Sandra Feldman, President
American Federation of Teachers
Keynote Address
QuEST Conference
Washington, D.C.
July 10, 2003

Welcome to QuEST 2003.  And thanks to all of you for being here, for taking precious time away from your families, your summer vacations -- and, for far too many of you, your second jobs -- to come here and actively participate in meetings all day. If there was any question about the character and commitment of the women and men who choose to work in our schools and for our kids -- and there shouldn't be -- your presence here in hot and humid Washington, D.C., is a tangible rebuttal, and wonderful to behold.

It's especially wonderful for me because, as many of you know, I was successfully treated for breast cancer this past school year, and this is a great opportunity to tell you how grateful I am for all of the cards and messages, prayers and best wishes. All I can say is that they've worked.

This has also been a challenging time for our union.  You were probably stunned and appalled when you heard about the rampant financial misdeeds that were recently uncovered in our Washington, D.C., and Dade County, Fla., locals.

I certainly was.  A lot of you also know that to protect our members, the national union has had to take over both locals -- a very rare step in AFT history -- but a necessary one here.  As an additional safeguard, the Executive Council has adopted policies to strengthen our financial oversight procedures.  And, at next year's convention, delegates will be asked to vote on constitutional amendments that will put additional rule changes into place.  We are going to do whatever we can to keep this kind of outrage from ever happening to us again.

We've also had to spend a lot more of our time and resources fighting against organized attacks from those on the far right whose real goal is to dismantle the government, piece by piece, including the public schools.  These attacks are stronger and more insidious than ever.

You know, it just amazes me that vouchers and privatization in general have been pushed so far under the banner of conservatism.  I wish that one of these so-called conservative thinkers would pick up a dictionary and see what the word "conservative" actually means.

The truth is that no principled conservative would ever support such a radical and destructive agenda. True conservatives are supposed to value and want to conserve the traditions, values, and institutions upon which our democracy was built and still depends. And that means preserving and further strengthening -- not destroying --public education.

There's no question: This has been an incredibly tough time for our union, our kids, our communities, our country -- and, in some ways most especially, for our members.

Someone once described teaching as both the most despised -- and most respected -- of the world's professions.  Has this ever seemed more true?  Yet, it's also true that bashing schools and teachers is a longstanding American tradition. Browse through the archives of The Atlantic Monthly  magazine and you'll see what I mean. One writer, for example, said, “The actual and effective standards in American public education are [so] deplorably and inexcusably low “that something must be done.”  [W]hen multitudes of young people accumulate credits, pass courses, carry off elegant [diplomas], and come out knowing little or nothing, it is simply intolerable." He was talking about American education in 1939 -- supposedly the "good old days."

Another writer worried about teacher quality, declaring that "The teacher is the school."  Yet low pay and working conditions "severe enough to deaden" the spirit make it hard to attract "first-class" minds.  Rising opportunities for women, he said, just act to compound the problem.  "Today... many of the ablest... women... avoid teaching, and the ranks of the public school teachers suffer from this loss."  On top of all this, weak teacher preparation programs and the "factory method of making teachers" leave many teachers ill-prepared, so that "teaching is... scarcely a profession.   People still think that almost anyone can teach." Sound familiar? That was 1909.

So -- let's take a deep breath:   We're still here, and our public schools and teachers are doing more and better for more children than ever before.  We have survived slanders and attacks before -- and we're going to do it again!

This union has always stood up to radicals who push destructive schemes in the name of reform -- but who simply want us gone.   And we have always kept our members and their students from being whipsawed too badly by the wrong kinds of reforms. And you can continue to count on that, again and again.

But this union and its members have also always understood that some criticisms of public education are legitimate.  Often, in fact, we're the first to point out problems and the first to propose solutions -- and we're going to carry on that proud tradition.

Today, I want to talk to you about our latest challenge, the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which poses yet another test of our ability to be constructive, responsive and creative while simultaneously fighting and protecting against the indefensible.  And I know that, together, we can meet that challenge.

