PrintPrivate group funds New York City math teachers
Math for America commits $25 million to bring more teachers to public schools
The timing is coincidental, but the release of yet another report about the lackluster performance of American students on an international math assessment should give a boost to a new program in New York City, where a nonprofit foundation is spending millions of dollars to bring new math teachers to the city’s public schools.
Math for America (MfA), a privately sponsored and financed group, is the latest initiative to lure talented college students and career changers into New York schools over the next four years. At a news conference announcing the venture, Randi Weingarten, an AFT vice president and president of the United Federation of Teachers, the New York State United Teachers affiliate in New York City, said “There’s no question we need individuals with a passion for teaching, but we also need—and this is especially true where mathematics is concerned—people who truly know the subject and can get our students excited about learning it.”
The first group of prospective teachers, who are being called Newton fellows, currently are enrolled in master’s level programs in math education, mostly at New York University and Queens College. They also student teach and receive a stipend as well as a full scholarship. Starting next school year, they will teach full time while also being mentored and participating in professional development activities. The candidates agree to teach for at least four years, during which they will receive additional stipends totaling $62,000. The program’s goal is to add 40 new fellows per year.
“U.S. students are woefully behind the rest of the world in terms of their general knowledge of mathematics, which places them and our country at a serious disadvantage,” said MfA founder and chair James Simons, a prominent mathematician. (Just days after the initiative was launched, the results of the 2003 Program for International Student Assessment were released, showing that U.S. 15-year-olds ranked below their counterparts in 20 of 29 industrialized nations.)
In addition to recruiting new teachers, MfA will include a program designed to keep strong math teachers in the classroom. Starting in September 2005, the master teacher program will provide stipends of $50,000 over four years to more than 40 New York City high school teachers. The master teachers will participate in professional development activities such as organizing math education seminars, working with the new teacher fellows, attending conferences or summer courses, and engaging in research projects.
Official NAEP report confirms AFT analysis of charter schools
The long-delayed official release of results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 2003 pilot study on charter school students’ achievement reveals that, in most cases, charter school students are not performing as well as other public school students.
The NAEP results, released in December, reaffirm the conclusions drawn from NAEP charter school achievement data unearthed by the AFT in August 2004: Charter school students often perform worse than other public school students in math and reading. Last summer, concerned by delays in releasing the official NAEP data, AFT researchers conducted an analysis of the charter school achievement data using the Web-based NAEP Data Tool.
“Having this information readily available to parents, teachers and policymakers will help all of us understand how students are doing academically in charter schools across the nation, and will allow us to better evaluate charter school policies,” says Antonia Cortese, AFT executive vice president. “In particular, the NAEP results highlight the need to reconsider the NCLB policy option of converting academically struggling public schools into charter schools.”
Although the official NAEP results generally echo the earlier NAEP data, there are slight differences between the NAEP report and the AFT analysis because AFT researchers did not have access to all data, questionnaire answers and additional “data cleaning” information.
In addition, the NAEP study shows that charter schools do not educate a disproportionate percentage of low-income students. The percentage of low-income students in charter schools fell from 54 percent in the NAEP sample reported on by the AFT to 42 percent in the fuller sample—two percentage points lower than the percentage in other public schools. And yet even with a sample that included fewer low-income students, charter schools underperform other public schools at statistically significant levels in both math and reading (when students with special education needs are excluded for reading in the NAEP report), according to both the AFT and NAEP reports.
“Some charter school proponents argue that these lower scores can be attributable to the disproportionate number of low-income students they educate,” says Cortese. The new NAEP report, however, “puts the lie to that argument,” she notes.
Interest-based negotiations result in partnership approach
Providence teachers now have a say in staff development
The 2004-07 contract between the Providence (R.I.) Teachers Union and the school board has been hailed as a win for the city, a win for teachers—and a win for students, says union president Steve Smith.
