Greg Toppo's story in??USA Today about the rift between two segments of left-leaning education types is noteworthy. Education has for some lengthy period been relegated to the outskirts of political conversation, and it's refreshing to see it command a little spotlight, however briefly. The story, summed up, is this: Al Sharpton ("a political gadfly," writes Toppo) and Joel Klein have teamed up to do right by poor and minority children, and part of their agenda might run afoul of teachers' unions, which have traditionally been partners of civil rights organizations and personalities such as Sharpton. What does Randi Weingarten think about it?
"Too often what happens is that when people get into this, they blame all the people who have been toiling in this field without the resources and without the public focus on it," she said. "It's like saying that those of us who have been frontierspeople in this fight for equity for the last 50 years are the ones who should be faulted, as opposed to saying, ???We'll join you ready for duty--what can we do to help?'" ??
The above is called peevish whining. Weingarten is scandalized, it seems, that some are not ready to "join" her and would rather put forth ideas of their own. But what are Weingarten's ideas other than sound bites and continuation of the failed status quo? And what does Richard Kahlenberg think about it all?
Education historian Richard Kahlenberg said that while unions' and civil rights groups' interests "are usually aligned," this isn't the first time they've clashed. "It's been an uneasy alliance over the years."
Kahlenberg, the author of a recent biography on legendary American Federation of Teachers President Albert Shanker, said a deep rift between the groups "would be disastrous--these are two groups that are essential to the fight for equal opportunity in society, and more narrowly ... both groups have an interest in making sure schools are properly funded. So to declare war on the teacher unions, I think, would be a huge mistake."
Kahlenberg's claim that the interests of teachers' unions and civil right's groups "are usually aligned" deserves scrutiny.??That was true in the 1960s, but what about today? Sure, both entities are left-leaning and want to see Democratic politicians in power, but what about their core interests and missions? Civil rights groups, as they're generally and basically understood, are organizations that seek to obtain equal opportunities for black people; many of their leaders??believe that the education of today's young blacks is, in fact, the seminal modern civil rights struggle. Those who claim that teachers' unions support this goal, that they work on behalf of equal opportunities for black students, are, I think, misguided--at best, a mountain of evidence lies between their claim and the truth.
The??education alliance between our friends on the left is uneasy:??one faction believes??educational progress can come only from the type of innovation that the teachers' unions stymie, and??another faction supports the unions and ascribes k-12's failures to broken homes, broken hospitals, broken neighborhoods, and broken societies. If the quotes Toppo garnered from Weingarten and Kahlenberg are representative of the level of thought that the latter group is proffering, if this is indicative of the quality of the latter group's goals, then in this disagreement--I can't believe I'm writing this--Al Sharpton's is truly??the side of ideas.