Weingarten's reputation rides on how she manages her way through the tension.

Andrew J. Rotherham, co-founder and publisher of Education Sector, blogs at Eduwonk.com. Richard Whitmire, president of the National Education Writers Association, blogs at whyboysfail.com.


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TJC on Randi and Bloomie Term Limits

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UFT/DOE Agreement on Teachers Evaluation Based on Test Scores

Letter from Weingarten to District Reps

Dear District Reps,

These have been a dizzying few days – the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the divided Congressional response to a bailout, and now the mayor making his decision to try to overturn term limits in the context of this crisis. The mayor will announce tomorrow that he will seek a third term by changing the law on term limits through legislation in the City Council. As the voters have spoken on term limits twice, some of us believe – even those like me who oppose term limits – that any attempt to undo the voice of the people should go back to the electorate in a special election, not to the Council. We have a resolution coming before the next Executive Board precisely on this point. Obviously, because of the ramifications of all this, we are watching carefully and have been in touch with elected officials, civic and educational groups and other labor unions about this.

This makes the other news I wanted to report that much more important. Right before the Rosh Hashanah holiday started, and as the school system was about to release the data it had collected on how kids in particular classes had done on standardized tests, Joel Klein and I reached an agreement that once and for all closes the door on using student test score data to evaluate teacher performance.

You may recall that last year we told you about the DOE’s pilot program to assess individual teachers’ contributions to their students’ achievement growth, controlling for such factors as the children’s poverty, special ed and ELL status, attendance, prior scores as well as class and school conditions. At that time we acted quickly to prevent the use of such data in making tenure determinations and received assurances that the initial reports were not to be used for evaluation purposes. In the meantime, we had a very public dispute with the city about all this last spring in Albany, which ended with the state Legislature agreeing that while teachers are responsible for using data to inform instruction, tenure could not be based on standardized test scores.


The DOE is now planning to release the same kind of data it piloted last year to all math and English Language Arts teachers in grades 4 to 8. The teacher data reports will be issued in November. The reports will be based on last year's New York State math and ELA exams and, if applicable, test score data from the two prior testing years.

In our agreement, which is spelled out in a joint letter appearing in this week’s Principals’ Weekly that is being issued this evening (reprinted below), the DOE makes it clear to principals that the results of these analyses must not be used for evaluation purposes. Instead, they should be used to help teachers strengthen their instruction and to help the school plan instructional and professional development strategies. In addition, the data is available only to the principal and the individual teacher, unless that teacher decides to share it.

Like many other types of data and other professional tools, this information can be a powerful instructional tool if teachers have the access, understanding and time to use it properly to assess and address their own strengths and weaknesses. But used improperly, it can be seen as a tool of intimidation and punishment. The chancellor and I issued the joint statement in order to ensure the most productive and positive use of these reports.

Although the teacher is the most important factor in student learning, there are many other influencing variables that are outside the teachers’ control, many of which cannot be precisely measured. That’s why we have opposed the use of student test score data sorted by individual teachers for high-stakes decisions such as tenure, evaluation or pay.

The commitments expressed in this joint letter should reassure members that the data will not be used against them. However, we must at the same time be prepared to respond to any violations of this understanding. Chapter leaders who believe that the letter or spirit of the agreement is not being followed should alert their district reps immediately.

In addition, the DOE and the union will be providing training for all our members who receive these reports on how to read, understand and use them to boost their students’ progress in the future.

Please share this news with your chapter leaders.

Sincerely,
Randi

* * *

The joint letter from Weingarten and Klein:

Dear Colleagues,

The work of a teacher is not only about teaching; it’s also about learning. As teachers, you know that this learning process isn’t just something that happens in the first week or year on the job. It’s a career-long effort to perfect your craft—to help more students understand, achieve, and progress.

This learning happens in many ways: when you share ideas with other teachers, when you observe your colleagues’ classes, when you participate in professional development sessions or reflect, on your own, about what you’re doing well and what you could do to improve. While information from sharing and observing is critically important, educators have told us that they want as much information as possible about what’s working and not working in their classrooms. How is your work affecting particular students? For the purposes of learning and growing, how do you compare to other teachers? What are your biggest strengths and successes that you could share with your colleagues? What could you learn from your colleagues that could help you fine tune your skills?

We are writing to let you know that this fall, the Department of Education is giving ELA and math teachers in grades 4-8 and their principals a new tool to help teachers learn about their own strengths and opportunities for development. We all appreciate that there is a broad array of factors, many outside of an educator’s direct control, that influence student learning. At the same time, many of you have told us how useful it would be to better understand how your efforts are influencing student progress. This new tool is designed to help you understand just that. The reports will be provided to all 4-8 grade math and English Language Arts teachers and their principals. They will give teachers access to very useful information, including:

* Whether the data suggest that you had a greater influence on the learning of some groups of students than on others. For example, how have special education students and English language learners fared in your classroom?
* How are you doing with students in the bottom of the class or the top of the class?
* What are other English and math teachers in similar circumstances doing successfully and what could you learn from them? What are your biggest successes that you could share with your colleagues—whether they’re other teachers in your school or teachers through the City?

The reports are based on your students’ performance on last year’s New York State math and ELA exams. If applicable, you will also see information for the two prior testing years. The reports isolate individual teachers’ effect on student learning by controlling for more than 35 different factors outside of a teacher’s control, including class size, students’ prior test scores, and the percentage of students with disabilities and living in poverty in each class. Even with these statistical controls, reports like these can never perfectly represent an individual teacher’s contribution to student learning.

We wish to be clear on one point: the Teacher Data Reports are not to be used for evaluation purposes. That is, they won’t be used in tenure determinations or the annual rating process. Administrators will be specifically directed accordingly. These reports, instead, are designed to help you pinpoint your own strengths and weaknesses, and empower you, working with your principal and colleagues, to devise strategies to improve. The data reports will add to the other sources of information—like periodic assessments, examination of student class and homework, and school inquiry teams—that you can use to develop as professionals. These reports will also help your school community plan collaboratively for professional development and make other instructional decisions.

It may be useful to understand the Teacher Data Reports in the context of two values that are central to the collective work of the Department of Education and the United Federation of Teachers over the past two years: empowerment and collaboration.

We deeply believe that our students have the best opportunity for success when the school, not the school system, is the central point of focus. That is why the school system has shifted more than $350 million from the bureaucracy to schools and classrooms, and that is why schools have been given substantially more power over professional development, scheduling, budget, and even support. This notion of “empowerment” is premised on the view that we need to give educators—the people closest to students with the best knowledge of what it will take to succeed—the decision-making power and tools necessary to determine how to help students succeed. The Teacher Data Reports are very much in that spirit, empowering teachers and schools with even more information that can be the foundation for improved strategies for student success.

Collaboration is an essential ingredient to school success. Over and over again, we have learned what is already intuitively obvious: when teachers work collaboratively with each other and when administrators value and support a collaborative environment, the probability of success rises. Simply put, students benefit when educators work together to assess what they’re doing well and what they need to improve. When educators use this information in a collaborative way to address school shortfalls and build on strengths, they improve their schools and improve results for students. Successful collaboration is at the heart of a well-functioning Inquiry Team, which empowers teachers to work together to solve problems and help children make academic progress. These new Teacher Data Reports will, in many cases, create additional opportunities for collaboration around instructional improvement, by giving teachers and principals additional information that will help them make more informed decisions for their schools and their students.

