Better education means working outside
schools, too

by Edward J. McElroy
AFT President

Earlier this year, I spoke with Democratic mayors from cities across the country, and I want to share with you the message I delivered to the mayors. I told them they are our natural allies, but that we need to improve our alliance in two fundamental ways.

First, we need to build strong coalitions of people and organizations that support public education and our members’ work, and we need to make sure petty differences don’t get in our way. If we are squabbling over minor differences, nobody wins—except the hard-core anti-teacher and anti-worker forces. If we are united, we can improve the lives of our members, students, and all working men and women.

Second, when we focus on education, we have to make sure we do not succumb to what I call “vertical problem solving”—trying to solve a problem in our schools without addressing out-of-school factors that contribute to the problem.

Often, school officials and local politicians respond to a problem with student achievement or behavior by proposing a change in curriculum or a new student behavior code. If there is an increase in drug use among young people, the proposed solution is to move anti-drug programs to earlier grades. When there’s a scarcity of veteran teachers for hard-to-staff schools, the shortsighted solution is to undermine the collective bargaining agreement so the central office can redistribute teachers.

It is a natural first inclination, once you have noticed a problem in a school, to look solely to school policies as a solution. But first inclinations are not always right. Is student misbehavior linked to an increase in gang behavior in the community or to other external causes? If so, a good part of the solution may lie outside the walls of the school. Is student achievement lagging because local economic conditions have strained family budgets, leading to poor nutrition, poor healthcare and, eventually, increased absenteeism? Are teachers and other school employees reluctant to work at certain schools because the surrounding neighborhoods are unsafe or simply too far from their homes? Changing school conditions can help alleviate a “school” problem, but we can do a lot more if we also tackle contributing factors that lie outside school.

Don’t get me wrong. Our schools and universities are a good place to start when it comes to changing society, and there are certainly things we can do better. That is why the AFT has sought to improve professional development, raise the bar for those entering the teaching profession, reduce class size, provide high-quality early education for all children, and encourage the use of research-backed reading instruction and other practices in the classroom. We have called for better professional development and compensation for paraprofessionals so they can be even more effective in helping disadvantaged students catch up with their peers, and we have called for federal funding to modernize schools.

But it is clear that changing our schools will have limited impact unless we also make changes outside the schools. It is obvious we can’t improve education in isolation. You have probably heard the saying that a tree without branches is a stump. The same is true for student success in our public schools—all the branches need tending.

If our schools are going to be successful, we need good public policies that support children and their families: policies on nutrition, poverty, early childhood education, healthcare, prenatal care—and a reasonable minimum wage. Study after study has shown that addressing such out-of-school factors could transform our public schools.

For union members and union leaders, that means we have to be willing to support good public policies in those areas as well. Building strong working relationships with mayors and other public officials is essential to our success in addressing all the issues that affect teaching and learning. If that means we have to broaden our agenda or get outside our area of expertise, so be it. We’ll do that and more to improve the lives of our members and to strengthen the institutions in which they work.