AFT pays tribute to Feldman
Personal stories offer insight into a smart and
compassionate leader

In what AFT president Edward J. McElroy called a gathering of her family, AFT officers, leaders and staff paid tribute to the union’s late president Sandra Feldman following the national union’s executive council meeting Oct. 19 in Washington, D.C. The event traced Feldman’s life through personal stories—a life, in the words of United Federation of Teachers president and AFT vice president Randi Weingarten, of "huge fierceness, huge intellect, huge compassion" on behalf of teachers and children.

Feldman, 65, who served as AFT president from 1997 to 2004, died Sept. 18 after a battle with breast cancer.

AFT secretary-treasurer Nat LaCour recounted how Feldman persuaded him to leave his beloved New Orleans and work for the national union. And executive vice president Antonia Cortese recalled Feldman’s intense optimism that, while never "Pollyanna-ish," prompted her to give a farewell speech at the 2004 convention in which she spoke only about the future of the union.

When fighting for students, Feldman could be so combative that bystanders once called the cops, but she also felt so much love that when her husband Arthur Barnes phoned, she put the governor of New York on hold. In her last days, she called AFT colleagues, including the UFT’s David Sherman, to let them know she wasn’t going to beat her cancer. Asked what he should tell people, she said he already knew the answer: "Keep on fighting like hell for the teachers and the kids and all the schools."

Barnes, who attended the AFT tribute, says his wife’s obituaries described her tenacity, toughness and strength--—all typical attributes of a leader—but adds that "she also was smarter than those sitting on the other side of the table."

Earlier that day, the AFT executive council approved a resolution chronicling Feldman’s accomplishments in the civil rights and trade union movements, and her leadership in the UFT and AFT.

'Nation's report card' shows public school progress
Results point to concern about charter schools

The results of the latest National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP) offer grounds for cautious optimism in the nation’s public schools. However, the latest scores on what is popularly called "the nation’s report card" also point to stubborn student achievement gaps between racial groups and to continued underperformance by charter schools.

The 2003-2005 NAEP results in math and reading for grades 4 and 8 were released on Oct. 19, and they show continued improvement in math at both grade levels. Reading scores rose for fourth-graders but decreased slightly at the eighth-grade level. White-black achievement gaps narrowed in math, although less significantly than in previous years. The white-Hispanic achievement gap also narrowed in reading and math but at a slower pace among fourth-graders.

"We are encouraged by students’ gains. We are troubled, however, by the snail’s pace in narrowing the achievement gap," says Antonia Cortese, AFT executive vice president. "Congress and the president need to pursue what research tells us works: preschool programs, intense early intervention, and social services for students and families."

Lagging charter schools
The AFT also reviewed the 2003-2005 NAEP data for clues about the performance of charter schools. It was the second such analysis—and the second time NAEP has revealed that most charter schools in the United States were doing worse in several areas than regular public schools.

The latest AFT analysis shows that charter schools continued to lag behind traditional public schools in 2003-2005. The latest NAEP results also reveal that charter schools do not educate a higher percentage of low-income students (a claim that charter school proponents often make to justify their relatively poor performance). In fact, low-income charter school students in both the fourth and eighth grades did not perform as well in math as comparable students in regular public schools, and eighth grade low-income students in charter schools failed to score as well in reading.

According to the latest NAEP data, there was no difference in academic achievement based on race, except for 2005 data for eighth-graders. In this area, students in charter schools scored significantly lower.

"Once again, the NAEP data confirm what years of independent research point out—students in the average charter school perform no better and, in fact, frequently underperform those in comparable, regular public schools," says F. Howard Nelson, who conducted the AFT’s review of 2003-2005 NAEP results and served as lead researcher for the AFT’s analysis of charter schools.

Political action halts pension cuts
IFT members turn out in record numbers for union's
Lobby Day

Members of the Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT) can take credit for defeating some of the worst proposals in a pension bill recently passed by the state Legislature. In August, a record number of IFT members descended on the state capital of Springfield for the IFT’s Lobby Day. They shared with legislators their concerns regarding the proposed pension system overhaul.

“We turned up the heat,” says IFT director of political activities Steve Perckwinkle, “and union members should be very proud of the pension benefits they were able to protect.”

The IFT and its members were able to defeat proposals that would have, among other things, created a two-tier benefit system, increased the retirement age for full benefits and slashed Cost of Living Adjustments (COLAs).

The bill passed by the Legislature did include a “pension holiday” that the IFT vehemently opposed. Union leaders believe the pension holiday will leave the pension system severely underfunded.

“The pension-funding crisis is largely due to the failure of the General Assembly to adequately fund state pension systems,” says IFT president Jim Dougherty, who is also an AFT vice president. The legislation passed by state lawmakers does nothing to correct that problem, he says.

“Each of us must deliver the message to our legislators. They need to hear again and again that it is their responsibility to fund pensions at an acceptable level.”

In addition to participating in Lobby Day, IFT members made phone calls, sent e-mails and postcards to their legislative representatives, and packed regional pension forums.

Successful schools take collaboration and
teacher training
Visits to Rhode Island schools highlight union-
district partnerships

The schools, Carnevale Elementary School and Coventry High School, are examples of what can be accomplished when teacher unions and school districts work together.

In Providence, Cortese toured Carnevale and met with the school’s principal and members of its faculty. Carnevale has made extensive use of the training offered through the AFT’s Educational Research and Dissemination (ER&D) program. Teachers at the elementary school, as well as those elsewhere in the district, have taken ER&D’s courses in beginning reading instruction and reading comprehension.

The Providence Teachers Union and the district have collaborated to train all K-3 teachers in Providence in ER&D’s beginning reading instruction program.

“The success of this reading program clearly shows that it should be replicated,” Cortese says.

Union and school officials report that Carnevale students who have had classroom instruction based on the ER&D reading program score better on the state’s assessment test than those who have not.

At Coventry High School in Coventry, a collaborative relationship between the RIFTHP and the state has been credited with turning around student achievement. The partnership has driven the implementation of standards-based instruction and assessment at the high school.

Once deemed a “low-performing school,” Coventry is now recognized as a leader in collaborative school reform. The high school was chosen by the Rhode Island Department of Education as a demonstration site for implementing the state-required Performance-Based Graduation Requirements.

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