How Al Shanker Blew Up No Child Left Behind

When the prospects for renewal of the federal education law known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB) blew up during a marathon congressional hearing last Monday, there was no shortage of ready explanations:

The "staff draft" proposal put out by committee leaders had gone too far (or not far enough) in fixing the current law. The delicate and unlikely alliance supporting the law for the past five years -- business, civil rights groups, and the Bush administration -- had finally fallen apart. The politics surrounding the law were changed now that Democrats had gained nominal control of Congress.

But the real, underlying cause is simpler than that: It was former American Federation of Teachers president Al Shanker's fault.

Just as the September 10 hearing of the House Education and Labor Committee began, the 340,000-member California Teachers Association surprised nearly everyone with an all-out campaign to block the "Pelosi-Miller" reauthorization bill, which had not yet even been introduced.

"It is a blatant attack on collective bargaining," said a CTA vice president Dean Vogel about the proposal, which he worried was going to be moved quickly through the House. "It makes a bad law even worse."

Then things got worse. Towards the end of the day, Miller got into a public, seemingly-unanticipated spat with Reg Weaver, head of the 3.2 million-member National Education Association, about the union leader's criticism of a proposed merit pay program, an issue that typically raises concerns for teachers.

"You can dance all around you want," said a frustrated Miller to Weaver from the dais. "You approved the language [two years ago]."

Weaver may have agreed to it before -- accounts vary -- but he and his members clearly did so no longer. And the AFT, the NEA's smaller counterpart, didn't either.

After seven hours and 40-something witnesses -- none of whom really liked the proposal -- the hearing ended in acrimony and exhaustion.

"I don't see much hope for an NCLB consensus, and I don't see much hope for NCLB 2.0 anytime soon," wrote former USDE official Checker Finn just after the hearing concluded.

Many observers were surprised at the strength and increasingly strident nature of the union opposition, both in Washington and in California.

"It seemed like the NEA's tone changed," observed Kevin Carey of the Education Sector, who testified at the Monday hearing. "You don't see people go after prominent members of Congress in their own back yards very often."

Others saw something familiar in the turn of events.

"I found that they were rarely satisfied," says Charles Barone, who used to work with the NEA as Miller's Deputy Staff Director. "They frequently came back to ask for additional changes once an agreement has been reached."

This was not how things were supposed to go.

For over five years, a bipartisan group of stalwart NCLB supporters including some key civil rights groups, business groups, the Committee leaders, and the Secretary of Education had stuck together against wave after wave of criticism of the law (and even the administration's inability to fund it fully).

During the past nine months, these same groups had worked towards a reauthorization plan that they hoped would address most if not all of the many complaints about the law.

But few of these allies were pleased with the early result Miller produced, which was released in two parts just before and after the Labor Day weekend.

Secretary Spellings, a longtime Miller ally, called Miller's changes "Washington wonkery" and suggested that the current law, with all its flaws, would be better than what he was proposing.

Amy Wilkins of The Education Trust, which helped craft the original law, said Miller's compromise "sacrifices what's best for poor and minority children."

Editorial pages including The New York Times, Washington Post, and USA Today all expressed concern that Miller was going too far in softening up the law and urged him to stand fast.

Most immediately problematic was the fact that Miller's plan failed to win the support of the teachers whose objections he had worked so hard to address.

The proposal didn't go far enough towards making the law more flexible, and -- most objectionable of all -- it included new provisions that would spread merit pay plans into more parts of the country.

Merit pay -- rewarding teachers based on some definition of performance rather than seniority and credentials -- has a long and controversial history in education circles.

And so, this proposed expansion brought on the wrath of the NEA and AFT.

That's where Al Shanker comes in.

Shanker, the charismatic former teachers union leader, is known to many for weekly paid columns in The New York Times (and The New Republic) and his embrace of innovative and controversial ideas (national standards, peer review of teachers, charter schools) that were outside the traditional purview of trade unions.

Out this month, Shanker's much-deserved biography, Tough Liberal, details these and many other accomplishments over nearly 40 years as an education leader. Read it and you'll understand how he became the darling of so many lawmakers, journalists, and policy wonks -- even conservative ones.

But few of Shanker's reform-minded ideas were ever adopted. Unionizing the nation's classroom teachers -- directly through the AFT and indirectly through the NEA (which was forced to follow Shanker's lead) -- is his main legacy.

And, in going after popular and powerful members like Pelosi and Miller, the NEA and CTA are acting to protect teachers' interests just like Shanker did.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. Collective bargaining for teachers raised wages, improved working conditions, and ensured ongoing support for public education in legislatures around the country. Millions of teachers and their families benefited, and many would argue that schoolchildren did as well.

And, it could be argued, the Miller proposal unwisely intrudes into the affairs of districts and local unions.

But union advocacy for teachers cuts both for teachers and against change, and regularly requires a show of strength.

During the 1960s and early 1970s, Shanker was so aggressive (and effective) in winning benefits for teachers -- through citywide strikes and other actions -- that he became the butt of a joke in Woody Allen's 1973 comedy, Sleeper.