In the next few weeks, we’re asking schools to verify the student and classroom information in the reports. When the reports become available later this fall, the DOE and UFT will work together to provide you with information, training, resources, and support so you understand the information fully and can begin to put it to use. In the meantime, we encourage you to visit the Teacher Portal [link to Teacher Portal] to learn more and to view a draft of a sample report.

Sincerely,
Joel I. Klein and Randi Weingarten

October 2, 2008

Teachers to Be Measured Based on Students’ Standardized Test Scores

By JENNIFER MEDINA

New York City is beginning to measure the performance of thousands of elementary and middle school teachers based on how much their students improve on annual state math and reading tests.

To avoid a contentious fight with the teachers’ union, the New York City Department of Education has agreed not to make public the reports — which described teachers as average, below average or above average with various types of students — nor let them influence formal job evaluations, pay and promotions.

Rather, according to a memo to principals from Chancellor Joel I. Klein and Randi Weingarten, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, sent on Wednesday night, the reports are designed to be guides for the teachers themselves to better understand their achievements and shortcomings.

“They won’t be used in tenure determinations or the annual rating process,” the memo said. “Many of you have told us how useful it would be to better understand how your efforts are influencing student progress.”

Still, even without formal consequences for teachers, the plan is likely to anger teachers and parents who are already critical of the increasing emphasis on standardized test scores as a substitute for judging school quality. It follows the city’s much-debated issuance of report cards labeling individual schools A through F largely on the basis of student improvement on state exams.

The State Legislature this spring prohibited the use of student test scores in teacher tenure decisions. The new measurement system — called “teacher data reports” — is an expansion of a pilot program that the city began in January involving about 2,500 teachers at 140 schools. The pilot program was so controversial that several participating principals did not tell teachers they were being monitored.

Christopher Cerf, the deputy chancellor overseeing the program, said it was important to get teachers “comfortable with the data, in a positive, affirming way.”

“The information in here is a really, really important way to foster change and improvement,” he said. “We don’t want people to be threatened by this.”

In introducing the pilot program, Mr. Cerf said it would be a “powerful step forward” to have the teacher measurements made public, arguing, “If you know as a parent what’s the deal, I think that whole aspect will change behavior.” But this week, he said that for now the reports will be treated as personnel records not subject to public-records laws.

Principals interviewing prospective teachers from other schools would be permitted to ask candidates for their reports, but the candidates would not have to provide them.

Ms. Weingarten said that the assurance that there would not be a public airing of individual teachers’ information made her more comfortable with the idea of the reports, which she said could help teachers identify their strengths and weaknesses.

“This can be used to inform instruction and advance it,” she said in an interview. “If this is something that becomes a ranking facility, opinions will be very, very different. That door has now been closed.”

Still, Ms. Weingarten said the reports answer only “a very narrow question” of how a particular teacher’s students do on tests. She and others have long argued that there are many other criteria on which teachers should be evaluated.

The new reports are part of a broader bid by the city to improve the ways teachers are recruited, trained and measured. Last year, the Education Department began a push to get rid of subpar teachers before they earned tenure, forming a team of lawyers and consultants to help principals amass enough information to oust those who are deemed deficient and do not show signs of improvement.

There have been similar efforts across the country, as politicians and academic experts say that teachers are the most important element in improving student performance and closing the gap in achievement between white and minority students. School systems in Texas and Tennessee, for example, have used student performance and improvement as a tool to evaluate teachers.

New York City plans to generate reports for roughly 18,000 teachers — every math and English teacher in fourth through eighth grades.

Amy McIntosh, the Education Department’s chief talent officer, who helped develop the system, said that her team would continue to explore ways to monitor the effectiveness of the city’s nearly 60,000 other public school teachers, but that for now the state tests were the only data on which to reliably base evaluations of them.

The teacher data report balances the progress students make on state tests and their absences with factors that include whether they receive special-education services or qualify for free lunch, as well as the size, race and gender breakdown of the teacher’s class.

Using a complicated statistical formula, the report computes a “predicted gain” for each teacher’s class, then compares it to the students’ actual improvements on the test. The result is a snapshot analysis of how much the teacher contributed to student growth.

The reports classify each teacher as average, above average or below average in effectiveness with different categories of students, like those who score in the top third or the lowest third on the test, and those still learning English or enrolled in special-education programs. It also contains separate measurements on effectiveness in teaching boys and girls, though it does not distinguish performance by students’ race or income level. Teachers will also be given a percentile ranking indicating how their performance compares to those who teach similar students and to a citywide pool.

“When we have talked to teachers about this, there is real insight about the students,” Ms. McIntosh said. “They will say, ‘I didn’t realize I was teaching to the bottom,’ or, ‘I am really great with boys, and less so with girls.’ ”

Last year’s pilot program also attempted to measure how well a principal’s perception of teachers aligned with the student test score data. According to the Education Department, about 69 percent of the teachers whom principals rated “exceptional” were in the top half on the reports. And 73 percent of those whom principals called “fair, poor or very poor” were in the bottom half.

Frank Cimino, the principal of Public School 193 in Brooklyn, which participated in the pilot program, said he was still uncertain about how useful the reports were.

“I would like to make a comparison to see what it shows this year to what it showed last year,” he said. “I don’t think anything can replace getting into the classroom.”

Marjorie Stamberg Comments:

Now the District Reps are being asked to tell us that the joint Klein-Weingarten letter linking teacher performance to student test scores is some kind of victory for teachers! Weingarten insists it won't be used to deny tenure or for annual teaching rating. Not going to be used punitively?! This has about as much credibility as Treasury Secretary Paulson's assurances up until two weeks ago that the economy was fine. Can I interest you in a bridge that's up for sale?

The union should "just say no" to the whole idea of linking test scores to teacher performance. Instead, they buy ito it, with a caveat on how it supposedly "won't be used." But it's just plain WRONG, by all measures of pedagogy as well as basic union principles.

First off, what this will be used for is for teacher bashing--in the New York Post, Daily News, Times, and the rest of the mainstream media who for years have blamed teachers for the failures of a public education system run by people who are dead set opposed to public education.

The fact that Randi has a joint letter with Joel Klein on something like this speaks volumes about the union's failure to combat head-on the assault on public education and on teachers and students by these educational counter-reformers. This whole exercise is based on this battery of endless standardized tests which has grievously distorted public education, leading to the wholesale eliminatin of music and arts programs to slashing social studies, science and in a number of cases eliminating sports programs and recess.

The joint letter makes much of how providing the information about the performance of each student on standarized tests will suposedly help the teachers to improve his or her educational technique by knowning more about their students' progress or lack thereof. The fact of the matter is, the information on a student-by-student basis, on different area studies (ELA, math, etc) is already available to schools and teachers on ATS.

The only thing this program will do is provide a listing of such scores that will convey no new educational information and can only be used for "evaluating a teacher." The joint letter claims that this will not be used for determining tenure or annual ratings. This is a transparent fiction--the principle will sit there with this information staring them in the face and ignore it?

Furthermore, there's a long history of using what are intended as diagnostic tests for purposes of "evaluation and exclusion." At the City University, the old WAT test was supposed to be used to determine which areas an incoming student needed remedial help. But then in the late 1990s, the Giuliani regime through it's agent Herman Bedillo turned this into a prerequisite for graduation and was used to exclude students from graduating.

