EDUCATION REFORM

Where We Have Been
Five years ago, when A Nation at Risk and numerous other education reform reports began to appear, we at the American Federation of Teachers also took a risk by committing ourselves to a level of openness to change in public education that was unprecedented in the education community.

We did not flinch from the criticisms of public education presented in these reports. We instead responded constructively and were willing to consider the various recommendations made in the reports and by states and localities. We were open to discussing changes in our schools, and we were ready to negotiate.

We did not pursue this position because we agreed with all the analyses and remedies proposed in these reports and the legislation they spawned. We said at the outset that the reform movement had serious shortcomings. But above all we knew, and had frequently argued, that public education was seriously troubled. It still is. We believed, and had frequently argued, that public education needed to change. It still does.

We also recognized that public education needed allies in order to improve, perhaps even to survive. We therefore believed that the reform reports represented an opportunity, a new commitment to the cause of public education by much of the business and political community.

And so we listened and talked and were open even to discussing proposals that traditionally had been anathema to this and other unions. Most frequently, we and our affiliates came up with bold new reform ideas and initiatives of our own, ranging from peer review to a national board for teacher certification and assessments, from fair and educationally defensible means of providing for differentiated staffing to restructured schools, from new ways of thinking about teaching and curriculum to new ways of organizing learning. The report of the AFT Task Force on the Future of Educa­tion charted new directions both for the union and for education and received national attention. Today, many of our locals are in the forefront of educational renewal.

Five years later, we have no regrets about our position on education reform.

A Mixed Bag of Results
Much good has cone from the education reform movement. Teacher salaries have increased, and entry-level teacher testing is now widespread. Although these tests are still not good, important work that would not have been pursued before is now under way to improve them. The professionalization of teaching is now a major education policy issue, and a National Board for Professional Teaching Standards with a teacher majority is in place. Curriculum, promotion and graduation standards and requirements for students have also been strengthened. More students are taking more rigorous subjects and doing more homework. After much neglect, the problems of disadvantaged students are getting more serious attention. The national interest in public education has intensified, and the level of dialogue and debate on education is improving. Public education, for the time being, has survived, despite the great odds against it just a short time ago.

But there is also much that has happened as a result of education reform that is bad. Despite the prevailing rhetoric about the professionalization of teaching and the important strides that have been made in this direction, we are witnessing major efforts to de-skill and deprofessionalize teachers. More and more teachers are being told what to do, when to do it, and how¾old-fashioned "teacher proofing" in the name of reform. Traditional merit pay schemes, now bearing new names, continue to rear their unsubstantiated heads. Teacher evaluation systems of the worse sorts have proliferated—"snoopervision" checklists of a mishmash of discrete teacher behaviors that reduce teaching to a simple and dubious formula.

Nor have students been spared. In the name of accountability, there is now a virtual obsession with standardized testing. Teachers are being forced to devote precious class time to coaching students on how to take and pass these tests, rather than getting them to do real reading, mathematics and writing or to engage in higher-order work. It is now not uncommon to find students faring well on standardized, multiple-choice test items, while being unable to read or to solve problems. Curriculum, texts and classwork are now being "aligned" with tests, thereby narrowing content and instruction and threatening to reduce education to only that which can be easily measured. We have no argument with legitimate accountability in education. But the tail is now wagging the dog to an extent that endangers real teaching and learning.

Indeed, so many things have happened as a result of reform that we are at a point where it is a mistake to speak of the education reform movement. There is not one reform movement in this country; there are two.

A Critique of Traditional Reform
The first and major reform movement is top down and regulatory, characterized by thick books of state legislation and district rules prescribing everything from academic requirements to the sub-units and sub-objectives of curriculum and how to meet them. Although there have been positive developments from this type of reform, including higher entry-level requirements for teaching and more rigorous standards for students, its central assumptions and methods are both naive and counterproductive: namely, that if students are exposed to more and more rigorous requirements, they will be inoculated against ignorance; and if teachers are simply worked harder, made to follow and dispense the "right" instructional prescriptions and held accountable for standardized test results, student learning will be produced.

