Six on Schools: Best Lists Of The Week: Instructional Strategies; The Return of Teacher Power; One Historian's Helpful Tip on
philip panaritis
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This return to militancy to effect positive change in America’s schools has its roots in a concept that began during the 1960s known as Teacher Power. During the 1960s and 1970s the United States witnessed a rise of teacher activism and militancy that swept through the country. Buoyed by years underfunding for schools, low pay, and societal views of teaching as an inferior profession, teachers across the country revolted against state and local school boards to demand improvements in education and to their profession. This movement coalesced around the concept of Teacher Power.
While other movements with similar monikers, such as the Black Power movement, have been well chronicled, the Teacher Power movement has remained a footnote in the story of American social movements. Teacher Power has largely remained dormant since the 1980s due to a national rise in anti-union beliefs and policies, and constant tension with educational reformers who place the blame of educational failings in the hands of teachers and their unions. However, the recent statewide strikes protests in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Arizona illustrate that Teacher Power has returned like wildfire, and this time these teachers might finish the job that their forebears started.
In a speech given in 1973 future American Federation of Teachers President Albert Shanker discussed the notion of Teacher Power arguing that it centered on the idea that, “teachers as an occupational group must be given responsibility for reshaping their school systems to the needs of the latter quarter of the 20th century,” and that Teacher Power was born out of the “deteriorating conditions in the schools.”
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That headline is like saying, “Flash! Water is Wet!”
Yet there are many elected officials who disparage that money matters. They say thatclass size doesn’t matter. They ignore real world problems of staffing schools and teaching kids with widely varying needs.
A new study finds that spending more does matter. When affluent parents spend large sums to send their children to a private school or to live in an expensive neighborhood, they are paying for small classes, well-maintained facilities, and a stable, experienced teaching staff.
We are unwilling to pay the price to provide similar resources to all children, even when we know that it matters.
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