June 2008

A National Workforce Agenda for Unions, Business, Educators, and Policy Makers
With support from the Albert Shanker Institute, the National Labor College (formerly the George Meany Center for Labor Studies) has launched a new institute that can take up key issues related to labor. The first meeting, “Promoting a National Workforce Agenda for Unions, Business, Educators, and Policy Makers,” was held on June 9 and included participants from a wide range of unions, business groups, labor and professional associations, universities, and think tanks. It began with a series of presentations on “big issues”: the changing nature of the workforce, skills demands in the old and new economy, and policy implications. Speakers for this session were Bob Lerman, professor of economics at American University, and Tony Carnevale, director of Georgetown University’s Global Institute on Education and the Workforce. In the second session, “Meaningful Workforce Preparation for All,” Andy Van Kleunen, executive director of Workforce Alliance, Rick Sloan, communications director of the International Association of Machinists, and Stephanie Powers with the Council on Foundations’ National Fund for Workforce Solutions, addressed the issues of how secondary education and all levels and types of college should be used to respond to the skills gap and make higher education accessible. Paul Nowak, a national organizer for the British Trades Union Congress described the U.K. labor movement’s experience in building political, employer, and member support for skills development.

Board Discusses Workforce Development, the Fatal Flaws of NCLB
The institute held its semi-annual meeting of the Board of Directors on June 2, 2008. In addition to hearing reports on recent institute activities and proposals for future work, the meeting featured two presentations. Board member Deborah Wince-Smith, president of the Council on Competitiveness, gave a presentation on “Workforce Development as Essential to the U.S. Competitive Edge,” with a response from Rick Sloan, director of communications at the International Association of Machinists. Wince-Smith reinforced several themes undergirding Shanker Institute projects over the last ten years—that U.S. competitiveness is increasingly dependent on the availability of a highly skilled workforce, that U.S.-based multinational corporations can’t be depended upon to develop these skills in their communities, and that globalization, technological change, and volatile financial markets require a focus on workforce skills that are not easily offshored. Rick Sloan agreed with this analysis, but also pointed out that the lack of attention to training younger workers in the technical trades has left the nation militarily vulnerable, not just economically vulnerable. Board member David Cohen, the John Dewey Professor of Education at the University of Michigan, led the second discussion. He described the findings of a new book he co-authored with Susan L. Moffitt, to be published later this year, on the history of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, now known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB), and its Title 1 provisions. Cohen argued that at the core of NCLB there is a strong disconnect between policy, practice, and achievability. Standards-based reforms on their own, he claimed, cannot increase student achievement or school standards without a focus on improving the things that quality depends on--curriculum, teacher development, and the overall capacity of the education system. Although he noted some positive effects of NCLB, he concluded that it is a badly designed law that asks for impossible performance by schools and teachers without providing them with the means to achieve it.

February 2008

Shanker, Labor, the Democrats and Foreign Policy
On Feb. 20, 2008, the Shanker Institute, Freedom House, and the Progressive Policy Institute co-sponsored a forum in Washington, D.C., titled “Should Labor and the Democrats Revive the Muscular Liberal Internationalism of Albert Shanker?” in which participants talked about Al Shanker’s stance on numerous international questions. Presenters recalled Shanker’s work with Lane Kirkland, former AFL-CIO president, Thomas R. Donahue, former AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer and president, Tom Kahn, special assistant to Kirkland and later AFL-CIO international affairs director, and Irving Brown, to help ensure the survival of the independent Polish union Solidarnosc, bring down apartheid in South Africa, restore political and trade union rights in Chile, build free trade unions in Eastern Europe after the demise of communism there, and promote academic freedom. At the AFT, Shanker built one of the strongest international affairs operations in the labor movement and launched a project called Education for Democracy/International, designed to help teacher unions in Eastern Europe, Nicaragua, South Africa, and other countries emerging from dictatorship to become leaders in the civic education of students. Panelists differed on the degree to which Shanker’s labor internationalism had declined within the labor movement, but most agreed much more could be done, both in terms of labor’s international role and also within the Democratic Party.

