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Where Are My Shanker Knights?
The fourth author in our series of guest posts commemorating the 20th anniversary of Al Shanker's death is Dr. Lorretta Johnson, secretary treasurer of the American Federation of Teachers. You can find the other posts in this series here.
Those of us who had the privilege to work with labor leader and progressive giant Al Shanker can attest to his deeply held sense of justice, his urgency in the fight for fairness, and his composure in the face of both personal and professional battles that would have left many of us undone.
For me, Al Shanker was a friend, a leader and a mentor. Shanker believed every worker deserved dignity, respect and a shot at the American dream. And when it came to paraprofessionals, he used his influence as AFT president to organize us into the union, thus giving us a voice in the classroom, dignity in the school building and the wages necessary to take care of our families. Back then, many paraprofessionals, like those of us in Baltimore, were seen as just the help and weren’t given a voice or chance to work in an equitable environment. Many of us were black and brown mothers, heads of households.
But, thanks to Al Shanker and the AFT’s organizing efforts, paraprofessionals saw better times, stronger collective bargaining agreements, higher wages, more dignity in our workplaces and greater love from the community we served.
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Remembering Al Shanker
The third author in our series of guest posts commemorating the 20th anniversary of Al Shanker's death is Herb Magidson, who, before serving as an AFT vice president for 28 years, was an assistant to Shanker when he was president of the UFT. You can find the other posts in this series here.
During these last few tumultuous months, I’ve thought many times about Al Shanker. How would he have reacted to the chaos now afflicting our nation? How would he respond to a new president who is so dismissive of the basic democratic principles on which the United States was founded more than two hundred years? And what counsel would he have given us as we seek to deal with this challenge to our very way of life?
At a time when authoritarians throughout the world appear to be gaining strength, I think of Al, above all others, because what was special about Al was his unwavering commitment to freedom; his dedication to the belief that support for a vigorous public school system, and a free trade union movement are integral to a robust, open society where workers from all walks of life can prosper. This 20th anniversary of Shanker’s death comes, therefore, at a moment when it is helpful to be reminded of the contributions of this hero who celebrated freedom and dedicated his life to its promulgation.
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In Search Of Tough Liberals In The Age Of Trump: Remembering Al Shanker
The next author in our series of guest posts commemorating the 20th anniversary of Al Shanker's death is Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, and author of Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles Over Schools, Unions, Race and Democracy (Columbia University Press, 2007). You can find the other posts in this series here.
I met Albert Shanker in September 1995, just a year and a half before his untimely death. I made an appointment to interview him for a book I was writing on affirmative action policies in college admissions. My father, who taught high school, used to clip Shanker’s columns in the Sunday New York Times and share them with me. So I was excited to meet the man whose writing on education, labor, civil rights and democracy spoke to me so profoundly.
Shanker cut an imposing figure. He was 6’4” with a deep voice and his office at the American Federation of Teachers had an impressive view of the Capitol. He wasn’t one for small talk so we got right down to business. On the issue of affirmative action, I strongly identified with Shanker’s position – wanting to find a way to remedy our nation’s egregious history of racial discrimination but simultaneously wanting to avoid a backlash from working-class whites, who also had a rightful claim to special consideration that racial preferences failed to acknowledge.
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Public Intellectual: The Legacy Of Al Shanker
Twenty years ago today, the legendary president of the American Federation of Teachers, Al Shanker, died. To mark the occasion, we have asked a number of individuals – some who knew and worked with Al and some who have studied his life’s work – to reflect on the continuing relevance of his ideas and his principles. We did so out of a conviction that Shanker’s ideas and principles are not simply matters of historical interest, but of real contemporary value at a time when public education, unionism and American democracy itself are in a state of profound crisis, under attack in unprecedented ways. Beginning today with this post, we will be publishing these reflections (you can find the full series here).
For a half-century, Al Shanker labored as a teacher and educator, as a unionist and as a democrat. In each of these fields, he was a political force to be reckoned with, shaping public policy and thinking in significant ways. Yet unlike most important political actors on the American scene, Shanker was a public intellectual who relished vigorous debate and reveled in the world of ideas. He brought an open mind and a penchant for critical analysis, a fierce commitment to rational discourse and logical argumentation that relied on evidence, to all that he did. His political engagement had a deeply intellectual cast.
As the executive director of the institute established by the AFT to honor Shanker by carrying on his life’s work as an engaged public intellectual, I have often thought about Al’s example. What strikes me most about Shanker the thinker was his refusal to become entrenched in his views or to allow his beliefs to harden into inflexible dogmas. One story in particular comes to mind.
