Education Week - August 6, 2014 - 11

At Conventions, Teachers' Unions
Strike Similar Chords on Key Topics
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
their rhetoric now largely matches.
"Nea and aft are on this parallel
course right now. They're moving in
the same direction, and the direction
is about kids, the education of
students, creating the right environment
to educate students, and using
the proper assessments when it's
appropriate," said Karen Magee, the
president of New York State United
Teachers, an affiliate of both unions.
She attended both conventions.
For Ms. García, who formally
takes the helm of the nea on Sept.
1, it is a natural evolution. Long an
opponent of test-based accountability,
she made assessment a major
theme in her address to nea delegates,
and the union's first major
item of business was to oppose a
culture of "toxic testing." The emphasis
marked a contrast with that
of Dennis Van Roekel, the outgoing
nea president, who has historically
underscored teacher professionalism
and school improvement.
For the aft, the shift has been
more conspicuous. Ms. Weingarten
initially had seemed more receptive
to the kinds of policy ideas
espoused in federal programs such
as Race to the Top. Just four years
"
I don't know that the
unions will become
indistinguishable, but
it is possible that they
are recognizing that
what they have to
fight is not each
other."
JULIA E. KOPPICH
Education consultant
ago, for instance, she said that
tests could be one of several measures
for evaluating teachers, and
garnered headlines for helping affiliates
in Baltimore, Pittsburgh,
and New Haven, Conn., ink contracts
experimenting with new systems
of teacher evaluation and pay.
Now, Ms. Weingarten calls "value
added" measures of teacher quality
based on test scores "a sham."
And her union passed a resolution
at its convention calling for an end
to the No Child Left Behind Act's
insistence on the annual testing of
every child in grades 3-8 in reading
and math.
Several factors have helped
push the teachers' unions closer
together.
There are the vagaries of politics,
including four years of attacks by
state Republican lawmakers seeking
to curb bargaining rights and
dues collection; unfavorable court
decisions, such as the recent ruling
in Vergara v. California that curbed
teacher job protections; and-crucially-the
continuing splintering
of the unions' support among their
traditional Democratic allies.
"I don't know that the unions will
become indistinguishable, but it is
possible that they are recognizing
that what they have to fight is not
each other," said Julia E. Koppich,
a teachers' union expert based in
San Francisco. "It is the same set of
forces, and those forces are arrayed
against the nea and the aft."
Also, the unions face, as Ms.
Magee of nysut points out, more
pressure from coalitions of parents,
teachers, and school boards to address
testing and the implementation
of the common-core standards.
And there is internal pressure
from a handful of union leaders who
have embraced a tougher stand on
some policy issues.
'A Seminal Moment'
The most prominent example is the
Chicago Teachers Union, the aft's
third-largest affiliate, whose president,
Karen Lewis, led a seven-day
strike in 2012 over disagreements on
seniority, school closings, and teacher
evaluation. It would prove to be a watershed
moment, giving rise to similarly
minded groups within both the
aft and the nea.
"The Chicago Teachers Union
strike was a seminal moment and
really galvanized people nationally
and showed people how to fight, and
that has really shaped both rankand-file
and national and local leadership,"
said Alex Caputo-Pearl, the
newly elected president of United
Teachers Los Angeles, a merged
aft-nea affiliate.
Generally, such groups claim a
"social justice" orientation based on
community engagement, improved
access for students to physical- and
mental-health resources, a balanced
curriculum, and smaller class sizes.
When it comes to work policies,
though, they have hewn strongly to
traditional rules on teacher seniority,
due process, and tenure -issues
that Ms. Weingarten once said could
be on the reform table.
"It's become clear at the national
level under Arne Duncan, and at
the local level with charter schools
and superintendents out of the
Broad Academy, that making what
used to be little concessions around
things like seniority doesn't stop
those folks from going for the jugular,"
said Mr. Caputo-Pearl. "It's not
a tactic that stops the onslaught on
public education."
That's also the perspective of the
new president of the Massachusetts
Teachers Association, Barbara Madeloni.
She ran for the top office in
that nea affiliate on a platform portraying
its outgoing president, Paul
Toner, as too prone to compromise
with state lawmakers.
"I offered a vision for educators
that said we don't have to continue
to go along to get along, go along
with the policies and mandates
that are overwhelming us and making
it harder to do the work we care
about," Ms. Madeloni said.
A few weeks later, Mr. Toner, who
was term-limited out of office, failed
to win election to the nea's board of
directors-a surprise, sources say,
even to some of the nea's top officials.
