Always setting the standard

President Clinton called him "one of the greatest educators of the 20th century."

Leading educator E.D. Hirsch Jr. said, "No other person in recent years has contributed more to the advancement of education in the United States."

Colorado governor Roy Romer said, "I will miss him. But more importantly, the American education system will miss him."

The man they are talking about was AFT president Albert Shanker. Once an organization dismissed in "proper" education circles as quick-to-strike ruffians who would destroy public schools in pursuit of a selfish agenda, Shanker transformed the AFT into a preeminent voice on education issues. It was Shanker whom President Clinton called minutes after delivering his 1997 State of the Union address to thank the AFT president for the enormous contribution he made to the administration's education agenda. It was Shanker whom North Carolina governor James B. Hunt Jr. credited with shaping the 1996 National Education Summit in Palisades, N.Y., where the nation's governors and top business leaders agreed to pursue an education reform strategy with high academic standards with accountability at its heart. "I saw Al Shanker throughout" that agenda for the future, says Gov. Hunt. "He was always challenging us to reach higher."

And it was Shanker—and his belief that the AFT should protect not only members' basic rights but also their professionalism and the institutions where they work—that changed the union forever.

Risking all

There were many key moments that made this transformation possible. One of the first came in 1978, when Congress was considering a measure that would have provided tuition tax credits for private or parochial schools.

Shanker stressed that the battle went beyond the certain loss of thousands of public school jobs. He urged the nation to consider what would happen to public schools should Congress approve tax credits. "Eventually the public schools will be left with only with those students who cannot be accepted by any private schools, or those expelled from private schools or those too poor to pay tuition," he warned. More than any other leader, Shanker brought a wider perspective to the fight against tax credits and, later, to vouchers. At stake was more than turf and vested interests, he believed. At stake was the nation's commitment to universal public education—a theme he would stress repeatedly as AFT president.

"The tuition tax credits fight brought him, I believe, to take up myriad questions that now include not only tax credits but vouchers and charter schools, academic standards, the teacher quality issues of preparation and professional development, how schools should be managed, staffed and organized, how big they should be and what kinds of curriculum they should use," says Eugenia Kemble, who worked closely with Shanker on education issues for nearly 30 years and directs a new AFT institute. "When this serious threat to the future of public education hit, he realized the union's response to what was wrong with schools had to be comprehensive."

The union joined other major education groups in an alliance called the National Coalition to Save Public Education. At Shanker's urging, the group was spearheaded not by teachers, administrators or other service providers but by education consumers, represented by the National PTA. Shanker felt the fight should be led by a group that "doesn't have a vested interest in the issue except what's best for children," remembers Arnold Fege, director of government relations for the National PTA, adding that Shanker also pushed successfully for religious organizations to be included in the coalition. That the AFT president was willing to work out of the limelight, that he felt the argument was winnable and should always be framed around the best interests of children, "goes to the heart and texture of this unique leader named Al Shanker," said Fege.                                  

Shanker, who had been elected AFT president four years earlier, used every resource at the union's disposal to fight the plan. A "special emergency" issue of the American Teacher was sent to members urging them to voice their opposition. For weeks, the entire organization made the tax credit battle their first, and often only, priority.

It was a risky strategy. Although the proposal ultimately failed by a whisker, tax credit proponents generated tremendous pressure and looked as if they had the votes for most of the session. The national AFT was a much smaller organization, with about two dozen administrative staff at the time. It had just moved out of a cramped building, next door to a strip joint in one of Washington's red light districts, that representatives from other unions liked to drive visitors past—just to drive home the point that the union's national presence was little more than a shell. Its credibility as a strong Washington presence, even within the organization, was shaky at best. And here was Shanker—putting that credibility on the line in an uphill fight against tax credits.

To those who knew him, Shanker's determination to put all the chips on the table in the fight to prevent the dismantling of public education was very much a reflection of the man. "At his core, this man was a democrat, with a small ‘d.’ He passionately believed in democracy and opportunity, and he knew those things could only be preserved through a strong public education system," said Bella Rosenberg, special assistant to the AFT president.

