Where We Stand

Al Shanker died, after a long battle with cancer, on February 22, 1997. Al's first Where We Stand column appeared over 25 years ago on December 13, 1970. His final one is taken from an autobiographical essay, "Forty Years in the Profession," which originally appeared in Reflections: Personal Essays by 33 Distinguished Educators (Phi Delta Kappa, 1990). In the essay, Al talks about his lifelong dedication to "gaining collective bargaining rights for teachers and using the collective bargaining process to improve teachers' salaries and working conditions." He also makes it clear that the teacher union movement always had an equally important aim: making schools work better for kids. His tireless efforts, during the past 15 years or so, on behalf of high standards of conduct and achievement and against the fads and follies that threaten to destroy public education were not an "about face" but a logical extension of his trade unionism.

Archived Where We Stand Articles

October Oct29, 1989

Tests Don't Tell Us ... What Kids Really Know

Every year, the American public spends hundreds of millions of dollars on testing our students. Yet we find out very little about what they know and are able to do.

October Oct22, 1989

What's Wrong With Schools? Ask The Kids

One of the important transformations in the world of work over the part several years has been the involvement of workers in decisions about the production process. When workers were isolated on an assembly line, they just followed orders. Nobody considered asking them about the best way to do their jobs.

October Oct15, 1989

Saturn Schools: Building from the Ground Up

It used to be, when a new school opened, people assumed it would be a lot like all the other schools around it would look about the same, be run the same way and offer the same kind of program. The thousands and thousands of schools that appeared during the Baby Boom years after World War II are good illustrations of this theory.

October Oct9, 1989

The President's Speech from the Summit: A Generous Vision

President Bush deserves many more cheers for his summit speech on education than he's gotten. A lot of people who heard the speech believed he didn't say much because the only thing they were listening to was a promise of more money.

October Oct1, 1989

Textbooks Tell America's Story: Half Right

What kind of U.S. History textbook would be skimpy in its discussion of George Washington? The most popular ones, according to Democracy's Half-Told Story: What American History Textbooks Should Add, a new study from the Education for Democracy Project.

September Sep24, 1989

Imperative for Education Summit: School Self-Renewal

When President Bush and the 50 governors meet in Charlottesville, Va., this week, I hope they'll resist the temptation to turn the education summit into a bully pulpit for airing numerous specific solutions to the numerous specific problems that ail our schools. Some of these proposals would be good, some not so good.

September Sep17, 1989

The Education Summit Peak or Pique?

When George Bush convenes the education summit next week, he'll preside over an occasion heavy with symbolic significance. This is only the third time a president has called together the governors of all the states to discuss a particular issue.

September Sep10, 1989

What Frills? The Arts are Basic

For some people, improving the curriculum in our schools means narrowing it. We'll produce better-educated students, they tell us -- students who will help us in our economic recovery -- if we drop arts programs and add more of the "basics."

September Sep3, 1989

Labor Day 1989 Closing the Skills Gap

America's economic position on Labor Day 1989 is not reassuring. The news from Wall Street was good this week, but our continuing competitiveness in world markets is going to depend on something that Wall Street cannot supply -- skilled workers.

August Aug27, 1989

Keeping Kids in School ... Who's Responsible?

People who care about our education system spend a lot of time thinking and talking about the dropout problem. We look at it in terms of social and personal consequences. We come up with dropout prevention strategies by the hundreds.

August Aug20, 1989

The Fall and Rise ... Of the Bottom Half

Charles Schnabolk, the president (and a founding member) of the New Jersey Chapter of the National Association of the Lower Half, says he's tired of hearing sneers at people who graduated in the lower half of their class.

August Aug13, 1989

Answers About School Incentives: Save Our Public Schools

I recently proposed a radical plan that would use incentives and competition to speed school restructuring. These principles are familiar enough in the business world -- our economy runs on them.

August Aug6, 1989

Failure of Nerve ... Keeps Us Failing

Sometimes I think our problems in education come from a failure of nerve, not from a scarcity of good ideas. There are lots of good ideas floating around. But we're afraid to seize one and try it out because it's not perfect - and it might lead to some kind of difficulty.

July Jul30, 1989

Desperate Remedies: Takeovers and Breakups

Two stories that appeared side by side in the New York Times this week should send an important message to people who haven't gotten it already. Public officials are getting more and more willing to prescribe desperate remedies for "failing" school systems.

July Jul23, 1989

A Message to the President: Put Merit in Merit Schools

Nobody likes to change. But business as usual in the public education system is going to put us out of business. Unless we change for the better -- and soon -- policymakers are going to find a cure that will be radical and painful.

July Jul16, 1989

Doing Well in School: It Doesn't Matter

Most kids act as though doing well in school is near the bottom of their list of priorities. They do the minimum, just enough to get by. Teachers and parents keep telling them it's important to study and get good grades because their futures depend on it. But the kids know better.

July Jul9, 1989

Impasse: Hold Kids Back or Move Them On?

The nation's 2.2 million teachers have just finished one of those jobs that never gets easier, no matter how many times you do it. I mean the annual, end-of-school decisions about which students are going to pass and which ones fail.

July Jul2, 1989

Teenagers in School: Lessons from the Playground

Nearly everyone who talks about school reform these days agrees that "restructuring" is the way to go. What do people mean by restructuring? Well, that depends on who's using the word.

June Jun25, 1989

Leave Well Enough Alone ... Restore the Old "ABC" Bill

Last Wednesday, thousands of parents and children from across the country gathered in Washington, D.C., for Children's Day on the Hill. They were rallying to dramatize the need for national child-care and parentalleave legislation.

June Jun18, 1989

If Teachers Get New Choices .... Shouldn't Parents?

School people are often cynical. They've been around long enough to know that every few years a new idea comes along that's supposed to cure all of our educational ills.