Questions Linger
The aggressive undercurrent
isn't limited to internal union politics.
At the nea convention, many
delegates identified themselves at
the microphones as members of
the Badass Teachers Association,
or "bats," a group with some 50,000
members on Facebook. The organization,
once considered a fringe
group, opposes test-based policies,
school closings, and the proliferation
of charters, and has executed
several highly visible policy campaigns
on Twitter.
The national union's leaders are
paying attention. Within the nea,
those teachers now have a caucus,
or internal membership group recognized
by the union. And twice
in her keynote address to aft delegates,
Ms. Weingarten also referenced
the group.
On some issues, nevertheless, the
two unions continue to plot a course
at odds with some of their internal
critics. So far, for instance, neither
the nea nor the aft has turned its
back on the Common Core State
Standards. A common-core resolution
written by the aft's executive
council, and eventually approved by
delegates, called for more teacher
input in implementation of the standards.
It staved off an alternative
proposal from the Chicago Teachers
Union calling on the parent union to
oppose the standards outright.
The nea similarly passed an item
pledging implementation support to
affiliates.
And Ms. García of the nea confirmed
her personal commitment to
the common-core standards in an
interview. "I read those standards,
and I love them," she said.
But both unions have also recently
argued that certain portions of the
standards might need to be rewritten
or "improved." The aft announced
a plan at its convention to give out
grants to affiliates for such purposes.
In the midst of acrimonious debates,
Ms. Koppich believes the
unions will continue to face pressure
from state lawmakers to produce
solutions to problems like uneven
teacher quality, and not merely
to criticize current trends.
It's advice that even some of the
new union activists can take to heart.
"Like our own communities, when
people are [in] constant battle mode,
it's a lot easier to defend yourself than
to come up with a positive agenda,"
said one activist who requested anonymity
because of his relationship
with several of the new union groups.
The TEACHER BEAT blog tracks news
and trends on this issue.
www.edweek.org/go/teacherbeat
EDUCATION WEEK | August 6, 2014 | www.edweek.org | 11
TWO UNIONS, ONE VOICE?
At their respective conventions in July, the National Education
Association and American Federation of Teachers approved
resolutions affirming their stances on some of the most
contested issues in education, and often echoed each other.
NEA
U.S. Secretary of
Education Arne
Duncan >
Teacher >
Licensing >
Called for his immediate
resignation.
AFT
Urged President Obama
to put the secretary on an
"improvement plan," and
demanded his resignation if he
doesn't change positions the
union deems harmful.
Voted to create a task
force "to explore the use
of teacher performance
assessments for
preservice teacher
candidates."
Common-Core
Implementation >
Directed the union to work
with state affiliates to
ensure that the Common
Core State Standards "are
properly implemented."
Said no teacher-licensing
exam, including the edTPA
performance assessment,
"should be tied to a highstakes
testing regime and
the outsourcing of evaluation,
especially to for-profit
corporations such as Pearson."
Affirmed its support for the
standards, but called for
more teacher input into their
implementation. Separately, the
AFT said it would award grants
to affiliates to analyze, critique,
and even rewrite parts of the
standards.
School >
Accountability >
Voted to convene a group
of NEA leaders to redefine
school accountability to
reflect the union's views
on what makes a "quality
education."
Test Scores >
& Teacher >
Evaluation >
Strengthened its
opposition to using
test scores in teacher
evaluations, stating
that "standardized
tests, even if deemed
valid and reliable, may
not be used to support
any employment action
against a teacher."
Testing >
Voted to direct $100,000
to a national campaign
focused on reducing
classroom time devoted to
"toxic testing," including
by decreasing the
frequency of state testing
required under federal
law. Students should be
assessed only once at the
elementary level, once in
middle school, and once
in high school, the union
said.
Called for replacing a
"disastrous shame-and-blame/
test-and-punish" accountability
system. A new approach, it said,
should identify schools needing
assistance by "qualitative
observation" as well as multiple
other measures.
Declared that value-added
measures and student-growth
percentiles are "fundamentally
flawed," and advocated for the
use of "multiple measures ...
that reach beyond standardized
math and reading test scores."
Called for maintaining the
disaggregated test-score
reporting mandated under the
No Child Left Behind Act, but
no longer requiring the testing
of every student in grades 3-8
every year. Instead, the union
advocates the use of a sampling
methodology.
SOURCE: Education Week
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