A nation at risk

Shanker’s "intellectual integrity and his courage" are qualities that former Procter & Gamble chairman O. Bradford Butler says he remembers from working with the AFT president on many education initiatives over the past 16 years. They were well in evidence in 1983, when the National Commission on Excellence in Education released its landmark report, "A Nation at Risk."

It painted a devastating portrait of American education. Educators were poorly prepared for their jobs and the subjects they were teaching. Schools had lost sight of their academic mission. As a result, the United States was dead last in seven international comparisons, with test scores lower than when Sputnik had been launched 25 years before. The report recommended tougher graduation requirements, lengthening the school day and a salary schedule that smacked of merit pay.

While some circles immediately attacked the report as a political document, Shanker was the only major figure in education to endorse the basic thrust of the report, which today is often credited with putting education reform on the map.

Greg Humphrey, who worked with Shanker as AFT legislative director and later as executive assistant to the president, calls the decision "absolutely momentous, a watershed moment" for the AFT.

"Context is essential to understanding what a risk Shanker was running by publicly backing the ‘Nation at Risk’ message," he says.

"Ronald Reagan had come into office three years earlier and put unions squarely in the crosshairs when he destroyed air traffic controllers union in 1981. It was ‘The Empire Strikes Back,’ and the conventional wisdom in the labor movement was to circle the wagons, and never give an inch," Humphrey remembers.

"Everyone in the Washington education beehive says the cure for what ails education is more money. Anything else is considered fire from the enemy. But Al saw that the report wasn’t boosting vouchers or privatization or letting the market in. Instead, it was thoroughly interested in preserving and improving public education."

Milton Goldberg, former executive director of the National Commission on Excellence in Education, says there is no question that the "Nation at Risk" message would have been crippled, perhaps buried, had every major education leader decided to sit back and throw bombs at the report. "It was vital that someone with stature step up" and take that risk, says Goldberg. "Al Shanker never wavered on that issue and the rest of the education community and public finally caught up to him.

"He was a giant in education, and as far as I’m concerned, he will always remain one."

Our profession

A long plane ride in 1982 marked Dal Lawrence’s introduction to Shanker. Lawrence, the former president of the Toledo Federation of Teachers, was invited by Shanker through the AFT educational issues department to tell union leaders about his union’s revolutionary peer-review program. The idea was to use experienced, excellent teachers to evaluate new teachers—and to work with and evaluate veterans who were experiencing severe performance problems. During the flight to meet with the AFT executive council in Washington, Lawrence remembers he wasn’t quite sure if the visit was intended to inform or was simply a trip to the woodshed.

"Here we were, a teachers union, and we were evaluating and even recommending the non-renewal and termination of teachers," Lawrence explains. Lawrence remembers the AFT president telling the council, "I’ve invited these people from Toledo to come here because they’re doing something that’s a little untraditional." Lawrence remembers the presentation and how all hell broke loose when it ended.

The council’s questions were sharp, critical and demanding, Lawrence says. "I remember someone asking, ‘Who gave these people the authority?’" Shanker, who had remained silent for much of the discussion, finally intervened by saying, "I think you’re missing something here" and began to talk about how other professions take responsibility for performance standards and induction of new members.

Following the meeting, the AFT featured the Toledo project in its publications and meetings. Lawrence would later receive an award at the union’s Quality Educational Standards in Teaching (QuEST) conference, and Shanker spoke about it frequently and positively on the lecture circuit. Many other locals would visit Toledo to learn more and ultimately start their own initiatives.

Lawrence remembers conducting surveys prior to launching the peer review project and "just hoping that we could get half to buy into it," he says. He was astounded when polls showed members supported it by a 4-to-1 margin. And, after more people learned about the project, follow-up polls showed teachers supported it 10 to one. Shanker’s role in disseminating this model was critical, he emphasizes. "He obviously saw things there that other people weren’t seeing—that it was part of a very important piece of the professional model that members wanted from their unions."