& Click here to read a story from a St. Louis Post-Dispatch writer.
& Read the remarks by ASI board member Herb Magidson, former vice president of AFT and chair of its Democracy Committee.

January 2008

Second “Good Schools” Seminar Focuses on Developing a Well-Prepared Teaching Corps
The institute brought together local and national AFT leaders, district superintendents, and top researchers and policy experts in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 29-30 for the second in its “good schools” seminar series. Participants’ frank, off-the-record conversations focused on what the research really says about various policy proposals that affect teaching quality. This seminar, titled “Developing the Teacher Corps We Need,” examined the research on effective new teacher support systems, peer assistance and review, and professional development. These topics are “at the heart of the labor-management agenda” and the crux of any serious effort at school improvement, said AFT and Shanker Institute President Ed McElroy. Participants also discussed two important conditions that make high-quality teaching more likely—high-quality student curriculum, along with student discipline and a positive learning environment. William Schmidt, a professor of education at Michigan State University and national research director for TIMSS and its follow-on studies (see below) was the keynote speaker at an opening dinner. According to Schmidt, the relative coherence, focus and rigor of student curriculum is the single most important factor in explaining why some nations performed much better than others on TIMSS. Rudy Crew, superintendent of schools in the Miami-Dade County Public Schools, acted as the respondent to Schmidt. Participants also heard from Eric Hirsch, special projects director  at the New Teacher Center, who is leading a full population survey of educators in several states in order to gather and compare school-level data on school environment factors. Hirsch reported that, of all the data gathered, teachers’ belief that their school was safe had the strongest correlation with overall student performance. On the seminar’s second day, Harvard professor Susan Moore Johnson led a discussion of her research on supports for new teachers. Responding to Johnson’s presentation, United Federation of Teachers president and Shanker Institute board member Randi Weingarten said improving teaching and learning will mean building a consensus around what teachers need in order to be effective in the classroom. Other sessions focused on peer assistance and review programs and union-district collaboration around professional development programs in places such as Hillsborough County, Fla., and New York City.

& Learn more about this series of seminars.
& See the agenda.

Chinese Workers Reveal Reality Behind “Economic Miracle”
A new report, released in Jan. 2008 by the Albert Shanker Institute, reveals that China’s “economic miracle” relies on pressuring the Chinese labor force to its limits and brutally suppressing worker rights. Chinese workers face a different reality than that portrayed by the Chinese government: delayed or unpaid wages, work-related illnesses, harsh working conditions, and severe repression for attempting independent organization at the workplace. A Cry for Justice: the Voices of Chinese Workers tells the stories of workers demonstrating in open defiance – from the Oilfields of Daqing, the Ferroally workers of Liaoyang, the Heavenly King Textile workers of Xianyang, the Gold Peak Battery factory workers of Huizhou, coal miners from Wanbao, teachers from Suizhou and ex-soldiers who work in factories around the country run by the People’s Liberation Army. The accounts are based on extraordinary first-hand interviews conducted by Han Dongfang, China’s leading labor rights advocate, with workers across China.
Copies are available for $7 each; $5 each for orders of ten or more.

& Read the press release for this and a companion report.
& Download the full report.
& Read a related story from a New Republic blogger.

