The Teacher Wars (47 page)

1
Al Shanker biographical details:
from Kahlenberg,
Tough Liberal;
Al Shanker (speech to New York State United Teachers Convention, April 27, 1985); A. H. Raskin, “He Leads His Teachers Up the Down Staircase,”
The New York Times Magazine
, September 3, 1967; and Edward B. Fiske, “Albert Shanker: Where He Stands,”
The New York Times
, November 5, 1989.

2
a shortage of public school teachers:
Christina Collins,
“Ethnically Qualified”: Race, Merit, and the Selection of Urban Teachers, 1920–1980
(New York: Teachers College Press, 2011), 107–9.

3
the most unionized profession in America:
Jal Mehta,
The Allure of Order
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 114.

4
Teachers with collective bargaining rights:
Barry T. Hirsch et al., “Teacher Salaries, State Collective Bargaining Laws, and Union Coverage” (working paper, American Economic Association, San Diego, January 6, 2013).

5
UFT co-founder George Altomare's high school economics classes:
Author interview with George Altomare, June 21, 2013.

6
Freedom Summer:
Sandra Adickes, oral history interview, October 21, 1999. USM.

7
School segregation actually deepened:
See Annie Stein, “Containment and Control: A Look at the Record,” in
Schools Against Children: The Case for Community Control
, ed. Annette T. Rubinstein (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970); Doxey A. Wilkerson, “The Failure of Schools Serving the Black and Puerto Rican Poor,” in Rubinstein, ed.,
Schools Against Children;
and Barbara Carter,
Pickets, Parents, and Power: The Story Behind the New York City Teachers' Strike
(New York: Citation Press, 1971), 9.

8
“Pygmalion in the Classroom”:
Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson, “Pygmalion in the Classroom,”
Urban Review
3, no. 1 (1968).

9
“disruptive children”:
Rhody McCoy, interview by Blackside, Inc., October 12, 1988.
Eyes
/WU.

10
“Even liberal educators view”:
Quoted in Claye, “Problems of Cross-Over Teachers,” 13.

11
“Uncle Tom's Cabin: Alternate Ending”:
Published in Imamu Amiri Baraka,
Three Books
(New York: Grove Press, 1975).

12
two major organizational backers of community control, CORE and the Ford Foundation:
See Karen Ferguson,
Top Down: The Ford Foundation, Black Power, and the Reinvention of Racial Liberalism
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013); and Kahlenberg,
Tough Liberal
.

13
“to destroy the professional educational bureaucracy”:
Quoted in Lillian S. Calhoun, “New York: Schools and Power—Whose?”
Integrated Education
7, no. 1 (1969).

14
Stokely Carmichael, a proponent of black separatism:
See “Free Huey” and Berkeley speeches published in Stokely Carmichael,
Stokely Speaks: From Black Power to Pan-Africanism
(Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1971).

15
Martin Luther King called this philosophy “nihilistic”:
See excerpts from King's “Where Do We Go From Here,” published in Martin Luther King, Jr.,
A Testament of Hope
, ed. James M. Washington (New York: HarperCollins, 1986), 586.

16
In Ocean Hill–Brownsville, an economically depressed neighborhood:
See Fred Nauman, interview by Blackside, Inc., April 18, 1989.
Eyes
/ WU.

17
these groups had hoped to address the problem:
See Rev. John Powis,
interview conducted by Blackside, Inc., November 4, 1988. Eyes/WU; Dolores Torres, interview conducted by Blackside, Inc., October 31, 1988.
Eyes
/WU; and Sandra Feldman, interview conducted by Blackside, Inc., October 31, 1988. Eyes/WU.

18
“school officials deprived the community”:
Carter,
Pickets, Parents, and Power
, 32.

19
students enrolled at MES schools:
Simon Beagle,
Evaluating MES: A Survey of Research on the More Effective Schools Plan
(Washington, D. C.: American Federation of Teachers, April, 1969); and Samuel D. McClelland,
Evaluation of the More Effective Schools Program
(Brooklyn: New York City Board of Education, September 1966).

20
“New Federalism”:
Unger,
The Best of Intentions
, 303.