It was quite an accomplishment considering the challenges the parties faced going into negotiations (an estimated $10 million budget shortfall and No Child Left Behind mandates). The contract was achieved through interest-based negotiations.
“Three years ago, we barely had any relationship,” Smith says. “We went from no communication to re-establishing communication and forming partnerships in a variety of areas.”
Professional development is one area where labor and management forged not only a new partnership but a new approach. In years past, four professional development days were built into the school year, with the district deciding both the content and the dates, Smith explains. “Teachers had no say.” Neither did the union.
Under the new agreement, teachers and the union both have a say. Teachers manage 50 percent of their professional development time—and get paid for it at their daily rate. The other 50 percent is managed by a joint labor-management committee. Further, the district agreed to incorporate some of the AFT’s educational research and dissemination (ER&D) courses into its program, and to offer courses under one joint umbrella, My Learning Plan (www.mylearningplan.com), a Web-based service for managing professional development activities.
Dennis Tosoni, a social studies teacher at Gilbert Stuart Middle School, hails the new professional development program because it gives teachers a say and more offerings. Under the old system, Tosoni says, the district’s mandated courses might not have relevancy to certain teachers. Now, he says, “you are choosing things that can help you, and you can tailor that to what you think our needs are.”
Smith notes that the union and district also are working in partnership to address chronically disruptive students as well as teaming up to develop protocols for schools that have been designated as low performing, not improving or that are facing federal or state imposed sanctions and interventions.
Participation was high in the widely watched United Teachers of Dade runoff election, and results announced in early December show that high school teacher Karen Aronowitz will take the helm at the AFT-affiliated local in Florida.
Aronowitz, an English teacher at Miami Southridge Senior High School and a member of the Future of UTD Task Force, received more than 52 percent of the vote in the two-person presidential runoff. Shirley B. Johnson, a third-grade teacher at Lake Stevens Elementary School and the former interim president of the local, received slightly less than 48 percent of the vote. Turnout was heavy, with 60 percent of eligible voters casting ballots, much higher than the first round of voting held in October.
“We are pleased that the members have actively participated in the voting process. This vote is a victory for those elected and for union democracy,” said Leonard Lee, deputy director of the AFT Southern region.
Other winners in the runoff were Artie Leichner for first vice president and Pamela Sturrup for secretary-treasurer. Eighteen executive board members also were elected. Aronowitz, Leichner and Sturrup are members of the UTD Spotlight Caucus. The caucus’s platform included calls for enhanced membership services, financial transparency and accountability in the local, and clean and healthy work sites in the school district.
The election was seen as a major step in restoring sound governance to the local. The AFT discovered the theft or misappropriation of at least $3 million. Former president Pat Tornillo is currently serving a prison sentence for the crimes. In 2003, the AFT execuive council placed UTD in an administratorship and appointed Mark Richard as administrator. The national union has provided funds to keep the local strong, exhausted legal remedies to recover stolen funds, and worked with the local to restore faith and participation in the union. A new UTD constitution and bylaws were adopted in the wake of the scandal, and more than 3,000 new members have joined.
The AFT administratorship will end on April 30.
Washington runoff election
The election of officers for the Washington (D.C.) Teachers Union will go to a runoff in January. In mail ballots, counted Dec. 28, none of the four candidates for president, or their slates, received the required majority of votes to win, so the two top vote getters will face off again. Runoff election results will be known at the end of January. (A report on the outcome will appear in our March issue.)
In the runoff for president, D.C. junior high school teacher and former WTU field representative George Parker, who received 520 votes (38 percent of the votes cast) will face Rachel Hicks, a WTU field representative, who received 514 votes in the first election, just six shy of Parker’s total.
In the other officer slots, Parker’s slate of Nathan Saunders, Joyce Amoo and Sallie Littlejohn will face Benita Nicholson, Harriet Frost and Morris Redd for the positions of general vice president, recording secretary and treasurer, respectively. Turnout in the election was low, with just 1,358 of the 4,440 eligible voters casting ballots.