China Seminar on Worker Rights and Political Liberalization
More than 50 trade unionists, academics, worker rights activists, attorneys, and other China specialists gathered for an off-the-record Shanker Institute seminar in Washington, D.C., Jan. 15-16 to consider the implications for Chinese workers of a new “reform” labor law in China. The new “labor contract law,” which took effect Jan. 1, is aimed at private industry, especially the growing foreign-owned sector, and was designed to provide increased job security and legal protections for workers, especially for high-seniority employees. It also enhances the role of the All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), the Communist Party’s labor organization, but leaves most of China’s labor relations framework essentially untouched. Independent unions and real freedom of association for workers remain banned. Despite these limitations, the law was ferociously opposed by multinational corporations, led by U.S. firms, which argued that it will raise costs and reduce competitiveness. Passage of this law and the Chinese government’s announced plans to improve other labor laws has refocused international attention on conditions for Chinese workers. Some speakers were skeptical that the law would be enforced and dubious about the government’s reform” strategy, arguing that the law does not make the political and institutional changes—such as providing space and protection for independent trade unions—which are essential to a healthy balance of power in the workplace. All the speakers at the seminar—trade unionists, attorneys, and academics—noted that the ACFTU is an arm of the Communist Party’s central propaganda department. It is not a union. Despite this, some participants argued for greater involvement with the ACFTU, noting that many U.S. industrial unions represent workers whose employers have substantial business interests and employees inside China. Accordingly, contact with the ACFTU can be seen as part of protecting their members’ self-interest. Other participants, citing media stories, noted that public visits with ACFTU leaders, especially in Beijing, are exploited for state propaganda purposes and undermine the principle of free and independent unions. There is also no evidence, they argued, that such visits help Chinese workers, especially as many, many worker activists languish in jail for trying to organize real unions. The seminar was the second on China and the fourth in a series that the institure has sponsored on labor and democracy.

December 2007

Board Discusses Curriculum, the Struggle for Middle East Democracy
The institute held its semi-annual meeting of the Board of Directors on Dec. 10, 2007. In addition to reports on recent Institute activities and reaction to Richard Kahlenberg’s biography, Tough Liberal (see below), the meeting was highlighted by two presentations. The first, by Saad Eddin Ibrahim, director of the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies in Cairo, Egypt, addressed the ongoing struggle for democracy in the Middle East. Ibrahim (one of the most prominent democratic activists and thinkers in Egypt and the Middle East) ointed to the difficulties facing democrats like himself in the region and described the numerous efforts of the Egyptian authorities to imprison him and inhibit his work. At the same time, he pointed to Western misconceptions, among them by President George W. Bush (see a press report on a recent encounter between the two men).  The second presentation, on the issue of curriculum and standards, was by William Schmidt, professor of education at Michigan State University, co-director of the Education Policy Center, and director of the research center that oversaw U.S. participation in TIMSS (the Third International Mathematics and Science Study). Through this experience, Schmidt has emerged as a leading proponent of national standards and a common curriculum. At the meeting, he urged a K-8 education program with three components: focused instruction in a few topics rather than scattered instruction in many topics (what he called the “mile wide, inch deep” approach); rigorous focus on high level topics; and coherence in the curriculum that did not vary widely from district to district. This variability, he argued, is a key source of antheenormous level of inequity in American education.

& Read an American Educator article inspired by Schmidt's remarks to the board.

November 2007

Lipset Lecture: Russia’s Transition to Autocracy
As it has in previous years, the institute co-sponsored the fourth annual Seymour Martin Lipset Lecture on Democracy in the World, an event initiated by the National Endowment for Democracy in honor of the renowned sociologist and founding Shanker Institute board member. At the Nov. 15 event, Pierre Hassner, research director emeritus at CERI (the Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Internationales) in Paris and one of France’s most respected intellectuals, delivered a lecture on “Russia’s Transition to Autocracy: The Implications for World Politics.” Approximately 150 attended. Dr. Hassner, currently a visiting professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal, has focused his major writings on war and peace, totalitarianism, ethics and international relations, and international order. The lecture described Russia’s path towards autocracy under Vladimir Putin and the dangers this development poses for the West and democracy. In addition to the NED and the Shanker Institute, the event was also co-sponsored by the University of Toronto’s Munk Center for International Studies and the AFT.

& Learn more about the Lipset Lecture series.
& Click here to view the lecture.