21
“It was a joy”:
Rhody McCoy, interview by Blackside, Inc., October 12, 1988.
Eyes
/WU.

22
One of them was Elaine Rook:
Les Campbell, interview by Blackside, Inc., November 3, 1988. Eyes/WU.

23
The morning after Martin Luther King's assassination:
Karima Jordan, interview by Blackside, Inc., April 18, 1989. Eyes/WU; Fred Nauman, interview by Blackside, Inc., April 18, 1989. Eyes/WU; and Kahlenberg,
Tough Liberal
, 91.

24
“Not one of these teachers”:
Ibid., 95.

25
12 out of 55,000 teachers:
see Carter,
Pickets, Parents, and Power
, 26; and Jason Epstein, “The Real McCoy,”
New York Review of Books
, March 13, 1969.

26
“We've got to make them learn”:
McCoy quoted in Calhoun, “New York: Schools and Power—Whose?”

27
“Teachers have been physically threatened”:
Reprinted in Carter,
Pickets, Parents, and Power
, 69.

28
Art teacher Richard Douglass:
Ibid., 83.

29
Rivers concluded that the district's accusations:
Published in
Confrontation at Ocean Hill—Brownsville: The New York School Strikes of 1968
, ed. Maurice R. Berube and Marilyn Gittell (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1969), 85–99.

30
When UFT teachers arrived:
Sylvan Fox, “Some Hostility Marks Return of 83 Teachers to Ocean Hill,”
The New York Times
, October 1, 1968.

31
“This is a strike”:
Khalenberg,
Tough Liberal
, 97–98.

32
“You're a racist, Mr. Shanker!”:
Maurice Carroll, “Giant City Hall Rally Backs Teachers,”
The New York Times
, September 17, 1968; and Robert E. Dallos, “Shanker's Home Picketed by 150,”
The New York Times
, November 4, 1968.

33
“What did they feel about coming to work”:
Dolores Torres, interview by Blackside, Inc., October 31, 1988. Eyes/WU.

34
replacement teacher Charles Isaacs:
Republished in Berube and Gittell, eds.,
Confrontation at Ocean Hill—Brownsville
.

35
“it was like someone was filming a movie”:
Karima Jordan, interview by Blackside, Inc., April 18, 1989.
Eyes
/WU.

36
“Lots of teachers were pretty racist”:
Author interview with Peter Goodman, June 3, 2013.

37
“If African-American History and Culture” and “The UFT says NO”:
Quoted in Kahlenberg,
Tough Liberal
, 107.

38
“To me, the Civil Rights Movement”:
Al Shanker, interview by Blackside, Inc., November 15, 1988. Eyes/WU.

39
socialist, anti-Soviet workshops:
Taylor Branch,
Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963–65
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998), 292.

40
“The proposal seems concerned”:
Bayard Rustin, “Articles on Education, 1942–1987,” Bayard Rustin Papers.

41
“sacrificing the needs of the school system”:
Raskin, “He Leads His Teachers Up the Down Staircase.”

42
“Listen, I don't represent children”:
Quoted in Kahlenberg,
Tough Liberal
, 125.

43
“I'm going to produce!”:
Quoted in Calhoun, “New York: Schools and Power—Whose?” 21.

44
the years from 1967 to 1969 had been educationally disastrous; “Everyone else has failed”:
Carter,
Pickets, Parents, and Power
, 55, 164–67.

45
accused of showing standardized test questions:
Leonard Buder, “Actual Tests Used to Prepare Students for Reading Exam,”
The New York Times
, April 3, 1971.

46
Eagle Academy for Young Men:
Information from the Eagle Academy Foundation Web site,
http://​eagle​academy​foundation.​com
.

47
not much more successful, in measurable ways:
Eagle Academy school data reported by Inside Schools at
http://​inside​schools.​org/​high/​browse/​school/​1546
.

48
The resulting fourteen-week, 2,500-person strike:
Steve Golin,
The Newark Teacher Strikes: Hopes on the Line
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002).

