Introduction “The Firing Squad: an Examination of Teacher

Introduction “The Firing Squad: An Examination of Teacher Termination practices in Urban Public Schools,” is a wiki-project created by Steven Ballantyne, Mallory Stark, Robert Street, and Bruce Villineau for A-100: Introduction to Educational Policy at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Through this project, we endeavor to analyze the history, policy, and politics that influence the teacher dismissal process in United States urban school districts. The project incorporates in-depth research, links to media resources, and source interviews with experts ranging from school district personnel to policy wonks to union leadership. The scope of this project is framed within our researched context of the Boston education community, adding additional information supported through an examination of district-union relationships of Chicago, New York, and Washington, DC. It is the authors’ hope that this study can help to further frame the scope and conversation of this multi-dimensional education policy as our public school systems continue to grapple with this often-contentious policy area. History The history of teacher dismissal in the American public school system is deeply enmeshed within the history of teacher unionism. This section provides a chronological account of teacher dismissal, beginning with arbitrary dismissal of teachers and continuing through assessment using the Toledo Plan of Peer Review. Al Shanker, then president of the United Federation of Teachers (an American Federation of Teachers affiliate), led New Yorker city public school teachers in their fight to bargain collectively in 1961. Shanker would become an icon for teacher unionism. He led the largest strike of public school teachers in American history in 1968 when 18 teachers were dismissed in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Ocean Hill- Brownsville without due process. In the 1980s, as the nation experienced a conservative shift of political power and as unions came under attack, Shanker supported a new strain of teacher unionism supporting the Toledo Plan of Peer Review. This event marked a shift from industrial bargaining to reform bargaining. Although teacher unions have existed in this country from as early as the mid 19th Century (the National Education Association [NEA] was founded in 1857 and the American Federation of Teachers [AFT] in 1916), teachers did not achieve the power to bargain collectively until 1961. Through collective bargaining, teachers garnered greater protection in many different aspects of employment. Collective bargaining helped decrease the instances and prevalence of unfair salary practices, poor working conditions, unfair class assignments, and arbitrary dismissal. (Kahlenberg, 2006, p.7). Prior to collective bargaining, many teachers faced the prospect of losing their position for a variety of reasons, sometimes even at the whim of school administrators. Teachers could be dismissed if parents objected to a grade that a child received, if they did not adhere to the policies of an authoritarian principal, or if they questioned a trendy educational theory. Without the added protection that accompanied unions with collective bargaining power, teachers could be let go if they voted for the wrong politician, were of a different race, or if the teacher had seniority and could replaced by a cheaper, less experienced teacher. (Kahlenberg, 2007, p.8). Throughout the first half of the 20th Century, up to 1960, states pressed for tenure laws for teachers and unions bargained for “ ‘due process’: the right to have charges laid out when dismissal was sought and the opportunity to defend oneself against the allegations.” (Kahlenberg, 2007, p.8). In the history of teacher unionism, New York City and its famous liberal leader, Albert Shanker play prominent roles in the achievement of collective bargaining for teachers and the protection of due process rights. Up to this time, there had been only small and, in general, isolated instances of collective bargaining agreements reached in Montana, Illinois, and Rhode Island in the 1930s - 1950s. The defining moment for collective bargaining occurred in December of 1961 when the United Federation of Teachers, the New York affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, waged a strike. While only 5,000 of 50,000 teachers struck, it was enough for Mayor Robert Wagner to take notice. Wagner formed a committee of labor leaders who recommended a collective bargaining election. Teachers voted 27,000 to 7,000 for collective bargaining, and an election was held between the UFT and the NEA affiliate, Teacher Bargaining Organization (TBO), with the UFT dominating in a vote of 20,045 to 9,770. (Kahlenberg, 2006, p.12). The vote was significant on several levels. It was meaningful for teachers because of the large concentration of teachers in New York City. (At the time, New York City had more teachers than the smallest 11 states combined.) Perhaps more importantly, the vote had a major impact on the overall labor movement in America. It had a direct influence on the signing and implementation of Executive