An archive of articles and listserve postings of interest, mostly posted without commentary, linked to commentary at the Education Notes Online blog. Note that I do not endorse the points of views of all articles, but post them for reference purposes.
"At one point Senator Padavan spoke and said he will look into the possibility of limiting the high stakes testing by imposing limits on state funds to NYC; in a manner similar to the recent limits of CFE money for class size reduction."
Posted on nyceducationnews listserve as part of a report from a forum testing held in Queens last night. Appearing were Randi Weingarten, Bob Tobias (former head of accountability at the old BOE and a frequent BloomKlein critic on testing policy) and Jane Hirschman (time out from testing) My comment:
As we learned at our high stakes forum a few weeks ago at Fordham, NY state has one of the most regressive and oppressive testign procedures that goes way beyond what NCLB requires. One thing the Senator can do is to focus on the process for appointing the state board of regents which appoints the state ed commissioner. Right now I understand the state assembly has the major role and Shelly Silver is instrumental.
If there is to be progress on reforming the state and city testing procedures it starts there. Holding politicians accountable is part of the process. So why am I, as usual, skeptical? Has the UFT put any effort into these kids of reforms? Appearing at forums and saying the right things is fine. But if it stops there then they are just words. If UFT reps appear at these forums they should be asked exactly what are their poliicies on reforming state ed and how far are they willing to go to back this up -- ie. withholding endorsements and support for candidates.
Norm From Leonie Haimson's post:
See email below, from Rob Caloras, the president of the CEC in D26, reporting on their forum last night on testing.
Sounds like a dynamite forum; we hope to be able to make the tape available. Meanwhile, Rob’s summary is below. Exciting news about Padavan supporting the introduction of a bill that would ban the use of high-stakes testing in our schools; I sincerely hope that the Democrats in the State Assembly may go along with this as well.
Last night, Community District Education Council 26 hosted a forum on testing & Assessing in NYC Public Schools. Our panelists were Randi Weingarten, President of the United Federation of Teachers, Bob Tobias - former Executive Director of Assessment and Accountability of the NYC Department of Education and current director of the As Stei
We were informed that during the last five years, there has been a tremendous increase in the number of standardized tests and assessments given to our children and a vast proliferation in the ways results are used. All of the panelists explained that testing is an integral part of the education system and is necessary to determine whether or not students are understanding a given subject. However, all of them agreed that the standard tests were not designed to be used in the way that they are being used in NYC schools. In particular, the use of these tests in determining whether a student is promoted and in evaluating an individual student and teacher’s performance was criticized and rejected as inappropriate. It was also explained that there is no evidence that when students are subjected to more standardized tests, their efforts increase and understanding improves. Panelists also discussed: the disparity between students’ good results on We were i
In general, parents expressed equal concerns on the above matters and expressed frustration over the inability to stem the regimen of testing now imposed. In fact, a belief that the system of testing is harmful to the quality of education is held by most parents . Such is the frustration that many parents called for a student boycott of tests. The Community District Education Council will be evaluating whether or not a boycott will be helpful to our students and if a boycott should be called and organized. I urge you to take steps to publicize issues on testing and assessing that do not reflect only the Department of Education’s point of view. By doing so, you will be doing a tremendous service to our children. Sincerely, Robert Caloras, CDEC26, President
I note that you have published news of my upcoming second DOE trial on your various websites and the obvious implication that it is urgent that all parties involved in Education issues MUST come together re the NYC DOE's latest and most blatant assault on the First Amendment.
One small favor I must ask of you. My name is mis-spelled literally everywhere it appears on your various pages and links.
It is NOT P A K T A R . It is P A K T E R
TAR should be used as in TAR and Feather Joel Klein, Esq. for crimes against the Bill of Rights as well as for being a common thug and an egotistical bully.
TER can be associated with the fact that no amount of retaliation against me will de-TER me from seeking to obtain Justice in Klein's assault on the United States Constitution as well his never ending attacks on The United Federation of Teachers.
For the record I wish to state here that were it not for the UFT and NYSUT I would have been terminated several years ago. The only reason I am still standing and have survived long enough to see a Second 3020-a Trial is the UFT's never wavering support of my cause, as well as the protections afforded me by the much maligned UFT Contract/s which have thwarted bully Joel Klein, Esq. and his assorted henchman, at every effort to "run me out of town" and out of a school system to which I have devoted 37 years of my life.
I would appreciate your remaining mindful of the above facts.
A teacher such as myself, who does not hesitate to stand up to thugs and bullies such as Joel Klein, Esq. would not survive more than a few months working in 98 per cent of the school Districts in this country where teachers who "stand up" are easy prey and stand little to zero chance of fighting back and/or defending themselves.
I call a spade a spade, Norm, and not a perfumed shovel.
Credit where credit is due. Randi has backed my cause, which is the cause of all teachers, to the hilt. She is up against a vicious, rabid, ruthless set of forces at a time when thanks to a President who receives his messages from God, unions everywhere are under brutal, and continuous siege.
Randi runs on four hours sleep a night and puts in one hundred plus hour weeks. I know of no one who would work half as hard as she does for ten times the salary. But she is hardly doing it for the money, in my humble opinion. In my book, she is a straight arrow. I am still standing because of Randi.
And I of course appreciate your support as well, Norm, as well as the support of Betsy Combier and anyone else for that matter, who believes in justice and fair play and the rights of Labor, everywhere.
Thanks again, Norm, for letting the latest atrocities perpetrated against me be known, remembering that this time it is about far more than me. It is about the NYC DOE and Joel Klein, Esq. crossing the fine line between simply attempting to crush dissent and actually violating the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights
I encourage you in the name of fairness to publish the above remarks as "An Open Letter to Norman Scott" in the same place you published my previous remarks. It would be the right thing to do, Norm. I would appreciate your doing so.
By Peter Lamphere and Megan Behrent, United Federation of Teachers | October 26, 2007 | Page 14
NEW YORK--The United Federation of Teachers (UFT) have agreed to a form of merit pay that will greatly undermine union principles and weaken the teachers’ unions fight against similar proposals in legislation currently before Congress.
Under the new agreement for schoolwide “bonus” plans, teachers at the lowest performing schools in New York City would be offered merit pay in exchange for improved test scores and reaching other achievement benchmarks set by the Department of Education.
At a UFT delegates’ assembly October 17, UFT President Randi Weingarten argued that these bonuses will shut the door to more insidious plans for individual merit pay, and would promote collaboration among teachers.
In fact, the plan will foster divisions within schools and weaken the union. As the New York Post says, “clearly, the camel’s nose is under the tent” for the type of merit pay proposed in the renewal of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, now being debated in Congress.
The UFT’s parent union, the American Federation of Teachers, along with the National Education Association, have resisted merit pay schemes. But now, the UFT has accepted merit pay by another name, and placed an incredibly divisive tool in the hands of New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and the principals.
Here is how it will work:
-- Some 200 high-needs schools (about 15 percent of those in the system) will be invited to participate. The number will double next year if it passes an independent review.
-- A 55 percent majority of UFT members in those schools must vote to accept the plan. However, participation in the plan will be a mitigating factor against closing a school, thus holding the threat of closure over the heads of our members if they vote “no.”
-- Once a school accepts the plan, it will be allocated an amount equal to $3,000 per UFT member if it meets the city’s benchmarks for testing.
-- This money will be distributed by a “compensation committee,” made up of a principal, his or her designee, and two UFT members elected by the staff. If the committee does not reach consensus on how to distribute the money, or the staff votes down its decision, then the bonuses are forfeit. This means that a principal can insist on a particular method of distribution (by test scores, etc.), and the staff must agree, or lose the money.
At the delegates’ meeting Kit Wainer, a Brooklyn UFT chapter leader who ran against Weingarten on an opposition slate last year, pointed out how the merit pay agreement would divide teachers and lead to finger-pointing about who wasn’t carrying their weight within a school.
There were a few speakers in favor of the proposal, mostly on the basis that it helped the union reach an agreement with the city to jointly lobby the New York state legislature to allow teachers to retire at age 55 with 25 years of service, rather than the current 30 years.