Here we have Unity Caucus once again greasing the skids for Bloomberg/Klein's union busting!

--Marjorie

Randi Weingarten and Joel Klein exchange letters on ATR's, Budget

September 24, 2008
Hon. Joel I. Klein
Chancellor
New York City Public Schools
Department of Education
52 Chambers Street
New York, NY 10007

Dear Chancellor Klein:

The latest effects of the Wall Street lending crisis has left us all with a deep sense of
uncertainty and unease, but it also presents us with an opportunity to stand together for
the children of this city. With families across the five boroughs already struggling, it is all
the more imperative that we do all we can to insulate our students and their classrooms
from this economic crisis and ensure that every student has a strong, safe and stable
learning environment.

As we navigate through this crisis, tough decisions obviously need to be made. As is our
practice, we have some ideas and proposals on how we mitigate some of the challenges
ahead without adversely affecting the classroom. Creative thinking and smart choices
protected schools from cuts earlier this year, and I strongly believe that we can duplicate
that success now.

In the spirit of partnership and collaboration, we urge you to adopt and implement the
following three measures:

1. An immediate hiring freeze at the central Department of Education, and at the school
and district level for any license areas where there are people in excess and available for
placement.

2. A redeployment of teachers and other excessed personnel in the Absent Teacher
Reserve (ATR) into vacancies as they arise.

3. Develop a program to recertify excessed personnel in additional license areas, so they
are available to fill vacancies as they arise.

The first two measures should help the Department of Education recognize immediate
cost savings, and the third recommendation would be a valuable investment in personnel
management.

We look forward to discussing these ideas and others in the days ahead.
Yours sincerely,

Randi Weingarten
Cc: Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler
Commissioner of Labor James F. Hanley
Deputy Chancellor Christopher Cerf



Klein responds
Dear Randi:

Thank you for your letter yesterday regarding the fiscal challenges facing the City and their impact on our schools.

I wholeheartedly agree that our priority should be to limit the impact of the budget reductions on classrooms and I welcome the opportunity to work with you and your team toward this end.

However, I want to reiterate that we will not alter our policy on forced placement of teachers. It makes sense to try to limit the significant and growing cost of unselected excessed teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve, but doing so by forcing these teachers into schools is not the answer. A return to this discredited practice, which harmed our schools for decades, would, once more, require schools to accept teachers regardless of whether principals and faculty believe they are the best candidates or good fits for positions.

At our announcement of the School-wide Performance Bonus awards last week, you and I both emphasized the critical need for teacher quality and effective collaboration among teachers and supervisors. You said, “We know, and I think there has become a real consensus in this City, that teacher quality and collaboration are real keys – pivotal keys – to turning around student achievement in schools.” Forced placement contradicts both of those goals. It would be far better to give excessed teachers a reasonable period of time to find a position before they are placed on unpaid leave. Such a policy would mitigate the cost while maintaining fairness and obviating the need for forced placement and all the negative repercussions a return to that system would bring.

I look forward to continuing our conversation on this critical issue and to receiving your input as we work to address our current budget situation.


Sincerely,

Joel I. Klein


FACT SHEET ON EXCESSED TEACHERS (from DOE)


Background




· Fact: Most Excessed Teachers Are Finding Jobs

o Only about 9% of the 2,742 teachers excessed in 2006 are still in excess. Well over 1,000 excesses – across all seniority levels –found regular teaching positions by applying for vacancies, interviewing with principals, and demonstrating that they were the best candidates for the positions. More than 14,000 positions across the city were filled since 2006.

o Of the 1418 teacher excessed in 2007, only 351 are still in excess after one year.

o Of the 2,039 teachers excessed in 2008, 758 are still in excess today.



· Fact: Excessed Teachers are Provided with Extensive Hiring Support

o The New Teacher Project provides excessed teachers with newsletters, workshops on resume writing and interviewing, one-on-one job-search assistance, bulletins with vacancy lists, job fairs across the City, and an on-line application system exclusively for excessed teachers.

o In the summer of 2008, TNTP sent bi-weekly newsletters to excessed staff with job fair information and job search tips, maintained a web site for excessed staff with job search tips, offered 15 skill-building workshops, answered 1,000 calls to a hotline set up for excessed teachers, and reached out by phone to excessed teachers who appeared to be inactive in their job searches.



· Fact: The Excessed Teacher Pool includes Junior and Senior Teachers, and Senior Excessed Teachers Have Been Hired at the Same Rate as Junior Teachers

o Excessed teachers who haven’t been hired are just as likely to be newer teachers as they are to be more experienced teachers.



Seniority of Excessed Teachers as of 9/5/2008

0 to 3 years 343 24.6%

4 to 6 years 245 17.6%

7 to 12 years 305 21.9%

13 to 19 years 262 18.8%

20+ years 240 17.2%

Total 1395 100.0%


o Excessed teachers across experience levels are equally likely to be hired to a position at another school:

· 35% of teachers excessed in 2006 with 0-3 years experience were hired by April 2008.

· 41% of teachers excessed in 2006 with 4-6 years experience were hired by April 2008.

· 47% of teachers excessed in 2006 with 7-12 years experience were hired by April 2008.

· 45% of teachers excessed in 2006 with 13-19 years experience were hired by April 2008.

· 38% of teachers excessed in 2006 with 20+ years experience were hired by April 2008.



o Another approximately 40% of excessed teachers are reabsorbed into the school from which they were excessed when positions opened up.


· Fact: The DOE Offers Schools a Subsidy for Hiring Senior Excessed Teachers

o The DOE pays the difference between a hired excessed teacher’s salary and a starting teacher’s salary (which could be as much as $55,000) for the first year, and half that difference for the second year, when a school hires a teacher who has been in excess for at least 6 months.



· Fact: Unselected Excessed Teachers Applied to Fewer Jobs

o Of the 235 unselected teachers excessed in 2006, about half did not apply for any teaching vacancies through the open market system, and they attended fewer hiring fairs.

o Of the 351 unselected teachers excessed in 2007, 62% did not apply for any teaching vacancies through the open market system in 2007 and 75% of these same teachers did not apply for any teaching vacancies through the open market system in 2008.

o Of the 758 unselected teachers excessed in 2008, half did not apply for any teaching vacancies through the open market system.

o During 2007 and 2008, more than 4,500 teachers were hired by schools through the open market system.



· Fact: Unselected Excessed Teachers Are More Likely to Have a History of Unsatisfactory Performance

o As of December 2007, nearly 15% of unselected excessed teachers had been rated unsatisfactory by their principal in the past 10 years, compared to only 5% of selected excessed teachers.

o As of December 2006, 20% of unselected excessed teachers with 13 or more years’ experience had prior unsatisfactory ratings compared with 7% of more junior teachers

o Excessed teachers who have been rated unsatisfactory by a principal at least once were hired at less than half the rate as excessed teachers who had never been rated unsatisfactory between December 2006 and September 2007.

o 7% of teachers excessed in 2008 who have not yet been hired by a school had previously been rated unsatisfactory, compared to 2% of teachers excessed in 2008 who have been hired.

o Approximately 1.8% of all teachers overall were rated unsatisfactory last school year.


· Fact: The Cost of Excessed Teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve for a Year or More is Substantial and Growing

o The cost in salaries and benefits for the 635 unselected teachers excessed in 2006 and 2007—who have been in the excess pool for a year or longer—could be as much as $60 million in this fiscal year.