October 2007

"Tough Liberal" Reception and Book Signing
On Oct. 4 in Washington D.C., the Albert Shanker Institute, in cooperation with the AFT, held a reception and book signing for Richard Kahlenberg's new biography, Albert Shanker: Tough Liberal, The Battle Over Schools, Unions, Race and Democray. The book, which was formally released on Labor Day, has already received a number of positive reviews. It describes the eventful life of Albert Shanker and his rise to the presidency of the AFT. It provides a new and valuable history of the building of the UFT in New York and the AFT and public employee unionism nationally and of the role of the UFT and AFT in the civil rights movement, conflicts within the Democratic Party that split liberalism, Shanker’s role in helping to launch the education standards movement, and the education and public debates in which Shanker and the union became leading voices. AFT and Shanker Institute President Ed McElroy writes that “Richard D. Kahlenberg has captured the political essence of Albert Shanker as a democracy advocate, unionist, and teacher. . . .This book brings to life his core values and underscores the enormous contribution he made.” The Shanker Institute has purchased advance copies of the book and has made it available at a special discount of $18 a copy, including shipping (regular price of $29.95) from the AFT Store.

& Purchase a copy of the Shanker biography at the $18 discounted rate.
& Read media reports about Tough Liberal.
& See book reviews.

July 2007

“Tough Liberal” Debuts at QuEST
The long-awaited new biography of Albert Shanker by Richard Kahlenberg, Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles over Schools, Unions, Race, and Democracy (Columbia University Press), was formally released on Sept. 3, but made its debut on July 12 at a special event sponsored by the Albert Shanker Institute during the AFT’s national QuEST Conference, where Richard Kahlenberg was available to sign advance copies of the book. At the event, AFT Secretary-Treasurer Nat LaCour recalled Shanker’s early support for LaCour’s efforts at organizing New Orleans teachers—the first integrated local organized in the South — and described Shanker as “the greatest teacher leader that this country has ever seen.”

June 2007

Shanker Institute Launches “Good School” Seminar Series
The Albert Shanker Institute launched a series of seminars on the union’s role in shaping the “good school” with a June 4-5 session on “Unions, Teaching Quality, and Student Achievement.” This kick-off seminar featured a series of presentations and candid, off-the-record conversations between local and national AFT leaders, superintendents from some of those locals, members of the Albert Shanker Institute Board of Directors, and selected policy experts and researchers. The object of this initial meeting was to get a sense of what is really known about how the most-discussed teaching reforms and staffing policies affect educational performance. One key issue was the suspect charge that provisions of teacher union contracts are detrimental to teaching quality—and, thus, student achievement. Another issue was to explore what unions and union-superintendent partnerships can do differently to better promote teaching quality. The information discussed came in two forms — first, as reports from some of the best researchers in the country on studies they have either conducted or reviewed, and second, from the practical experience of local union leaders and superintendents already in the process of trying to implement effective practices.

& Read more about the Good Schools seminar.
& View the agenda of the June meeting.

May 2007

Middle East Leadership Study Trip
The Albert Shanker Institute, in partnership with the AFT International Affairs Department, organized an eight-person union leadership study trip to the Middle East in May 2007. The trip included an intensive schedule of meetings with teachers and other unionists from Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Iraq, and Yemen, as well as with country and regional representatives of the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center, the Democratic Party’s National Democratic Institute, and U.S. Embassies. The group investigated the current situation in the region and the role of education unions and unions generally in promoting democracy and peace. The study group had a particular interest in the volatile situation in Israel and the West Bank, meeting with the Israel Teachers Union and teachers unions in the West Bank (representing both Muslim and Christian teachers). The group returned from the region in agreement about the vital importance of the AFT’s international work, especially in the Middle East, and, among other things, recommending that the AFT amplify its role in facilitating communication among conflicting parties. The group is also recommending continued support for the international affairs work of the union and a greater concentration on international issues in leadership meetings of the AFT. In addition to AFT Vice President and Shanker Institute Board Member Ted Kirsch, who led the study group, participants included Paul Babich (United Teachers of Wichita), Ken Brynien (York State Public Employees Federation), Louis Malfaro (Education Austin), Cathleen McCann (AFT Great Lakes Region), and Mary Cathryn Ricker (St. Paul Federation of Teachers).