One delegate moved to table the issue so delegates would have an opportunity to discuss it with the rank and file, but this was ruled out of order. In a confusing rush, the delegates then voted for the plan by a large majority. A proposal for a national teachers’ demonstration against individual merit pay was voted down by delegates, although Weingarten promised to contact the AFT about the possibility.
However, thanks to Weingarten’s “bonus” plan, merit pay is now a reality in the New York Public Schools. The delegates’ assembly meeting was a historic turning point in the history of our union--for the worse.
Ed Note:The above article was posted on ICE mail but I do not haev the exact soruce. Peter and Megan are members of Teachers for a Just Contract, an alternative caucus in the UFT.
I have taught for 37 years and been both decorated and honored in New York's City Hall for my contributions to this City by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. It was my distinct honor to have former UFT Vice President Frank Carucci at my side when that happened.
But from the time I wrote a respectful letter to Chancellor Joel Klein, Esq. on October 2, 2003 my life changed forever. I wished only to alert him to the fact that egregious Civil Rights violations were occuring at the school where I taught Medical Illustration. But from that instant on I became the subject of a non stop vendetta of massive retaliation and harassment that has continued to this day.
Although I was exonerated both in a NYC DOE Trial and vindicated by the City's own hand picked Medical Arbitrator of the knowingly false claims of the DOE Medical Office that I was "not fit for Duty", the continuous retaliation against me by Chancellor Joel Klein, Esq.'s Board of Education has continued to this moment. This is all well known and was the subject of an in depth story written by a UFT reporter, Jim Callaghan in his March 15, 2007 story: "Whistle-blower axed--again". That UFT expose documented in great detail, including an admission from my immediate Supervisor at the school, Giovanni Raschilla, AP, that the Principal, Hilda Nieto told him that "she was under orders from Region 9 to 'get something on Pakter' ".
After being removed from my position on trumped up charges and then illegally assigned to the NYC DOE's most infamous "Rubber Room", a small windowless space on the 6th floor of a building on 125th Street in Harlem, I had no choice but to wait to see what type of charges the NYC DOE would bring against me for my second trial. This past week I finally received those detailed charges, most of which represented typical NYC DOE boiler plate language. But "Specification Charge number 6 came as a shock even to my jaded eyes quite familiar with DOE jargon when charging teachers. I quote it here verbatim:
SPECIFICATION 6: Respondent's actions caused widespread negative publicity and notoriety to the High School of Fashion Industries and the New York City Department of Education in general when his unprofessional behavior was referenced in a UFT Newspaper.
Did you or I or any of the millions of other citizens of this great city ever think in our wildest imagination that a day would arrive when a former Federal Prosecutor, appointed by a NYC Mayor would, while in control of the largest school system in America, decide that the United States Constitution applied to everyone but him. But that stunning fact has now come to pass. For despite the fact that the First Amendment to the United States Constitution specifically guarantees freedom of speech and more important in this instance, freedom of the press, a decorated educator and loyal UFT member of 37 years is now being charged with the crime of having the long and ruthless vendetta perpetrated against him, reported in the UFT Newspaper, The New York Teacher.
Are we not now looking into the abyss? Into that bottomless crack in the world into which any great democracy can easily fall, tumbling to its doom, if those who prize liberty are not vigilant. Are we not now witnessing the fetid fruit of what can happen when those who rule our great nation are allowed for too long to make light and even defecate on those liberties we have inherited from the Founding Fathers and which we have defended time and again down all the generations of this great Nation, with our precious blood.
Is the Washington, DC political climate of the past several years and the musings of our "mission accomplished" Commander in Chief to be blamed for what we are now witnessing in the New York City Dept/Board of Education, a 17 billion dollar conglomerate that is under the almost exclusive control of one man. An individual who like our President, perceives himself to be the Great Decider and the final arbiter in all things having to do with the education and nurturing of more than one million public school children, many of whom were left out in the cold, last Winter, figuratively and literally due to his gross incompetence and ever ready willingness to spend millions of tax payer dollars on his ever ready and willing "consultants".
No doubt Mr. Klein is determined that my upcoming trial, the second, will also be my last and put the last nail in my coffin as an educator. His high opinion of himself (a legend in his own mind) and limitless Hubris have even convinced him that the next Mayor of New York City will wish to retain the services of Mr. Joel Klein, Esq. as Chancellor of the NYC Schools system. Is delusional the proper word here?
But what you should focus on, Randi, is that if a New York teacher must feel afraid to report wrongdoing, especially to a reporter and if that teacher believes the NYC DOE can actually charge a teacher, as in my case, for providing information to a free press, in this case your own UFT newspaper, The New York Teacher, then what is left of this great union. What were all the years of work and sacrifice on the part of the United Federation of Teachers for, whose legacy stretches back to that immortal Labor Leader Albert Shanker who helped build this great union into the important force it became in the world of education.
Some believe you may one day go to Washington yourself to carry on your work in the field of Education on a national level. I for one, hope that event comes to pass. You have often shown yourself to be a person of courage as well as a woman of enormous courage, something which thousands of admiring people recently witnessed and have praised you for.
When you agreed one year ago to publish my story and how I had been bullied, harassed and retaliated against by Chancellor Joel Klein's DOE for being a Whistle-blower, I was grateful to you beyond words and had flowers delivered to your office the day after that news story appeared in The New York Teacher, the official UFT newspaper.
But now with these latest charges brought against me it is clear that this same newspaper is under attack simply for the "crime" of printing the truth and I am being portrayed as as accessory after the fact for the "crime" of believing we still have a functioning Bill of Rights in America that protects freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
The hour is late, Randi, and Mr. Klein is determined that regardless of when he stops being the Chancellor of our Schools system, that I will go first. It is literally a David versus Goliath contest. On his side Mr. Klein rules a 17 billion dollar agency.
On my side, I have only the courage of my convictions and the belief that it is yet not too late to make our United States Constitution and our Bill of Rights stand for something in this great Nation. I may fall in this battle. But it is most important that our Union and we as a people do not fall or falter in this struggle to protect the rights and freedoms of all teachers, of all New Yorkers, of all Americans.
Sometimes Randi we do not choose our place in history but rather the long arm of Destiny does that for us. When Rosa Parks boarded a public bus so long ago she could have had no idea that she was boarding a journey into history.
If you will one day go to Washington, then go as a woman who stood up for the United States Constitution. Go to Washington as a person who long after our country's birth, still believed that The Bill of Rights was still relevant and still worth fighting for, shoulder to shoulder down all the corridors of time.
I know the enormous damage our country has suffered due to years of poor leadership is also reflected in the stories of the countless innocent teachers in your union who have been condemned, some for years, to the horrors of the NYC DOE Rubber Rooms for teachers, simply for exercising their First Amendment Rights.
Your time has come, Randi. That time is now, that place is here. If you but listen you will hear that clarion call in the air summoning you to meet the challenge of our time.
That is to say the challenge to breathe new life into those historic documents that have preserved this great Nation for more than two hundred years. People like Chancellor Joel Klein, Esq. a self inflated autocrat and bully will be consigned to the scrap heap of history soon enough. You however have the opportunity to live on in perpetuity as will Albert Shanker, (and Sandra Feldman) your predecessors at the helm of the United Federation of Teachers.
At a time in history when unions have never been more under siege and when the rights of every American, set forth by our Forefathers before us and guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, have never been more under siege, what our Nation needs most is courageous leaders of high ethics. Leaders who no force on God's earth can sway from their duty to protect the values our Nation stands for and holds dear.
You can, and for the sake of our United States Constitution, you must rise to this occasion, Randi. I know you possess the courage and the ability and the resolve to do so to meet this gravest challenge of our time - the assault on the inalienable rights of all teachers, of all citizens, of all Americans, indeed, on the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
The group, which has dubbed itself the Teacher Reassignment Center SWAT Team, has been compiling pages of documentation on the so-called rubber rooms where teachers accused of charges ranging from incompetence to sexual assault are held as they await a hearing. More than 700 teachers now sit in rubber rooms, where they receive full pay but cannot enter a classroom, a Department of Education spokeswoman, Melody Meyer, said.
