AFT President's Office: Albert Shanker Collection Papers, 1957-1997 (Bulk 1978-1994) 105 Linear Feet Accession Number 1553 Processed: Daniel Golodner The presidential papers of Albert Shanker have been placed in the Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs from 1981 through 2004. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT): Office of the President Collection was opened in 1991. Since the collection contained materials from four different presidents of the AFT and two different departments, the collection was determined to be useless to researchers. Also do to the importance of Albert Shanker as a leader to the AFT; a guide to his presidency was needed. In 1998 the collection was taken apart to create the AFT Presidential Collection: 1960-1974, and the Human Rights/Community Services Department. From 1997 through 2004, over 300 linear feet of materials were sent to the Reuther Library from the AFT headquarters pertaining to the tenure of Albert Shanker as president. By merging what was from the AFT: Office of the President collection and the other shipments over time, the AFT President's Office: Albert Shanker was opened January 2005. Under the leadership of Albert Shanker, AFT membership almost tripled, organizing was expanded, and the AFT had become a union that was respected in all areas of education and labor. Albert Shanker steered the AFT through the various crises of the 1970s that included tuition tax credits, affirmative action court decision and citizens tax revolts. The AFT expanded its organizing scope to include paraprofessionals, state and local public employees and nurses. The 1980s saw the immediate rise of education reform with the release of 'The Nation At Risk'. The AFT advanced some of these education reforms while battled other. The AFT challenged its membership to take the risks of education reform to better the lives of the children they teach, from merit pay to a peer review program that came out of the Toledo Federation of Teachers, Local 250 (the TFT collection at the Reuther Library ends in 1968.) The union also expanded its services to include more research on the issues of healthcare, privatization, state and local budgets and more. In 1985 Albert Shanker gave a speech at the National Press Club calling for a new professionalism in regards to teachers, he called for a national board for teachers. In 1987 the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards was created. Since the 1920 the AFT has been very involved with international education and unions. See the AFT collection Part I and II and Selma Borchardt. Under Shanker’s leadership the AFT expanded its interest in international issues. The AFT was very involved with the promotion of democracy and free trade unionism in the Polish Solidarity movement; 1 also the union provided training and technical support to teacher unions in Eastern Europe with the Democracy in Education project. During the 1990s the AFT continued to grow and prosper. Albert Shanker became the elder statesman of the labor movement and education worldwide. The union continued to push new ideas in education reform through the collective bargaining process, as in standards, restructuring of the school, and discipline through a Bill of Rights of Respect and Responsibility. In 1997, Albert Shanker was taken by cancer. Important Subjects Covered In This Collection: Academic Freedom New York Financial Crisis, 1975 Academic Freedom Poland Revolutionary Movement Affirmative Action Private Schools AFL-CIO Professional Employees AFSCME Public Employees At-Risk Youth Public School Choice Bilingual Education School Restructuring Charter Schools School Violence Child Care Science Education Civil Rights South Africa Collective Bargaining Soviet Union Community Control Strikes Curriculum Student Testing Czechoslovakia Teacher Duties Day Care Teacher Education Desegregation Teacher Salaries Discrimination Technology Early Childhood Education Tenure Education Reform Totalitarism Education Standards Tuition Tax Credits Employment United Federation of Teachers Health Care Reform United Federation of Teachers Higher Education Urban Schools Human Rights US City Finances IFFTU US Economy Immigration Vocational Education International Education Vouchers International Free Trade Unions Women Workers International Free Trade Unions Labor Unions Math Education Merit Pay National Education Association New York City 2 Important Correspondence Covered In This Collection: Lamar Alexander Vernon E. Jordan Terrel Bell Edward Kennedy William Bennet Lane Kirkland Ernest Boyer Ed Koch Irving Brown Marsha Levine Joseph A. Califano, Jr. Gerald W. McEntee Cesar Chavez Patrick J. O’Farrell Leo Cherne Paul O’Neil William Clinton Diane Ravitch Thomas Donahue Ronald Reagan Peter Drucker James D. Robinson, III Chester Finn Bayard Rustin Jim Harris John Ryor Linda Darling Hammond Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Norma Hill John Sibler Bill Honig Theodore R. Sizer James Hunt Jerry Wurf John E. Jacob Restrictions Researchers cannot quote from the files ‘Bruce Miller’ Citation AFT Presidents Collection: Albert Shanker, box number, folder number. Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University. Separated Materials Hundreds of photographs have been removed to the AV department of the Walter P. Reuther Library. A small amount of audio and video tapes were moved to the AV department. Seven books were removed and placed in the library. 3 Biography of Albert Shanker Albert Shanker is considered one of the most important labor leaders of the late 20th century. From a substitute math teacher, Shanker rose to national prominence as the president of the American Federation of Teachers. Shanker gained national attention as the militant strike leader of New York City teachers in the 1960s and was immortalized in Woody Allen's 'Sleeper' as the man who destroyed civilization with a nuclear weapon. Shanker later became known as an elder statesman on education, trade unionism and human rights. President Clinton called him "one of the greatest educators of 20th century." Albert Shanker was born on September 14, 1928 and raised in Long Island City, Queens, New York by Russian immigrant parents. His father delivered papers and his mother worked as a sewing machine operator in the garment sweatshops. It was his mother that instilled a passion for trade unionism and the love of debate. Shanker completed all but his dissertation at Columbia University before running out of patience and money eventually taking a job as a substitute teacher at PS 179 in East Harlem. Shanker quickly became active with the Teachers' Guild and by 1959, resigned as a math teacher to become a full time organizer for the Guild, which in 1960 became the United Federation of Teachers (UFT). Shanker was pivotal for the next eight years in changing the nature of teacher unions. By 1964 Shanker became president of the (UFT), the union that represented just over 45,000 New York City schoolteachers, a position he held till 1986. In 1967, Shanker led a three-week strike that included not only basic trade union issues but also various education reforms such as class size, and discipline. Shanker entered the national spotlight during a volatile period of strikes in 1968 that divided New York City. At the center of the issue was community control of the school district called Ocean Hill – Brownsville. Shanker favored community control, however when union members were dismissed without due process, Shanker took the city's teachers out on strike three different times for a total of 55 days. Both strikes sent Shanker to jail. The following year, the UFT won the right to represent paraprofessionals in the city, the deciding votes coming from the Ocean Hill-Brownsville area. In 1972, he worked with Tom Hobart, to merge the National Education Association’s statewide affiliate with the AFT state affiliate, to create the New York State United Teachers. In the spring of 1975, New York City’s faced bankruptcy and needed $7 billion in loans. The city laid of thousands of city employees, including 15,000 teachers. The UFT struck for five days over the issue of class size. Various unions in New York City, however, agreed to use strike funds and retirement pensions to buy city bonds to save the city. Shanker asked the UFT's Teachers' Retirement System to invest as well and on October 17, 1975, the UFT bought $150 million in city bonds. 4 Shanker became president of the American Federation of Teachers in 1974. Under his leadership the membership of the AFT almost tripled and the role of organizing changed in which the union included paraprofessionals, health care workers and public employees. In 1978, Congress was considering tuition tax credits to be used for private and parochial schools. Shanker argued that it was not just about jobs but also about the future of public education for everyone, good schools and bad. The AFT joined with the National Coalition to Save Public Education, an alliance of various education consumer groups and religious groups whose sole purpose was to support a commitment to unrestricted public education. The defeat of tuition tax credits resulted in the transformation of Shanker as a militant union leader into a sincere education reformer. Shanker initiated an experiment on December 13, 1970. On that day, his first Where We Stand column was published in the New York Times. The idea came from Arnold Beichman, a friend of Shanker’s, who suggested that he place an ad in the same place every week in the Sunday New York Times. This would allow Shanker to have a weekly forum to convey his ideas to the public. Twenty-six years later and about 1,300 columns later, the ‘Shanker column’ became an institution in the Sunday New York Times. Every Sunday, in 800 words, Shanker wrote to a worldwide audience about education, the labor movement, human and civil rights, and even how to make perfect French bread. He believed the column was a perfect medium to “help create a balanced picture of what I was about and what the union was about.” In 1983 National Commission on Excellence in Education released the report “A Nation At Risk”.