Obama at AFT, Weingarten Takes Power

Obama Tells Teachers Union He Opposes Vouchers

Weingarten Will Take Helm of AFT

By ELIZABETH GREEN, Staff Reporter of the Sun | July 14, 2008
http://www.nysun.com/new-york/obama-tells-teachers-union-he-opposes-vouchers/81801/

Senator Obama is saying decisively that he does not support private school vouchers, while sticking with his support for incentive pay for teachers based on their students' performance.

Mr. Obama made the remarks yesterday in a telecast speech to the American Federation of Teachers' national convention in Chicago after the union voted overwhelmingly to endorse his presidential bid.

The convention will also be the site today of the long-anticipated accession of the New York City union president, Randi Weingarten, to the presidency of the AFT, the national branch of the local United Federation of Teachers. Ms. Weingarten, who was the only candidate nominated for the national job after the former president announced he would retire, is planning to hold on to her position as UFT president while she steers the national union.

Today will mark her first day as president of both unions. It will be closely watched, both for any sign that Ms. Weingarten might be taking her eye off the ball in New York, where she is a formidable figure both on education policy and in state and city politics, and for signals of what role Ms. Weingarten will play on the national stage.

Ms. Weingarten's parents have traveled to Chicago to watch the speech she will deliver this morning.

Both Mr. Obama and Ms. Weingarten have aroused a mix of excitement from those who push for extensive change in public schools and skepticism from traditional union members who oppose the so-called reform policies, such as charter schools and plans to tie teacher pay to student test scores.

In February, Mr. Obama set off concern among some union members when he told a Milwaukee newspaper's editorial board that he was open to supporting private school vouchers if research showed they work.

His campaign quickly issued a statement that said, "Senator Obama has always been a critic of vouchers," and Mr. Obama echoed that sentiment yesterday, saying that while he supports charter schools, he opposes private school vouchers.

"We need to focus on fixing and improving our public schools; not throwing our hands up and walking away from them," he said.

Mr. Obama also raised concerns when he endorsed the idea of "merit pay" at a convention last year for the other national teachers union, the National Education Association.

In his address to the NEA this year, he acknowledged that the idea "wasn't necessarily the most popular part of my speech last year," but vowed to stand by it, eliciting some boos.

He also stood by the idea in his speech to the AFT convention yesterday, which he made via satellite from San Diego.

"When our educators succeed, I won't just talk about how great they are; I will reward them for it," Mr. Obama said. He listed several cases in which districts could give teachers a salary increase, including if they serve as mentors; if they learn new skills, and if they "consistently excel in the classroom."

Those at the AFT convention said that no boos followed the remarks, though some union members later said they were concerned by them.

"That was the one statement that raised our eyebrows," the president of the AFT's Los Angeles chapter, A.J. Duffy, said yesterday. "Our question is what does that mean, 'who consistently do well in classrooms,' and based upon whose guidelines? Is it a principal, a test score? We're going to continue to have dialogue with him."

Other AFT members said they were offended that Mr. Obama did not make his speech live in Chicago, his hometown. In a change from the practice of some previous Democratic presidential candidates, Mr. Obama also delivered his remarks to the NEA via satellite.

The executive director of the lobbying group Democrats for Education Reform, Joseph Williams, characterized that decision as a "Velvet Snub" indicative of Mr. Obama's willingness not to become owned by special interest groups, addressing them as if across a protective velvet rope.

In her tenure as New York City union president, Ms. Weingarten's work starting two charter schools and her collaboration with the Bloomberg administration on a performance-based pay plan have won her a similar mix of skeptics and boosters.

Mr. Duffy said some Los Angeles teachers are concerned about Ms. Weingarten, though he supports her.

A New York City teacher who is attending the Chicago convention and is a member of a group that has opposed some of Ms. Weingarten's ideas, Lisa North, said that in Chicago she is hearing from many union members across the country who are skeptical about policies such as charter schools.

"There are AFT members that would like to see the AFT helping organize teachers to fight the privatization, the high-stakes testing, and No Child Left Behind," Ms. North said.

Reg Weaver, the president of the NEA, which is seen as more stringent than the AFT in its opposition to such policies, would not say whether there are any differences between his positions and Ms. Weingarten's.

He added: "I think she's good, has been good, and will be great."

Weingarten: New Vision for Schools Proposes Broad Role

Sam Anderson writes to ICOPE listserve:

NOTE: This is hype. Randi Weingarten and her coterie are not really going to help redesign the public school system into a system of schools-as-communit y-centers. They are latching onto the national anger and frustration that parents, educators and students experience under the present hi stakes testing/scripted learning system that has dissed not only parents and students, but educators also.

She is embracing bits and pieces of the works of progressive educators and organizations that are dedicated to TOTAL transformation of the education system based on Human Rights and antiracism. This is a classic move that liberal leaders make to attempt to stay in good faith with their handlers and their rank and file.

Let's not get distracted and diverted by this liberal bourgeois hype that is really about keeping the power over schools in the hands of those who presently rule and their army of pseudo-intellectual lieutenants.

July 14, 2008

New Vision for Schools Proposes Broad Role

By SAM DILLON

Randi Weingarten, the New Yorker who is rising to become president of the American Federation of Teachers, says she wants to replace President Bush’s focus on standardized testing with a vision of public schools as community centers that help poor students succeed by offering not only solid classroom lessons but also medical and other services.

Ms. Weingarten, 50, is running unopposed for the presidency of the national teachers union, whose delegates at an annual convention in Chicago are expected to elect her Monday. In a speech prepared for delivery after the vote, Ms. Weingarten criticizes No Child Left Behind, President Bush’s signature domestic initiative, which is defended staunchly by Margaret Spellings, the secretary of education.

Ms. Weingarten, saying the law “is too badly broken to be fixed,” lays out a “new vision of schools for the 21st century.”

“Can you imagine a federal law that promoted community schools — schools that serve the neediest children by bringing together under one roof all the services and activities they and their families need?” Ms. Weingarten is expected to ask in the speech, a copy of which was provided by the union to The New York Times.

“Imagine schools that are open all day and offer after-school and evening recreational activities, child care and preschool, tutoring and homework assistance,” the speech reads. “Schools that include dental, medical and counseling clinics.”

By laying out that expansive vision of government’s role in the public schools, Ms. Weingarten wades into a fierce debate among Democrats seeking to influence the educational program of Senator Barack Obama, their party’s presumptive presidential nominee. In an interview last week, she said the ideas in the speech amounted to “what I’d like to see in a new federal education law.”

In her 10-year tenure as president of the United Federation of Teachers, which represents New York City teachers, Ms. Weingarten has defended teachers’ economic interests, raising her members’ salaries by 43 percent in the last five years. But she has also proved willing to accommodate the city’s ideas on improving schools. She has embraced charter schools, and last year — even as teachers unions elsewhere were opposing performance pay plans — negotiated an arrangement in New York that gives bonuses to teachers in schools whose poor children show broad gains in test scores.

With her move to the presidency of the national union, with 1.4 million members, Ms. Weingarten will have a broader platform from which to influence the nation’s education debates. Although the federation is smaller than the country’s other teachers union, the National Education Association, with its 3.2 million members, A.F.T. presidents have had an equal or larger political profile because presidential tenures in the bigger union are restricted by term limits.

Two previous presidents of the United Federation of Teachers, Albert Shanker and Sandra Feldman, also rose to lead the A.F.T.

