UNIONS SHAPING GOOD SCHOOLS:
WHERE EVERY CHILD GRADUATES AND EVERY DIPLOMA
REFLECTS ACHIEVEMENT

A Seminar Series for Union Leaders, Policy Experts and
Superintendents on Unions and Achieving Schools

"Unions, Teaching Quality and Student Achievement"

June 4-5, 2007

 The Albert Shanker Institute launched a series of seminars on the union’s role in shaping the “good school” with a June 4-5 session on “Unions, Teaching Quality, and Student Achievement.” This kick-off seminar featured a series of presentations and candid, off-the-record conversations between local and national AFT leaders, superintendents from some of those locals, members of the Albert Shanker Institute Board of Directors, and selected policy experts and researchers. (See full Agenda.)

The object of the initial seminar was to get a sense of what is really known about how the most-discussed teaching reforms and staffing policies affect educational performance. One key issue was the suspect charge that provisions of teacher union contracts are detrimental to teaching quality — and, thus, student achievement. Another issue was to explore what unions and union/superintendent partnerships could do differently to better promote teaching quality. The information discussed came in two forms — first, as reports from some of the best researchers in the country on studies they have either conducted or reviewed, and second, from the practical experience of local union leaders and superintendents already in the process of trying to implement effective practices. 

The presentations included: “Why Teachers and Education Need a Union Voice” (with education historian Diane Ravitch and UFT President Randi Weingarten); “What Does the Research Really Say About Teaching Quality?” (Suzanne Wilson, chair of teacher education at Michigan State University);  “Staffing for Extra Needs (Hard-to-Staff Schools and Positions):  Union Policies, Union Effects” (Kathryn Strunk from the University of California at Davis and AFT staff member Howard Nelson);  “Promoting and Recognizing Teacher Excellence: Pay for Performance, Mentoring and Induction, Peer Review and Intervention, Providing Quality Curriculum and aligned Professional Development” (Toledo Federation of Teachers President Fran Lawrence and Susan Moore Johnson from Harvard University); “Working on Partnerships from Where the Superintendent Sits,” (Kathleen Kashin, New York City, Rudy Crew, Miami-Dade, Nanciann Gatta, northern Chicago suburbs, and Gary Smuts, Los Angeles suburbs); and “Working on Partnerships from Where the Local President Sits” (Karen Aronowitz, United Teachers of Dade, Dan Montgomery, North Suburban Teachers Union, and Laura Rico, ABC Federation of Teachers).

 Two themes that arose throughout the discussion were: (1) That we need a stronger voice to counter the anti-union and anti-public-education forces in the country, offering “big ideas” and a “big platform” around which to rally support; and (2), that we need to look at ways that improvement can be brought to entire districts and not just on a school-by-school basis. As one participant stated, “While we are busy proving that we can create more exceptions to the norm, we have not figured out how to make the exception the norm.”

 In his concluding remarks, AFT and Shanker Institute President Ed McElroy noted that the context for this work is the growing threat to public education. To fight back against the critics who are only too happy to balkanize and dismantle public education, he said, we must make sure that efforts to improve public education are very concrete and grounded in the best research, and that we tackle these issues at a “big table” among those willing to work together to strengthen and preserve public education.