The election of new officers in the runoff will bring to a close the AFT administratorship of the local, which began in January 2003 after the national union discovered that more than $5 million in union funds had been misappropriated. In October 2003, former WTU president Barbara Bullock pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiracy to embezzle WTU dues over a seven-year period, as well as mail fraud and filing false union tax returns. She is currently serving a nine-year prison sentence. Former Bullock executive assistant Gwendolyn Hemphill and WTU treasurer James O. Baxter have been indicted and are awaiting trial.
The AFT executive council appointed former AFT vice president and regional director George Springer to serve as the WTU administrator, and in October 2004 members overwhelmingly approved amendments to the WTU constitution that will improve the local’s operating and oversight functions as well as bring it into compliance with the national AFT constitution.
Officers elected in this runoff will serve through June 30, 2007.
Educators discuss how best to help English language learners
AFT task force puts Latino issues on the front burner
The AFT’s new English language learners (ELL) Teacher Cadre met for the first time in November in Washington, D.C., to map out plans to help the national union address topics that are important to AFT members who work with children not yet proficient in English. Charged with helping the AFT develop policies and identify resources related to educating ELL students, the cadre consists of 15 veteran ELL teachers from affiliates in California, Indiana, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York and Texas. The cadre is an offshoot of the AFT staff task force on Latino issues established two years ago to review the national union’s work on Latino issues and to recommend new projects.
The ELL cadre’s first task was to review and discuss the instructional resources being developed by the AFT educational issues department and the human rights and community relations department in conjunction with the educational division of WETA-TV, the PBS station in Washington D.C. The initial phase of resource development will include a Web site with preK-3 informational resources and an outreach tool kit for Latino parents. The initiative will be launched at the AFT QuEST Conference in July, and the resources will be available to educators nationwide. These resources are the AFT’s first professional development materials targeted specifically to teachers of English language learners.
The cadre also will help the AFT develop additional professional development materials for ELL teachers and review AFT policy on the education of English language learners.
As one cadre teacher puts it, “I am overjoyed that AFT is taking a first step in addressing the issues of ELL students. This must continue.”
Alabama local helps district earn EPA award
Thanks to the efforts of the Jefferson County (Ala.) American Federation of Teachers (JCAFT), the county’s public school district was honored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in December with a Tools for Schools Excellence Award. The award, which recognizes schools that have shown an extraordinary commitment to improving indoor air quality, was presented during the EPA’s Indoor Air Quality Tools for Schools Symposium in Washington, D.C.
The award would not have been possible without the work of the AFT local, which encouraged the school district to adopt the EPA’s Tools for Schools program, notes JCAFT president Vi Parramore.
The Tools for Schools program teaches schools how to identify, resolve and prevent indoor air-quality problems using low- or no-cost measures. Participants learn about indoor air-quality management as well as facility planning, maintenance and emergency response.
The union began working with the school system on indoor air-quality problems after some students and staff at Rudd Middle School in Pinson, Ala., became sick as the result of a renovation and construction project two years ago. Cleaning up the problems cost the district more than $450,000. Since that incident, the local and school district have established an indoor air-quality committee to address problems at other schools. In addition, the Indoor Air Quality Tools for Schools program has been implemented in every school in the county. The local also is helping the district introduce a “green cleaning” pilot program in eight schools; only environmentally friendly cleaning products will be used.
“We’ve taken a horrible situation and turned it into a positive for students and staff,” Parramore says. “We are doing everything we possibly can to create optimum working and learning conditions in our schools.”
Spellings: Bush's choice for education chief
AFT leaders describe Margaret Spellings, President Bush’s pick to replace outgoing Education Department Secretary Rod Paige, as a solid and pragmatic administrator who is well versed in the issues and committed to public schools.
