Diane Ravitch Spring Conference Address 2005

May 14, 2005 1:14 PM

For this great honor, I thank you.

I also thank John Dewey, who held card #1 in the UFT. When I studied his writings, what I learned from John Dewey is that you should think for yourself, be independent of anyone's party line, be willing to think otherwise, and not fear to challenge the powerful, even to challenge Dewey himself. Some people think it is wrong to criticize Dewey, but Dewey would have disagreed. He welcomed dissent, debate, and discussion.

We live in a time when it is fashionable to beat up on the UFT. Powerful voices in the media, business, and politics assert that the best way to reform the schools is to break the union. If scores are low, they say, it is because of the contract. If incompetent teachers have been hired and given tenure, it is because of the contract, not the hiring process. Editorialists condemn the union and demonize your president, Randi Weingarten. They want to scrap the contract, throw away teachers’ legal protections, and bring the union to its collective knees.

They say to teachers, you don’t need a union, trust us. We are smart business executives. We know how to fix the schools. We will make them run like corporations, standardizing every operation and procedure to the smallest detail.

In this atmosphere, it seemed to me that it would be worthwhile to talk a bit about why the union was created and why it remains important.

Take tenure, for example. The union didn’t invent tenure. Tenure evolved in the nineteenth century as one of the few perks available to people who were paid low wages, had classes of 70 or 80 or more, and endured terrible working conditions. In late 19th century New York City, there were no teacher unions, but there was already iron-clad, de facto teacher tenure. Local school boards controlled the hiring of teachers, and the only way to get a job was to know someone on the local school board. Once a teacher was hired, she had lifetime tenure in that school, but only in that school. In fact, she could teach in the same school until she retired—without a pension or health benefits—or died.

One problem with this kind of tenure was that it was not portable. If a teacher changed schools, even in the same district, she would lose her tenure in the school where she was first hired, and she would have to go to the end of the line at her new school. But assuming the teacher did nothing outrageous, she was guaranteed a job for as long as she wanted, and moved up in seniority as older teachers retired or died.

Pay for teaching was meager, but it was one of the few professional jobs open to women, and most teachers were women. Pay scales were blatantly discriminatory. Teachers in the high schools were paid more than those who taught in the elementary schools. Male teachers were paid more than female teachers.

I would like to remember some of the forgotten heroes of the movement to establish fair and equitable treatment of teachers.

First, there was Mary Murphy. She started teaching in the Brooklyn schools in 1891. Ten years later, in 1901, she got married. That was a mistake. When she got married, the Board of Education charged her with gross misconduct and fired her. Teachers were not supposed to get married. She sued the Board. She lost in the lower court, but then won in the state court of appeals, which ruled that marriage “was not misconduct” and ordered the Board of Education to reinstate her.

Second, there was the Interborough Association of Women Teachers. They started a campaign in 1906 to wipe out the salary differentials between male and female teachers, with the slogan “equal pay for equal work.” When the state legislature passed their bill for equal pay, it was vetoed by the governor. They finally won pay equity in 1912.

Then there was Bridget Pexitto, a veteran teacher of 18 years in the Bronx. She took advantage of the new right to get married without losing her job. But then she got pregnant. The Board of Education fired her on charges of “gross negligence by being absent to have a baby.” Not only that, the Board ordered the Superintendent of Schools to discover whether there were any other pregnant teachers in the city’s schools. He somehow did a visual inspection of the city’s teachers and found 14 of them, who were promptly suspended from teaching. Bridget Pexitto fought the decision in state court and was eventually reinstated with back pay by the state commissioner of education.

The forerunner to the United Federation of Teachers was the New York City Teachers Union, which was founded in 1916. Its purposes were to fight for improved salaries, to fight against “oppressive supervision,” and to defend the rights of teachers. At the time, there were more than sixty other teachers’ organizations representing people who worked in the school system.

Over the years, the Teachers Union proved to be the most assertive union in lobbying for better salaries, pensions, and working conditions. In time, that union established in 1916 became the present-day United Federation of Teachers, representing all the city’s teachers.

That was then, this is now. Is the union relevant today?

In my view, the union is as relevant today as it was in 1916.

The New York City schools are in the midst of revolutionary changes. Decisions are being made every day that affect the lives of tens of thousands of teachers and over a million children. The people who direct the school system—the Mayor and the Chancellor—have a degree of authority and concentrated power that is unprecedented in the history of the school system. Unlike any time in the past, there are no checks or balances to restrain the power of the system’s leadership.

The leadership believes that it can fix the system without consulting the people who work in the system. Is there a successful organization anywhere in the world that imposes changes without listening to and collaborating with those who are expected to implement them?

Let us consider for a few moments the nature of the Bloomberg revolution.

When Michael Bloomberg was a candidate, he made three promises:

First, that he would install a back-to-basics curriculum

Second, that he would eliminate bilingual education.

Third, that he reform the system with the same amount of money simply by modernizing its management.

The mayor then proceeded to hire Joel Klein as his Chancellor, despite the fact that Mr. Klein had no experience in education. By the time that the mayor introduced his Children First program, all his campaign pledges had disappeared.

First, he announced that he would mandate a curriculum that no one would call back-to-basics. The literacy program was unknown and untested. The math program was controversial in many other cities and states because of its neglect of basic skills.

Second, he launched a reorganization of the bureaucracy that was supposed to save money and return it to the classroom. Out came a blizzard of new, very highly paid positions, LISes, RISes, ROCs, coaches, and of course, the very expensive stable of young Ivy League assistants and deputy assistants who work at Tweed. Most of these new positions pay far, far more than a teacher’s salary, and more even than the salary of an experienced principal.

