There is a new parlor game among the cognoscenti called “Albert Shanker Said This 20 or 30 Years Ago So It Must Be Right.”
Last fall, I had a tiff with New Jersey Commissioner Chris Cerf, who invoked Shanker’s name to support the Christie administration’s push for charters. I patiently explained that Al Shanker was indeed a founding father of the charter movement in 1988, but became a vehement critic of charters in 1993. He decided that charters and vouchers were the same thing, and both would be used to “smash” public education. This is not a matter of speculation. It is on the record.
Now the Shanker blog has an article by Lisa Hansel, former editor of the AFT’s “American Educator” magazine and now an employee of the Core Knowledge Foundation, asserting that Shanker would endorse Common Core if he were alive today. (The Core Knowledge English Language Arts program is now licensed to Amplify, which is run by Joel Klein and owned by Rupert Murdoch.)
Hansel also quotes Shanker as a great admirer of “A Nation at Risk.”
But here is the problem. Hansel speculates about what Shanker would say if he were alive today. She doesn’t know.
Would he join with Jeb Bush to endorse the Common Core? We don’t know.
Would he be as enthusiastic about “A Nation at Risk” in 2013 as he was in 1983, now that it has become the Bible of the privatization movement? We don’t know.
However, I can speculate too. Al Shanker cared passionately about a content-rich curriculum. So do I. Would his love for a content-rich curriculum have caused him to join with those who want to destroy public education? I don’t think so.
Would he have come to realize that “A Nation at Risk” would become not a document for reform but an indictment against public education? If he had, he would have turned against it.
Would he have felt good about Common Core if he knew that it had never been field tested? Would he have been thrilled with the prospect that scores will plummet across the nation, giving fodder to the privatizers? I think not.
Would he have been concerned that the primary writers of the Common Core were the original members of the board of Michelle Rhee’s union-busting StudentsFirst? Absolutely.
Would he have allied himself and his union with those who want to destroy the union and privatize public education? No.
Where would Albert Shanker stand on the Common Core if he were alive today?
I don’t know, and neither does anyone else.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Let’s get out the crystal ball and like Nancy Reagan go to the astrologer and they can tell us what he would say and do. This is the level they are at. No one knows. Now is not then.
Frankly, Al Shanker’s endorsement would make me think even less of Common Core. Al Shanker is held up as a strong union leader by some, but my experience with him was as a leader of the fight against community control of the schools in NYC — pitting teachers AGAINST the very allies that we most need (in that case, the African-American, Puerto Rican and Chinese families struggling for a good,education for their children). He helped set in motion precisely the kinds of things that allied the union, as an organization, more with the kinds of forces now attacking us, and against the very parents and communities we most need to serve, and most need to work with (today it’s the likes of Gates, Broad, and the politicians of both parties who promote their “reforms”). This is a legacy which still holds us back, and which the Chicago teachers have done so much to turn around.
Then there is that disputed unsubstantiated quote attributed to Shanker which is used to bash Shanker and unions:
“The teachers unions are the clearest example of a group that has lost its way. Whenever anyone dares to offer a new idea, the unions protest the loudest. Their attitude was memorably expressed by a longtime president of the American Federation of Teachers: He said, quote, ‘When school children start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of children.’ ”
— Mitt Romney in an education speech at the Latino Coalition’s Annual Economic Summit in Washington, D.C, May 23, 2012
Mitt Romney, another multi-millionaire who hates unions and will use an unsubstantiated made up quote to bash unions and to demean Shanker.
Joe, Joel Klein used that spurious quote. No one has ever found a time or place when Shanker said it. Fair to call it a lie.
Well, one can only speculate that he would not have supported CCSS that did not have research to back them or qualified educators who created them.
Diane,
It is interesting that a report known for cautioning against spending money on education is used in any way to positively spin Common Core (& PARCC tests)—-many districts in Louisiana are struggling to get all computers ‘PARCC ready’ by 2014-2015 school year (that would include an upgrade to Windows 7). That comes at a hefty cost with no guarantees other than the scores will tank. How can any fiscally-minded individual–especially those that identify as conservative–support such untested, pricey ideas?