“My sense is that Randi Weingarten is continuing Al Shanker’s tradition, clearly standing up for the interests of teachers but also trying to engage in thoughtful education reform that will be good for students,” said Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation whose biography of Mr. Shanker, “Tough Liberal,” was published this year.

On Sunday, Mr. Obama spoke to the convention by satellite feed from California, and he mixed criticism of the No Child law with praise for teachers’ contributions and an exhortation to Americans to meet the nation’s responsibility to educate all children. He quoted a young Chicago teacher as telling him that she had been annoyed by a tendency “to explain away the shortcomings and failures of our education system by saying, ‘These kids can’t learn.’ ”

“These children are our children,” Mr. Obama said. “It’s time we understood that their education is our responsibility.

“I am running for president to guarantee that all of our children have the best possible chance in life,” he said, “and I am tired of hearing you, the teachers who work so hard, blamed for our problems.”

Convention delegates gave Mr. Obama a standing ovation.

Ms. Weingarten takes national office with robust support of the rank and file. “The last eight years of the Republican presidency have really been a threat to the middle class and to public education,” said William Gallagher, a high school social studies teacher in Philadelphia for 33 years. Ms Weingarten, he said, would “work hard to make sure the new president, whoever he is, puts education on the forefront of issues in this country.”

In the speech Ms. Weingarten is to deliver Monday, she praises the ideas of a group of Democrats led by Tom Payzant, the former schools superintendent in Boston, who have argued that schools alone cannot close achievement gaps rooted in larger economic inequalities, and that “broader, bolder” measures are needed, like publicly financed early childhood education and health services for the poor.

Another group, headed by the Rev. Al Sharpton and Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein of New York, issued a manifesto last month urging the nation to redouble its efforts to close the achievement gap separating poor students from affluent ones and blaming “teachers’ contracts” for keeping ineffective teachers in classrooms.

Of the vision of Mr. Payzant’s group, Ms. Weingarten’s speech says, “Sisters and brothers, this is an idea whose time has come.

“Imagine if schools had the educational resources children need to thrive, like smaller classes and individualized instruction, plentiful, up-to-date materials and technology anchored to that rich curriculum, decent facilities, an early start for toddlers and a nurturing atmosphere,” she says.

Ms. Weingarten, whose mother was a teacher in Nyack, N.Y., is a lawyer who was union counsel during the 1980s and 1990s. In the last decade, Ms. Weingarten taught high school history for six years in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn.

In the interview, she said: “We all have to work tenaciously to eliminate the achievement gap and to turn around low-performing schools. But the folks who believe that this can all be done on teachers’ shoulders, which is what No Child tries to do, are doing a huge disservice to America.”

------------ --------- --------- ---------
s. e. anderson is author of "The Black Holocaust for Beginners"
Social Activism is not a hobby: it's a Lifestyle lasting a Lifetime
http://blackeducato r.blogspot. com
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Weingarten on Charlie Rose (transcript)

CHARLIE ROSE: Tonight we continue our series of conversations with leaders in the field of education. Our guest is Randi Weingarten. She is president of New York City`s largest teachers union, the United Federation of Teachers.

She has worked for higher pay and better training during the 10 years she has led the union. She clashed with Mayor Bloomberg over issues such as tenure and standardized testing. She`s announced her candidacy for the presidency of the National Teachers Union, the American Federation of Teachers. She`s expected to win and perhaps will be the only candidate.

I`m pleased to have her at this table to talk about a subject that needs a lot of discussion, and that she comes to with considerable experience and insight.

Welcome.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: It`s great to be here. Thank you.

CHARLIE ROSE: Thank you very much.

Now, you`re going to be the head of the American Federation of Teachers, we assume.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Well, there`s -- look, I always am very reverent and respectful about due process. And we have an election at our convention, but I`ve gotten huge amount of support around the country, and so that`s why on Friday I said -- or that`s why a couple weeks ago I said I`m going to run.

CHARLIE ROSE: Is anybody else going to run?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: At this moment in time, I don`t think so. But who knows?

CHARLIE ROSE: Yes, all right.

You`ve been -- you come to the teachers union from the law.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Correct.

CHARLIE ROSE: Negotiator.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Correct.

CHARLIE ROSE: But also have been a teacher.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Correct.

CHARLIE ROSE: Have been...

RANDI WEINGARTEN: And had a mother actually who was a teacher for 29.5 years. And what was very funny about both my sister and my stories, is that my sister went into medicine first. I went into law first.

CHARLIE ROSE: Yes.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Because we watched out my mother worked, and we thought that teachers worked all the time. Our living room table -- my mother used to always work on the living room table. Unless we were having company, the living room table was festooned with paper at all times.

CHARLIE ROSE: Tell me what you think of the state of American public education is K-12.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: There`s lots and lots of places we are doing a really good job, and there`s a bunch of really important places where we need to do huge improvement.

CHARLIE ROSE: Doing a good job as defined as teaching and learning going on so that young people are better equipped to continue a lifetime of learning?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Well, actually I would define it -- I would actually define it a little bit differently. I would define it as -- let me take a step back.

America is one of the only places in the world, the universe, I would say, where we actually have two values. A value of universal access and universal attainment, where we believe that we have an obligation to help all kids not only dream their dreams, but to fulfill them. And so what that means in terms of high school education is that when a child graduates from high school, he or she should be ready and prepared to go to college and/or ready and prepared to get a job where he or she can support his or her family.

And so what happens in this country, particularly now with globalization, with all the competition from all -- from all over, is that there is huge pressure on school systems across the country to help all kids get to that level of achievement and attainment in high school. And what we`ve just seen is that in a lot of urban areas, we are not able to do that. And ultimately, we have to work at it because we`re never going to be happy -- educators will never be happy unless we have 100 percent attainment.

So even when you look at other governmental services, other types of things, people always get up and they`re very pleased when they see a downward trend in crime. For us, an upward trend in education is not sufficient. The only thing that will make us feel like we`ve done our jobs is when we help all kids.

That`s why it`s so hard, because you`ll see a lot of suburban systems that do a terrific job, and you see a lot of urban systems where you see graduation rates hovering at 40, 50, even 60 percent. Until we have that graduation rate at 100 percent, no one in education is going to be happy.

CHARLIE ROSE: So why is it such a variance between urban and suburban?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: A lot of the variance are things that are outside of our control, but education -- we try to use education to trump that. So education is one of those few things that actually trumps demography. And ultimately, that`s part of what makes it so hard, because this is what I often say -- one of the inputs -- I hate frankly using words like "inputs" and "outputs," but I know business folk use them.

What can we bring -- what can we bring to the table? What we bring to the table as educators, or as an education system, is the system should have great teachers. That`s the single most important factor. Good principals who can organize.

And what I`ve learned, Charlie, more and more, particularly over these last 10 years, is that there are other things that are important, such as if we can have parental involvement, that`s huge and terrific, but we have an obligation to kids even if we don`t have that. If we can lower class size so we can differentiate instruction, that`s huge. If we can make sure that the schools are safe, obviously that`s huge.

But after qualified teachers and good principals, the most important factor is how we work together, principals and teachers alike in schools, because there`s hundreds of decisions we make every day. And if people are not working together to try to build off each other, we`re not going to be successful in schools.

CHARLIE ROSE: And how are principals and teachers working together in New York City?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: You know, some of -- there are a lot of them these days that are working very well together. There are some of them that are not working well together at all.