49
Nationally, teachers unions wielded extraordinary political influence:
See chapter 9 of Terry M. Moe,
Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America's Public Schools
(Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2011).

50
Central Park East School:
Author interview with Deborah Meier, June 4, 2013.

1
“bureaucratic boondoggle”:
Edward B. Fiske, “Reagan Record in Education: Mixed Results,”
The New York Times
, November 14, 1982.

2
President Reagan “may be using me”:
Terrel H. Bell,
The Thirteenth Man
(New York: The Free Press, 1988), 149.

3
Bell biographical details and Utah merit pay plan:
Ibid., 7–13, 79–87.

4
an infamous wall chart:
Ibid., 137.

5
A press conference:
Reported in the Associated Press, “Bell Asks Schools to Bolster Courses,”
The New York Times
, February 17, 1981; and UPI,
“Bell Urges Stiff Tests to Decide If Students Go on to Next Grade,”
The New York Times
, April 10, 1981.

6
with polls showing that by 1980:
Mehta,
The Allure of Order
, 119.

7
testing programs to evaluate student achievement:
See Ibid., 75–83; and U.S. Department of Health Education and Welfare,
Inside-Out: The Final Report and Recommendations of the Teachers National Field Task Force on the Improvement and Reform of American Education
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1974), 1.

8
“competency based” evaluation:
John Merrow,
The Politics of Competence: A Review of Competency-Based Teacher Education
(Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Education, 1975).

9
California essentially prohibited:
Julie Greenberg, Arthur McKee, and Kate Walsh,
Teacher Prep Review, 2013
(National Council on Teacher Quality report, 2013), 33–35.

10
“Why Teachers Can't Teach”:
Gene Lyons, “Why Teachers Can't Teach,”
Phi Delta Kappan
62, no. 2 (October 1980).

11
“Bring God back into the classroom”:
Quoted in Mehta,
The Allure of Order
, 88.

12
A Nation at Risk:
National Commission on Excellence in Education,
A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, April 1983).

13
At the American Federation of Teachers:
For Shanker's response to
A Nation at Risk
, see chapter 14 of Kahlenberg,
Tough Liberal
.

14
“I took it as a personal insult”:
Author interview with Dennis Van Roekel, October 7, 2013.

15
four-day teaching week:
William K. Stevens, “Head of Teachers' Union Bids Locals Push for 4-Day Week,”
The New York Times
, November 23, 1969.

16
Shanker was calling charter schools:
Kahlenberg,
Tough Liberal
, 308–16.

17
In Japan the average teacher:
David C. Berliner and Bruce J. Biddle,
The Manufactured Crisis: Myth, Fraud, and the Attack on America's Public Schools
(Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1995), 103.

18
“Basically, no teacher wants to fail”:
Fred M. Hechinger, “About Education,”
The New York Times
, July 6, 1982.

19
“The Japanese have invaded”:
Quoted in Wendy Kopp, “An Argument and Plan for the Creation of the Teacher Corps” (senior thesis, Princeton University, April 10, 1989), 4.

20
Two-thirds of the states:
Bell,
The Thirteenth Man
, 139.

21
“a flawed idea whose time has gone”:
Edward B. Fiske, “Education; Lessons,”
The New York Times
, August 3, 1988.

22
studies of merit pay programs:
Samuel B. Bacharach, David B. Lipsky, and Joseph S. Shedd,
Paying for Better Teaching
(Ithaca, NY: Organizational Analysis and Practice, 1984), 28–29, 37–38.

23
Kalamazoo, Michigan, provides a powerful example:
See Richard R. Doremus, “Whatever Happened to Kalamazoo's Merit Pay Plan?”
Phi Delta Kappan
63, no. 6 (February 1982); and United States Commission
on Civil Rights,
School Desegregation in Kalamazoo, Michigan
(April 1977).

24
In Texas, a 1984 guidebook:
Kelly Frels, Timothy T. Cooper, and Billy R. Reagan,
Practical Aspects of Teacher Evaluation
(National Organization on Legal Problems in Education, 1984).