In short, while this reform movement speaks of schools educating students for the 21st century, it is instead looking backward with nostalgia to the schools (and society) of the 1930s to 1950s. And although this reform movement is rhetorically supportive of the professionalization of teaching, its methods reflect a view of teachers as o1d-fashioned factory workers and not very able or trustworthy ones at that.

What are the likely results of this reform movement? If the so-called "good old days" to which it looks are a guide, an optimistic reading is that it may work for those students who are able to learn in traditional schools and in traditional ways and who needed only a reinvigoration of requirements and standards to get them back on the road to achievement. Unfortunately, this does not, and never did, represent the majority of students. Even in the "good old days" of the 1930s to 1950s¾when schools had their pick of the best and brightest aspiring teachers, when traditional families and values were relatively intact, substance abuse was a minor issue, discipline problems were relatively trivial, television and video were not major cultural phenomena and competitors to book learning, and the world was a simpler place¾even then the majority of students did not benefit from the traditional, rigorous academic program. In 1940, for example, the high school dropout rate was 76 percent, and not until the 1950s did it fall to just below 50 percent. And, astounding as these figures are, they do not even take account of the many children who were outrightly excluded from schools.

The AFT is not persuaded that a traditional model of schooling, which even in its presumed heyday and under more favorable social circumstances benefited only a minority of youngsters, will now produce high levels of achievement in the majority of our students. Indeed, when we consider this vastly more complex world, our changed society and our more diverse student population, we are deeply fearful that a reform movement based on doing "more and better" of the same old thing will increase the failure and dropout rate to even more intolerable levels than we had in the past.

The cost of that risk would now be appalling. For if in the past even a poorly educated person had a decent chance of succeeding by virtue of hard work, in today's world that possibility is much diminished. In a period when the need and demand for an effective public education have never been greater, we simply cannot risk the tragedy of millions of poorly educated and disenfranchised children just because it is uncomfortable to take a fresh and critical look at the conventional assumptions and methods of reform and the traditional structure of schooling.

We therefore reject the major reform movement's view that public schools are not as good as they were in the past. We reject the view that teachers and other school-related personnel are failing to meet the needs of their students. The fact is that public schools are better than they were in the past. They are educating more and more diverse students for more years and to higher achievement levels than were demanded of students in the past. And they have been doing so at a time when the larger familial, social, economic and political conditions that once supported the work of the schools have been greatly altered. But as our society and our position in the global economy have changed, so too must our public schools change. What was good enough in the past is no longer sufficient. We must now educate the majority of our students to a level of accomplishment that has never yet been demanded or attempted.

Unionism and Reform
We similarly reject the view that teacher unions are an impediment to education reform, school effectiveness or the professionalization of teaching. In addition to our philosophical objections to this smear, we have yet to be presented with any evidence to support it. Indeed, if those who attack collective bargaining as harmful to public education were correct, one would expect them to produce evidence that student learning was greater in non-collective bargaining states. No such evidence would be found.

Certainly this union has been both a leader and responsible critic of reform. Certainly this union has labored tirelessly on behalf of the ideals and the improvement of public education and for the highest standards of professional competence. As the architects of collective bargaining for teachers, which gave our members the first experience of even having basic individual rights and due-process protections in the school system, we find the implication that unionism and professionalism are incompatible particularly and cruelly ironic. To think that teachers were treated like professionals before the advent of teacher unionism is a rank distortion of history.  Professionalism and unionism are inextricably linked.

Of course, our mission of securing for teachers the prerogatives, and responsibilities, of true professionals is far from complete. We also acknowledge that a changed world requires a responsible and responsive, not defensive, union. But as the union was the key to attaining even the minimal professional status our members now enjoy, so too is the union now the key to achieving the professionalization of teaching and the improvement of student learning. Any reform agenda that attempts to separate teachers from their unions is committed neither to true professionalism nor to the betterment of public education.