And one of the things that has happened with the last reorganization, interestingly enough, is that the schools feel like they`re such islands that I`ve actually seen a lot more working together this year than we had beforehand. And I think until the last month or so -- and I don`t quite understand why we`re in, you know, yet another pitch battle -- but until the last month or so, I give the mayor a lot of credit, because he spent the last couple of years saying that it`s really important to work together. And he and I spent a lot of time doing things together to try to create that tone.

CHARLIE ROSE: And he also said that he wanted to make education a priority for his first term and second term.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Correct.

CHARLIE ROSE: High on his priority. And he did things that you felt very good about.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Correct.

CHARLIE ROSE: You know, and you complemented him because he made education a priority.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Correct.

CHARLIE ROSE: Here`s what he said about teachers unions, which you represent. Here it is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHARLIE ROSE: Teachers unions, part of the problem or the solution?

MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG (I), NEW YORK: I think it`s a mixed bag. We have over the last six years raised teacher salaries 43 percent. We`ve instituted merit pay. We`ve gotten rid of a lot of the seniority rules.

The teachers are teaching longer. And they`re doing a better job.

On the other hand, the teachers union last week convinced the legislature in the dead of night to insert in the middle of a budget bill, where this had nothing to do with budgets, a law that says in New York State we can`t use teachers` ability to teach as a measure deciding whether or not to give them tenure. It`s just unconscionable that this was pushed through our Albany legislature.

So in that case they were -- couldn`t have been more on the wrong side. Generally, however, we have had good relations, and they have been a force -- a positive force for change.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHARLIE ROSE: So there you go. Let`s talk about the teachers and tests. It`s at the core of every conversation you ever have about teachers.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Correct. Actually...

CHARLIE ROSE: How do you measure their ability in terms of how much you pay them, in terms of tenure, in terms of merit pay, tests?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: First off, one of the things I would just -- look, I understand that the mayor is angry...

CHARLIE ROSE: About this thing.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: ... about this thing, because they did something that they ought not to have done. This issue had been resolved a year ago in April.

Having said that...

CHARLIE ROSE: Who`s they?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Who is they?

CHARLIE ROSE: Yes.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: The mayor and the chancellor. Governor Spitzer resolved this issue last April about how we -- because last April, truth be told, we actually all together made the tenure process, which is simply a due -- after three years -- teachers have probation for three years. After three years, tenure means they can`t get fired without having due process. That`s all it means.

But let me go directly to this question, which is how do you evaluate teachers? And ultimately where the mayor is really wrong, and virtually every educator would say that to him, is that standardized tests were never intended as a measure of good teachers, good teaching, or how teachers teach. And every expert in the country, including the mayor`s own experts, will tell you this.

In fact, even the experts will say that if it`s used, it should be used as a little factor. But there`s a bunch of things, Charlie -- and this is where we agree, not disagree -- there`s a bunch of things that you can use and should use in order to make sure that we`re getting great teachers and keeping great teachers and evaluating teachers in terms of how they teach.

CHARLIE ROSE: I didn`t invite you here to compare you with the mayor, but you worked in this system, and the mayor is in charge of this system, and the chancellor is his chief executive officer as chancellor to do something about the system. And I want to explore philosophies.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Sure.

CHARLIE ROSE: But you`re saying that all educators you know, all that advise the mayor, don`t believe that standardized tests are a way to test, as used as a measurement for teachers?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: There is no one who thinks right now that you can use standardized tests in this state to isolate the effectiveness of an individual teacher. And that`s why, frankly, everyone else in the state, including the school boards, the state school boards, is hailing the compromise that the governor and legislature came up with this year, because they frontally attacked this issue and said, let`s see, let`s give it a real independent look to see if you can use -- these are call value- added -- see if you can use these value-added metrics to actually evaluate teachers.

And they`re going to form a study commission, not in the back room of Tweed (ph), but something very transparent that the legislature and the governor does. So let`s look at it. Let`s see if it can be -- let`s see if it actually really works.

But right now there`s not an economist or an educator, even people we fight with -- even if you ask the chancellor, can you actually right now, using current metrics, can you isolate the effectiveness of an individual teacher? Their answer would be no.

CHARLIE ROSE: Two questions about this. Number one, everybody wants to see teachers paid more, especially you. Agreed or not?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Yes.

CHARLIE ROSE: That`s true.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Right.

CHARLIE ROSE: And most people believe that the best way to get maximum performance from students is great teaching. Correct? Great teaching is the crucial ingredient in terms of students learning and doing well.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Right.

CHARLIE ROSE: Yes, or not? Tell me.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: No. It`s -- I`m trying to...

CHARLIE ROSE: I`m trying to put the emphasis on teachers...

RANDI WEINGARTEN: You`re absolutely right. You`re absolutely right.

CHARLIE ROSE: ... and how crucial they are in a child getting an education.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Right.

CHARLIE ROSE: And how do you and should you evaluate between one teacher and another, and should that be a means of saying who gets paid more or less, who gets fired or not?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: There`s a bunch of things that go into evaluating of teachers. And anyone who -- anybody who`s done any of this research on student testing...

CHARLIE ROSE: Right.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: ... will tell you that it is not an OK measurement or a fair and accurate measurement for teachers.

CHARLIE ROSE: You cannot design a test for kids that will measure the ability, the merit of the teacher? Is that it?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: It is -- if you can design it, it hasn`t been designed yet.

CHARLIE ROSE: So how do you -- go ahead.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: So there`s -- but there`s lots of other -- but that`s not where the argument should end, because what we`re all in this for wanting that same purpose. The real issue becomes, how -- what is an accurate and fair way of evaluating teachers?

CHARLIE ROSE: And you believe what is?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: You have several ways. First off, supervisory observations and evaluations are critical. Secondly, we have in New York City now...

CHARLIE ROSE: Supervisory by principals, by whom?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Principals.

CHARLIE ROSE: OK.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: And right now in terms of New York City, there`s three years for tenure, there`s three years of evaluations. And supervisors evaluate people pretty much two, three, four times a year in terms of going in (INAUDIBLE).

CHARLIE ROSE: Should teachers be fired if they`re not doing a good job?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Teachers -- I believe that teachers who are not cutting it should have a due process procedure.

CHARLIE ROSE: Let`s assume due process. But should they be fired if they`re doing a good job?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: I do not think the school system should have to have incompetent teachers, absolutely right. And ultimately, what we`ve done in terms of this, Charlie, is last year -- in terms of 2006 -- we actually did something called a peer intervention plus process.

The union itself offered to police our own profession, because fair and reasonable and objective kind of evaluation measurements, it`s really important to get to a place where everybody agrees to what those measurements are and how to do it. But we`ve been able to do it in this city, and we`ve been able to do it in other places around the nation as well.

And one of the things that we tried to do, and all of us very proudly did this in 2006, we said, let`s have a peer review process. So that if a supervisor says a person isn`t cutting, even if the person has tenure, then what we`re going to do is bring somebody independent in to see, and then...

CHARLIE ROSE: Well, who would that independent person be? I mean...

RANDI WEINGARTEN: We`ve agreed to -- we`ve agreed to it, it`s being implemented in the city school system right now.

CHARLIE ROSE: How many...

RANDI WEINGARTEN: And then that person actually goes and testifies at the due process hearing. And so ultimately there is no one that teachers themselves don`t want to be teaching side by side with somebody incompetent.