What Works Forum Examines Research on Dropout and Graduation Rates
The Shanker Institute's “What Works” forum series concluded with a May 3, 2007 session on high school dropout and graduation rates and what can be done to improve them. The discussion featured presentations by Robert Balfanz, a research scientist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Social Organization of Schools, and Mark Dynarski, director of the education area at Mathematica Policy Research and project director of the U.S. Department of Education’s What Works Clearinghouse. UFT President Randi Weingarten, an AFT vice-president and Shanker Institute board member, moderated the discussion. Both presenters noted that a lot of controversy remained over the exact magnitude of the dropout phenomenon and how best to measure it, explaining that there are strengths and weaknesses in all of the various methodologies that have been used to calculate both graduation and dropout rates. Balfanz also cited research which indicates that a relatively small number of troubled high schools are responsible for a large proportion of all dropouts. Indeed, he estimated that these “dropout factories” representing only 15 percent of the nation’s high schools produce close to half of all dropouts. Despite continued debate over the exact scope of the dropout problem, however, all sides tend to agree that improvement is needed, and that comparatively little is known about what school systems can and should be doing to help. “This is a very under-researched area,” stated Dynarski. “For 20 years, we’ve had a social problem that’s pretty big that has not moved one whit.” After scrutinizing the evidence, Dynarski said that the What Works Clearinghouse had identified only eight things that might possibly work, several of which would be very difficult and expensive to implement well.

& Read a transcript of the May forum on high school dropout rates.

April 2007

Workforce Development Study Trip to the U.K.
As part of its on-going effort to explore innovative union models, the Shanker Institute organized another study trip to the U.K. to review the nationwide “learning representatives” program administered by the British Trades Union Congress (TUC) and its affiliated unions. This program offers workers access to lifelong on-the-job learning services. The study group, led by AFT and Shanker Institute President Ed McElroy and AFT Executive Vice President Toni Cortese, also included Ken Brynien (New York State Public Employees Federation), John McDonald (Henry Ford Community College Federation of Teachers), Marcia Reback (Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals), and Randi Weingarten and Aminda Gentile (United Federation of Teachers). With this trip, representatives from all AFT constituency groups and all AFT officers have had a chance to learn about this successful program. The group found a labor movement deeply committed to a learning agenda that helps unions reach and attract members by giving them on-the-job educational supports and that holds a special appeal for younger members, ethnic minorities, and women—groups that have historically been under-represented among the ranks of union activists. British labor leaders report that workers are more likely to join and become more engaged with unions when they offer concrete assistance with further education, career development and job training. They also report that the focus on learning has given a "new face" to unionism, helping to improve the public’s perception of unions and attract new members.

February 2007

The Challenge for Democracy in the Middle East: The Art of the Possible

The challenges for democracy in the Middle East was the focus of a forum that the Albert Shanker Institute conducted on Feb. 6-7 for AFT national, state and local officers and staff as well as AFL-CIO international affairs staff and representatives from the Canadian Labor Congress. This seminar, held in Washington, D.C., was the third in a series organized by the Shanker Institute to examine U.S. unions’ support for democracy and for independent, democratic trade unions in the world. So far, the focus has been on the Middle East and China, two regions of special importance to Shanker Institute board members in developing initiatives to promote democracy. Participants heard from former Clinton and Bush I envoy to the Middle East Dennis Ross, who described the situation of the peace talks in relation to the conflicts in the region and the growing power of Hamas, the militant organization which won the Palestinian Authority elections in January 2006. One recommendation arising from the seminar was that the AFT and the Institute should become more involved in concrete actions promoting both peace and democracy in the region, especially given the negative connotations that democracy promotion has been given by the policies of the Bush Administration.  

& Learn more about this conference.
& See the full agenda.