We also reject the view that it is our students who are at fault for failing to learn. The challenges we face because of their diversity and because many of them live under economic, social, family or neighborhood circumstances that put them at risk--be it the poor ghetto child surrounded by urban decay and crime or the middle class youngster for whom drugs is a way to escape alienation and a disintegrating family--are very real and very difficult. But we cannot use these problems as excuses for an inability to succeed or for the failure to succeed to the extent that we would like, for to do so is to engage in the same tactics that our critics use to blame us. More important, this union has always maintained that only public education has fulfilled the unique and noble role of providing equal opportunity to the diverse citizens of this nation. There is no question about abandoning this role; the only answer is to discharge it even more effectively.

The AFT therefore continues to stand by its historic position that all students should be held to high stand­ards and expectations. We are in fundamental agreement with the reform movement over this. Where we differ, however, is over the question of means. For where the reform movement assumes that there was once a golden age of education and tinkering with and tightening the traditional structure of schools and minutely regulating teachers will bring that back, we are compelled by a different vision: that whatever the merits or demerits of public education in the past, the future requires a higher and different level of achievement; that traditional schools can work for some students and every effort should be made to improve them and the conditions of the students and faculty who work in them; but that for many other students and teachers, it is the traditional structure of the school system¾its rigidities and unexamined policies and habits, its emphasis on information over real learning and doing, its old-fashioned factory model of authority and decision-making relations, and its disincentives for professionalism, collegiality and inquiry¾that is implicated in the enduring problems of teaching and learning.

The 'Second' Reform Movement
The direction the AFT is pointing toward is represented by a second reform movement in this country, and it already has many AFT locals at its helm. Unlike the first education reform movement, this movement is directly concerned with the majority of students who are not being adequately reached by the traditional structure of schooling. Also unlike the first reform movement, this is a "bottom-up" effort that trusts the professional judgment and experience of teachers and allows them to use their understanding of schools and children to promote high levels of learning. Its underlying aim is to cre­ate a public education institution that responds to children and adults in the best way other institutions and professions strive to perform. This movement also has solidly grounded ideas about good practices; but it does not claim to know all we need to know about "what works," least of all for everyone. Above all, this reform movement is committed to inquiry and development, to a search for solutions.

Unfortunately, while the first education reform movement is nearly pervasive, this second movement is tiny and fragile. Indeed, bucking the prevailing trend of reform policy and practices and the traditional factory style of school management and organization has required almost ideal conditions. Consequently, there is only a relative handful of sites involved in this movement. It includes a small group of districts where there is a strong collective-bargaining and trust relationship between AFT affiliates and management and a mutual willingness to take risks. It also includes some school networks initiated by a few school-minded academics, as well as a few public schools or programs within schools that were initiated by groups of risk-taking teachers and, sometimes, administrators. All told, there are precious few districts and schools systematically involved in trying new approaches to school management and organization and teaching and learning in order to reach the majority of students.

It is this second reform movement that the AFT seeks to encourage and support.

The students of this nation cannot wait until all the school districts throughout the country have ideal conditions for change. Public education cannot wait until all districts have solid collective-bargaining relationships and the conditions that enable mutual risk taking between labor and management. We cannot even wait until total or near-total consensus on change exists throughout a school.

But this union has never waited for the impossible to create the possible. And we need not do so today when public education is in such grave danger.

A Multiple Strategy of Education Reform
Therefore, on behalf of the interests of our members and of the students they serve and for the sake of the public education ideal that we so cherish, the AFT will pursue a multiple strategy of education reform.

First, we will continue to pursue collective-bargaining rights for our members who do not presently enjoy such rights. The experience of the past few years has further convinced us that collective bargaining is not only an is­sue of democracy and labor, it is also an educational issue. As our affiliates that have pioneered districtwide reform have demonstrated nationwide, collective bargaining--and the collateral agreements, committees and other arrangements that derive from this labor-management relationship¾is the best means of pursuing reform. We will continue to support our path-breaking locals embarked on districtwide reform efforts and encourage and assist other affiliates to pursue this course. We also will continue to seek adequate federal, state and local funding for educational reform, including increased teacher salaries, per pupil allocations, and ancillary services.

Second, we will seek to expand and further develop and support the pioneering approaches our affiliates have developed and implemented through collective bargaining to enable entire schools, by a method of consensus or majority vote, to pursue new reform directions and move out of the lock step of the rest of the school system and even to waive or go beyond some provisions of the union contract.