CHARLIE ROSE: I just want to make it clear that by trying to understand exactly what you believe, because we`ve had lots of politicians, everybody else in here, and you`re on the firing line in terms of representing teachers, by asking these questions I`m trying to understand exactly how you see it.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Right. I -- I`m sorry.

CHARLIE ROSE: Let me ask this question. How many tenured teachers are there in New York City?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Right now there`s about 50-some-odd-thousand tenured teachers. Most of the teachers in the city of New York -- most of the teachers in the city of New York -- one of the myths -- the other myths that I`d like to debunk is that the tenure process starts day one. It doesn`t start at the end of three years.

CHARLIE ROSE: Right.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: And basically over 30, 35 percent of our teachers either get fired or quit before they`re even eligible for that three-year period of time.

CHARLIE ROSE: Is this number corrector not? Out of 5 55,000 tenured teachers, last year only 10 were fired?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: That -- there are over -- Charlie, there are over 800 teachers who are brought up on charges sitting in what is called rubber rooms right now that the school system...

CHARLIE ROSE: Rubber rooms?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Yes. That`s what they call them. It`s horrible. It`s really horrible.

CHARLIE ROSE: It is. That really is.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: And it`s a really terrible way to treat people.

CHARLIE ROSE: Poor use of language, isn`t it?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Right. But that`s what they`re called because that`s how -- I mean, it`s a terrible situation.

CHARLIE ROSE: It sounds like a room where you put somebody where they won`t hurt themselves.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Right. There are over 800 people who the school system has removed for one reason or another that they have a right to bring charges on and whatever. So when they say 10 people, or this or that, I don`t know what they`re talking about. They have a procedure...

CHARLIE ROSE: OK. But how many people...

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Right.

CHARLIE ROSE: But is it true or not true that 10 people were fired last year? I mean, that`s an easy question.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: No. It`s far more than 10 people.

CHARLIE ROSE: Were fired.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: There`s far more than 10 people who were fired.

CHARLIE ROSE: Not brought up on charges. Fired.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Far more than 10 people who were fired last year.

CHARLIE ROSE: So that number is bandied about. I mean, this is part of what you`re trying to do, is not...

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Right. The number is bandied about because the number -- this is where -- what happens is that even in the peer intervention process that the union has done since -- actually which we did with Mayor Ed Koch since the middle of the 1980s -- we actually see over 200, 300 teachers a year, and teachers who principals or themselves have said they are floundering, really in danger of being fired. And what we`ve done is we`ve actually helped about 60 percent of them become satisfactory teachers again, and the rest of them we`ve counseled out of the profession.

So the processes that I`m talking about, no one wants -- this is what`s so troubling to me about this whole argument. You have to -- in terms of teaching, teaching takes so much kind of effort to do, and there`s so much that`s outside of our control. Everybody wants to be a great teacher. And there`s a lot of things that we can bring to the table to make that happen. But if we had a joint agreement, whether it`s this management, or whether it`s the federal government, or whatnot, in No Child Left Behind, about what constitutes good teaching and how you can actually do an evaluation process that people bought into, you would have huge public support in terms of education.

CHARLIE ROSE: So is this a failure of creativity?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: It`s -- frankly, a lot of this in terms of the evaluation, the city school system has huge power right now to fire virtually anybody in the first three years of service. And so...

CHARLIE ROSE: Before they get tenure?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: I mean, the only -- the difference between the first three years of service and after tenure is that you have a hearing. That`s really the only difference. But they have a lot of power. And ultimately what happens is that...

CHARLIE ROSE: They have a lot of power meaning the school system?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: The school system could fire somebody like this in the first three years of service. And so when the mayor says that he wants to tie tenure or the acquisition of tenure to test scores, that has never been used for this purpose. I`m saying to myself, what happened to the principals institute, what happened to evaluations and things like that?

CHARLIE ROSE: Here`s another person who was on this program. We`ve had Chancellor Klein on here, but also Jeffrey Kennedy (ph). Here is what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The teachers unions are really designed to make sure that teachers, not just new teachers, but teachers don`t have to work longer hours, they don`t have to be held accountable. You can`t fire them very easily. Once they get tenure, that`s it.

They`re not paid by performance. It`s the one...

CHARLIE ROSE: No merit pay?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No merit pay.

CHARLIE ROSE: No inducements to be better?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There`s no inducements to be better. In fact -- in fact, over time what you begin to see is that the people who really want to be better, the system really prevents that from being recognized in any way whatsoever.

So it`s the only place in America that I know no matter how good or lousy I am, I can make the same thing that you make. If you`re great and I`m lousy, we both get the same thing.

CHARLIE ROSE: Or reverse.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And year after year after year. And that system doesn`t work any place else in America.

Now, people think I`m against unions. I am not. I am not against unions.

And people think -- you know, I talked to Randi Weingarten, and I consider her a friend, and she said, "Jeff (ph), you`re beating up on us." Let me make it clear. I think teaching is one of the toughest things to do for real -- to do it well in the world, and I think our teachers are woefully underpaid.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHARLIE ROSE: What do you agree with and what do you disagree with?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: The folks who quickly give a bromide about what teachers should do and shouldn`t do, and what unions should do and shouldn`t do, I often just simply say to them, "I want you to teach one period a week, every week. Teach with me."

I`d love to go back to teaching. I loved it. Clara Barton was one my favorite teaching jobs ever.

Just go and teach one period a week before you start talking about what teachers do or don`t do, or teacher unions do or don`t do. In New York City, teachers work incredibly hard. Most teachers put in not just what they do in class, but hours and hours and hours a day. I think the last survey we took, teachers work an average of 10 hours a day.

I told you the story about my mother...

CHARLIE ROSE: Then why -- there`s a movement to extend the day as well as eliminate the summer recess.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: There`s a movement to -- because there`s a movement -- there`s a constant movement to try to figure out how we help all kids.

CHARLIE ROSE: Right.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: And so there`s a couple of ways of doing this.

What`s interesting is this -- look, in New York City, we`ve extended the time about 30 minutes a day. So what Jeffrey (ph) is saying about teachers don`t want to work, teachers work hugely hard.

And the second thing, but the thing I really question, strong unions, Charlie, allow teachers to take risks. And in the city we`ve done school- based -- I wouldn`t -- it`s not merit pay. We`ve done school-based bonuses, we`ve done differentiated pay by having lead teachers. We`ve extended time. We did this chancellor`s district, which was actually the single most important reform we`ve ever done.

I run two charter schools. So the demagoguery about how bad unions are...

CHARLIE ROSE: You run two charter schools in which all the teachers are unionized?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Of course.

CHARLIE ROSE: Right.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: But the issue here is, how do you help every child? So you can actually add more time, but -- or you could do things such as reduce class size so there`s more of a connection between teacher and child.

CHARLIE ROSE: It would also require hiring more teachers.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: It will -- either way is going to require more teacher contact time. When you are a high school teacher, for example, frankly, a high school teacher has a 150 kids a day or 170 children a day. And every high school teacher I know, and every elementary and middle school teacher I know, goes home with a stack of papers every single day.

CHARLIE ROSE: Let me...

RANDI WEINGARTEN: So this kind of nonsense about we`re not accountable, we`re not -- you know we don`t care about kids, it`s just -- it`s so disconcerting to teachers and to their union.