In the movie, we learn that, some 200 years into the future, civilization will be destroyed by a madman named Al Shanker who gets hold of a nuclear warhead.

In real life, of course, the fiery union leader didn't destroy civilization. He just organized the teachers, whose PACs gave nearly $4 million to federal candidates in 2006.

In so doing, however, Shanker may well have planted land mines in the path of school reform efforts that followed -- including, for the time being at least, the renewal of No Child Left Behind.

Alexander Russo is a freelance education writer who blogs at This Week In Education.

Comments

[cowboyjerkface]

The NCLB idea might have seemed good on the surface but after hearing all the parents and teachers complain at the montly PTA meetings it is most obvious that all we are doing now is teaching testing and nothing else...and the republicans continue the dumbing down of our nation. Down with the arts and sciences and now education in general. I have sorry news for you republicans....you live in this country too and the generations of ill prepared citizens will affect you just as much as any liberal and independent and there is no way to deny that.

[bolobill]

You know, of course, that it was Shanker's predecessor, David Selden, who is the father of teacher's unions in the US, moving the AFT from a professional organization to a union when he called out the teachers in NYC. Several years later, behind his back, Albert Shanker pulled a Stalin-like move and ousted Dave. The AFT's loss, as Shanker was often a divisive force in an effort to get attention for himself.

[Aunt Shecky]

Both sides of the No Child Left Behind business assume that merely because a child is
poor, "disadvantaged," or a member of a minority that he or she can't learn, or learns "differently," or that the home environment automatically works against educational goals. This is a bias that everyone in education should abandon. Many, if not most, parents want their children to succeed and acquire the skills for a better life.
Even poor kids can go to public libraries-- they're free. In addition to books, children and adults can have use computers with Internet access. I've never met a librarian who wasn't willing to help a patron find something. And if your child's school isn't working, parents can work to make it better.
It seems to me that "education reformers" all work from an agenda to promote the goals of the
government or the State Education Department, or the school board, or the school district's profit-making providers, or the-- forgive me because I'm NOT an enemy of organized labor--
the teacher's union. Why is it that the interests of parents and children themselves are way, way down on the bottom of the totem
pole?

[nich]

"Both sides of the No Child Left Behind business assume that merely because a child is
poor, "disadvantaged," or a member of a minority that he or she can't learn, or learns "differently," or that the home environment automatically works against educational goals."

You're right, being "disadvantaged" doesn't guarantee educational difficulty for a given individual, but on average, it does.

[jim2812]

NCLB, and its Rep. Miller's proposed reconfigured reauthorization, answer the question what is the goal of American public education? And, that is the problem with both because they both have the same answer that the goal of public education is higher test scores.

Jefferson believed the National goal should be educating the citizens to govern democratically.

I believe in Jefferson's goal for America's education system and not Secretary of Education Spelling's test prep NCLB.

Ben Franklin said something to the effect on the signing of the American Constitution that what we have is a Republic if we can keep it. Future Americans will more likely keep that Republic if its education system's goal is the Jeffersonian approach.

[Merrysunshine]

One of the prerequisites for schools to receive funding from NCLB was that all junior and senior students' personal information had to be supplied to the military for future campus recruiting.

As for the academic feature of NCLB, it has been an unmitigated disaster..focusing on teaching and learning to tests and not teaching critical thinking skills.

NCLB is an absolute failure. Let local school boards and teachers set learning standards. Make sure that school districts without a sufficient tax base have the money they need to operate properly.

And for God's sake, don't put any of Neil Bushs' COWS in any school. Talk about a waste of money!

[gulopartisan]

What the neocon thugs did to our education system was like what they did to Ashcroft: Exploit weakness to their own benefit. Now we have talk show hosts who don't know if the world is flat, an electorate that thinks Iran is behind Al Quaida's daily terrorist attacks on our freedom in Iraq, and a teacher corps that can't address those problems because they'll be fired. Soon we won't even need martial law.

[ProfessorVP]

The way this piece is written, it's as if Shanker were still alive. He kicked off 10 years ago. I am a product of the NYC education system, and I can assure you it must certainly have been a requirement that public school teachers loathe knowledge, learning and children, not necessarily in that order.

[suki21693]

Scrap it! The only positive thing the federal government can do for education is make sure that poor neighborhoods with smaller tax bases have enough money to provide the kids with a decent education. Everything else should be left up to the local teachers and administrators who actually have an opportunity to get to know the kids.

We're talking about educating individual children here, not manufacturing bolts. By it's very nature the process can not be standardized.

If I am unhappy with the education my kid is getting, I would really like to be able to go to the local school board and hold them accountable. For all the talk about accountability, NCLB really removed all accountability on a local level, because no one locally is making any pertinent decisions. If you don't like it, who are you going to call, Bush?

NCLB ignored several pertinent facts, not the least of which was that in a good percentage of areas, the public education system was working just fine without it. Why destroy what was working in a failed attempt to fix what was not?