25
merit pay plans that were popular with teachers:
See Brian T. Burke, “Round Valley: A Merit Pay Experiment,”
California Journal
(October 1983): 392–93; Gene I. Maeroff, “Merit Pay Draws Criticism and Praise From Teachers,”
The New York Times
, July 2, 1983; Fiske, “Education; Lessons”; and Francis X. Clines, “Reagan Visits Tennessee in Another Swing to Press Education Issue,”
The New York Times
, June 15, 1983.

26
Gera Summerford:
Author interview with Gera Summerford, September 4, 2013.

27
the merit pay program rolled out in 1982:
Details reported in Robert Reinhold, “School Reform: Years of Tumult, Mixed Results,”
The New York Times
, August 10, 1987.

28
$23,500 per year:
Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy,
A Nation Prepared
(Report of the Task Force on Teaching as a Profession, 1986), 37.

29
the Carnegie Foundation recommended:
See Ibid.; and Margot Slade, “Ideas and Trends: Teachers Urged to Face Change,”
The New York Times
, August 26, 1984.

30
Ross Perot, for example, pushed Dallas:
William E. Schmidt, “Economic Issues Spur States to Act on Schools,”
The New York Times
, May 5, 1986; Reinhold, “School Reform: Years of Tumult, Mixed Results”; and Linda Darling-Hammond, “Mad-Hatter Tests of Good Teaching,”
The New York Times
, January 8, 1984.

31
formal evaluation programs were too expensive:
Larry W. Barber and Karen Klein, “Merit Pay and Teacher Evaluation,”
Phi Delta Kappan
65, no. 4 (December 1983); and David F. Wood and Dan S. Green, “Managerial Experience with Merit Pay: A Survey of the Business Literature,” in Johnson, ed.,
Merit, Money, and Teachers' Careers
(Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1985).

32
“I always was and still am against”:
Edward B. Fiske, “Al Shanker: Where He Stands,”
The New York Times
, November 5, 1989.

33
“The principals were often former gym teachers”:
Author interview with Chester Finn, November 11, 2013.

34
When unions brought this suspicion:
Unlike the NEA, Al Shanker supported the Lamar Alexander career ladder plan in Tennessee, with its complex rating and classroom observation systems. He also supported a similar plan in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. See Linda Dockery and Marcia Epstein, “The Teacher Incentive Program (TIP) of the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools,” in Johnson, ed.,
Merit, Money, and Teachers' Careers
.

35
“takes innocent children” and “proudest achievement”:
Gaillard,
The Dream Long Deferred
, xi.

36
Department of Justice school desegregation suits, 1980 and 1981:
John L. Palmer and Elizabeth V. Sawhill, eds.,
The Reagan Experiment
(Washington, D.C: The Urban Institute, 1982), 140.

37
In 1984, Secretary Bell spent $1 million:
UPI, “U.S. Encouraging Merit Pay Plans,”
The New York Times
, March 11, 1984; and AP, “Reagan Vetoes a Money Bill for Chicago's Desegregation,”
The New York Times
, August 14, 1983.

38
Bell was even on the record:
Marjorie Hunter, “Bell Will Not Push Lawsuits on Busing,”
The New York Times
, March 16, 1981.

39
In September 1999, Potter ruled in favor:
Gaillard,
The Dream Long Deferred
.

40
According to research from the labor economist C. Kirabo Jackson:
Kirabo C. Jackson, “Student Demographics, Teacher Sorting, and Teacher Quality: Evidence from the End of School Desegregation,”
Journal of Labor Economics
27, no. 2 (2009): 213–56.

41
The movement of experienced teachers:
For teachers' mind-sets on student race, see Kati Haycock, “The Elephant in the Living Room” (Brookings Papers on Education Policy, no. 7, 2004), 229–63; and Martin Haberman, “Selecting and Preparing Urban Teachers” (lecture, February 28, 2005, available on Web site of National Center for Alternative Teacher Certification Information).

42
A second study:
Stephen B. Billings, David J. Deming, and Jonah Rockoff, “School Segregation, Educational Attainment and Crime: Evidence from the End of Busing in Charlotte-Mecklenburg,”
Quarterly Journal of Economics
, September 17, 2013.