“She is a very experienced and capable policy analyst,” says John Cole, president of the Texas Federation of Teachers and an AFT vice president, who worked closely with Spellings in the early and mid 1990s, when she served as then-governor George Bush’s senior adviser on education policy. Cole points in particular to her constructive role in implementing a statewide early-reading initiative that was spearheaded by the Texas federation and became the education centerpiece of Bush’s second term as governor. “She is especially committed in the area of teaching reading,” notes Cole, who describes the nominee as “a product of public schools who promotes public schools” and not vouchers.
Spellings currently is a White House domestic policy adviser. The AFT is looking forward to continuing its “good working relationship” with Spellings, says AFT president Edward J. McElroy, who points out that the union has worked with Spellings in the past and has found her to be “accessible, open and willing to listen.”
At a November White House press conference to announce her nomination, Spellings said, “I commit to work alongside America’s educators and my new colleagues at the Department of Education to make our schools the finest in the world.”
Union negotiators share experiences, gain insight
The AFT Center for Collective Bargaining holds first conference
More than 120 negotiators and staff representing all AFT constituency groups met in early December for a three-day conference on bargaining contracts. Held at the Robert M. Healey Center at the Illinois Federation of Teachers, the workshops and presentations focused on the craft of negotiations and strategies for bargaining issues such as health insurance, performance pay, No Child Left Behind guidelines, seniority and privatization.
AFT president Edward J. McElroy addressed participants, assuring them that they could count on AFT support when they go to the bargaining table. Preserving healthcare benefits, good salaries—even the fundamental right to bargain—depend to a large degree on unions’ ability to safeguard collective bargaining rights won through often hard-fought political battles, said McElroy.
G. Richard Shell, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and director of Wharton’s Executive Negotiation Workshop, opened the conference with a presentation based on his book, Bargaining for Advantage. Shell helped participants assess their bargaining styles, and provided techniques and strategies to use at the bargaining table.
Staff from the AFT educational issues department were on hand to offer guidance on bargaining issues such as transfers and evaluation guidelines in districts implementing NCLB. Other national AFT staff from public affairs, health and safety, the privatization center and the legal department participated in the conference via webcast technology.
In planning the bargaining conference, Lynne Mingarelli from the AFT Center for Collective Bargaining worked closely with liaisons from the AFT’s constituency divisions as well as AFT staff. In addition, an advisory group of veteran negotiators provided ideas and suggestions. Bargaining issues unique to the various AFT constituencies were addressed by providing opportunities for negotiators to meet with the liaisons from the AFT’s public employee, healthcare, higher education and PSRP divisions.
During the conference, negotiators dipped into their pockets to raise more than $1,100 to support striking AFT members at Northeastern Illinois University.
Unique nature of trade schools presents wide-ranging problems
Connecticut local works with AFT to upgrade health and safety program
The unique nature of trade schools can pose wide-ranging health and safety concerns. So, Connecticut’s State Vocational Federation of Teachers (SVFT) teamed up with AFT national staff health experts to learn more about how best to address the health, safety and security interests of SVFT members. The local represents more than 1,200 academic, trade and technical teachers in 20 schools statewide.
Lack of maintenance is a chief health culprit. But antiquated heating systems, leaking roofs and fire code violations are only part of the challenge at trade schools, where a variety of classes, including automotive, carpentry, culinary and cosmetology, create noise pollution and present serious ventilation and air-quality problems.
“Career and technical schools face daunting challenges,” says Darryl Alexander, one of AFT’s health and safety experts who worked with SVFT. “Dwindling resources have significantly limited these schools from maintaining equipment and ventilation as well as securing new technology. As a result, students and staff suffer because they often experience unacceptable exposure to dangerous equipment and chemicals.”
“In my wing, beauty culture is right downstairs,” says Clare Rheiner, chair of SVFT’s health and safety committee. “When they are doing acrylic nails, we can’t breathe.”