Third, the mayor announced that he would create a Leadership Academy to train principals. The Academy has not exactly been what you would call a success story. The mayor and chancellor raised $75 million for three years or $25 million per year from the private sector. In the first year, the Academy produced 77 graduates, only 64 or so of whom are now principals. At this rate, the Academy will be remembered as the most expensive training program in the history of the world, and we won’t know for years whether those 64 persist and were well prepared for the challenge of school leadership.

As the months rolled by, the mayor’s agenda became ever more complicated and new ideas were added, almost too numerous to count. One day, the Chancellor announced that he planned to eliminate all middle schools. Another day, the idea was to eliminate social promotion in the third grade. The next year, we learned that the Department of Education would eliminate social promotion in the fifth grade. Then the Chancellor decided to authorize dozens of charter schools. Another day, he decided to break up the large high schools and create scores of small high schools.

One never knows what innovation or reform or initiative will come forth the following day, but you can be sure that it will be accompanied by a flurry of press releases, photo opportunities, media advisories, and premature claims of success.

This is an administration that is masterful at self-praise, but has no capacity to address genuine problems other than to deny them. When the New York Times wrote a devastating front-page expose of massive problems in special education, the Department’s spokesman responded by denying that there were any problems and insisted that things were better than ever. When the headlong rush to create more than 100 small schools in a few months led to massive overcrowding in the large high schools, the Department said that the problem was not a problem and would soon be fixed. When reading scores plummeted by double digits in Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant after the first year of the new literacy program, the DOE suggested that this was not a problem either.

This is, after all, “a work in progress,” which turns out to be a euphemism meaning “give us time, we don’t know what we are doing.”

Is there a businesslike administration of the schools? How can we say that there is when the Department of Education operates without transparency or accountability? When the Chancellor hires his assistants, he says he has to pay top dollar to get them. That’s the way it works in the business world, right? Well, if the Chancellor wants to recruit the best people to teaching and retain the best people in teaching, if he wants to get the best people as principals, then he should be willing to pay top salaries to teachers and principals. That’s only good business sense.

The Chancellor boasts of the city’s standardized curriculum, but I am not sure that there is such a thing. There is the mandated curriculum for most schools; then there are 49 schools using a different reading program from the one chosen by Tweed because the mandated program did not meet the requirements of No Child Left Behind as a research-based program. Then there are 235 schools exempted from the mandated curriculum. Then there are all the supplementary programs in literacy and math designed to correct the defects of the mandated curriculum. Is this a uniform curriculum? I don’t think so.

The real secret is that there is no curriculum at all. There is only the mandated constructivist, workshop-model pedagogy, which everyone must obey or be punished.

I happen to believe in the value of a uniform curriculum, where there is continuity, coherence, and clarity about what children in different grades are expected to learn. A uniform curriculum in science, history, English, and mathematics describes WHAT is to be taught, but it doesn’t tell teachers HOW to teach.

Tweed has it exactly backwards. It ignores what is taught, but demands lockstep adherence to the one and only correct way to teach. It has a standardized pedagogy, but no curriculum at all.

Excuse me, but I don’t think there is a single best way to teach. Constructivist methods may be just right for some teachers, but not right for everyone. How in the world do Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein—a business executive and a lawyer—have the nerve to tell 80,000 teachers that there is only one way to teach?

The same thing can be said about school size. There are excellent schools that are large and there are excellent schools that are small. There are terrible schools that are large and there are terrible schools that are small. Where did Tweed get the idea that only small schools are worthy?

Unfortunately, the Chancellor began his job believing that the New York City public schools are a “failing” system. Believing this, he and his team set a course to tear the system apart. They continue to churn out one change after another, without regard to the consequences for teachers and students. Any change, they think, will be for the better. They are in love with change. Call it the Humpty-Dumpty strategy of institutional reform.

Lacking any public board that they have to report to, lacking any public forum where they have to explain and defend their decisions, they implement their ideas without careful review and planning, which guarantees flawed implementation.

It turns out that there is a simple genius in democratic institutions that require public review, public input, public hearings, and public discussion. These are the checks and balances that protect our society from grievous errors.

In the months and years ahead, the UFT will continue to be the only significant check or balance in the public sector to defend the rights of teachers, to protest against ill-advised policies, and to speak out for sound education. Teachers and principals in the school system are afraid to speak up. They are not allowed to defy the reform of the day or to question any of Tweed’s decisions.

John Dewey taught us that it is healthy to ask questions; it is healthy to discuss plans and policies before you implement them. He said that the essence of democracy is involving people in the decisions that affect them. The discussion itself is the heart of democratic action.

Right now, New York City’s teachers need the UFT more than ever. It is the only counterforce to an autocratic style of management. Right now, it is the sole agency that will speak up for teachers, parents, and others who have a different point of view.

The New York City public school system faces difficult days ahead as Tweed pushes its ever-changing agenda.

In many respects, the parallels between 1916—when this union was founded—and today are striking. Here we see the value of learning from the past, of studying history.

In 1916, the union was organized to demand better pay and better working conditions and to fight against “oppressive supervisions.” These goals are as important today as they were then.

In 1916, teachers confronted a leadership that wanted to impose a factory-style efficiency on them. The teacher was treated as nothing more than a cog in the machinery of production.

Today teachers confront a leadership that wants to impose a corporate model of governance with lockstep supervision and cookie-cutter instruction.

Over the years, philosophers of education have debated whether teaching is an art or a craft. The regime at Tweed has answered that question: They say it is neither. They believe that teaching is a factory-line job, where the teacher’s role is simply to follow their orders.

The lesson of history is as clear today as it was in 1916: Teachers need their union. And so, I might add, does the public.

The challenge in the immediate future is to protect your right to think and act as professionals and as free men and women. For this, you must once again turn to your union.