You know, this law has something of Charles Dickens about it:  It's complex, arcane, and wordy -- weighing in at some 1,000 pages.  It's also incredibly controversial, and likely to become even more so as the many provisions it contains take effect over the next few years. And, while we know it's not the best of laws, time will tell if it's the worst of laws.

With most states and districts in a period of severe budget crisis and all the recent attacks on public education, it's easy to understand why many see it as the worst of laws.   One Pennsylvania school superintendent called it "the most anti-public school legislation that's ever been passed" and said that it had been designed to "destroy public education."  On the other side, a superintendent from Maryland said, "The patient is sick; there's no question about that," and described the law as "medicine" -- which, if used correctly, has the potential to save the entire public education system.

As with most things, the truth lies somewhere in the middle -- with a lot yet to be revealed in the law's implementation and -- most especially -- in the willingness of the Bush Administration and the Congress to fund its mandates.

Certainly, the law is built around goals we've long supported: high academic standards and achievement; eradicating achievement gaps between the haves and the have nots; making sure that every teacher in every school is qualified; and, yes, accountability.  The law also mandates reporting outcomes by student subgroup, which is the right thing to do because it puts inequities out there for all to see.

But laudable goals are not the same thing as effective measures to accomplish them.  There's still a lot of controversy and uncertainty over how the law should be implemented and even about how some of its provisions should be interpreted.  And we all know the necessary money still isn't there, despite the many promises to the contrary.

The money part is straightforward:  We fight like hell for it!

But the implementation part is harder.  On the one hand, controversy and uncertainty create the opportunity for us to press ahead with what we know will work for our students and schools.  But we also know that those conditions create a similar opportunity for others to advance measures that would harm our students and schools.

We certainly know how to fight the latter.  What's less clear are the opportunities created by this law, so that's where I want to turn first.

If we take a closer look at the law's goals, I think you'll see what I mean.

Let's start with teacher quality. There's a very basic reason why administrators are so frustrated by the tenure system -- and why, frankly, we tend to run rings around them in arbitration hearings on issues of professional competence -- aside from the general brilliance of the typical AFT rep, that is.  Under tenure laws, administrators are required to show just cause before they're free to discipline or fire a tenured employee. So, if you've spent years producing reams and reams of fairly useless rules and regulations for teachers to follow -- but fail to define what competent teaching actually is -- or if you appoint principals who don't know much about instruction -- then of course you'll have trouble trying to prove incompetence. Sadly, this is the situation we face in most places -- all guest administrators in the audience excepted, of course.

Yet here is this new law, requiring states to provide every classroom with a "highly qualified teacher" by the 2005 school year. A lot of state and district administrators don't like this -- after all, it's a lot cheaper and more convenient to recruit for hard-to-staff schools by waiving qualifications or assigning teachers out of field. But it's a totally unacceptable substitute for providing the salaries and working conditions necessary to ensure an adequate supply of qualified teachers -- in every field.

Now, for the first time, each state is being forced to develop real standards for the skills and knowledge that qualified teachers should have, as well as a system for seeing whether these standards have been met.

Opportunity or challenge? Both.

Of course, there are real problems that have to be addressed -- such as those in rural or middle schools -- where flexibility is obviously needed. Also, the teacher-quality provision could be mishandled in ways that could drive a lot of talented people out of the classroom and bring a lot of disasters in to replace them.  Retesting experienced teachers -- something we defeated in the legislation -- is one sure way to do that. Another sure way is to use the law's teacher-quality provision as a backdoor to wipe out qualifications for teaching altogether. There are certainly powerful adherents to this destructive point of view, including some in the Bush Department of Education.

Well, we're not going to stand idly by and let that happen.  Nor are we going to roll over for attempts to resurrect discredited merit-pay schemes or for new schemes that purport to address the need for professional-level salaries but intend to pay more only to so-called successful teachers -- chosen either subjectively by principals or through still unproven methods of using student test scores. 

Are we against innovation?  On the contrary, we support differential pay and pioneered the good models: master teacher programs, paraprofessional career ladders, peer assistance and review, National Board Certification, and more.  We know the difference between systems that promote teaching and learning and those that undermine them.

