No one has greater interest than teacher unions in ensuring that every classroom has a good teacher. We understand that the future of our children is at stake, as is the reputation of our profession. We know that incompetent teachers make it difficult for other teachers to do their jobs well. And members expect our union to take a leadership role on professional issues.
The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has come forward to assume responsibility for our profession. Many credit my predecessor, Al Shanker, with the concept for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, a demanding certification process for master teachers. We have aggressively pursued higher standards for teacher preparation and licensure. And we've initiated programs to ensure that teachers have the knowledge and skills they need to do a good job, including mentoring for new teachers, inservice education and professional development, and peer assistance for teachers who aren't measuring up.
Just as American schools lack common standards for student performance, teacher preparation programs are of uneven quality. Some new teachers come well prepared for the job. Others arrive with energy and enthusiasm—but inadequate training. Many AFT local unions participate in programs that assign experienced teachers as mentors to guide new teachers through their first years in the classroom.
By Educators, For Educators
Every profession recognizes the need to provide continuing education for its members, be they doctors, lawyers, or teachers. But in many places, inservice teacher education is a joke. There are too many one-shot workshops, too many irrelevant programs, and too many reforms-du-jour that come and go so fast they leave heads spinning. So teachers have increaingly taken the lead in creating and offering the kind of inservice training their colleagues need. Let me cite two examples.
At the national level, the AFT runs an Education Research and Dissemination program, which features research-based practices in areas like math instruction or classroom management skills. Teachers attend intensive seminars and then return home to share this knowledge with their colleagues. Each year, the program trains about 300 teachers nationwide in areas ranging from teaching reading to managing antisocial behavior. Teachers receive continuing education and university credits for their coursework.
In New York City, the United Federation of Teachers runs "UFT University" for educators. Under a contract with the city board of education, the union provides the lion's share of the inservice training for district teachers, ranging from programs to help new teachers get off to a good start to programs for veteran teachers on curriculum design, educational technology, and interdisciplinary curriculum development. Teachers earn continuing education credits for these courses. In any given year, nearly 40,000 teachers are involved, and scores of different subjects are offered, including master's degree programs conducted in collaboration with colleges and universities. These professional development efforts work because they are created by teachers for teachers. This continuing education is useful, relevant, and based on the latest knowledge of what works best for students.
The Competence Question
Critics have cited teacher unions as an obstacle to getting rid of incompetent teachers. These critics are wrong. We are as interested as any parent in removing bad teachers from our profession. We make no apologies for protecting teachers' due process rights; that's our job, as well as our legal and moral obligation. Dismissal proceedings should be fair, but they should not be so lengthy and expensive that they hinder the process. Many local unions have negotiated streamlined procedures, including binding arbitration for dismissal, and those are working well.
We believe we should intervene well before dismissing a teacher becomes the only option. Many local AFT unions draw on the expertise of outstanding teachers in peer assistance programs, including those in Cincinnati, Ohio; Rochester, New York; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Poway, California; and Toledo, Ohio. These programs focus on helping teachers who are having trouble and on counseling out of the profession those who fail to improve.
The Toledo Federation of Teachers blazed the trail for peer review in 1981. The federation's Intern-Intervention program gives first-year teachers support and guidance and assists veteran teachers identified as performing unsatisfactorily. This program demonstrates that teachers can provide effective help to their peers—and they can also be very demanding of them. In Cincinnati, although the number of teachers recommended for termination is small, peer-review teachers are more than twice as likely as administrators to recommend that a fellow teacher leave the profession.
Teacher unions don't run schools, and much that happens is beyond our control. But where we can influence the quality of America's teaching force, we do—working constantly to help our teachers to do the best possible job strengthening student achievement.