Ms. Weingarten said yesterday she hopes the investigation will end with a deal between the union and the city, and not in the courtroom. The result, she said, will hinge on how the Department of Education responds to new guidelines she plans to send in a letter next week. "If we make a proposal and the Board of Education says, ‘No, forget about it,' then we have a problem," Ms. Weingarten said.
She called the issue a "test case" for her new cooperative stance with city officials.
A lawsuit is one route if cooperation fails, the head of the investigative group, Betsy Combier, said.
The centers hold teachers accused of misconduct ranging from criminal charges to incompetent teaching. Tenured teachers cannot simply be fired or pushed to leave their jobs because the UFT contract requires that they first receive a hearing. A panel of arbitrators then decides whether the teacher will be fired, fined, or allowed back in the classroom with no discipline.
Just 11 rooms hold the 700-plus teachers whose cases have not yet been resolved. The backlog has left some teachers on the city payroll for as long as two years before a decision is reached. In the meantime, teachers in the rooms pass the time by watching television, reading books, and writing.
A complaint the UFT sent to a deputy chancellor at the Department of Education, Kathleen Grimm, recently noted the crowded rooms' poor conditions, including inadequate toilet facilities and electrical violations such as exposed wiring.
Ms. Combier said her conversations with about 70 teachers so far suggest that a majority in the rubber rooms are also being denied due process rights — that is, they have been taken out of the classroom and placed in a center for as long as two years without any information as to why. "It's a public relations nightmare for the Board of Education," Ms. Combier said. "They will never live this down. I won't let them."
A Department of Education spokesman, David Cantor, said cooperation is a possibility. "We'll work with the UFT whenever we can," he said. "But don't be mistaken. The teachers in the rubber rooms have been accused of serious misconduct and crimes. We will not keep them with kids in schools simply because their contract says they must continue to be paid."
He said there are a few cases in which the city does not tell teachers why they are charged as a way of protecting the investigations against them. He said "virtually all" teachers know why they are in rubber rooms.
Ms. Weingarten's promise to ramp up pressure on the issue of rubber rooms comes as she is facing more pressure to act from inside her union and beyond. Factions have formed within the union to fight on behalf of teachers in rubber rooms, making suggestions ranging from hiring more staff to defend teachers to issuing subpoenas of state agencies on their behalf. One group, the Teacher Advocacy Group, plans to picket the union's Lower Manhattan headquarters Wednesday following a delegate assembly meeting, a retired teacher who is advising the group, Norman Scott, said. The group will carry signs charging that the union has "dropped the ball" on protecting teachers.
An independent filmmaker has also added to the fire with a documentary called "The Rubber Room," which several teachers said has generated interest from such high-profile outlets as Comedy Central's "The Daily Show."
Some in the union ridiculed Ms. Weingarten's push for compromise, saying it will not resolve what they described as the UFT's failure to provide teachers in rubber rooms with strong legal representation. "They need people that have some kind of understanding and background in employment investigations. They have nothing," a teacher who was placed in a rubber room and who is also a lawyer, Jeffrey Kaufman, said.
Ms. Weingarten's new team includes Ms. Combier, who said she has previous paralegal experience, and two journalists at the union's newspaper.
Rallying on the sidewalk outside city school system headquarters Tuesday night, Baltimore teachers and their supporters called for the ouster of schools chief Andres Alonso and the school board.
About 150 people protested before and during a school board meeting, chanting "Alonso must go!" and booing from the lobby while the new chief executive officer spoke inside. At issue is a dispute between the Baltimore Teachers Union and the school system over teachers' planning time.
Among those who turned out to support the union was Edward J. McElroy, president of the American Federation of Teachers, which has 1.2 million members. And City Councilwoman Sharon Green Middleton, who spoke at the protest, said she would introduce a resolution asking the council to intervene on behalf of teachers.
The dispute centers on what would seem to be a minor issue: 45 minutes a week of planning time. Alonso wants principals to have the authority to require teachers to spend one planning period a week collaborating with colleagues. The union says teachers don't have enough planning time as it is.
The contract for the union expired July 1, and negotiations are at an impasse. The two sides have reached an agreement over pay and benefits.
"This is absolutely asinine that we are out here fighting over planning time," said Loretta Johnson, co-president of the union, which represents teachers and aides.
But Alonso said after the board meeting that he's not budging.
"The city has to make a choice," he said. "Is it about adult interests, or is it about kids?"
In a meeting earlier this week with The Sun editorial board, Alonso said of the union dispute: "It's almost like defining the terms of engagement. I'm working from principle, not a political stance, and I think for some people in this city, that is so new."
The union, meanwhile, accused Alonso of being out of touch with teachers, and of retaliatory tactics.
"He's been here three months, and the teachers don't have any confidence in him at all," said Bertha McCloud, a business education teacher at Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School, who has worked in the city schools since 1969. "He's not teacher-friendly."
Johnson said that Alonso had threatened to fire a system mailroom clerk who allowed fliers promoting the union protest to be sent to schools. "This man is out of control," she said.
Alonso called the allegation "nonsense." As a Cuban immigrant, he said, he welcomes the opportunity for people to exercise freedom of speech.
Union officials say they will call a general membership meeting next week to ask for a vote of no confidence in Alonso, who came to Baltimore over the summer after serving as a deputy chancellor in New York City schools. For the past week, teac hers have been picketing before and after school at various sites around the city, though turnout has been sporadic.
City teachers are not legally permitted to strike, but the union has asked them to "work to rule" since the start of the school year. Alonso has said the impact of work to rule has been minimal because many teachers are not complying with the union request that they do no more than their contract requires. The union says there has been an impact, with teachers refusing to stay after school to supervise clubs and other activities.
Alonso argues that the cities having success with reforming low-performing schools, including New York and Boston, all require their teachers to plan their lessons together. The union counters that in New York -- and in all the surrounding Maryland school systems -- teachers have more planning time than teachers in Baltimore.
McElroy, the AFT president, said the dispute in Baltimore is "somewhat unique." He said many school districts have been giving teachers more planning time, not less, to accommodate increased paperwork.
"We had to fight like crazy 25 years ago to get planning time built into contracts," he said.
Tuesday night's protest attracted more than just teachers. Some education advocates used the rally to further their argument that the city should have an elected school board, rather than the current structure where the mayor and governor appoint the board jointly. Other unions, including electrical workers, sent representatives to show their support.
The protesters, wearing yellow BTU shirts, marched and chanted outside for the hour before the school board meeting began, carrying signs with messages like "SCHOOL BOARD ARROGANCE MUST STOP." About a dozen of them stood in the median strip of North Avenue, outside system headquarters, waving their signs at the cars passing by.
A lone Alonso supporter walked around them, carrying a sign that read, "Thank you Dr. Alonzo [sic]. Out of the Box, Innovative, Original."<> When the board meeting began, the protesters moved into the lobby, where their cheers and jeers were loud enough to make the meeting inaudible at times, and school police had to tell them to be quiet. A handful stayed outside, holding their signs up against the board room windows.
This is an old but very valuable piece by Lois Weiner, a former NYC teacher and UFT delegate. Lois recruited Bruce Markens and me to review the Kahlenberg book for New Politics. (Bold was added by me in some places to highlight points we are looking at.) Lois wrote a wonderful piece on neoliberalism and education which illuminates many connections between the actions of the Democrats, BloomKlein, Gates, Broad, Weingarten (posted here on this blog recently.)
by Lois Weiner
After Albert Shanker's death in February 1997, the numerous obituaries in newspapers throughout the United States testified to his notable presence in American political life. Shanker headed the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) for 22 years, his responsibility for the national union overlapping his equally long career as president of the New York City teachers union the United Federation of Teachers (UFT). In both cases, the organizations he left were transformed by his presence. Early in his tenure as president, the UFT grew from 2,500 to 110,000, becoming collective bargaining agent for New York's teachers and paraprofessionals (Goldberg, 1993); during his presidency of the AFT, it grew from about 400,000 members (AFT, 1976a) to over 900,000 (Weil, 1997).
As the obituaries make clear, Shanker made a significant mark on American political life and altered the politics of education and teacher unionism. According to the Washington Post, he helped "revolutionize both the nation's labor movement and its educational system in the years after World War II" through his work in bringing New York's school teachers under the union umbrella (Weil, 1997, p. B:5). Newspaper headlines eulogized him as a "visionary" (Dine, 1997)" and "crusader for education reform" (Woo, 1997) who was "stronger than an atom bomb" (Warsh, 1997).