Yet, if all we do is focus on the potential harm that can be done by the law, then we'll be doing a disservice to our students, our profession, our union, and to each and every individual teacher.

Some states are open to seeing the law's provision as an opportunity to replace meaningless requirements with high standards and sound practices for qualifying teachers -- which would also lead to real improvement in the quality of teacher education, induction and professional development programs and perhaps even an end to out-of-license teaching; these are all interconnected. And we can show those states how.

 To the great credit of many of our affiliate leaders across the country, the AFT has already started to work with community allies, with superintendents and with state education departments to come up with ways to address the teacher-quality provisions that are beneficial for students, teachers and the profession as a whole.  Actually, we now have an opportunity for greater voice, because this much decried new law is -- for the first time -- forcing policymakers and education officials to do something real about teacher quality.  It's still very early, but useful discussions between our leaders and their states are already taking place in Ohio, Michigan, Massachusetts, New York and elsewhere, and AFT is helping.

 One of the best examples of how AFT leaders are working to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse is in the law's requirements for raising the qualifications of paraprofessionals.  While negotiating job security protections, our PSRP leaders also see the law as an opportunity to achieve their long-held goals of better preparation and certification -- and, of course, compensation.  And we are having some success: for example, in Pittsburgh, Pa.; Perth Amboy, N.J.; in Corpus Christi, Texas, and, at the state level, in New Mexico, Maryland, Illinois, Ohio, Minnesota, and many more places.

 None of this would be happening if we were focused only on the negative.  One strength of the AFT is that we are very good at walking and chewing gum at the same time.  Our para leaders, just like our teacher leaders, are fighting to save jobs and, at the same time, working to raise professional standards, which will lead to better outcomes for students and better pay for a group of people whose contributions have long gone unrecognized.  Remember -- early in the reauthorization process, there was an effort to eliminate paraprofessionals from Title I.  Instead, we got an opportunity to give them more credibility and status than they've ever had.

 Of course, there are lots of ways in which this could still go wrong. But it is as much our obligation to seize and create the opportunities for the kinds of changes that will improve our schools and our profession as it is to be ready, willing and able to fight those who would use these same opportunities to hurt public education. 

 And that brings me to Title I of the law, the part that is mainly concerned with standards, assessment, and -- the crux of the matter -- accountability. 

 The frustration, anxiety and uncertainty over Title I are, as you well know, particularly intense, and it's not hard to see why.  There are some real problems, and I'll soon talk about one of them especially -- AYP, adequate yearly progress.

 But, once again, we have to keep our eyes on the mark. When anxiety over Title I gets whipped up into a generalized, simplistic "down with the law" mantra, it jeopardizes Title I.  On the other hand, when even legitimate criticism of the law is met with the accusation that the critic is against accountability, or doesn't believe that poor children can learn, or is guilty of "the soft bigotry of low expectations"-- that also jeopardizes Title I.  Why?  Because a refusal to acknowledge problems is a refusal to more effectively help the kids who need Title I most.

 Either way, that kind of criticism puts at risk the largest and most important federal commitment there is to the education of poor children, the law on which our most vulnerable youngsters and resource-starved public schools depend. That is an unacceptable risk.

 Remember – we  had a major fight over many years just to get a federal commitment to poor children.

 Was Title I ever perfect?  Did it ever fulfill its purpose of leveling the playing field for needy children or getting at the root issues of separate and unequal school systems -- one for poor kids and another for everybody else?  No.  But Title I, beginning with the fundamental changes made in 1994, which we supported, now comes closer to fulfilling its purpose than ever before, which means we're that much closer to where we really need to be.  And without it, my friends, the schools that poor children go to would have far fewer resources than even the inadequate ones they have now.

 Were there problems with the standards, testing and accountability provisions introduced into Title I in 1994, under the Clinton administration?  As architects of the standards movement, we fought to make sure poor kids were not left out of it.  But even then, with a friendly administration and a far less radical Congress, the law emerged with problems and without all the necessary components to achieve the full potential of these reforms.