[weaponsofmassdeception]

NCLB is a burden on the schools that need the most help. When the demographics are broken down by gender, race, English as a second language (ESL), and learning disability, a school can't possibly meet all of the goals.
How crazy is it to demand that a kid with an IQ of 70 pass a high school reading test? Not as crazy as telling a school that the entire school fails because the 'special ed' kids didn't meet the goals.
NCLB is all-or-nothing. It doesn't matter if the school has 12 or 25 demographics. If EACH subgroup does not meet the goals, the ENTIRE school fails. In other words, a 24/25 isn't 96%, it's ZERO
So which schools are set up to meet these goals? Homogenous middle-class (mostly white) schools, while the inner-city schools, which tend to have the students most in need of strong schools, will end up being de-funded.
NCLB must be changed!! It's hurting the schools who most need help.

[marko77]

The most shocking aspect of NCLB is the insistence that students with learning disabilities score at the same level as non-learning disabled students. I simply could not believe this was and it a part of this program - especially since educators and administrators can lose their jobs as a result.

I know this may seem like a strange concept to some, but there is a reason a small percentage of students are labeled "learning disabled." And although hard to grasp, it just might have to do with them actually being unable to process information as most students, resulting in an inability to read and write at the same level as those not identified. What a concept!!! Yet the Bush administration missed it. Kafkaesque and sad.

[rednaxela64]

i don't think anyone is losing jobs because of NCLB -- that's a myth. schools get rated because of NCLB. plus which, parents of disabled kids seem to be one of the law's biggest supporters -- finally, educators (ie, nonSPED folks) have to take their kids seriously.

[bantrybay]

Thank God he BLEW IT UP!!!! About time. It is a nightmare, an attack on learning and if Miller really did "listen" to the NEA Weaver and AFT Shanker, he would hear millions of screams of anger, sheer anger from the most reasonable teachers in all school Districts in this country. It is an issue that all sides agree upon, except LEGISLATORS, SPELLING and the clueless, BUSH. We will pay for decades what you have forced us to do to our children. We are NOT teaching, and children are not learning, just learning to take tests. What job classifcation are we preparing them for? Professional test takers!Don't fix it, blow it up and start over with people who actually DO the job. What a novel idea eh?

[Jain]

NCLB was never fully funded so it was doomed. The emphasis on testing has teachers teaching to a test rather than educating. Worst of all, it opened a loop hole so that military recruiters could gain info on all the high achool students and target the most vulnerable: I have personally encountered these con artists. Another Bush defeat: environment, education , Iraq war, etc. Follow the money.

[fightorleave2]

Good for Al Shanker. I don't even know what the author's problem is/was.

[johnfrankweaver]

I couldn't figure out Russo's point either, other than "this is why NCLB reform fell apart in Congress recently." Is this good or bad? He doesn't seem to put forward an opinion, other than expressing mild annoyance at Al Shanker’s disruption of the congressional negotiating process.

NCLB has largely been a failure in improving the education children receive, however it has admirably drawn attention to the wide gaps between minority kids and white kids, poor kids and middle class kids, suburban kids and urban kids. Not that we didn't know these gaps existed in the past, but they have entered the national conversation in a way that didn’t exist before NCLB.

What we need to do now is scrap most of NCLB and replace it with a system of education that effectively addresses the causes of those gaps. The new system should include essay tests and portfolios, assessments that are less intrusive to class time but that focus on a range of skills broader than simple reading and math. We should also give superior resources to the kids and schools who are underachieving on those evaluative devices: more teachers, more time in school, more tutors, more technology, etc. And we must limit the number of kids who come to our public schools with built in education deficits. Kids from families on welfare know 500 words by the age of 3; kids from families of professionals know 1000 words by the age of 3. That pre-Kindergarten disadvantage must be eliminated in order to improve the education given to our kids.

[yellowdogSC]

"Secretary Spellings, a longtime Miller ally, called Miller's changes "Washington wonkery"...."

Interesting, coming from a Secretary with ZERO experience in teaching or education in any form. Oh, I forgot, she'd a "...mother..."!
http://www.whitehouse.gov/government/spellings-bio.html

If I EVER heard of "Washington wonkery", she's the wonkiest! (And NOT in a good way.)

[JoAnnCr]

Good on Al Shanker, then. NCLB ruins whole education and is another miserable Bush failure.

[Doofus]

When all else fails, blame Al Shanker.

'Union Man' - Thomas Toch - August 17, 2007

(Review of) 'Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles Over Schools, Unions, Race and Democracy'

When the protagonist of Woody Allen's 1973 movie Sleeper wakes up 200 years in the future, he learns that a madman named Albert Shanker has destroyed civilization with a nuclear bomb [over a teachers' strike]. It was Shanker's reward for spending the previous decade and a half leading New York City's public school teachers into a militant, strike-filled, industrial-style unionism.

In 1962, Shanker won the first collective bargaining for teachers in a major city and encouraged the rapid spread of teacher unionism throughout the nation, at a time when many people didn't believe public employees could be organized on a large scale. Within a decade, some 70 percent of the nation's teachers were unionized, and the political and educational contours of public education changed permanently. ...