Education Week - July 15, 2020 - 13

generally "impede both."
"It's not an assault on teachers
to point out that the union system
makes it harder to improve teaching
and harder to get rid of bad teachers,"
Greenhut said. "The same dynamic,
from what I've seen ... is at work with
police unions."

Police in Schools
Unions are also reevaluating their
stance about whether police should
work in schools.
In early June, the AFT and NEA
backed a public call for the creation
of a nationwide database of police officers who committed misconduct, a
federal ban on chokeholds, new useof-force standards, and more reforms
for the police. That marked a break for
the unions with their police counterparts.
The Justice in Policing Act, introduced by House Democrats shortly
afterward, incorporated several of
the demands from the unions and
dozens of other groups. However, the
bill would not prohibit police from
working in schools. In fact, it would
set national standards for police, including for law enforcement posted
at schools, and help fund related pilot
programs. A subsequent Senate Republican bill to reform police does not
address school resource officers.
In response to questions from Education Week, the NEA said in a statement that it supported local affiliates
and school boards that decided to bar
contracts with police that turned officers into "student disciplinarians-
a role they were never intended to
serve."
In its statement, the NEA also called
on schools to review discipline practices and ensure educators receive
training on implicit bias
"Too often the presence of law enforcement personnel in schools results in an over-reliance on these staff
to intervene in the discipline process
resulting in unwarranted schoolbased arrests," said the NEA, which
several years ago published articles
with headlines such as "Positive Relationships with Law Enforcement"
and "Promoting School Safety with a
Badge and a Smile."
On June 17, the AFT adopted a resolution that says "the necessary function of school safety should be separated from policing and police forces,"
although it did not explicitly call for
police not to be in schools. Echoing
Weingarten's previous comments on
social media, the resolution also calls
for "transparent legal procedures for
holding police officers accountable for
misconduct and violations of law."
According to recent federal data,
58 percent of schools reported having a sworn law enforcement officer
at least once a week for the 2017-18
school year.
The AFT, like the International
Union of Police Associations, is an affiliate of the AFL-CIO. (Other police
unions, like affiliates of the Police
Benevolent Association, are not.)
There's been some public pressure for
the AFL-CIO to sever its connection
to the police group.
The International Union of Police Associations did not respond to

requests for comment about Weingarten's remarks, or whether its relationship with teachers' unions was
shifting.

Local Union Support
The AFT's resolution came on the
heels of school boards in cities like
Denver, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis
voting to sever their official relationships with local police departments.
And teachers' unions in Chicago, Los
Angeles, and Seattle have forcefully
backed such efforts recently.
The fact that roughly 4 out of 5
teachers are white influences schools'
approaches to police, said Vilson, the
New York City middle school teacher.
But he stressed that such movements
to sever schools' relationships with
police departments show that unions
can also help shift school safety policies. While he said he didn't support
law enforcement being in schools,
Vilson said he could envision some
type of police unit that would report to
the district, could belong to the local
teachers' union not unlike other public employees who aren't educators,
and would focus on dealing only with
emergency situations.
Yet on the whole, the unions have
been a "mixed bag" on the issue, said
Judith Brown Dianis, the executive
director of the Advancement Project, which advocates for police-free
schools.
"There are places around the country where the teachers' unions have
joined forces with communities led
by students of color who are pushing for police-free schools," she said.
"Unfortunately, at the national level
of the AFT and the NEA, they have
not stood with police-free schools."
In places where unions have resisted efforts to remove police from
schools, Dianis said, they have focused on how suspending or expelling
students is often the most expedient
option in schools that lack the resources to otherwise intervene or support students. The single most helpful
thing the unions could do nationally,
she added, would be to simply call for
police-free schools; Dianis said the
AFT's June resolution "misses the
mark" and represents the political
challenges her group has sometimes
experienced when working with labor
groups.
"We've been massaging the relationship with the teachers' union for
about 20 years," she added.
El-Mekki said problems in both
police and teachers' unions with respect to race come "from the same
rotten tree." And when unions don't
prioritize Black students' needs, he
said, that constitutes "misconduct"
of a very serious kind even if it does
not constitute physical harm.
"Show me Black Lives Matter in the
policies that you advocate for. Black
Lives Matter is more than about the
hashtag. It's about how our students
are performing based on your membership's work," he said.
Yet Dianis didn't agree with the
idea that teachers' unions were essentially simpatico with their police
counterparts in how they interact
with certain students. "They come
at it from a caring lens," Dianis

said of teachers in general. "That's
not where law enforcement comes
from."

Political Implications
The evolution of teacher evaluations in recent years might also indicate that teachers' unions are well-positioned to defend themselves against
broad political attacks on their influence in the current moment.
The number of states incorporating student-growth data from assessments into teacher evaluations grew
from 15 in 2009 to 43 in 2015, alongside a growing emphasis on educator accountability policies from the
Obama administration and officials
from both parties.
But pushback from the AFT and
NEA-neither of which endorsed
Obama in the 2008 Democratic primary-in response to accountability
policies linked to test scores grew as

well, and likely had an effect on the
retreat of those policies. From 2015
to 2019, 30 states rescinded one or
more of their policies about teacher
evaluation; 10 states and the District
of Columbia dropped requirements
for student-growth data to factor into
teacher evaluations.
In the realm of pure politics, the
AFT and NEA took a relatively cautious approach to the 2020 presidential primary; neither endorsed former
Vice President Joe Biden until he had
all but wrapped up the Democratic
nomination. Yet in May, both Weingarten and NEA President Lily Eskelsen García were picked to join a task
force on policy issues that will provide
input to Biden.
And after prominent clashes during the Obama administration,
Democratic candidates in this election cycle have also avoided talking
about teacher accountability, instead
calling on more funding for schools

and support for teachers.
Bruno of the University of Illinois
said conservative groups could use
greater scrutiny of police unions as
a springboard for a bigger attack on
labor, including teachers' unions.
How successful they'll be, he said, is
another issue.
"I do think those groups will look
at this question of taking protections
away from bad cops as an opportunity
to translate that into other public sector
workplaces, to make an argument that
collective bargaining rights for public
sector unions [are] illegitimate," Bruno
said. "I don't see teachers' unions as
vulnerable on the actual substance."
In Vilson's view, the recent focus
on police unions can help inform how
people think about teachers' unions,
but that the comparison shouldn't define the conversation.
"When it comes to the day-to-day
operations of what teachers do, it becomes more complicated," he said.

PRINT AD (2/5 3 COL)

Distance Learning Up Close:
Teaching for Engagement
and Impact in Any Setting
Join Fisher, Frey, and Hattie as they
draw on The Distance Learning
Playbook and more than 25 years
of Visible Learning® research and
evidence to reveal what works
best in teaching, assessing, and
planning in your online classroom.

Thursday, July 23, 2020
3-4 PM ET
www.edweek.org/go/webinar/
DistanceLearningUpClose

GUESTS
*	DOUGLAS FISHER, co-author, The
Distance Learning Playbook
*	NANCY FREY, co-author, The
Distance Learning Playbook
*	JOHN HATTIE, co-author, The
Distance Learning Playbook

Content provided by

EDUCATION WEEK | July 15, 2020 | www.edweek.org | 13
http://www.edweek.org/go/webinar/DistanceLearningUpClose http://www.edweek.org/go/webinar/DistanceLearningUpClose http://www.edweek.org
Education Week - July 15, 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - July 15, 2020