Curiously though, each obituary identified a salient but different aspect of his long career as a teacher union leader to commemorate. For Philip Dine of the Wall Street Journal, Shanker was best remembered as a legendary labor leader whose major contribution was prescient support of "workers' struggles in communist countries" (p. 14). The author of Shanker's obituary in the Los Angeles Times identified him as the country' s leading spokesman for teachers, with "trailblazing ideas about teachers' rights and educational reform" (Woo, 1997, p. 1). The Boston Globe columnist argued that Albert Shanker was best known for leading the UFT's 55-day strike to halt a plan to allow local community boards to control educational policy, as well as for being mentioned by Woody Allen in his movie Sleeper for destroying civilization when he obtained a nuclear warhead (Warsh, 1997). Writing in the Chicago Tribune, Linda Chavez, former editor of the AFT's magazine and a self-confessed protege of the union head, saluted him for his political ideas: outspoken criticism of racial quotas and preferences, opposition to bilingual education, and lifelong anti-communism (Chavez, 1997). Writing in the Christian Science Monitor, three educational researchers remembered his transition from labor militant, "spreading fear and in some cases loathing throughout the land" to educational reformer and statesman who saved New York City from bankruptcy by lending the government $150 million dollars from the teachers' pension fund (Weeres, Koppich & Kerchner, 1997, p. 1).
A partial explanation for the divergence of views about Shanker's most memorable accomplishments is his longevity on the political scene. Unlike the presidents of the United States who cannot serve for more than two terms, Albert Shanker was not limited in the amount of time he could remain in office. Although the union membership could, technically, have unseated him, the possibility was unlikely without a sustained, well-organized opposition that had links to reform movements in other unions, an occurrence which has been quite rare in American unions in the past three decades.
Within a few years of becoming AFT president, Shanker instituted several organizational changes that served to insulate his authority, duplicating the method of consolidating control that he had used successfully in the UFT (Lieberman, 1997). A full discussion of the alterations in the union's structure would go beyond the focus of this article, but two key changes should be noted: making the heretofore annual membership conventions biennial and broadening the union's membership to include nurses and health care workers, who now compose a considerable portion of the union's membership. Another modification, probably more notable for its symbolic importance than its impact on the union's functioning, was elimination of the verbatim transcripts of convention proceedings distributed during conventions and mailed to each local. The transcripts were replaced by summaries of the convention proceedings highlighting speeches given by union officers and invited guests, edited by union staff headed by Linda Chavez, whose remembrance of Shanker (1997) called attention to his powerful influence on her political thinking.
Borrowing a strategy more commonly used by political activists than union leaders, Shanker exercised authority through the mechanism of political caucuses, the "Unity Caucus" in the UFT, and the "Progressive Caucus" in the AFT. As is still true, these were "disciplined" caucuses, meaning that if members disagree with a position taken by the group, they may not express their opposition outside of the caucus in a public forum (Lieberman, 1997.) In the Unity Caucus, discipline extends to votes as well; to vote or speak against a caucus position carries the risk of exclusion from the caucus and the many jobs the union leadership controls (Weiner, 1976). Analyzing Shanker's mechanisms for controlling debate and decision making in the AFT, one critic compared Shanker's exercise of authority to the Leninist concept of "democratic centralism" (Lieberman, 1997). However, comparison of accounts of organizational life in both the UFT and AFT suggests that Lenin's Bolshevik party, at least until the Russian revolution, was less tightly-controlled than was the Unity Caucus under Shanker (Deutscher, 1954; Weiner & Markens, 1990).
Examination of the last verbatim transcripts of proceedings at AFT conventions sent to delegates (AFT, 1976a) reveals an illuminating pattern in Shanker's method of dealing with dissension from the floor. While the norms of democratic debate in the form of adherence to Roberts Rules of Order were generally upheld, no vote occurred that might have undermined the public unanimity expected of caucus members. When the prospect of such a vote occurred, a delegate who was closely identified with Shanker, often a UFT officer, moved to refer the measure to the AFT Executive Council. Shanker himself rarely entered into debates on issues before conventions except when important votes seemed in jeopardy. The intervention of a trusted lieutenant was sufficient signal to UFT delegates and Shanker's supporters from other locals about how they were expected to vote. In one instance, the president of a large local and member of Shanker's caucus introduced a special order of business that called on the AFT to defend a teacher's right to maintain discipline, opposing any diminution of laws that supported corporal punishment. The resolution noted that the NEA had filed a suit on behalf of a student challenging Florida's corporal punishment statute before the Supreme Court and demanded that the AFT counter the NEA's stance by filing a brief in support of the principal, who had exercised his right to paddle the student.
The verbatim transcript shows intense reaction to the resolution. One delegate argued "I do believe that teachers have the right to maintain discipline. ... That does not mean that they have a right to beat people who are smaller than they are." The transcript shows his marks interrupted by "[Boos and catcalls]" (AFT, 1976a, p. 26). Shortly thereafter, an officer of the UFT moved to refer the issue to the AFT Executive Council. A delegate from a small California local in California spoke against allowing the Executive Council to decide the matter, as did a teacher from a local in New York state. He acknowledged that the issue was divisive, but he argued that it merited debate because it was significant, as were the differences of opinion that had come to light. His remarks bespoke a frustration that the convention had taken up so many resolutions about social and political issues, and so few that addressed teaching and learning: "I am depressed, frankly, when I look at the number of the resolutions that have come before the body and that we have considered, whatever our viewpoint on them, that have to do with our relationship with our students" (AFT, 1976a, p. 28). The booklet containing resolutions submitted by locals and by the union leadership shows that his perception was accurate. Out of 62 resolutions, only nine focused on instructional concerns (AFT, 1976b).
Shanker's longevity in office cannot fully explain his prominence because presidents of larger unions who have also served life-long terms in office, have not made a noticeable mark on American political life, either through their unions or their direct involvement in politics. The other key to explaining Shanker's renown is understanding the period of time in which he exercised control of the AFT and UFT. During his tenure in office, American political life was shaken by the birth of social movements that challenged the nation's political underpinnings. First, the civil rights movement, then the women's movement drew attention to social inequality and demanded an end to legally-sanctioned discrimination. American schools and universities were shaken by student protests of the war in Vietnam. The teacher union movement was reborn in the 20th century amid intense political ferment that influenced the political culture of schools and teachers' self-conceptions (Murphy, 1990). The dramatic effect of the UFT's early strikes and its militance was captured by one mourner at the memorial service for Shanker when she recalled that "he made teachers go from being people who took orders" to being people who gained self-respect (Steinberg, 1997, p. 7). Although sizable teacher strikes had occurred earlier in other American cities, the UFT became the model for teacher unionists throughout the country struggling to establish collective bargaining agreements with their school boards. Thus, Shanker's reputation as a militant, combative unionist was earned in the days when teacher unionism was a dynamic social movement, with many of its members active in anti-war and civil rights protests.
Shortly after Shanker and the UFT established themselves as significant political players, changes in the nation's political climate configured what many commentators have identified as a turning point in racial relations in American cities. Shanker led the UFT in dogged opposition to decentralization of the New York City Board of Education, a position upheld by a series of strikes in the 1968-69 school year that polarized racial relations in the city. Civil rights groups, unable to integrate the New York City schools, decided instead to agitate for more control of the schools serving poor, black students. The confrontation between the largely Jewish membership of the UFT and the black proponents of decentralization and community control became symbolic of the unravelled liberal alliance (Berube, 1988).