 We fought hard for the right way to do it then, and we'll never give up this fight. But for all the problems and broken promises, then and now, there is absolutely no question that the standards movement was, and is, the right way to go -- not only for poor children but for all children -- and that it has made a huge, positive difference.

 Title I - which our poorest schools depend on -- cannot be jeopardized.

 You know, sometimes in my cynical moments, I think that one of the reasons we're hearing hysteria over this law that we didn't hear in 1994 is because this time, the pressure isn't only on those who educate poor children; it's on everyone, including our most-advantaged school districts.

 Well, for those of you who work in school districts serving poor students, the pressure has been on for a long, long time.  We didn't hear howling from others when you were the only ones being held accountable, mostly under some terrible plans.  We didn't hear howling from others when you were expected to bring students to higher standards without being provided the training or even a curriculum to do so.  We didn't hear it during the many years now that you've been asked to perform miracles without getting adequate resources or even enough 20-year-old textbooks to hand out to each of the students in your overcrowded, crumbling classrooms.

 But, in the AFT way, we did more than just protest. Together, we continued to fight for our vision of how to do this right, from district offices to state capitols -- while simultaneously working ourselves to the bone to seize every opportunity that Title I provided to do what we've pressed for from the first day of our history:  improve the education of the most vulnerable children in this land.

 The result was our best work ever.  AFT leaders and members across the country did an extraordinary job of transforming the pressure of the new Title I into working with parents, community groups, administrators and school board members to make turning around low-performing schools a top priority; getting research on what works to help kids learn and discovering proven programs; seeking major improvements in the standards and the tests; insisting on professional development that was actually helpful; expanding our ER&D program; turning around beginning reading instruction;  even writing curriculum because no one else would provide it.  And this is just a bare summary.

 So, standards, assessment and accountability, not to mention pressure, aren't exactly new to us.  And if we didn’t back away from Title I and the standards movement at a time when every mistake in the book was being made by states and districts first learning to deal with these changes, because, pain notwithstanding, we believed so strongly that this was right for our students, then we're not about to do it now.  We are not going to put ourselves above a program whose resources, inadequate though they are, continue to be so desperately needed by our poorest students and most under-funded schools.      

 But, my friends, neither are we going to give up our right-- indeed, our obligation -- to criticize, to point out what's wrong and to seek improvements.  Because, as I said before, those who refuse to recognize the very real problems in the law jeopardize our public schools and children as much as those who refuse to see any good in it at all.   Sometimes I even think that's exactly what the see-no-problem crowd on the right wants: the worst possible outcomes for our public schools and poor kids and another excuse to say Title I doesn't work and, therefore, that the federal commitment to the education of poor children must end.

 And that brings me to AYP -- adequate yearly progress.          

 You don't hear a lot about AYP because, frankly, few people understand it.  It is indeed complicated.  But the fact is, it is the linchpin -- land mine, really -- of the standards, testing and accountability provisions of the law.

 How does AYP work? The law calls for 100 percent of students in general and in each of a number of subgroups -- low-income, racial and ethnic minorities, special education, and English language learners -- to reach a "proficient" level on tests of reading and math in grades 3-8 and at least one grade in high school.  Science will soon be added.

 One-hundred percent student proficiency has to be reached in 12 years from the signing of the law, by the year 2014.  Each state has to figure out a starting point for its percentage of proficiency, according to yet another formula in the law.   Then, the amount of progress each of its districts and schools have to make every year over the 12 years is determined by that starting point.

 This means that schools whose students are way behind from the start have to make far, far more annual progress -- both on average and with each of their subgroups -- than schools already at or beyond the state's starting point.  Indeed, the experts told us -- and we and they tried to tell Congress -- that this AYP formula is not only statistically stacked against diverse schools; it also calls on most high-poverty schools -- with their well-documented lack of resources -- to achieve a rate of academic progress that has never before been seen, not in our most advantaged schools and not even in so-called world-class school systems. 