Let me just say one more thing. Why is it in the United States of America that one of the only industries that has such union density is teachers? The reason that teachers still have such union density, are so well-organized, is because they are powerless.

Everything is thrown at them. And ultimately what they do is they ask for unionization...

CHARLIE ROSE: Why are they powerless?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Because what happens is that we have the fad of the month, we have the reform of the year. And what happens is, all they want to do is they want to teach kids.

CHARLIE ROSE: But there is this perception...

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Right.

CHARLIE ROSE: ... that American K-12 education o f young people is not working, and could be a lot better. And the perception is -- and I want you to deal with it -- is that part of the problem is accountability, especially with teachers.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: And then -- and this is where -- then I say to folks...

CHARLIE ROSE: Here`s the words they use, accountability of teachers, the capacity to measure performance. And the capacity to pay for superb math teachers or superb science teachers, to pay them more to bring them in.

What`s wrong with that?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: But what happens with schools is that schools are communities. So what we did in New York this year is we did a pay-for- performance process, but we made it school-based. And just in October when we did that -- meaning the whole school, because what happens is...

CHARLIE ROSE: Meaning what, whole school? Meaning that it`s OK to pay more if you pay everybody more?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: What we did is we made it a whole school-based program, yes, and even then...

CHARLIE ROSE: So even though you just wanted to bring in more science and math teachers and pay them more, that`s not OK, you have to pay everybody more?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: What I`m saying is that when you`re talking about school-based performance, you`re looking at the entire school. When you look at a school, take an elementary school. An elementary schoolteacher teaches all those subjects. In a junior high school, a child has to learn -- if you want to have a well-rounded education, a child has to have art and music and all of that.

CHARLIE ROSE: Right.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: The issue -- and frankly, if a child is engaged in art and music, a child is going to do a lot better in math or in English. But the problem is this -- there are certain business concepts that are terrific in terms of schooling and certain that are not. So take what we just did. We just did a big report about accountability.

CHARLIE ROSE: Right.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: And said there should be four pillars of accountability, there`s various ways of how to do this.

CHARLIE ROSE: Right.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: But it doesn`t actually matter which reforms you`re talking about and which you`re not. The real issue becomes, in terms of schooling, how do we help engage individuals? And teachers do not work alone. And ultimately, we build on what each other does, and schools are far more communities than they are just individual actors.

CHARLIE ROSE: When you look at No Child Left Behind, good idea, bad idea? A good idea not funded? What`s your evaluation?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: See, this is -- I`m so glad you raise this. No Child Left Behind, seven years of the theory that Chancellor Klein is propounding -- just focus on accountability, just focus on test scores.

CHARLIE ROSE: Right. And if a school doesn`t do well over a certain period of time, you shut it down?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Close it. Right.

CHARLIE ROSE: Is that a bad idea?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: So, we`ve closed and redesigned so many schools in New York City, some of them have done better after they`ve been closed and redesigned, some of them have not. I actually prefer to help it first, but, no, not a bad idea.

(CROSSTALK)

CHARLIE ROSE: ... between Chancellor Klein and Mayor Bloomberg, can you? I mean, they have the same policy. They agree on the same things. And there`s no...

RANDI WEINGARTEN: I`m saying that for the last seven years, all across America had No Child Left Behind. Has it significantly helped in terms of kids? I would argue no.

Things that we had done beforehand, like the chancellor`s district with Chancellor Crew (ph), where we were routinely helping schools get off the bad school list within two years, I felt were better reforms. We`ve had -- so what you start with, some very good idea behind No Child Left Behind. Have high standards, and then you see if you`ve gotten to those high standards.

CHARLIE ROSE: Another problem they had is people began to worry that they were gaming the standards.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: And they have. But you just got to my point, which is what happens is, when everything is about measurement, which is what`s happening, people game it in all sorts of different ways. So you have states -- New York State has kept its standards really high. You have other states that have not.

Ultimately, even when you look at union versus non-union, the states that have some of the highest union density is some of the highest performers for kids. The right to work states, states like, you know, where you have no unions, the kids are not doing any better. In some ways they`re doing much worse.

What I would argue is, I`m not saying that union has been perfect, and I`m not saying I`ve been perfect or our union has been perfect, but the real -- what unions can do, and what the law, the federal law, should do, is it should enable people to take risks so they`re taking risks on behalf of kids.

CHARLIE ROSE: What`s a risk?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Meaning like what we did. We opened two charter schools. We said, look, we think we know enough about education, about teacher voice, and about professional development and about educating kids. Let us try. And our schools are doing just as good if not better.

CHARLIE ROSE: Explain this for somebody who doesn`t know, what are charter schools?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: A charter school is a publicly-funded the school outside of the public school system.

CHARLIE ROSE: The public system, right.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: But, you know, so...

CHARLIE ROSE: So they set their own...

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Right.

CHARLIE ROSE: ... standards and rules and...

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Well, they don`t set their own standards. The standards are set by the state government or the federal government or whatnot. But even at our charter schools, our teachers and our school leaders are so focused on the test scores, as opposed to focusing on how kids learn.

CHARLIE ROSE: OK.

Vouchers, good idea or bad idea?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: I think that vouchers...

CHARLIE ROSE: Vouchers -- explain that, where they get certain parents money to send their kids to certain schools.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Right. You give parents -- certain parents some public funds to send their kids to private schools.

The problem with vouchers has been that they have siphoned off money exactly where they shouldn`t be siphoned off. Forget for a second about the religious issues or the First Amendment issues. And the one experiment that`s going on for a really long time in Milwaukee has shown that they haven`t worked. So what you have is that all of these competition and choice experiments that have gone in this system for a while, have not worked the way people wanted them to.

CHARLIE ROSE: OK. Let me just understand this. You agree with incentives.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: I agree with incentives that are fair.

CHARLIE ROSE: Now, in some cases, fair just to you means make it schoolwide, not individual -- teacherwide.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Some schoolwide, some individual teachers, as long as teachers really can do it. So, for example, lead teacher, people who -- we did an incentive to create a career ladder, where great teachers would stay in classrooms, make more money, and mentor other teachers. It`s called the lead teacher program.

CHARLIE ROSE: If you could...

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Getting people to hard-to-staff schools. That`s an incentive.

CHARLIE ROSE: If you had a magic wand, what would be the thing that you would instantly do as your contribution to, you know, the New York City school system, because that`s what you`re leaving if you become head of the American Federation of Teachers.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: First, if I had a magic wand I would try to instill a sense that schools have to be able to be a big tent where we listen to what parents need and what teachers need to do a good job. So that piece, that collaboration piece that I talked about before, more and more and more I see that as the most important factor of helping kids learn.

Number two, do everything we can to both recruit, retain and support great teachers, because the more important problem we have is the number of great teachers who leave than the issue of incompetent teachers.

And number three, I would do as much as we could to support getting good principals.

Number four and five, I`d do a lot about trying to get -- focus on safety for kids, including guidance services and doing some stuff with class sizes.

CHARLIE ROSE: But here`s what`s interesting. The essence of what you just said was that I would do everything I can to get good teachers and support them, and get good principals and support them. That was the core of what you would leave.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Exactly right.

CHARLIE ROSE: OK.

Thank you.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Thank you.

CHARLIE ROSE: Randi Weingarten, thank you for joining us.

See you next time.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHARLIE ROSE: This conversation with Randi Weingarten is part of a series of conversations about education, all underwritten by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation.