UFT Spring Conference Address Randi Weingarten, May 8, 2004

Aug 30, 2005 10:43 AM

It’s great seeing you here today. You know, no matter how trying a year it’s been, there’s something about our annual spring conference that’s fantastic. The energy here today is awesome.

What inspires me is that despite what Tweed has put you through this year, you rise above it for the sake of the kids. And whether you’re new to our school system or a seasoned veteran, you come to our annual education conference to learn more about your craft and become better at it. That is the mark of a true professional.

Speaking of true professionals, I’m going to make some proposals today about how we attract and keep great teachers and how we make all our schools great schools.

But first, listen to three teachers who — like you — care deeply about their profession, but are seriously thinking of leaving our schools.

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I left a lucrative field to teach in NY as a Fellow. After all, I had grown up in a high needs area here, and the events of 9/11 made me think that it was time to give back to the community. The experience has been a real shocker though. Unsanitary working conditions, unprofessional treatment, and a profound lack of support for teachers make the job undesirable. I still can’t believe that teachers are expected to perform janitorial and facilities duties, cleaning classrooms and carrying books and supplies. Or that bathrooms often run out of paper and hand soap. I’m shocked that teachers have supervisors that find fault instead of managers that ask what is needed of them to get the job done. Forced professional development and teaching methodologies, such as the workshop model; inclusion classes without the support needed to make them work; constant interruptions to the learning day due to message deliveries; prep periods lost to meetings and visits by regional staff; administrative work that doesn’t end—the list goes on and on. And all for a miserable salary! Why would any self-respecting professional want to continue to do this?

As a fully certified bilingual speech and language provider, I am leaving the city school system after 10 years of service. I have stayed this long because of my dedication to the students and the opportunities for professional growth afforded to me. But the working conditions have finally burned me out. I have worked in the hallway, a storage closet, next to the gym and in the entrance way of an auditorium. I have double the case load due to shortages in providers, which requires that I pick up students from three buildings every half hour and transport them to an out-of-the-way room. The schools are usually short on supplies so I am told that they must go to the “real teachers” in the school. This year was the final straw. Since the reorganization there is no one to coordinate and take responsibility to make decisions about cases in special education. As a therapist, if I want to advocate for a child, it is virtually impossible to get a clear answer on procedures and options. The review of cases and delivery of services is the compliance issue of numbers and not the ultimate goal of helping students. My principal and speech supervisors have tried their best. I have been in charge of training other speech and language pathologists in the region and they are leaving too, after only two years of service due to burnout. I can no longer work under these conditions.

I’m retiring with a heavy heart. I would love to stay if I could do the job I was hired for. I’m supposed to work with small groups of early grade students to help reduce class size, but lately I’m a cluster teacher and I am constantly being pulled away to do coverages. I get a different assignment every morning, so it’s impossible to plan or prepare. Teachers in my school, even the young ones, are burning out. They feel their teaching is being stymied. The lessons are so scripted that you’re even supposed to use an egg timer. You have to go through the material so quickly you can’t teach properly, and if the kids miss something you can’t go back because there is no time. And then there’s the lack of supplies. The superintendent’s staff comes around to check the bulletin boards, but they never notice there is no paper or soap in the bathrooms. You have to carry your own. When they want to they call you professionals, but professionals don’t have to beg for supplies. Discipline is a disaster. Even if children are suspended they are back in school in the same class in two or three days. I’m on tier 4 I could stay a few more years but the job stresses have become too much. I’m not leaving because of the kids but because of the administration.

Unfortunately, I hear stories like these every time I visit schools. You’re the ones keeping the schools together lately, and I think people are beginning to see that.
Some of you may have seen the New York Times poll on Mayor Bloomberg a couple of weeks ago. His handling of education, the issue he’s pinning his re-election hopes on, is getting pretty low grades. And the people who know the schools best, the people who actually have kids in the public schools, they’re the people who rate him the worst.
But when asked what is the best thing about their child’s school, by a wide margin they say the teachers! Even John Kerry, the candidate we endorsed for President, in charting his education vision this week, talked poignantly about the incredible impact his teachers had on his life. It’s nice to be reminded of the positive effect you have when you’re feeling so overworked and under-appreciated.
[pause]
We are here today at a promising time, a time when a convergence of events could spark a major break-through on many of the goals we’ve been working for. But that will happen only if — and it’s a very big if — the powers-that-be work together to seize this opportunity.
The path to this opportunity began fifty years ago next week with the historic Brown v Board of Education decision that declared that all children, regardless of race, are entitled to equal educational opportunities. We have made some progress toward this goal, but not nearly enough.

Today, as a result of another court decision, this one in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case, we have a chance to truly fulfill the promise of Brown, to at last provide real educational opportunity for every child.
(Our national union, the AFT, filed a brief in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the plaintiffs in Brown, and following in that tradition, the UFT filed briefs and testified in support of the plaintiffs in the CFE case.)
Justice DeGrasse's landmark decision in that case made it clear that the state and city must ensure that every child in New York City has access to a sound, basic education. If we believe in the wisdom and righteousness of Brown, then we must seize this opportunity now.

What makes me think the stars are finally aligned?

First is the improving economy. “The recession is over,” the mayor declared, and judging by such indicators as rebounding tourism, Broadway ticket sales and Wall Street profits, he may be right.
In the last six months, city revenues exceeded forecasts by some $800 million, and the mayor feels flush enough to rebate property taxes and still roll over $1.3 billion of the ballooning surplus into next year.

Second is Mayor Bloomberg’s determination to produce real educational results. “If I don’t make the schools better, don’t vote for me,” he said.

And third, of course, is the pressure of a court mandate. The Court of Appeals, New York State’s highest court, has given our state leaders until July 30 to come up with a plan that meets that constitutional mandate for equal educational opportunity, or it will appoint a special master to do it. The Legislature is struggling under that deadline every day.

Estimates for what a sound, basic education for every student in New York State will cost range from $2.5 billion to upwards of $20 billion. The Mayor has already staked a claim to $5.3 billion for the city’s share. Any way you count it, that’s a lot of money that could make a real difference for our schools and our kids, if it is invested wisely, in the strategies that really matter.

And nowadays it’s not so hard to figure out what those strategies are. Study after study has confirmed that two elements are absolute prerequisites to a world-class school system: highly qualified teachers and small classes. It’s no accident that Justice DeGrasse, in his CFE decision, put these at the top of his list of resources that city students need.

Look at the evidence. Our own experience shows that when you focus resources to ensure a qualified teacher in every classroom with a small enough class size, children, regardless of their socio-economic background, surge ahead.

Two highly successful programs of the past illustrate this: the More Effective Schools program, championed by the union back in the ’60s and ‘70s, and the Chancellor’s District, created by the UFT and then-Chancellor Crew and continued by former Chancellor Levy. Both programs directed resources into some of the system's neediest schools, providing children a full array of support services, much smaller classes and an enriched, structured curriculum, as well as extra training for teachers. The Chancellor’s District also included additional pay for a longer school day dedicated to focused professional development for teachers and small-group tutoring for students who needed it. Unfortunately, MES fell victim to the city's fiscal crisis and the Chancellor’s District has been disbanded.

Every objective analysis concluded that the Chancellor’s District was a success, with student scores rising at rates well above the rest of the system. It was particularly effective at improving the performance of students in the lowest quadrant, Level 1 — which, by the way, is the group of kids who will be held back in 3rd grade under the mayor’s retention policy.

The Chancellor's District approach also solved the problem of attracting certified teachers to the neediest schools. The additional resources and pay meant that certified teachers -- who had been difficult to attract or retain in such schools -- came and stayed in unprecedented numbers.

The lessons of these initiatives are two-fold First, that under the right conditions — including appropriate salaries and supports — the school system can attract and retain great teachers. Second, schools that everyone labeled as failures can not only turn around, they can soar.

So how do we build the capacity to do this on the scale of 1.1 million children and 1200 schools?

Everyone — the governor, the Albany legislative leaders; the various commissions created to address this issue; parents; government, civic and business leaders — everyone is talking about a down payment on CFE this year. I propose that we use that down payment to create a $1.5 billion Education Stimulus Initiative. This initiative would support and implement two reforms we guarantee will have a monumental, long-term beneficial effect.

First, invest half the one-and-a-half billion dollars, $750 million, in reducing the teacher salary gap between New York City and its surrounding suburbs, a gap that is $10,000 to $15,000 wide. That way, even our best schools can retain their excellent teachers and raise the quality of the education they are offering, while others are given a real shot at improvement.

Second, invest the other half in closing the student achievement gap by creating a School Enterprise Zone for those schools that are struggling. If the enterprise zone is constructed the right way, I believe that within three years, teachers, parents and students will be banging down the doors to get into its schools. And the creation of the School Enterprise Zone will provide real choice, public school choice, for all our students, without their having to leave their neighborhoods.

Let me discuss each of these components of our Education Stimulus Initiative in greater detail. First, competitive salaries.

Now, Justice DeGrasse isn’t an educator or a researcher. But he listened to the testimony of educators in the CFE case and he analyzed the extensive education research. And he concluded that the skills of a teacher can ensure that children are not trapped by their social, economic or racial status — “Demography is not destiny,” as he put it. In fact, he said “a sufficient number of qualified teachers” was the very first of the components necessary for an education that passes constitutional muster.

How do you provide that? How can we put a qualified teacher in every classroom?
Every recent study of school improvement and teacher quality -- from the report of the National Commission on Teaching headed by Lou Gerstner to the state's Zarb Commission, on which I sat -- has come back to the same answer: To attract the best and the brightest to teaching and to retain them in our profession you have to pay competitive salaries.
But New York City schools do just the opposite. As a result, we are facing a huge brain drain, as teachers continue to leave in record numbers.

Meanwhile both the mayor and the chancellor are finally realizing that teachers are the key to the school system’s success. Why else would they have launched a major advertising campaign to recruit the best and brightest teachers? Their aim is to raise the status of teaching, a goal I whole-heartedly endorse. And I love how they’re describing our teachers. “Join New York’s brightest,” they say. “Teach New York City.”

But even their own estimate of needing to hire 6,000-7,000 new teachers next year is probably an understatement. As you may have seen in the news yesterday, the Investigations Division of the City Council surveyed thousands of teachers and were alarmed by the numbers who are seriously considering leaving the New York City Schools. They predict that the city will have to hire 30,000 teachers in the next three years just to replace those who will have left.

Most stunning is their finding that 70 percent of those who are eligible to retire plan to do so in the next two years, and that’s after two years of record retirements.

The city says it needs our senior teachers to work with our neediest children. Yet what has the city done to convince them to stay?

And what has the city done to convince newer teachers to come here? Our last contract lifted starting salaries substantially and it provides higher salaries overall in exchange for longer school hours. That helped narrow the gap with other school systems in our marketplace. And it helped raise the number of certified teachers almost overnight. In fact, the mayor and chancellor often boast about that achievement — notably without crediting the 22 percent increase that boosted starting salaries from $31,000 to $39,000.

This time, however, things are different, despite the new ad campaign. Every time prospective teachers hear the mayor and chancellor say the city’s contract with DC 37 applies to teachers, it reminds them that a 15 percent pay cut for new employees and a call for reduced pensions say much more about the mayor’s commitment to new teachers than Madison Avenue slogans.

And recruitment doesn’t do much good if it’s a revolving door. Newer teachers are fleeing faster and faster. Of those hired in1998, 25% left in their first two years. Compare that to those hired in 2001; 36% of them weren’t here this past September. At this rate, we’ll be losing well over half of our new teachers in their first five years.

Ironically, according to that Council survey, 70 percent of newer teachers want to stay. Yet, as the data demonstrate, they continue to give up and leave.

The truth is, ads alone can’t solve the teacher retention crisis or raise the status of our profession. And, as nice as it is that the mayor talks about the attractions of New York City enticing new teachers, we want them enticed by the potential to make our city their home and our schools their career. It takes competitive salaries to do that.

You heard what our teachers on tape had to say. You hear the same thing in teachers’ rooms every day. If we want to attract and keep the best and the brightest in our New York City schools, it will take a contract with a raise that puts their salaries on par with those in the suburbs.

That is the problem that the Mayor and Chancellor should be addressing.
Bel Kaufman, author of the legendary book, Up the Down Staircase, may have said it best when recently asked by New York Times columnist Joyce Purnick what works to improve schools. Kaufman replied succinctly: “Good teachers. Better teachers. Better money. Do whatever it takes to find them and hold them.”

So, all these reasons and many more are why our proposal for competitive salaries for all teachers and other staff is the first component of the Education Stimulus Initiative. We propose that $750 million be reserved for that purpose, the equivalent of approximately a 12 percent increase over and beyond the city’s budgeted three percent raise for municipal employees.

Of course, the critics will say, “What about all those teachers who don’t pull their weight? That’s why you should pay more only to the – quote – “good ones.”
Aside from simply being an excuse, that argument also shortchanges kids. As I said to the Association for a Better New York in January, I don’t know a teacher who supports incompetence. Rather than engaging in this endless debate of who’s to blame, we should be working to ensure that all teachers are good teachers.