And third, so that this nation need not await near-ideal conditions in order for the second reform movement to expand its efforts to reach the majority of students who do not learn well in the traditional school structure, the AFT will now encourage and support its locals to find ways to enable any group of qualified teachers in a building to create a different type of public school.

A New Initiative
How might this new initiative work? The local union and the school district would develop a procedure that would enable any group of about six or more teachers to submit and implement a proposal to create a new school; obviously, a school would not necessarily be synonymous with a building. For purposes of guidance, we think that the proposal should essentially demonstrate the following:

• there would be no adverse impact on other teachers and students in the home school or district;
• a commitment that the school would accept students who are representative of the school district in terms of background and achievement and that other civil rights guarantees would be followed;
• a plan for participative management and governance and professional review;
• how the school will be organized to account for the fact that all students should have access to higher-order knowledge and be held to high standards, yet children learn at different rates and in diferent ways and should not be humiliated or penalized for their efforts at learn­ing; and how an emphasis on both individualized and group learning for students and teams of teachers working together might be employed instead of conventional "tracking" and a "one best method" approach to learning;
• how students will be workers and not passive recipients of information and how the curriculum will reflect this and the above principles, as well as the multiple instructional and technological strategies¾audio and videotapes, art, music, dance, drama, lecture, computers, etc.¾that may be used to achieve these goals;
• how what the best of what is known about learning and teaching will be applied, but also how the school will be structured in a collegial way to inquire into that which is unknown or only weakly understood in terms of reaching the students in that school;
• a plan and method of evaluation setting high standards for what students should know and be able to do and how they might be asked to demonstrate mastery in ways that are superior to conventional standardized testing.

The conditions for implementing the proposal should essentially include:

• union and school board approval;
• if the proposal involves an entire existing school, there should be consensus among the faculty, principal and parents involved or perhaps provisions for a transfer if only a small minority don't opt for the new school;
• if the proposal involves a school within a school, the other teachers and principal in the building must agree to its existence but would not be required to participate;
• voluntary participation on the part of teachers, parents and students.

Finally, if the proposal is approved, the teachers involved would get space in the school building and the same per-pupil allocations are ancillary services that are provided for other students in the building. Moreover, we know that many teachers have been discouraged from bringing about change in schools because of the experience of seeing such efforts terminated by school officials for no good reason. Therefore, the school district ought to agree that, so long as teachers continue to teach in the new school and so long as parents continue to send their children, it will maintain the school for at least five to 10 years. The only reason to dishonor that commitment to the school would be if there were a precipitous decline in valid student indicators or schoolwide wrongdoing.

This new initiative is not a signal that the AFT is abandoning its efforts to promote education reform in entire school districts and entire schools. Our commitment to that effort is stronger than ever. Rather, we are adding to our set of reform strategies by providing a new policy mechanism to encourage and enable smaller groups of teachers and other school-related personnel to pursue these ends. There is a growing number of districts in which labor-management relations and other conditions are ideally conducive to seeking and testing new solutions to the endemic problems of schooling. But there are still too few of them to expand this kind of reform movement to the extent that the needs of our students require. In contrast, there are thousands of districts in this nation in which groups of teachers are willing and able to develop and try new ideas for how to make schooling--and not just their individual classrooms--work as well as we need it to.

The AFT is committed to making this work. We will continue to encourage our locals to the extent that they judge possible to initiate "bottom-up" reform in their districts and/or in entire schools. But we will also encourage our locals to make it possible for any group of teachers who want to do this to do so.

Where We Stand
The AFT is a union that thinks and dreams and makes the seemingly impossible possible. We do not do this through compulsion or with a top-down approach. We built a union by enlisting individuals in a movement and a cause, and we built collective bargaining by effort, trial and example. We have already pioneered a new way of thinking about and undertaking the improvement of our public schools, and we did this as well by effort, trial and example. In the coming years, this nation must move from the point where the number of fundamental reform sites can be readily counted to a point where there is a mass movement of people engaged in developing schools for the 21st century to reach the overwhelming majority of our students. And, as we have done before, this union will seek to lead by building through effort, trial and example.