 Moreover, despite the word "progress" in "adequate yearly progress," the formula doesn't really give credit for progress. A school may make a large amount of progress in a year -- let's say 6 points -- but if the predetermined target is 7 points, tough luck; just like the school that made zero points, it will be sanctioned, instead of praised.

 Now, we led the way in turning around low-performing schools.  AFT has always believed all children can learn and that the effects of poverty can be overcome with the right conditions and supports.  I have always believed that no child should have to go to a school we wouldn't want our own to attend.  And we have worked hard to achieve that goal -- and folks, truth be told, we are making great progress.

 But this AYP formula staggers the imagination and maybe even human capacity. Furthermore, this formula could put a large number of good schools on the "failing" list -- which, since states are then required to help them, could result in even less money to help schools that are really in trouble.

 Now, you can be absolutely sure that we are watching all of this very closely.  And, again, we're doing this in the AFT way -- protesting -- yes, but at the same time gathering the necessary evidence to win the fight by exposing the indefensible.    

 We are already working with the leading measurement experts to evaluate whether  annual AYP targets that will be set for various districts and schools are indeed attainable, and whether a school is being identified for sanctions because of statistical anomalies or for genuine academic reasons.

 Similarly, we're working with the experts to be able to determine whether a school that gets nailed for failing to make AYP is actually succeeding in making a rate of academic progress that is as great as, or greater than, the statewide average or in schools that do make their AYP.

 Right now, frankly, it's hard to get anyone in Congress, let alone the media -- which means the public -- to believe that the AYP formula could actually work against the goals of the law.  Legislators certainly didn't believe it during the course of the law's reauthorization, when we told them, and the experts presented them with simulations, of the perverse ways in which the AYP formula would work in practice.  If Congress had believed us then, I'd like to believe we'd have had a different AYP formula.

 So, we need more than simulations, predictions, and protests -- we need hard evidence about real districts and schools.  And, if the experts were right -- and all signs point that way -- we will provide that evidence to you and take it to parents and the public, whom we need to have on our side.  We will organize and mobilize to get a congressional hearing, and work with members on both sides of the aisle to make the necessary changes -- without being thrown back into legislative fights over the value of paraprofessionals, or collective bargaining, or veteran teacher testing, in this dangerous political climate.  And I believe with the evidence and AFT in action, we will get those changes. 

 Because, my friends, accountability for that which is attainable is legitimate.  But accountability for that which is humanly impossible, laudable as it may sound, is unacceptable.

 And when that accountability also comes on top of the failure to provide adequate federal resources for federal mandates; on top of rollbacks of class-size reduction; state and local budget crises; cutbacks in after-school, summer-school and other vital programs; the continuing failure to provide teachers with the curriculum and other materials they need -- not to mention the squandering of federal resources on tax cuts for the rich -- that means it is this administration and the congressional majority who need to be held accountable.  And we intend to see that they are!

 During this week, QuEST participants are going up to Capitol Hill to see key representatives on the federal budget.  And at the opening of school this fall, we will be organizing town meetings in the states -- documenting the shameful state cuts and inadequacy of federal resources which have hurt our schools and our kids.  We will mobilize our members to make sure all candidates for elected office who want our support, pledge their support for our public schools.  We're not going to stand by and see a rollback of the progress our students have been making.

 The fact is, you and your colleagues have been doing a truly remarkable job to raise student achievement, particularly in the nation's poorest urban and rural schools -- and especially in light of the limited means you've been given thus far.  Your dedication to students, and your commitment to becoming ever more effective in helping each of them achieve their full potential, is working.

 Let's look, for example, at world-class standards -- rather than the outer-space standards of AYP.

 On the most recent international reading comparison, the United States finished ninth among 35 nations, but was only significantly outscored by three:  Great Britain, the Netherlands and top-scoring Sweden. And we did it even though American schools that were part of the test included schools that educate large numbers of disadvantaged children in this nation that has the highest childhood poverty rate in the industrialized world. If you exclude our highest-poverty schools, the U.S. topped even top-scoring Sweden.  Similar patterns can be found on international math and science comparisons.

