The powerful teachers' unions:
Berube, Maurice R
THE POWERFUL TEACHERS UNIONS POLITICAL CLOUT FOR THE STATUS QUO MAURICE R. BERUBE The National Education Association (NEA), with 1.8 million members, and the American Federation of Teachers...
...THE POWERFUL TEACHERS UNIONS POLITICAL CLOUT FOR THE STATUS QUO MAURICE R. BERUBE The National Education Association (NEA), with 1.8 million members, and the American Federation of Teachers AFL-CIO (AFT), with 600,000 members, have become one of the most powerful political constituencies in the nation...
...Moreover, the NEA maintains a quota system guaranteeing minority representation among union officers, a practice that the AFT denounces...
...After all, who knows better than teachers how badly our schools need such reforms...
...The AFT expelled such locals from the union and was in the forefront of the civil rights movement...
...Jimmy Carter obliged the NEA by establishing the department in 1979...
...Negotiations collapsed for a variety of reasons...
...Nowhere has that ideological difference been more evident than in their differing reactions to the "excellence" movement...
...For Selden, the originator of the idea, merger meant that the teachers' unions would become the cutting edge of educational and social reform...
...The Reagan bill did not make it to the floor of Congress...
...Shanker has also called for a national licensing examination system...
...For the most part, the NEA and the AFT represent different wings of the Democratic party-the former liberal and the latter conservative...
...He is an exceptionally bright, articulate, and politically astute labor leader...
...The two filed opposing amicus curiae briefs in the 1976 Bakke Supreme Court decision...
...The AFT, which under Shanker has focused on anti-Communism, attacked the NEA's manual as "propaganda" and argued that the NEA should not bring such "political, moral, and economic issues" into the classroom...
...Shanker has dominated AFT politics for over a decade and a half...
...But in the popular mind, clearly the "excellence" reform movement has upstaged the unions and underscored the need for stronger teacher initiative...
...The NEA has a larg-er membership and this would ensure its control and liberal dominance of the merged union...
...The NEA, however, has declared all of the Democrats "strong supporters of education," and has dismissed the Republicans...
...The unions have reaped the rewards of their political involvement by having much of their legislative program adopted, while stopping what they have opposed...
...and the union published a teachers' manual, Choices: A Unit on Conflict and Nuclear War...
...The NEA and the AFT have marked differences in certain of their educational goals as well as in their social and political objectives...
...The AFT does not poll its members on their political affiliation, but it is probably quite similar to that of MAURICE R. BERUBE is associate professor of urban education at Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia...
...In the 1980 campaign, one observer estimated that the NEA rounded up as many as 500,000 volunteers who worked on behalf of the union's favorite, Jimmy Carter...
...The excellence movement was launched by the Department of Education's publication of A Nation at Risk...
...Again ironies abound...
...From 1973 to 1984, the NEA PAC successfully supported winners in 76 percent of their contests...
...Albert Shanker, the head of the AFT, feels comfortable with the "excellence" reform, and takes pride in the fact that his call for a national teacher examination, as part of that reform, has received a good deal of attention and editorial support...
...The unions stopped a Reagan administration attempt to set up such a plan for students being served under Chapter I of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act...
...In New York City, the UFT (the AFT local) virtually dominates community school board elections...
...The NEA has aligned itself with the international peace movement...
...Union power may have made the teachers the chief representative of education in the halls of Congress and in state houses...
...The NEA once maintained segregated locals...
...He hoped to have the "entire educational system . . . renovated and reconstructed" and emerge with "a united teacher organization...
...Instead, he calls for "intensive help" in the public schools to educate minorities...
...A longer-range plan might have the NEA restructuring its governing councils to encourage the grooming of a long-term, educational leader...
...Shanker is an educational and racial conservative, a hard-line anti-Communist, and a loyal adherent to the AFL-CIO view of the world-views diametrically opposite those of the NEA...
...NEA presidents are classroom teachers elected for a maximum of two terms...
...now that the union controls so many boards, it is resisting efforts to abolish them...
...the AFT opposes them...
...Over the past generation, the NEA has moved from a promoter of the status quo to a more liberal orientation...
...Shanker argued that the Reagan plan would allow private schools to "discriminate along racial or religious lines" and would "pit one group of parents against another...
...The unions now give competency tests at least limited support: have beginning teachers take them...
...Though the teachers' unions have succeeded only once- with Jimmy Carter-in four tries at presidential politics, they have been influential power brokers in the primaries...
...Both unions were initially defensive about this Reagan-backed initiative...
...At the same time, the AFT, under its former president, David Selden, supported a liberal-and at times radical-agenda, but now it has moved slightly to the right of center...
...In New York, the only state dominated by the AFT, 94 percent of those who won the union's endorsement won seats in the state legislature (here a significant number were Republicans...
...NEA members...
...Back then, the UFT opposed them...
...Mary Hatwood Futtrell was given an exceptional third term...
...What are the prospects for greater teacher unity, especially in the form of a merger...
...but union politics has limited their power in the school-house...
...building a liberal labor political force similar to those which functioned in most European countries...
...the NEA's is not...
...He has made his presence felt mainly through his paid educational column in the New York Times, originally published, as paid advertising, to restore his image after the community control fight...
...Now the NEA supports affirmative action programs...
...But the two unions have acted in concert on some important educational policy issues, including competency tests for teachers, vouchers, and tuition-tax, credits-issues that will directly affect their members and/or the viability of public schools...