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New Teacher Evaluations And Teacher Job Satisfaction
Job satisfaction among teachers is a perenially popular topic of conversation in education policy circles. There is good reason for this. For example, whether or not teachers are satisfied with their work has been linked to their likelihood of changing schools or professions (e.g., Ingersoll 2001).
Yet much of the discussion of teacher satisfaction consists of advocates’ speculation that their policy preferences will make for a more rewarding profession, whereas opponents’ policies are sure to disillusion masses of educators. This was certainly true of the debate surrounding the rapid wave of teacher evaluation reform over the past ten or so years.
A paper just published in the American Education Research Journal addresses directly the impact of new evaluation systems on teacher job satisfaction. It is, therefore, not only among the first analyses to examine the impact of these systems, but also the first to look at their effect on teachers’ attitudes.
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Students As Agents Of Lasting Change: The Citizen Power Project
“The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically…Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.” – Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., “The Purpose of Education”, 1947
Today is Martin Luther King Day and even now, all across the country, educators and students strive to meet the goal that Dr. King set for education.
The Citizen Power Project -- presented by First Book, the American Federation of Teachers, the Albert Shanker Institute, and the Aspen Institute’s Pluribus Project – seeks to identify the intersection between critical thinking and character in order to uplift it.
In November, educators planned and then proposed civic engagement projects for their students and communities. Of the hundreds that were sent in, 15 were funded as part of the challenge. Students used resources made available on the First Book Marketplace to think intensively and conduct research about an issue in their community or in the world. The next step would be using what they’d learned to take action and help right wrongs, uplift others, and make their world a better place.
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Changing Communities With Books: The Citizen Power Project
In November, First Book and its partners the American Federation of Teachers and the Albert Shanker Institute presented the Citizen Power Project; a challenge to educators nationwide to identify, plan, and implement a civic engagement project important to their students, school or community.
Fifteen of those projects received grants to help turn their big plans into big impact.
Since then the fifteen projects have gotten underway and the results have been phenomenal. With a wide range of projects each in different phases, we thought we would check in with educators to hear about what their project has done so far and where it is going.
In Framingham, Massachusetts, middle school English teacher Lori DiGisi knows her students don’t always feel empowered. “They feel like the adults rule everything and that they don’t really have choices,” she explains. “The issue I’m trying to solve is for a diverse group of students to see that they can make a difference in their community.”
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Three Important Details When Discussing School Segregation
It sometimes seems as if school segregation is one of those topics that is always “in fashion” among education policy commenters and journalists. This is a good thing, as educational segregation, and the residential segregation underlying it, are among the most important symptoms and causes of unequal opportunity in the U.S.
Yet the discussion and coverage of school segregation, while generally quite good, sometimes suffers from a failure to make clear a few very important distinctions or details, and it may be worthwhile laying these out in one place. None of the three discussed below are novel or technical, nor do they represent a comprehensive list of all the methodological and theoretical issues surrounding segregation (of any kind).
They are, rather, just details that should, I would argue, be spelled out clearly in any discussion of this important issue.
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Our Request For Simple Data From The District Of Columbia
For our 2015 report, “The State of Teacher Diversity in American Education,” we requested data on teacher race and ethnicity between roughly 2000 and 2012 from nine of the largest school districts in the nation: Boston; Chicago; Cleveland; District of Columbia; Los Angeles; New Orleans; New York; Philadelphia; and San Francisco.
Only one of these districts failed to provide us with data that we could use to conduct our analysis: the District of Columbia.
To be clear, the data we requested are public record. Most of the eight other districts to which we submitted requests complied in a timely fashion. A couple of them took months to fill the request, and required a little follow up. But all of them gave us what we needed. We were actually able to get charter school data for virtually all of these eight cities (usually through the state).
Even New Orleans, which, during the years for which we requested data, was destroyed by a hurricane and underwent a comprehensive restructuring of its entire school system, provided the data.
But not DC.
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How Books Inspire Action: The Citizen Power Project
Our guest author today is Marissa Wasseluk, Digital Communication Manager for non-profit FirstBook.
All too often, young people feel they don’t have the power to fix problems in their communities How can books inspire students to take action and become engaged citizens?
Earlier this year, First Book, along with our partners the American Federation of Teachers and the Albert Shanker Institute, presented educators nationwide with a challenge: identify an issue and a civic engagement project important to their students, school or community. We then asked for proposals on how, with the support of books and resources from First Book, their students could take action to address that issue and show their students that they have a voice and the ability to make positive changes happen.
We called this challenge The Citizen Power Activation Project. Funded by the Aspen Institute’s Pluribus Project, 15 proposals - five each from elementary, middle and high schools - would be chosen to receive a collection of special resources to help them implement their projects and a $500 grant for use on the First Book Marketplace.
More than 920 proposals were received.