Shanker's reputation as an aggressive opponent of progressive social change was buttressed by his uncompromising support of the war in Vietnam. As political opposition to the war mounted among liberals and labor's allies in the Democratic party, agreement on foreign policy became increasingly important to the AFL-CIO leadership, which fervidly supported U.S. military intervention in the war (Schmidt, 1978; Buhle, 1997). Meany appointed Shanker, only a vice-president of the AFT at the time, to the AFL-CIO Executive Board, rather than the AFT President, David Selden. Curiously, the author of the highly sympathetic biography of Shanker, Where He Stands, states that Shanker explained that both he and Selden "opposed the war in Vietnam and Meany supported it" (Mungazi, 1995, p. 94). Berube's description of the circumstances is more accurate: At a time when public employee unions were a weak force in the labor federation, George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO "was dubious about teacher or whitecollar organization" (Berube, 1988, p. 65) but elevated Shanker to the executive board because Shanker, unlike Selden, was in political agreement with Meany about how U.S. and labor's interests should be defined.
As the nation's political climate became more conservative in the 1980s and '90s, Shanker's opposition to progressive political causes and his public rejection of the militant unionism that had earned him his early prominence enabled him to win the support of conservative authors and politicians with whom he had previously locked horns (Lieberman, 1995). Like Reagan and his appointees, Shanker opposed bilingual education, mainstreaming of handicapped students, and efforts to make the curriculum more multicultural. However, it is essential to note that what changed was the political temper of the period, not Shanker's ideology, which remained essentially the same as it had been since he became UFT President. Herein lies the element that connects all of the seemingly diverse aspects of Shanker's legacy, his political ideology, which requires explanation of events that one author has described as "Byzantine" (Mahler, 1997).
Shanker was a political co-thinker of a small group of former socialists, organized into Social Democrats-USA, commonly known by the acronym SD-USA. The intellectual mentor of this group, Max Shachtman, was well known in left-wing circles up until the mid-1950s as a socialist, a left-wing opponent of communism.
However, as the cold war intensified, Shachtman viewed American capitalism in an increasingly favorable light that called for forgiving many of the practices that he had previously contested. In an obituary, the theme of which was Shachtman's two deaths, one moral, the other corporeal, a critic of Shachtman' s "turn to the right" noted, "Shachtman had become an apologist for American imperialism's filthy war in Vietnam, aligned himself with the ugliest elements in the unions, rationalized the racist practices of the construction unions" (Jacobson, 1973, p. 99).
Echoing SD-USA's cold war politics and its concern that labor not be too militant, lest it weaken communism's protagonist, liberal capitalism, the AFT under Shanker assumed a more aggressive stance on foreign policy and more attenuated support for social movements challenging the status quo. Examination of AFT convention transcripts supports contentions that Shanker's defense of human rights was politically lopsided, targeting violations and repression in communist countries but not those by U.S. allies, especially in Latin America (Berube, 1988; Schmidt, 1978).
In 1976, the union passed Resolution #21, submitted by the UFT, demanding freedom for Yakov Suslensky, a Soviet teacher who wanted to emigrate to Israel. However, when two resolutions came to the floor soon after, dealing with political repression in two countries within the U.S. sphere of influence, South Korea (#23) and in Chile (#24), the convention declined to identify wrongdoing in a specific locale, opting instead to condemn "all nations governed by Fascists and Communist dictatorships" (AFT, 1976a, p. 28). The same pattern exists in resolutions on foreign policy passed in 1978, 1979, 1980, and 1981.
Shanker's prominence as a teacher unionist and political figure rested in great measure upon his remarkable organizational skills and acumen, which both his sharpest critics and impassioned supporters noted. His considerable ability as an orator, coupled with the structural changes in the union that made opposition Herculean, go far in answering how he was able to retain control of the union.
Unlike most other American unions, the AFT does not allow for direct election of national officers; the convention, heavily weighted in favor of large locals, especially the UFT, elected Shanker first at its annual and then biennial meetings (Weiner, 1976). Whether, as one columnist noted, Shanker "was able to maintain the loyalty" of the UFT and AFT membership is therefore open to question. But his achievements and distinctions also relied on the political fit between his ideology and the nation's climate. As political debate became more sympathetic to corporate prerogatives, Shanker's ideological predilection to downplay conflicts between labor and management, teachers and school boards, was enhanced. In a nation more receptive to conservative ideas, Albert Shanker became a spokesperson for a unionism that rejected confrontation and articulated a vision of educational reform that was more similar to that of corporate leaders and school boards (Shanker, 1985, 1988 & 1989; Kerchner & Mitchell, 1988).
However, in the last few years of his life, political events developed that have illuminated the underside of Shanker's achievements, events that have made his legacy far more problematic than the obituaries suggest. With the collapse of communism, the cold war dimension of Shanker's politics became meaningless (Mahler, 1997), reducing his political beliefs to a conservatism more similar than not to that of mainstream Republicans (Buhle, 1997). But conservatives are not often supporters of organized labor, especially not in an AFL-CIO that has resurrected at least the verbal banner of class struggle. John Sweeney, who defeated Lane Kirkland and his supporters, prominently among them, Albert Shanker (Manegold, 1995) "has set a whole new tone" for the labor movement (Cooper, 1997). Though the right-wing of the labor federation, which counts as a leader Sandra Feldman, Shanker's heir to the AFT and UFT presidencies, (who was a youthful protege of Shachtman), is poised to retake control if Sweeney's hold of the AFL-CIO apparatus is significantly weakened, SD-USA's ideological hegemony and organizational infuence have clearly been shattered.
Shanker's policy of quelling lively internal debate about educational issues and international politics for close to three decades in the UFT and two in the AFT, allowed him to present a picture of unified UFT/AFT opinion to politicians and the public. And the organizational changes that gave him enormous control over policy and personnel reinforced his image as a powerful leader, speaking forcefully for teachers. But the positions he took that made his reputation as a labor statesman are clearly not shared by classroom teachers today.
Reliable national polls show that teachers are skeptical about the usefulness of national standards in education (Ford Foundation, 1993). They believe that traditional teacher union issues are relevant and legitimate; they expect the union to intervene about workload, health and safety, theirs and that of their students, and resources (Bascia, 1994). Teachers are rarely permitted to vote on educational issues, because of the narrow scope of collective bargaining laws, but when they do, the results suggest that classroom teachers are, at best, sharply divided about many of the positions Shanker advocated.
For instance, in Rochester, members of the teachers union voted down a contract that contained financial incentives, a policy Shanker advocated; they approved the contract only after it had been altered to remove the provision (Blinder, 1992; Koppich, 1993). In 1995, New York City teachers voted down a contract for the first time in the UFT's history. The contract rejection occurred for many different reasons, but the vote revealed that the union leadership was unable to bargain effectively for teachers because it had misunderstood their desires.
President Clinton's decision to award Shanker the Medal of Freedom, commending him as "a staunch proponent of teacher certification and higher standards for students" (Lewis, 1998, p. 16), demonstrated that Albert Shanker had been accepted in the most powerful political circles. Yet, a good many of the 2,000 people attending his memorial service in New York City were retired rather than active members of the union who recalled his leadership in the battle to give teachers a voice in school policy. Shanker's heirs have inherited his power without his moral and political claims to leadership of teachers' battles. His legacy may prove to be that he gained personal prominence by creating a tight organizational apparatus in the UFT and AFT, making them susceptible to the same winds of change that swept John Sweeney' s supporters into the AFL-CIO and Albert Shanker's collaborators out.
1. Two sources of information about the physical, legal, and political obstacles union reformers confront are Union Democracy Review, published by the Association for Union Democracy, Brooklyn, New York, and Labor Notes, published by the Labor Education and Research Center, Detroit, Michigan.
2. George Schmidt's booklet identifies specific individuals who took charge of AFT's involvement with the Central Intelligence Agency; the endnotes in Paul Buhle's commentary on Shanker's politics contain several references to works more readily available than Schmidt's that examine much the same territory.
REFERENCES
American Federation of Teachers (1976a). Convention Proceedings, Bal Harbor, Florida, Thursday, August 19. Washington, DC: Author.
American Federation of Teachers (1976b). Convention Resolutions Submitted to the Annual Convention of the American Federation of Teachers Annual Convention, Bal Harbor, Florida, August 16-20, 1976. Washington, DC: Author.
Bascia, N. (1994). Unions in teachers' professional lives. New York: Teachers College Press.
Berube, M. (1998). Teacher politics. New York: Greenwood Press.
Blinder, A. (1992,December 14). Adam Smith meets Albert Shanker. Business Week, p. 20.
