This document has been formatted for printing from your browser from the Web site of the Illinois Association of School Boards.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE -- This document is © copyrighted by the Illinois Association of School Boards. IASB hereby grants to school districts and other Internet users the right to download, print and reproduce this document provided that (a) the Illinois Association of School Boards is noted as publisher and copyright holder of the document and (b) any reproductions of this document are disseminated without charge and not used for any commercial purpose.

Illinois School Board Journal
September-October 1998

by Debi S. Edmund

Debi S. Edmund is contributing editor of the IASB School Public Relations Service and a frequent contributor to the Journal.

         For decades, teacher unions have been seen as impediments to change. In fact, it’s not uncommon to hear the argument that unions, by their very existence, prevent true reform. However, in recent years, unions appear to be changing.
    In a speech before the National Press Club in 1997, National Education Association President Robert Chase announced a "new unionism" that would build partnerships with administrators and the community, work to enhance school quality, and help incompetent teachers improve — or remove them from the classroom. He said NEA would join with those "who seek genuinely to reform public education — and not dismantle it — to challenge the entrenched system, to fight for the changes that we know are urgent and necessary."
    For nearly three decades, "the National Education Association has been a traditional, somewhat narrowly focused union," Chase said in his Press Club speech. "We have butted heads with management over bread-and-butter issues — to win better salaries, benefits and working conditions for school employees. And we have succeeded. Today, however, it is clear to me — and to a critical mass of teachers across America — that while this narrow, traditional agenda remains important, it is utterly inadequate to the needs of the future."
    "New unionism," according to its proponents, is essentially the expansion of traditional unionism from a strong collective bargaining and political action base to one which places equally high priority on leadership in professional issues. It is "about moving — where circumstances permit — from conflict to cooperation with school management," says Chase, who was elected as NEA president in July 1996. "It is about taking responsibility for the quality of education and using our advocacy tools to make things better for children, for students. It’s about taking risks — acting in creative, unconventional ways to address some serious challenges."
    "We are trying to lead our unions down a new path, joining forces on behalf of children, seeking partnerships instead of conflict with management, and taking responsibility for our profession," echoes Sandra Feldman, president of the American Federation of Teachers since May 1997. Her predecessor, the late Albert Shanker, had been calling for unions to move in a similar direction for several years.

More collaboration

    So far, leaders of the National School Boards Association have expressed openness to "the new unionism." As part of her "new vision" for NSBA, executive director Anne Bryant wants to see "much more collaboration among the education organizations," including school boards and teacher unions. "As national and state and local organizations, we need to figure out what we have in common between teachers and school board members that will raise student achievement and create quality education," she says. "That’s what we have to work on together."
    Workshop participants at last November’s Joint Annual Conference sponsored by the Illinois Association of School Boards were invited to learn how collaboration and the "new unionism" could change the face of public education. "A Conversation with the NEA/IEA" featured panelists Bryant, Chase, Illinois Education Association President Bob Haisman and NSBA President Barbara M. Wheeler. In the freewheeling discussion that ensued, panelists agreed that more collaboration was desirable.
    What’s driving this change? Is it for real? And what will this approach mean for local school boards?
    Indeed, more collaboration between school boards and teacher unions would seem to make a lot of sense. After all, school board members and teachers share education’s number one priority: student welfare. They also are often in agreement on a number of other issues: school funding, student discipline, a better image for public education, better use of technology and opposition to vouchers, to name a few.
    Charles Kerchner, Julia Koppich and Joseph Weeres, authors of United Mind Workers: Unions and Teaching in the Knowledge Society (published in 1997), are among those who think the new unionism is more than a public relations ploy. "As dedicated and organizationally savvy educators, [Chase and Feldman] know that there are easier ways to spend their presidencies than by trying to change the belief systems of their own organizations," the authors wrote in an article for the journal Educational Leadership. "Union leaders have come to realize that their organizations cannot thrive unless public education does. Thus, they face the problem of advocating not only for their members’ immediate interests, but also for teaching as an occupation and public education as an American institution."
    The "new unionism" does have its skeptics and naysayers, both from without and within. At a meeting of education writers in 1997, Chester Finn Jr., a fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute and a strong critic of unions, charged that teacher unions "say one thing in Washington and then do something else around the country." Education Policy Institute chair Myron Lieberman called the new unionism "a fairy tale." Meanwhile, one unidentified NEA member was quoted in Education Week as protesting that Bob Chase was telling them to "climb into bed with the boss." The member further accused the NEA president of a "collaborationist approach" that "may bring him plaudits from right-wing, anti-labor groups, but it will neither help members, nor improve education."

    But Chase insists that the new unionism is not a threat to union clout and solidarity. "This new collaboration is not about sleeping with the enemy," he says. Rather, it is about "waking up to our shared stakes in reinvigorating the public education enterprise."
    In a June 1998 column entitled "Where We Stand," AFT President Feldman said, "When you look at it, teacher unions have taken on plenty of tough educational challenges. We were early leaders in the push for national standards and especially for higher academic standards for all our students. We mounted strong opposition to social promotion — the practice of just sending students on to the next grade regardless of whether they have learned the current year’s work. And because, as teachers, we know that children cannot learn unless the classroom and the school are orderly places, we’ve also campaigned long and hard for tougher discipline codes that are consistently and fairly enforced."
    In the same column, she added, "Nor have we shirked the difficult issue of teacher quality. The union recognizes that we owe it to our students — and our profession — to make sure that new and veteran (and yes, even tenured) teachers who are not doing well in the classroom are identified and helped and, if necessary, counseled out of teaching."
    However, even those who would like to see the new unionism catch on question how much influence national leaders — school board or union — have on decisions made at the local level. National leaders can talk about reform, some say, but the national agenda doesn’t necessarily filter down to state associations or local school districts.
    NSBA executive director Bryant acknowledges that collaboration is "easier to do nationally than even at the state level, and at the state level, it’s easier to do than at the local level. At the national level we have a great deal in common, for instance, as we lobby Congress on increasing the federal budget. We might disagree on the specific programs, but we agree that urban education needs resources. When it comes to the local level, you have people fighting over very dwindling resources. When you are arguing or debating the merits of one professional development program for teachers versus more textbooks for kids, it can get heated. So the stakes at the local level are very different from the stakes at the national level."