Shanker also pioneered the concept of a voluntary national certification system in a now-famous speech at Washington, D.C.’s National Press Club in 1985 and at AFT national and regional meetings. He proposed a board that could certify teachers in specialty areas as outstanding veteran practitioners, much as the medical profession does, and said such board-certified professionals should be entitled to more pay.

Once again, it was a risky proposal for the head of a teachers union to advance in the Reagan era. As an organizer in the 1950s for the predecessor of the United Federation of Teachers, Shanker also knew differentiated pay was a thorny issue that could drive a wedge between unionists and their efforts to join forces under one organization. But it was a risk that the AFT president thought was worth taking.

"We’ve had arguments [over the issue of merit pay] for 50 years. It doesn’t go away," Shanker told the QuEST ‘85 audience. The AFT president argued that the only way to respond was to advance a meaningful alternative.

Shanker’s proposal, and his support for the Carnegie Forum report "A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century," led directly to the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. This voluntary national certification body for teachers launched its revolutionary system in the 1994-95 school year and has become a major force on the education reform landscape. This year, President Clinton proposed funding that would allow 100,000 teachers to seek certification as exemplars of accomplished teaching practice through the National Board.

"More than any other single person, Al Shanker was the founder of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards," says North Carolina governor Jim Hunt. A founding member of the board, Hunt and Shanker were the only two current members who had been there from the beginning. "I really learned personally from Al Shanker how critical it was to raise the standards of the teaching profession, and I was amazed at his courage in proposing things that I didn’t expect to come from the lips of a leader of a large teachers’ organization. He was clearly decades ahead of his time in seeing that America would only begin to respect and compensate teachers fairly if we raised standards and put into place support for teachers."

What works

"This is the one and only country that ever developed the philosophy called pragmatism," Shanker told an audience at the Brookings Institution in 1994, "and yet, when it comes to trying to change our schools, we are the most unpragmatic and unintelligent."

The remark would come as no surprise to those who followed Shanker’s influential "Where We Stand" column in the New York Times. Since 1970, Shanker lambasted fads in education reform—from discipline policies that penalize students who come to school prepared to learn to grading policies that replace marks with "smiley faces."

These and other ill-conceived proposals were giving short shrift to strategies that did work in schools. Shanker argued that we should learn from other countries that had successful education systems. Typically, they define the essential content and skills students will be taught in core academic subjects and tie them to the entire education system: curriculum guidelines, instructional materials, teacher training and assessments that students, teachers and parents take seriously. On this last point—the need for stakes and incentives—Shanker spoke forcefully and frequently.

"When I taught, whenever I gave an examination or a quiz or told kids to bring in an essay, the whole class shouted out, ‘Does it count?’" the AFT president said. "None of these proposed reforms is going to work in any large way unless there are stakes. Stakes change everything."

Bringing high standards and stakes to schools was particularly important for students who didn’t seek admission to elite colleges, Shanker emphasized. Those students already had standards and stakes in place. Unless schools embrace high expectations for all students, they would be perpetuating a cruel hoax on the bulk of students who would enter the work force or colleges unprepared for life. "If the schools don’t have standards, and if they can’t tell the truth to the youngsters, the world eventually will tell them the truth," the AFT president warned.

And that message was heard.

Last year, at the National Education Summit in Palisades, N.Y., the nation’s governors and business leaders pledged to make high academic standards tied to meaningful assessments a priority. Business leaders from major corporations agreed to make greater use of student transcripts in hiring decisions. And, this year, President Clinton launched a 10-point education action plan that includes setting rigorous national standards and developing national tests to show how well students are doing compared to those standards and to their peers around the country and the world.

"If any single person could be said to be responsible for the astonishing shift in public sentiment that recently prompted the president of the United States to call for national educational standards—a proposal that would have been unthinkable a few years back—that person would be Al Shanker," said Hirsch. "No other person has contributed more to the advancement of education" in the United States.

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