Buhle, P. (1997). Albert Shanker: No flowers. New Politics, 6(3), New Series, 51-58.
Chavez, L. (1997,February 26). An era of crystal clear views. Chicago Tribune, p. 17.
Cooper, M. (1997,November 24). Labor's hardest drive: Organizing a new politics. The Nation, pp. 16-20.
Deutscher, I. (1954). The prophet armed. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
Dine, P. (1997,February 28). Teachers' leader a visionary on overseas labor movement. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, p. C:3.
Dine, P. (1997,March 13). A unionist cold warriors should mourn. The Wall Street Journal, p. 14.
Goldberg, M.F. (1993). A portrait of Albert Shanker. Educational Leadership, 50(6), pp. 46-49.
Jacobson, J. (1973). The two deaths of Max Shachtman. New Politics, 10(3), 96-99.
Kerchner, C.T. & Mitchell, D.E. (1988). The changing idea of a teachers' union. New York: Falmer.
Koppich, J.E. (1993). The rocky road to reform. In C.T. Kerchner & J.E. Koppich (Eds.), A union of professionals: Labor relations and educational reform. New York: Teachers College Press.
Lewis, N. A. (1998,January 9). President names 15 for nation's top civilian honor. New York Times, (p. 16).
Lieberman, M. (1997). The teacher unions. New York: The Free Press.
Mahler, J. (1997,October 31). Labor's war winds. The Jewish Forward.
Manegold, C. (1995,May 11). Kirkland's supporters rally at AFL-CIO. New York Times, p. 26.
Mungazi, D.A. (1995). Where he stands. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.
Murphy, M. (1990). Blackborad unions. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press.
Raspberry, W. (1997,March 10). The unbiased advocate. Washington Post, p. 17.
Schmidt, G.N. (1978). The American Federation of Teachers and the CIA. Chicago: Substitutes United for Better Schools (SUBS).
Shanker, A. (1985,Fall). The making of a profession. American Educator, p. 10+.
Shanker, A. (1988,October 16). Restructuring the dinosaur. Paid advertisement in the New York Times, p. E:7.
Shanker, A. (1989,March 12). Where we stand. Paid advertisement in the New York Times, p. E:9.
Steinberg, J. (1997,March 25). Shanker is eulogized as a towering educator. New York Times, p. 7.
Testing Assumptions: A survey of teachers' attitudes toward the nation's school reform agenda (1993 September). New York: Ford Foundation. Study #930012.
Warsh, D. (1997,February 25). Stronger than an atom bomb. Boston Globe, p. D: 1.
Weeres, J., Koppich, J.E., Kerchner, C.T. (1997,March 7). Teacher unions: a key to school reform. Christian Science Monitor, p. 19.
Weil, M. (1997,February 23). Obituary. Washington Post, p. B:5.
Weiner, L. (1976). Cracks in Shanker's empire. New Politics, 11(4), 51-57.
Weiner, L. (1991,April). Re-examining the history of the 1960s. Paper presented to American Educational Research Association. (ERIC #ED 336 358).
Weiner, L. & Markens, B. (1990). The UFT after Shanker. New Politics, 2(4) New Series, 68-77.
Woo, E. (1997,February 23). Albert Shanker, crusader for education reform, dies. Los Angeles Times, p. 1.
LOIS WEINER teaches education at Jersey City State College and is the author of many articles on teacher unionism. She was an officer of the Hayward Federation of Teachers and an activist in the United Federation of Teachers for many years.
EBSCO Publishing Citation Format: APA (American Psychological Assoc.):
http://support.ebsco.com/help/?int=ehost&lang=en&feature_id=APA and make any necessary corrections before using. Pay special attention to personal names, capitalization, and dates. Always consult your library resources for the exact formatting and punctuation guidelines.
References
Weiner, L. (1998, January 1). Albert Shanker's Legacy. Contemporary Education, 69(4), 196. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. EJ576396) Retrieved October 3, 2007, from ERIC database.
Chicago Public Schools Policy Manual Title: REASSIGNMENT AND LAYOFF OF REGULARLY CERTIFIED AND APPOINTED TENURED TEACHERS Section: 504.2 Board Report: 04-0623-PO5 Date Adopted: June 23, 2004 Policy:
THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER RECOMMENDS: The Chief Executive Officer recommends amending Board Report 97-0723-P02 by adoption of the following amended policy for use by the Board and administrators, effective July 1, 2004. HISTORY OF BOARD ACTION: The Board approved Board Report 95-0814-P02, Reassignment and Layoff of Regularly Certified and Appointed Teachers Due to Changes in Staffing Needs on August 14, 1995 and amended the policy by Board Report 97-0723-P02 on July 23, 1997. DESCRIPTION: The Illinois School Code and other statutes permit collective bargaining on decisions regarding reductions in force. The merits of various options concerning the reassignment and layoff of regularly certified and appointed tenured teachers as a result of changes in staffing needs and the remediation, probation, or reconstitution of schools were the subject of collective bargaining with the Chicago Teachers Union. The policy set forth below reflects the agreements reached with the Chicago Teachers Union.
Section I - Scope of Policy Whenever an attendance center or a program is closed, there is a drop in enrollment, the educational focus of the attendance center is changed such that available teaching positions cannot accommodate some or all current regularly certified and appointed teaching staff, or when an attendance center is subject to actions taken pursuant to Sections 34-8.3 or 8.4 of the School Code, tenured teachers will be reassigned or laid off in accordance with this policy.
Section 2 - Selection of Teachers for Removal A. In Attendance Centers/Programs That Are Not Subject to Reconstitution If changes in an attendance center or program require removal of some but not all teachers, teachers with appropriate certifications will be selected for retention based on system-wide seniority. Provisionals, Day-to- Day substitutes, Cadre Substitutes, Temporarily Assigned Teachers ("TATs") and Probationary teachers within the attendance center or program will be removed before any regularly certified and appointed tenured teachers with the appropriate certification is removed, in that order. Within each group, system-wide seniority shall be the determining factor.
B. In Attendance Centers/Programs That Are Subject to Reconstitution In attendance centers that are subject to reconstitution, tenured teachers will be removed based upon the criteria set forth in Section 34.18(31) of the School Code. The relative weight of such criteria shall be determined by the Chief Executive Officer or an individual attendance center basis according to the School Improvement Plan and the type of position to be changed or closed. Section 3 - Notice of Position Closing When a determination is made that a tenured teacher's services are no longer required at an attendance center, or in a program for the reasons described in Section I above, the tenured teacher will be so notified (hereinafter "notice of removal").
Section 4 - List of Vacancies Upon notice to the tenured teacher of removal, the Department of Human Resources will immediately provide the tenured teacher with a list of all unencumbered vacant positions for which he or she is qualified and which are consistent with the Plan to Implement the Provisions of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Department will also provide each tenured teacher who makes a written request to the Department with a copy of the list of vacancies in any area identified by the Department to be an area of systemic critical need.
Section 5 - Opportunity to Interview During the first 30 school days after notice of removal, the tenured teacher will be permitted to interview at schools of his/her choosing without being assigned any additional duties. The Board will make available to affected tenured teachers lists of vacancies, job counseling and assistance with resume writing and interviewing skills. Section 6 - Reassignment To A Permanent Position Applications for vacancies shall be made to the principals with a copy provided by the tenured teacher to the Department of Human Resources. The tenured teacher will be interviewed by the principal unless the position is filled before an interview takes place. When a principal recommends appointment of a tenured teacher applicant to a vacant position, the teacher will be transferred to that position. Section 7 - Interim Appointment An appointment of a tenured teacher to a vacant position may be made by a principal on an interim basis, with written notice to the Department of Human Resources. An interim appointment will be no more than sixty school days during which the teacher's performance will be evaluated by the principal or a qualified designee. If the tenured teacher is removed from the interim position prior to expiration of the interim period or if the tenured teacher is not offered a regular appointment when his or her interim appointment expires, he or she will be reassigned to an Area cluster as provided in Section 9.
Section 8 - Permanent Appointment If the principal, determines during the interim period that the tenured teacher is performing satisfactorily and should by appointed permanently, the principal will recommend such an appointment to the Department of Human Resources. The recommendation will be accepted and the tenured teacher will receive a regular appointment. If the tenured teacher remains in the interim position for more than 60 days, he or she shall be permanently assigned to the position.