 And some critics tell the public that public education in America is hopelessly broken? That, plain and simple, is a lie!

 What is not a lie is the achievement gap between disadvantaged children and their more advantaged peers.  Yet even here, the strides we’ve made are remarkable.  A recent report by the Council of Great City Schools summarized the progress being made by its urban districts. Almost 90 percent of these districts reported increased math scores in more than half of the grades that had been tested -- with about half of those urban districts making greater gains than the average in their states!

 These gains have also helped many districts narrow the achievement gap among students.   The great majority of fourth, eighth, and tenth grades that were tested saw a narrowing of the gap in math achievement between African-American and white students.  The results are similar for Hispanic students, and both groups also showed good, though smaller, gains on reading tests.

 We recognize that there's still a long way to go in bringing our neediest students up to the levels of their more advantaged peers.  But the gains that have been made are impressive -- sometimes twice the statewide average.

 Not only that, student participation in Advanced Placement programs increased by 48 percent between 1998 and 2002, but participation by minority students rose 77 percent, and by poor students an astonishing 101percent !

 Just imagine what more could have been accomplished over this time if our poorest schools had had access to what schools in more affluent areas take for granted, or if their students had arrived in school ready at the start because they had benefited from high-quality early childhood education. 

 Just imagine the achievement we'd produce if, once and for all, this rich nation decided to overcome its disgraceful level of childhood poverty -- instead of simply expecting that we, and we alone, compensate for all of poverty's devastating effects.

 It's no wonder that educators feel overwhelmed.  And, as if these pressures aren't enough, we're also blamed for not embracing every wrong-headed, irrelevant reform idea that comes down the pike.

 But we are not without understanding and support.  The American people believe in their public schools and appreciate the heroic work that educators do, even if many politicians, pundits or the media don't.  And unlike them, the American people trust us.

 They want us to help kids do well on reading and math tests but, like us, they don't want the other subjects left out either.  And, yes, many expect us to do it all -- not just teach children, but socialize and feed them, provide emotional support and baby-sit for them, you name it.

 Guess what?  We cannot do it all!

 We need help.  We need shared responsibility.  We need politicians and administrators to be held accountable until they provide us with the tools and resources we have asked for repeatedly.

 We need poor parents to get more economic opportunity; it would make a huge difference in the health and achievement of their kids.  As the research repeatedly shows, achievement goes up as family income goes up.  Yet, somehow, the White House and the congressional majority decided that big, never-ending tax breaks for the wealthy were much more important than tax relief for the working poor or an increase in the minimum wage.

 Somehow, they think that welfare for the rich is more productive than fully funding special education, Title I, or providing universal access to high-quality early childhood education.

 Well, we're going to fight hard to prevent them from getting away with it.   We'll never stop fighting for what is just.      

 And now for some good news.  At the 2001 QuEST conference, you may recall, I outlined a proposal for achieving universal access to high-quality preschool, especially for poor children.  Last year, at the AFT convention, I proposed an interim step to get there.  We called it Kindergarten Plus -- an expansion of kindergarten into the summer before and the summer after the children would normally enter school.  The proposal was grounded in the rock-solid evidence that poor children, on average, were way behind even at the onset of kindergarten and that our extraordinary kindergarten teachers were overcoming the basic-skills gap between poor and advantaged kids by the end of the kindergarten year.  (By the way, we've now seen similar evidence about our extraordinary first-grade teachers.)

 But advantaged kids, of course, were also moving ahead, so new gaps were opening up. It was clear that what disadvantaged kids needed was more time in school -- especially in those early years.

 Thankfully, a few elected officials grasped Kindergarten-Plus.  In April, New Mexico became the first state in the country to enact a Kindergarten-Plus law.  And last week, the first kids were enrolled.  Similar legislation has been introduced in Illinois and Rhode Island, and the AFT is talking to key members of Congress about developing a federal Kindergarten-Plus program.

 Today, I want to talk about something else that would make a big difference for disadvantaged children. I want to talk about the crucial, nonschool determinant of student success: Parents.