Order 10988, which allowed all federal employees to bargain collectively, dismissing the notion that it was beneath federal employees to belong to a union with collective bargaining powers. (Kahlenberg, 2006, p.13). Continuing to the lead the way for teachers’ rights, Shanker and New York City found themselves in the middle of another breakthrough moment in 1968 that established the precedence and power of due process rights for teachers in the event of arbitrary dismissal. In May of that year, the local school board in the Brooklyn ghetto of Ocean Hill-Brownsville sent telegrams of dismissal to 19 unionized teachers, 18 of whom were white. The one black teacher on the list had been included by mistake. The school board quickly reinstated the black teacher once the mistake was realized. Formed as the result of efforts by a surprising alliance of Black Power activists, including Sonny Carson, and white aristocratic liberals, such as Mayor John Lindsay and McGeorge Bundy, President of the Ford Foundation, the school board in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville neighborhood was intent on giving impoverished communities power and voice over management of their schools. The liberal ideal of school integration had faced the crushing defeat of white flight, and this unlikely coalition supported the idea of giving community control to de facto segregated schools. (Kahlenberg, 2008, p.7). Proponents of community control believed that students of color would achieve higher outcomes in school if the school board hired minority teachers who could serve as motivating role models. Bundy’s report for the Ford Foundation, “Reconnection for Learning: A Community School System for New York City,” became the intellectual and political framework to support the argument for community control. The report pointed out that only 9 percent of the New York City’s Public School System’s staff members were Black or Puerto Rican. The report called for the formation of a highly decentralized system of governance with the creation of 30 - 60 community school boards, instead of the single school board that existed in New York up to that time. The report also advocated that school boards be empowered with the authority to consider race as a factor in hiring and promotion. A precursor to race-conscious affirmative action, the report specifically stated that Black and Puerto Rican teachers had particular “ ‘knowledge of, and sensitivity to, the environment of pupils.’ ” (Kahlenberg, 2008, p.7). The situation at Ocean Hill-Brownsville in 1968 represented a dilemma for Al Shanker, who was by then, president of the UFT, and it fostered a division among New York City liberals. Shanker, the son of Jewish immigrants whose father delivered newspapers and whose mother worked as a seamstress, was a longtime civil rights activist. Shanker had embraced the civil rights movement and had led a coalition of teachers to hear Martin Luther King’s March on Washington address in 1963, and he understood the need for more black teachers. However, he also believed that firing on the basis of race was contradictory to the entire meaning of the civil rights movement. For Shanker, the universality of King’s message was essential to its moral grounding, “that people be judged not ‘by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.’ ” (Kahlenberg, 2008, p.7). Shanker believed in an inclusive version of affirmative action and argued for a policy that supported the economically disadvantaged of all races, similar to what Martin Luther King had advocated in his 1964 book, Why We Can’t Wait. In contrast, Rhody McCoy, the local superintendent, was more influenced by the ideas of Malcolm X rather than King. Mr. McCoy insisted on achieving a teaching force comprised of only black teachers. Shanker led the UFT members in Ocean Hill-Brownsville in a strike against the arbitrary dismissal of the white teachers. When teachers were not reinstated, Shanker led a series of three strikes for a total of 36 days from September through November of 1968, representing the longest set of school strikes to ever occur in the United States. (Kahlenberg, 2008, p.7). The Ocean Hill-Brownsville strikes had a lasting effect on the concept of liberalism and its relationship to unions. It represented an early example of the liberal attack against organized labor. The strikes were significant for two key reasons. First, they were carried out to support the traditional liberal ideas that unions should protect individuals from dismissal without due process and that race should not matter in hiring and firing decisions. Second, the overall situation saw those same principles relinquished by many people who self-identified as liberals. The concerns of racism, community control, and definitions of liberalism raised by the strikes were important in influencing future discourse over school reform in the years to come. (Kahlenberg, 2007, p.111). During the late 1970s, the conservative movement began to gain power, and this momentum culminated with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, causing unions to come under attack.

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