School board role

    For one thing, local school boards and unions do have some differing priorities. "School board members are governors," Bryant explains. "They are the people who hold the superintendent and administrators accountable. They are the folks who find the resources to make all of it work and they are advocates for their school districts in the community. So there is a very specific role that school board members play."
    Union leaders are equally candid about their commitment to their members. "Of course, we’ll never stop working to improve our members’ employment conditions," says AFT president Feldman. "We’ve never believed that fighting for our members — who serve the children, after all — and working to improve schools are incompatible. Quite the contrary."
    Unions have also had to work through their own culture clashes. The AFT, founded in 1902, represents 950,000 members. The NEA, founded in 1857, currently has 2.4 million members. A proposed merger this summer would have created an organization with a combined membership of more than 3 million. However, a crucial vote this summer, in which the NEA rejected the plan by a 57 to 43 percent margin, dashed the union leaders’ hopes for an imminent merger.
    In Illinois, the Illinois Education Association and the Illinois Federation of Teachers have been traditional organizing rivals, with decidedly different internal "cultures," according to IEA President Bob Haisman. "However, in recent years, we have signed and renewed a no-raid agreement with the IFT and worked together on school funding and other universal education issues." After the NEA vote, IFT President Thomas H. Reese promised in a statement that, "the cooperation and collaboration exhibited by the Illinois Federation of Teachers and the Illinois Education Association on issues crucial to public education will not cease" as a result of the vote, and added, "Our organizations have much in common."
    On the national level, cooperation between the two unions continues despite this summer’s vote. Last November, NEA and AFT announced the formation of a national joint council to work on three issues: school infrastructure, school safety and discipline, and teacher quality. The NEA/AFT joint council — composed of 15 elected state and local leaders of each union — was the first such national collaboration between the two unions. "The formation of the AFT/NEA joint council," said Chase in a press release issued jointly by the AFT and NEA, "is about putting our competition aside and combining our energies, resources and expertise to improve education for America’s 45 million public school children." AFT president Feldman noted that the three issues chosen by the joint council "directly affect our ability to give all our students a first-rate education."
    Speaking on the issue of school discipline, Feldman said, "School discipline is the top concern for both parents and teachers in many places. Teachers can’t teach, and children can’t learn, in an atmosphere of disruption, violence and disrespect." About school infrastructure, Chase said, "It is unconscionable that, in a nation that claims to value its children, we allow our kids to sit in classrooms that lack adequate heat or air conditioning, where buckets are put on the floor to collect dripping rainwater, and where lead paint is peeling off the walls."
    Of teacher quality, Feldman said, "We’re going beyond what some would see as the traditional union role and taking more responsibility for everything from teacher preparation programs to counseling out of the profession those who can’t do the job." Among other efforts, the joint council will focus on improving teacher preparation programs, licensing, inservice education, establishing peer assistance and review programs, and encouraging members to seek certification by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.
    Could national school board or union leaders do more to encourage collaboration at the local level? "We are doing that by example," NSBA executive director Bryant says. "We can’t, and we would never, dictate to a local school district and say you must work more collaboratively with your teacher union. But we can say there are merits to sitting down at the table and asking, ‘How can we work together to improve student learning? What can we do together to enhance student achievement? What can you bring to the table? What can we bring to the table?’ You begin to have win-win conversations of, ‘I’ll give this and you give that,’ instead of teachers saying, ‘We’re not giving another minute of our day to do anything additional’ and the school board saying, ‘We’re not giving you one more dollar until you do X.’ Instead of a give-up mentality, it’s give-together mentality."

    Meanwhile, 21 union leaders representing both the NEA and AFT have formed the Teacher Union Reform Network (TURN). Among TURN members are locals in Albuquerque, Boston, Cincinnati, Denver, Memphis, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh and Seattle. Funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the network has been exploring how local unions might take a more active role in reform, participants say. Many of the locals involved with TURN are those that have successfully experimented with revising contract language to stimulate school reform in areas of peer evaluation, student assessment, curriculum and instruction, accountability and professional development.
    In this state, the Illinois Education Association and the Illinois Federation of Teachers have been leaders in the Illinois Learning Partnership (ILP), a coalition of business and civic groups committed to working with educators to improve public education. The ILP’s goals include altering the present culture of isolation and contention in public education and fostering collaboration through workshops and seminars. Among organizations represented in the ILP, besides the teacher unions, are the Chicago Urban League, Deere & Co., the Illinois Farm Bureau and Voices for Illinois Children, as well as the Illinois Association of School Boards, the Illinois Association for School Administrators, the State Board of Education and the Illinois Parent Teacher Association, along with numerous other education groups.

    "To an amazing degree, teachers, school boards and administrators all agree on this reform agenda. And this commonality cries out for us to build an entirely new union-management relationship in public education," says Chase. To which Bryant adds, "If we don’t start working collaboratively with other family members, we’re going to have a dysfunctional family."
    "At the national level, there have been some very candid, open discussions between the leaders of the AFT and the NEA, and the other major educational organizations ... blunt discussions about issues surrounding student achievement," says Barbara Wheeler, president of the NSBA and a past president of the Illinois Association of School Boards. "I am very encouraged by the candor. I see real hope to do really good things for kids."