...In 1986, 80 percent of AFT- and NEA-backed candidates won...
...With their considerable financial and personnel resources, these two unions maintain highly effective lobbying arms that press for favored legislation, and run political action committees (PACs) that support local, state, and national candidates...
...The Republican write-off notwithstanding, teachers' unions have been enormously successful since entering the political arena in the mid-sixties...
...social change within the schools...
...These endeavors have been remarkably effective in helping to elect mayors, governors, state legislators, members of Congress-and even one president, Jimmy Carter...
...By the 1984 presidential election campaign, for example, the NEA boasted more money than the entire labor movement-some $375 million- and was prepared to spend a portion of it in the election...
...Thus, an important question has arisen which the unions have yet to answer satisfactorily: With all of their political influence, why have the teachers' unions had such limited impact on education itself...
...His most recent book is Education and Poverty (Greenwood...
...If things are going well in electoral politics for the unions, matters are quite different when it comes to the politics of education...
...Starting with their collective bargaining breakthrough in 1961 and the right to negotiate union contracts, the unions did not have to take too many steps to become involved in the politics of school budgets and the elected officials who control them...
...NEA house polls indicate that 41 percent of its members are registered Democrats, while 28 percent are Republicans...
...Shanker has been the most consistent labor figure in American education...
...Today, the chief obstacle to merger may well be Shanker himself...
...From the "equity" reform wave of the 1960s when the civil rights movement set the agenda for education of the disadvantaged, to the ' 'excellence" movement of the 1980s when competition from abroad, notably Japan, began stressing education for the best and brightest, teachers' unions have been followers rather than active initiators of school reform...
...The easiest answer to the question is that bitter organizational rivalries in seeking new members have impaired the ability of the AFT and NEA to work together on other agendas...
...A merger plan could guard against some of these problems by including proportional representation...
...In 1980, the NEA sent 464 delegates and 169 alternates for Carter to the Democratic convention, one-tenth of all the delegates and one in seven of those committed to Carter...
...The two unions' success is even more dramatic at state and local levels...
...Its current president, Mary Hatwood Futtrell, the first black to head a teacher's union, has attacked "excellence" advocates as "would-be reformers" who believe that "schools are devoting too many resources to educating disadvantaged learners and not enough to fostering excellence among talented students...
...One of the many ironies of the NEA-AFT rift is that it was the NEA that made the creation of a cabinet-level department of education one of its key political demands, while the AFT was opposed...
...But for all of their political clout, the teachers' unions have done very little to deal with many of the chronic problems plaguing the nation's schools and educational systems...
...The AFT structure is attuned to strong leadership...
...When Selden was AFT president in the late sixties and early seventies, there was talk of merging the two unions...
...Given the large field in the 1988 primaries, teachers' unions, like the AFL-CIO generally, have refrained from backing any candidate...
...As a political response to the economic failings of American business in a competitive world market,' 'excellence" is very much a product of the Reagan administration...
...In addition, the AFT backed the winners in the races for the executive branch, especially Mario Cuomo, who was a leading presidential possibility at the time...
...The concern of NEA officials about the performance of minority teachers on such examinations is not fully shared by their counterparts at the AFT...
...Selden subsequently lost the presidency to his protege, Albert Shanker...
...On a congressional level, the unions have exerted immense influence...
...In any merged union, Shanker and the AFT might well dominate...
...While the NEA has maintained a cool hostility, the AFT eventually joined the "excellence" bandwagon...
...In 1981, its representative assembly went on record against nuclear conflict...
...Thus far, however, its major impact has not been to improve business, but to shift emphasis away from the equity agenda...
...The teachers' unions find the greatest common ground in their opposition to vouchers and tuition tax credits that would aid private and parochial schools...
...The NEA, on the other hand, has retained its allegiance to the "old" equity agenda...
...There they play an essentially caretaker role: they have made incremental gains in salary and working conditions for their members, but otherwise have worked largely to preserve the educational status quo...
...The excellence/equity disagreement points to another difference between the two unions-the question of race...
...These boards were part of an effort during the sixties to decentralize the powers of the New York City Board of Education and encourage community participation in the schools...
...But they remain opposed to such tests for experienced teachers...
...Futtrell called it a "cruel hoax" that "signals further retreat" from efforts to educate the poor...
...In the face of these divisive views, it is hard to imagine the teachers' unions ever being united enough to devote more attention and energy to sorely needed reforms within schools and the educational establishment itself...
...That is certainly the conclusion of Chester E. Finn, Jr., Assistant Secretary of Education in the Reagan administration, who has written off the teacher union vote: They are "firmly in the Democratic camp" and the "Republicans rarely owe debts or favors to [them...
...Finally, the unions have different positions on foreign policy which, though far removed from the immediate concerns of most teachers, are indicative of divergent union philosophies...
...In 1984, 270 NEA delegates went to the convention as Mondale delegates...
...Shanker sees no reason for concern about losing minority teachers...
...Former AFT president Selden believes this rivalry has seriously detracted from educational concerns...
...Its 1986 candidates won majorities in twenty-five out of thirty-two school districts...
...Equally important, the teachers' unions have critical ideological differences, which are often reflected in their educational priorities...
...But the two unions have never been farther from this vision than they are right now...
...And without merger, it is unlikely that the unions will ever become the national force needed for educational and social change within the schools...
Vol. 115 • April 1988 • No. 7