Section 9 - Assignment to an Area Cluster Following the 30 school day period after notice of removal and thereafter during any period when the tenured teacher is not in an interim or permanent appointment, the teacher will be assigned to an Area cluster as a day-to-day substitute teacher. The Department of Human Resources will make every effort to assign the tenured teacher to the Area cluster to which the tenured teacher was previously assigned or in which the tenured teacher resides.
Section 10 – Layoff If a tenured teacher is unable to secure a permanent appointment within 10 school months after notice of removal, the tenured teacher shall be laid off and given an honorable termination from service and the opportunity to be placed as a cadre substitute in accordance with the collective bargaining agreement between the Board and the Chicago Teachers Union. When a layoff is required, the tenured teacher shall be notified at least 14 days in advance of the date the layoff is to take effect.
Section 11 - Recall If after 10 school months the tenured teacher has not been appointed to a permanent position, he or she will be honorably terminated from service. If within two years after an honorable termination the tenured teacher is appointed by a principal to a permanent position, tenure and prior seniority will be restored to the teacher as of that date.
Section 12 - Plan to Implement Provisions of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 If a removed tenured teacher's appointment to a vacancy would not be consistent with the Plan to Implement Provisions of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the appointment will not be made unless there is no teacher who holds the appropriate certification available to be appointed consistent with the Plan.
Section 13 - Effective Date This policy is effective only with respect to certified and appointed tenured teachers who receive a notice of removal on or after July 1, 2004. Non-tenured teachers removed pursuant to Section 1 prior to July 1, 2004, and to whom this policy applied prior to July 1, 2004, shall continue to receive the benefits of this policy. Amends/Rescinds: Amends 97-0723-PO2; 95-0814-PO2 Cross References: Legal References: 115 ILCS 5/4.5, as amended
EALRS: History 1: The student examines and understands major ideas, eras, themes, developments, turning points, chronology, and cause-and-effect relationships in US, World, and Washington State history.
GRADE LEVEL: Secondary
BASIC CONCEPTS: Clearing up many of the misconceptions, myths, and misunderstandings behind the mainstream view of Christopher Columbus.
ORGANIZING GENERALIZATION: The voyages of Columbus changed the lives of American Indians forever. We must begin to present a perspective about him that is more acceptable to the sensitivity of Indian history. Instead of perpetuating the many inaccuracies found in textbooks, or the commonly used terms, ideas and concepts that refer to a biased viewpoint, we must look at the devastation to Native cultures his "arrival" on this continent foreshadowed.
CULTURE AREA: Western Hemisphere
TIME PERIOD: 1492-present
BACKGROUND: "When Columbus and his men came ashore in the Bahama Islands and were met by the Arawak people he was to later write in his journal: "They . . .brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned . . .They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features . . .They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane . . .They would make fine servants . . .With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want." p. 1 This chilling and foreboding statement achieves even an even darker tone when considering the fate of the Arawak people. "In two years, through murder, mutilation or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead. By the year 151, there were perhaps 50,000 Indians left. By 1550, there were 500. A report of the year 1650 shows none of the original Arawaks or their descendants left on the island." p. 4-5 "The treatment of heroes (Columbus) and their victims (the Arawaks) - the quiet acceptance of conquest and murder in the name of progress - is only one aspect of a certain approach to history, in which the past is told from the point of view of governments, conquerors, diplomats, leaders." p.9 Quotes taken from: A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn.
OBJECTIVES:
Knowledge Students will: (History 1.1) understand historical time, chronology, and causation and (History 1.2) analyze the historical developments of events, people, places, and patterns of life in US, World, and Washington State history. Skills Students will: Evaluate the misconceptions and flaws in their previous learning about this subject, analyze the reasons for their misconceptions, and develop a deeper understanding about the Native American viewpoint of Columbus.
Values Students will: group events and individuals by broadly defined historical eras and use time lines to explain patterns of historical continuity and change in the historical succession of related events and analyze the historical development of civilization drawn from different continents with regard to turning points, ideas, people, places, and patterns of life in US, World, and Washington State history.
ACTIVITIES: Read Ch.1 of A People's History of the United States and will read the included paper, Truths of Columbus, and will write a paper about their own perspective on this issue, focusing on what they have learned that was different from their previous conceptions. Students should compare this information to the representation in their textbooks they have been using for History to decide if their textbooks perpetuate any of the misconceptions raised after reading this lesson's resources.
EXTENSIONS: Have students search for older history textbooks and research how the supposed "facts" of Columbus have changed over a relatively short amount of time, and write an in-depth paper on their findings. Students could do a creative writing assignment that puts them back in history to the time of Columbus' arrival on the Bahama island from the viewpoint of a person their own age. They could write a persuasive paper focusing on the renaming of Columbus Day to Native American Memorial Day. Skits could be performed that focus on the truths, clearing up the many misconceptions. Poetry, music, or songs could be performed with the focus on the issues raised in this lesson.
EVALUATION: Having students analyze the topic in this lesson will raise many other questions and perhaps allowing students to continue in this vein of "self-discovery" will raise their awareness of their own cultural encapsulation, misconceptions about other topics of historical significance, and help them to higher level thinking skills.
MATERIALS/ RESOURCES:
Chapter One in A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
Available from OSPI:Office of Indian Education: An American Indian Perspective on Columbus by Esther Stutzman; "Truths of Columbus" adapted from this pamphlet and included in this packet.
The language in this George Carlin Video is rough but the truth shines through. Watch the video and then read this essay by George Monbiot, who points out that a cabal of intellectuals and elitists hijacked the economic debate, and now we are dealing with the catastrophic effects.
George Monbiot
For the first time the UK's consumer debt exceeds the total of its gross national product: a new report shows that we owe £1.35 trillion. Inspectors in the United States have discovered that 77,000 road bridges are in the same perilous state as the one which collapsed into the Mississippi. Two years after Hurricane Katrina struck, 120,000 people from New Orleans are still living in trailer homes and temporary lodgings. As runaway climate change approaches, governments refuse to take the necessary action. Booming inequality threatens to create the most divided societies the world has seen since before the first world war. Now a financial crisis caused by unregulated lending could turf hundreds of thousands out of their homes and trigger a cascade of economic troubles.
These problems appear unrelated, but they all have something in common. They arise in large part from a meeting that took place 60 years ago in a Swiss spa resort. It laid the foundations for a philosophy of government that is responsible for many, perhaps most, of our contemporary crises.
When the Mont Pelerin Society first met, in 1947, its political project did not have a name. But it knew where it was going. The society's founder, Friedrich von Hayek, remarked that the battle for ideas would take at least a generation to win, but he knew that his intellectual army would attract powerful backers. Its philosophy, which later came to be known as neoliberalism, accorded with the interests of the ultra-rich, so the ultra-rich would pay for it.
Neoliberalism claims that we are best served by maximum market freedom and minimum intervention by the state. The role of government should be confined to creating and defending markets, protecting private property and defending the realm. All other functions are better discharged by private enterprise, which will be prompted by the profit motive to supply essential services. By this means, enterprise is liberated, rational decisions are made and citizens are freed from the dehumanising hand of the state.
This, at any rate, is the theory. But as David Harvey proposes in his book A Brief History of Neoliberalism, wherever the neoliberal programme has been implemented, it has caused a massive shift of wealth not just to the top 1%, but to the top tenth of the top 1%. In the US, for instance, the upper 0.1% has already regained the position it held at the beginning of the 1920s. The conditions that neoliberalism demands in order to free human beings from the slavery of the state - minimal taxes, the dismantling of public services and social security, deregulation, the breaking of the unions - just happen to be the conditions required to make the elite even richer, while leaving everyone else to sink or swim. In practice the philosophy developed at Mont Pelerin is little but an elaborate disguise for a wealth grab.
So the question is this: given that the crises I have listed are predictable effects of the dismantling of public services and the deregulation of business and financial markets, given that it damages the interests of nearly everyone, how has neoliberalism come to dominate public life?