In this vein, I suggested we build on our highly successful Peer Intervention Program and work intensively with struggling teachers for 90 days to help them improve. If that fails, as it rarely does given PIP’s track record, we would counsel the teacher to leave the profession. If the principal and chancellor’s office then decide to remove the person, we would help him or her find other, more suitable employment. And if the teacher still chose to fight that ruling, we would do everything we can to expedite a fair hearing.

Instead of taking us up on this offer, the administration presented its 8-page no-contract proposal.

So to our critics I say: Take us up on our offer to help struggling teachers. Don’t find excuses. Do what’s right to close the 30-year salary gap with the suburbs. Plug the constant drain of qualified teachers.

The second part of our Education Stimulus Initiative addresses the student achievement gap. I propose that we dedicate the second $750 million to turn around our lowest performing schools and transform them into gold standard schools. Let us create a School Enterprise Zone to provide all the conditions we know lead to effective teaching and learning — the kind of conditions that educators and students have in many other parts of our state.

Seven hundred fifty million dollars would allow us to lift up 200 of the lowest-performing schools. Then, depending on funding, we can grow it each year until we’ve brought every school on the latest low-performing list, the No Child Left Behind list, up to that gold standard.

What would those schools look like? Our recipe has 12 ingredients but the specifics of each one would be shaped by what the parents, principal and staff in each school decide.

All enterprise zone schools, regardless of level would have:
• reduced class sizes to allow teachers to individualize instruction;
• extensive parental involvement and programs that support parents in helping their children;
• meaningful professional development tailored for the staff of each school;
• timely academic interventions for struggling students, including longer school days for intensive small-group instruction;
• preventive health, guidance and social services that focus on urban health problems like obesity and asthma, and provide counseling and family services;
• a strictly enforced student code of conduct; and
• well-maintained facilities with enough space, technology and supplies.
For elementary schools, we would add:
• enriched early childhood programs beginning in an expanded pre-k program and including a “promotional gate” in grade one to lay a strong foundation for learning to read; and
• reading and mathematics programs chosen by school staffs from scientifically–proven models.
And in the secondary schools, particularly middle schools, there would be:
• a well-rounded curriculum that includes art, music, health and physical education, foreign languages and opportunities for career and technical exploration; and
• an intimate, supportive atmosphere, so no child feels anonymous..

Finally, the most important ingredient: the teachers.
Schools in the School Enterprise Zone present the most difficult challenge to teachers, of course. To encourage and reward those who volunteer to take on the toughest assignments and work in our hardest-to-staff schools I propose we offer a 15 percent pay differential. We would support such a differential, on top of a competitive pay base, provided it is available to all school staffers in the School Enterprise Zone — not just a teacher or a principal but everyone from the secretary in the office to the paraprofessional who works with the teacher in the classroom.

With such an incentive, those schools can establish the most rigorous qualifications for experience and expertise and staff their classrooms with teachers who are not only highly qualified but also want to be there. That’s a far cry from the forced transfers that the administration has proposed or the continuous accusations hurled at the union that if only seniority were eliminated all schools would be perfectly staffed and newer teachers would never leave.

That’s not all of course. We’ve studied this issue in depth and we have considered many ways to ensure quality teaching — ways of recruiting, retaining and supporting our teacher corps, from mentoring of new teachers, to Career Ladders to keep good teachers in teaching, to an expansion of the Peer Intervention Program. If the administration were interested in serious bargaining, we would like to negotiate all of these for the Enterprise Zone.

Now, here’s where the rubber hits the road. Turning a cutting-edge proposal like this into reality requires a real spirit of cooperation among City Hall, Tweed and the UFT. Mr. Mayor, let’s walk the halls of Albany together to lobby the Governor, the Senate and the Assembly to get this done.

The joined forces of the UFT and the City, on behalf of a hundred thousand educators and 1.1 million schoolchildren and their parents can have a powerful influence in Albany. We can’t pass this up. We must not let this window of opportunity slam shut on our students.

When it comes to helping our kids, our moral obligation is to work together regardless of our differences.

The New York Times recognized that. Its February 9th editorial advised, quote:
The Bloomberg administration would have smoother sailing if it took a less hostile attitude toward teachers and the union that represents them. The United Federation of Teachers … has been a cooperative partner in the city’s most successful school experiments.”

This is the time, Mr. Mayor, to put aside our differences. Don’t let 2004 be remembered as the year we wasted a magic moment. Let it be remembered as the year we worked together to win serious resources for our children, and invested them wisely; let it be remembered as the year we took bold steps to close the teacher salary gap and the student achievement gap; and let it be remembered as the year we fulfilled the promise of Brown v Board of Education in New York City.