Rheiner, a science teacher at E.C. Goodwin Tech School in New Britain, is acutely aware of the overdue cleanup needed in science labs as well. “We have found some strange things in science labs that were just put on a shelf and left,” she says, noting that many businesses, in their efforts to become compliant with regulations, have donated items over the years “that really shouldn’t be in trade schools,” such as radioactive assessing kits and Geiger counters.
“They need to be removed,” says Rheiner, noting, however, that disposing of materials and chemicals is not just a matter of throwing them in the dumpster or flushing them down the sink.
Although the SVFT health and safety committee routinely inspects its schools (10 annually) the committee wants to ramp up its program. Working with AFT health and safety experts Darryl Alexander and Michael Lohman, they have succeeded.
The AFT staff experts have been “a great resource,” says Rheiner. “I was shocked at the thoroughness of their work. They tailored [the plan] based on interviews and discussions with the committee about what our issues are.”
At about the same time SVFT started working with AFT’s Alexander and Lohman, Abigail Hughes became superintendent of Connecticut’s technical high school system. Rick Tanasi, SVFT vice president, says Hughes has established and filled a management-level position dedicated to health and safety.
Over the next several years, SVFT will continue to build its health and safety infrastructure by establishing committees in each school that will be responsible for monitoring, tracking and reporting members’ concerns. In the meantime, Rheiner says, members need to be proactive. “The only way to make any effective change is to notify the union,” she says.
For more information about SVFT, visit www.svft.org.
Employees shoulder healthcare load
Employers are coming to grips with the backbreaking cost of skyrocketing health insurance by placing more of the burdens on their employees, a recent survey from the Mercer Human Resource Consulting group reveals.
Average per-employee cost of health benefits rose 7.5 percent last year, the lowest increase since 1999. One contributing factor to smaller increases might be employers that shift costs to employees. Higher deductibles and co-payments could be prompting more workers to forgo heathcare, even necessary care. That allows employers to reap savings as utilization of services drops.
“Cost shifting was somewhat more restrained in 2004 than in 2003, when employers (especially small employers) sharply raised deductibles and co-payments, seeking immediate relief from three years of double-digit increases” in healthcare costs, New York-based Mercer reports. But the cost-shifting trend seems firmly in place, and it could have serious implications for the future.
“When you start the year with a $1,000 deductible,” notes study co-author Blaine Bos, “you think twice about going to the doctor if you have a cold. The downside, of course, is that you may also put off getting necessary care.”
Employers were also optimistic that their per-employee healthcare costs would drop to 6.6 percent in 2005 after making “design changes” in their coverage. Twenty-one percent said they would increase employee deductibles, co-payments and/or out-of-pocket maximums. The same percentage of employers said they will increase the percentage of the premium paid by the employee, the survey notes.
The survey sample reflects health insurance conditions affecting about 90 million full- and part-time employees.
Keeping class-size caps in place
Grass-roots protest in Texas proves successful
Efforts by the Texas commissioner of education to weaken limits on class size were checked late last year thanks largely to effective lobbying by the Texas Federation of Teachers and other education groups.
The TFT and Texas State Teachers Association in November withdrew their lawsuit against commissioner of education Shirley Neeley over a guidance letter aimed at creating new rules that would have weakened the current 22-1 class-size cap.
It ultimately was not the courtroom but the court of public opinion that made the difference. “We appreciate the fact that the commissioner has responded positively to thousands of parents and teachers across the state who voiced their concerns over weakening the class-size limits,” said John Cole, Texas Federation of Teachers president and an AFT vice president.
In October, Neeley sent a letter to school superintendents that provided a way for administrators to avoid the main obstacle to obtaining class size waivers: a requirement that such waivers could only be approved by school boards in open meetings. Neeley suggested that boards could simply vote to delegate waiver authority to superintendents. The policy shift would have meant that “after the one-time vote, the superintendent can ask for all the waivers he wants without the need to face parents, teachers and board members,” Cole observed.
The attack on class-size limits prompted not only a lawsuit from the TFT and its NEA counterpart but more than 1,600 faxes in protest from educators and parents.