43
In a separate paper:
Byron Lutz, “The End of Court-Ordered Desegregation,”
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy
3, no. 2 (2011): 130–68.

44
One of the most compelling:
Heather Schwartz,
Housing Policy Is School Policy: Economically Integrative Housing Promotes Academic Success in Montgomery County, Maryland
(Century Foundation study, 2010).

45
In 1980 American school integration reached:
Linda Darling-Hammond,
The Flat World and Education
(New York: Teachers College Press, 2010), 35.

46
“In the sixties and seventies”:
Wendy Kopp with Steven Farr,
A Chance to Make History
(New York: Public Affairs, 2011), 4–5.

47
he sought to push the standards:
David K. Cohen and Susan L. Moffitt,
The Ordeal of Equality: Did Federal Regulation Fix the Schools?
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 139.

48
Kati Haycock:
See Karin Chenoweth, “In Education We Trust,”
Black Issues in Higher Education
15, no. 22 (December 1998): 14; and Kati Haycock, “ ‘Five Things I've Learned,' ” Pearson Foundation Web site,
http://​www.​the​five​things.​org/​kati-​haycock/​#
.

49
The Education Trust distributed massive data books:
New York Times News Service, “Test-Score Gap for Minorities Widening Again, Study Finds,” December 29, 1996; Chenoweth, “In Education We Trust”; and
Dale Mezzacappa, “In Poor Schools, Lower-Quality Teachers Abound, Report Says,”
Philadelphia Inquirer
, June 22, 2000.

50
Another issue was:
A good summary of research on class size: Matthew M. Chingos and Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst, “Class Size: What Research Says and What It Means for Public Policy” (paper, Brookings Institution, May 11, 2011).

51
“color a poster”:
“Alums Making a Difference: Kati Haycock,”
GSE Term Paper
(fall 2001).

52
“semiliterate aides”:
Mary Jordan, “Panel Says Poor Children Disserved by School Aid,”
Washington Post
, December 11, 1992.

53
“The polls among black folk”
and
“Twenty or 30 years ago”:
Chenoweth, “In Education We Trust.”

54
“Bush's message”:
Joan Walsh, “Surprise: Bush Could Be the ‘Education President,' ”
Salon
, September 17, 1999.

55
“bridging instruments”:
Cohen and Moffitt,
The Ordeal of Equality
, 142.

56
In Texas:
Ibid., 168.

57
In 2009 Alabama reported:
See table at
http://​nces.​ed.​gov/​nations​reportcard/​studies/​statemapping/​2009_​naep_​state_​table.​aspx
.

58
Perhaps the most lasting outcome:
Alexander Russo,
Left Out of No Child Left Behind: Teach for America's Outsized Influence on Alternative Certification
(American Enterprise Institute report, October 2012).

59
“I know this is a poem”:
Linda Perlstein,
Tested: One American School Struggles to Make the Grade
(New York: Henry Holt, 2007).

60
Research confirmed:
Jane L. David, “Research Says … High-Stakes Testing Narrows the Curriculum,”
Educational Leadership
68, no. 6 (March 2011): 78–80.

61
In Florida, schools were more likely to suspend:
Tiffany Pakkala, “Study: Suspensions Can Often Help School's FCAT,”
Gainesville Sun
, June 14, 2006.

62
“Texas Miracle”:
Michael Winerip, “On Education: The ‘Zero Dropout' Miracle,”
The New York Times
, August 13, 2003; Rebecca Leung, “ ‘60 Minutes' Report Investigates Claims That Houston Schools Falsified Dropout Rates,” CBS News, January 6, 2004.

63
By 2005 the NEA's:
The American Public School Teacher: Past, Present, and Future
, ed. Darrel Drury and Justin Baer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2011), 43.

64
“The key to measuring is to test”:
“Remarks on the No Child Left Behind Act” (speech by President George W. Bush, Philadelphia, January 8, 2009). Available at
http://​www.​gpo.​gov/​fdsys/​pkg/​PPP-​2008-​book2/​html/​PPP-​2008-​book2-​doc-​pg1522-​2.​htm
.