 The research, not to mention common sense, is well settled about how critical good parenting practices are for cognitive and social development.  For example, the study by Todd Risley and Betty Hart that was recently reported in the AFT's American Educator magazine, showed that the school readiness of advantaged children came mainly from the vocabulary and skills their parents had given them by reading to and talking with them.

 But advantaged children didn't have a monopoly on those skills.   When low-income parents engaged in those activities, their children acquired the skills, too.   And once they were in school, their poverty didn't matter as much when it came to academic achievement; their teachers were able to bring them up to the levels attained by more- advantaged children.

Now, I know that most poor parents are already struggling to do the best for their kids.  But, yes, we really need these hardworking, overburdened parents -- to whom I am sincerely and utterly sympathetic -- we need them to pay more attention to their kids.

 We need quality childcare; we need Head Start and preschool. But kids still need their parents – at every age, but especially early on, when there are no schoolteachers there to help them and they are completely dependent on their parents for everything.  Kids need their parents to speak to them and speak up for them.  They need them to have high academic and behavioral expectations for them and to read to them from a very early age.  They need their parents to talk regularly with their teachers, check their homework, attend their athletic events and performances, and keep a close watch on their social lives.

 So, parent involvement is important, essential. Its absence is not, as some cynics or know-nothings like to say, an excuse by teachers.  It's a gaping hole in the education --the very character, lives, and future -- of children.

 And this isn't just a message for poor parents, my friends.

 Just listen to an excerpt from a recent New York Times spoof on upper middle-class parents:

 "Welcome to the 2003 Smith.com Elementary School commencement day.  If there are any parents here this year, the empty section up front has a wireless Internet connection, so you can stay connected to the office while your children perform."

 You get the picture.

 Parents like these also need to do more. But the truth is, their children are most likely going to make it anyway. The same, alas, cannot be said of far too many disadvantaged children.  And it is their parents -- their genuinely set-upon parents -- who need our help in order to help us educate and fulfill the potential of their kids. 

Here, too, many of our locals have pioneered outstanding parent involvement and homework-help programs.  But it isn't enough, and it often comes too late.  So one of the things we plan to do is work with early childhood organizations, health professionals and other groups to create a program for new parents that will demonstrate the importance of certain parenting practices with very young children.   You can expect to hear more about this in the next school year.

It is not, however, a substitute for schools' improving their own efforts to reach out to parents.  Because schools need to be a lot friendlier to parents, especially to poor and under educated parents, who are often intimidated or overwhelmed by responsibilities or unable to speak English or, often, have all of these going against them, and more.

It is time to have the obvious recognized:  We cannot do the work of educating youngsters alone, nor should we have to.  If ever there was a time for shared responsibility, it is now.

So let me conclude with a bittersweet story from my hometown.

New York City,  like so many other districts across the country, made great academic progress last year.  It did this despite just coming out of the horrendous September 11 attack and despite the very real trauma and trouble and fears felt by so many children and families -- not only those who were directly touched, but also the more than one million students throughout the schools, and all who work with them. 

We all felt it-- but they so much more -- and yet, not only did their teachers and parents and paras and principals bring them back to normalcy, their public schools raised their achievement -- despite September 11 and its aftermath, despite the economic crisis, despite the election of a new mayor and the onset of another regime of changes, and despite another turn of the revolving door of school administrations and yet another turn of the screw. 

Is it enough?  No.  Is it spectacular given the circumstances and the lack of support?  Yes.   Did it get recognition?   No.  Reward?  Hell, no.

And the same is true, in varying degrees, all over these United States.  In city after town after suburb, teachers and our public schools are producing against the odds, and finding their reward the way teachers always have -- in the eyes and the lives of their students.

And isn't that why you're here?   In July, in sweltering Washington, D.C., to learn even more about what you can do for other people’s children?

So, my dear colleagues, even while I exhort you to do more, I pledge that the AFT will never stop fighting for you, for our schools, and for our students.  I know we'll overcome these latest challenges and come out stronger than ever.

For all you give to America's children, I thank you.