December 2006

In Memoriam
The institute is deeply saddened by the deaths of two thoughtful, committed members of the Albert Shanker Institute's board of directors. Their wise counsel, advice and support will be sorely missed. Our hearts and prayers go out to their families.

Seymour Martin Lipset, who died at the age of 84 on Dec. 31, 2006, was among America’s pre-eminent sociologists but with wide-ranging political, social, and labor interests. He is the only person ever to be president of both the American Political Science Association and the American Sociological Association. Best known for his books Political Man (for which he received the MacIver Prize) and The Politics of Unreason (for which he received the Gunnar Myrdal Prize), his earliest successes were Union Politics, a collaborative study of the typesetters’ union in New York and its distinct democratic characteristics, as well as several studies of “American exceptionalism” and the differences between American and Canadian democracy. An author of dozens of books and articles (including the autobiographical Steady Work: An Academic’s Life), Lipset taught at a wide range of institutions, including Columbia University, Harvard University, Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley, and George Mason University, and was a fellow at both the Hoover Institution and the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars. Lipset was an early supporter of the National Endowment for Democracy and served on its board for nine years. A lifelong friend of the labor movement and of Albert Shanker, he was a founding board member of the Albert Shanker Institute. The Shanker Institute has supported the NED’s annual Seymour Martin Lipset Lecture on Democracy and the World (see above).

Tom Mooney, president of AFT Ohio, died on Dec. 3, 2006 of a sudden heart attack. He was 52. Tom was a vibrant force on behalf of a quality public education system, free trade unions, democracy, and social justice. He was a tireless advocate for teachers, children and schools. As a young union officer, Tom was a student of Al Shanker’s in learning how to build teacher’s unions by linking unionism to the professional lives of teachers. Mooney grew up in Cincinnati, OH, earned his bachelor’s degree at Antioch College, and began his career as an educator teaching high school government in Cincinnati. He quickly became president of the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers, a position he held for 21 years, and was elected an AFT vice president in 1990. Among other initiatives in Cincinnati, he helped establish the country’s second peer assistance and evaluation program and a four-tiered career ladder for teachers, the Career in Teaching Program, as well as a professional development partnership for new teachers. Tom was elected president of the Ohio Federation of Teachers in 2000, remaining one of the nation’s most innovative and outspoken union leaders in support of the education reform agenda. In addition to serving as a member of the Albert Shanker Institute Board of Directors, Mooney was member of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and a founding member of the Teacher Union Reform Network.

November 2006

Lipset Lecture: Toward Islamic Democracies
On Nov. 1, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Egyptian democracy activist and founder of the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies in Cairo, delivered the third annual Seymour Martin Lipset Lecture on Democracy in the World. Co-sponsored by the National Endowment for Democracy, the University of Toronto's Munk Center for International Studies, the AFT, and the Shanker Institute, the event was named to honor a founding member of the ASI board of directors. The Ibn Khaldun Center and the ASI have also been collaborating to produce a forthcoming reader on Islam and democracy.

& Learn more about the Lipset Lecture series.
& Click here to view the lecture.

July 2006

UnionLearn Briefing at the AFT Convention
In July, just prior to the AFT Convention, the institute hosted a meeting in Boston so that AFT vice presidents, staff and selected delegates could hear from participants in the May study trip to the United Kingdom (see below). Attendees also heard from representatives from two British teachers unions, Mary Howard, Senior Assistant Secretary of NAS-UWT, and Judy Moorhouse, President of NUT, about the effect of the un-ion learning agenda on union growth and activism in the U.K., as well as ideas on how this might apply to the U.S. situation.

& Read a transcript of the May forum on background knowledge and reading proficiency.

& Read an excerpt from the book, "The Case for Bringing Content into the Language Arts Block and for a Knowledge-Rich Curriculum Core for All Children," as featured in the Spring 2006 issue of American Educator, the AFT's quarterly magazine.

April 2006