Richard Nixon was once forced to concede that "we are all Keynesians now". Even the Republicans supported the interventionist doctrines of John Maynard Keynes. But we are all neoliberals now. Margaret Thatcher kept telling us that "there is no alternative", and by implementing her programmes Clinton, Blair, Brown and the other leaders of what were once progressive parties appear to prove her right.
The first great advantage the neoliberals possessed was an unceasing fountain of money. US oligarchs and their foundations - Coors, Olin, Scaife, Pew and others - have poured hundreds of millions into setting up thinktanks, founding business schools and transforming university economics departments into bastions of almost totalitarian neoliberal thinking. The Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institute, the American Enterprise Institute and many others in the US, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Adam Smith Institute in the UK, were all established to promote this project. Their purpose was to develop the ideas and the language which would mask the real intent of the programme - the restoration of the power of the elite - and package it as a proposal for the betterment of humankind.
Their project was assisted by ideas which arose in a very different quarter. The revolutionary movements of 1968 also sought greater individual liberties, and many of the soixante-huitards saw the state as their oppressor. As Harvey shows, the neoliberals coopted their language and ideas. Some of the anarchists I know still voice notions almost identical to those of the neoliberals: the intent is different, but the consequences very similar. Hayek's disciples were also able to make use of economic crises. An early experiment took place in New York City, which was hit by budgetary disaster in 1975. Its bankers demanded that the city follow their prescriptions - huge cuts in public services, smashing of the unions, public subsidies for business. In the UK, stagflation, strikes and budgetary breakdown allowed Thatcher, whose ideas were framed by her neoliberal adviser Keith Joseph, to come to the rescue. Her programme worked, but created a new set of crises.
If these opportunities were insufficient, the neoliberals and their backers would use bribery or force. In the US, the Democrats were neutered by new laws on campaign finance. To compete successfully for funding with the Republicans, they would have to give big business what it wanted. The first neoliberal programme of all was implemented in Chile following Pinochet's coup, with the backing of the US government and economists taught by Milton Friedman, one of the founding members of the Mont Pelerin Society. Drumming up support for the project was easy: if you disagreed, you got shot. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank used their power over developing nations to demand the same policies.
But the most powerful promoter of this programme was the media. Most of it is owned by multimillionaires who use it to project the ideas that support their interests. Those ideas which threaten their interests are either ignored or ridiculed. It is through the newspapers and TV channels that the socially destructive notions of a small group of extremists have come to look like common sense. The corporations' tame thinkers sell the project by reframing our political language (for an account of how this happens, see George Lakoff's book, Don't Think of an Elephant!). Nowadays I hear even my progressive friends using terms like wealth creators, tax relief, big government, consumer democracy, red tape, compensation culture, job seekers and benefit cheats. These terms, all invented or promoted by neoliberals, have become so commonplace that they now seem almost neutral.
Neoliberalism, if unchecked, will catalyse crisis after crisis, all of which can be solved only by greater intervention on the part of the state. In confronting it, we must recognise that we will never be able to mobilise the resources its exponents have been given. But as the disasters they have caused unfold, the public will need ever less persuading that it has been misled.
From the Editor's Desk Back To School Edition Commentary By Howard Schwach
The Wave http://www.rockawave.com/news/2007/0914/Editorial/016.html
Now that we are back to school, there are many issues that have to be addressed about the "success" that Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein have brought to the city's public school system.
First of all, there are three ways to increase scores on standardized tests, such as the ELA, the math tests and the state's Regents exams, to give the appearance that students are learning more.
The first is to actually teach the content area and skills needed to understand and pass the test, as the city schools have been for years.
The second way is to forget about everything but the tests and to teach only the content area and skills necessary to pass the tests, which is what the city has been doing for the past two years.
The third, also apparently a city priority is to make the tests easier, lower the passing grade and then insure that only those who have a good shot at passing the test actually take it.
The city and state have been heavily into the third option, something that has only recently come to light, although school staff have known about it for two years or more.
Where is Al Shanker when we need him most?
One of the funniest lines in movie history came in a Woody Allen movie, "Sleepers," where Allen was asked what started the wars that led to the destruction of many nations.
"Al Shanker got the bomb," he answered.
That was an insider joke that drew a big laugh in New York City, but probably not in the hinterlands, because Shanker was the first president of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), the union that represents the city's teachers.
I knew Shanker because I was a chapter chair at the schools where I taught and I spent some time speaking with him.
In one case, he even called me at home to ask me (it was more of orders from headquarters) to stop private teaching activities during the long strike in 1968.
The point is that Shanker was very liberal and very interested in education. He would have never let the UFT get away with some of its more recent activities and acquiescence to Department of Education foolishness had he still been alive.
He believed in educating students to become citizens. He did not believe in educating students on how to take a test.
Shanker once enunciated his core belief for education in New York City at a meeting of chairpersons.
He said that schools were places where children learn to be active, engaged citizens in their democracy and where teachers must be free to exercise professional judgment to do what is best for the children in their care.
How far we've come from that core belief.
We no longer teach social studies or citizenship because that gets in the way of teaching test-taking skills. Students no longer get an education on how democracy works, on what our Constitution stands for, on how our three-branch government works, or how important it is to a democracy for each member to make an informed vote.
No longer do teachers have the right to exercise their professional judgment on any classroom-related topic. Everything is dictated from Tweed Courthouse; from the type of rug the kids have to sit on, to textbooks, to providing teaching texts to elementary teachers.
Shanker would have fought the mayor and the chancellor. He called one three-month strike over community control run amok. He might well have called another over the lack of education going on in this city.
The Daily News thinks that it broke the story of dumbed-down tests, but it has been going on for some time.
I once wrote questions for the Grade 11 American History Regents Test. I went to Albany for a workshop that taught how to write succinct, difficult questions.
Those that were thought of as too easy were pushed from the Regents table to other, easier state tests such as the Regent's Competency Test (RCT).
Three years later, the annual workshop given by the state education department were already focusing on making the questions easier, giving more students a "chance to excel," as they put it.
Two years ago, the State Board of Regents changed the passing score on those tests from 65 to 50. How to get more kids to meets standards? Make the standards lower.
Last year, at Beach Channel High School, a student was found taking a regent's test for a younger sibling.
The student who took the test was reprimanded and suspended for three days.
The student for whom the test was taken received no sanction whatsoever.
At the Scholar's Academy last year, parents of eighth grade students received letters in June saying that their students would not be allowed to take the coming Math A Regents because there was little chance that they would pass the test.
In fact, the Scholars' Academy is a good case in point for what is going on in our schools.
That magnet school draws a population of sixth graders that is already performing in the high range - high 3's and 4's - on standardized tests otherwise they would not have been admitted to the school in the first place. Yet, they spend the months of September, October, November and December for ten periods a week going over the Kaplan test prep material in English and Mathematics.
Why? Because the school has a public relations goal of becoming one of the "best" schools in the city, rather than a goal of providing the best education to their already high-performing students.
Some parents, however, less concerned with test scores, would rather see more sophisticated incorporation of content area skills and understandings for their middle-schoolers.
I always believed that a child should be given the chance to fail. To keep kids from taking the test just to insure that the number of kids passing the test will be impressive is not education, it is statistics.
Every child taking the class should also take the Regents. To keep kids from the test because they might fail is just plain wrong.
Kids who are already performing above level should not be burdened with test prep to the exclusion of content area material.
Education has become a numbers game rather than an education game.
Principals get a bonus if their numbers are up, even if the majority of kids are still failing.
Teachers working with at-risk kids are often excoriated, given Uratings and fired or transferred because their numbers do not move sufficiently from one year to the next.
Schools are called "failing," even though the great majority of their students are doing well in school, because one group - typically special ed or English language learners - are not statistically up to snuff.
Kids are moved ahead despite poor test scores, because they do well on their "alternative methods of grading" - portfolios and the like. Other kids are held back or made to suffer intensive courses of study because they are poor test-takers and do not do well on the standardized tests. Teachers know who they are, but are powerless to do anything about it.
We need another Al Shanker. A person who believes strongly in education rather than test scores and believes as strongly in democracy, not in isolating children in singleissue or single-language schools.
What we need is some good basic education rather than high-stakes testing.