Bryan, most who have looked at implementation say that it will cost billions for Common Core, between new technology, professional development, new tests, and new materials. Now do you understand the corporate support?
Perhaps rather than speculate on what Shanker would have done, can we not just directly say we who are AFT members request that our union not endorse CCSS until, as Melissa Heckler puts it here, they come with adequate research behind them, qualified educators’ input and direction, and a recognition of teacher-led best-practices being necessary to implement, along with a rejection of high-stakes testing and teacher evaluation based on test scores. That seems like what we should be getting at — looking forward.
Good idea, Kipp. I think AFT has already endorsed CCSS. Randi is giving a major speech this week in NYC and I am hoping she suggests that implementation must be careful and deliberate, as it was NOT in NYC.
I seriously doubt he would support that garbage. He learned his lesson about his naive notion of charter schools, and although long dead, he’s never lived it down.
Furthermore, speculating on what he would have done is a waste of time. What AFT’s current big shot is doing should be a concern to EVERYBODY. She’s a total sellout, a mole for the privatizers.
Would he support anything written on the Shanker blog? I’ve disagreed with virtually everything I’ve ever read there, including this article, so I’m not wasting any more of my precious time on that site.
Having talked with Shanker many times, I’d disagree that he was a “founding father” of the charter movement. He used the term in some NY TImes ads that the teachers paid for.
But what he was suggesting was already possible within school districts, and he knew it. He was familiar with District 4 in New York City, where teachers had been allowed to create new schools and schools within schools. Deborah Meier is an example, with encouragement from Sy Fliegel of the district administration, and others.
There are numerous examples in the 1970’s and 1980’s of school districts and teachers doing what he suggested. Shanker did note in one of his columns that teachers who tried to create new options within traditional districts often were treated like “traitors or outlaws for daring to move outside the lock step.”. He then noted, accurately, that if they someone succeeded in creating a new option within the district they could look forward to “insecurity, obscurity and outright hostility.”
Al Shanker, “Were We Stand: Convention Plots New Course – A Charter for Change” New York Times paid advertisement, July 10, 1988, p. E-7.
It does not appear that the NY Times index includes advertisements such as those produced by Shanker. But I can send a copy of this Shanker column to anyone who sends me a stamped self-addressed envelope. Write to me, joe@centerforschoolchange.org
Having worked in a district option, and having worked with others who helped create other options around the country, I can confirm what he wrote.
That’s part of the reason why the charter idea as developed in Minnesota, allowed educators to go to a group outside the local school board to have their ideas reviewed, and potentially (but not always) approved.
A Nation at Risk : wrong then, wrong now:
“To our surprise, on nearly every measure, we found steady or slightly improving trends.”
Education at Risk: Fallout from a Flawed Report | Edutopia
The SANDIA report refuted the interpretation of data and the conclusions in “A Nation At Risk”
By then, however, catastrophically failing schools had become a political necessity. George H.W. Bush campaigned to replace Reagan as president on a promise to confront the crisis. He had just called an education summit to tackle it, so there simply had to be a crisis.
The government never released the Sandia report. It went into peer review and there died a quiet death. Hardly anyone else knew it even existed until, in 1993, the Journal of Educational Research, read by only a small group of specialists, printed the report.
http://www.edutopia.org/landmark-education-report-nation-risk
I’m confused. If someone invokes John Dewey in discussing a policy idea, should I respond “Dewey is dead move on”? Looking over Shanker’s life and ideas, a philosophy emerges. I can agree with him on some matters, like national standards, and reject other ideas he had, like US involvement in the Vietnam War. Furthermore I can apply his medodology to questions that come up in the education debate regardless of whether or not they were present during his time.
The fact is that Common Core has the potential to move us in the direction that Shanker saw. It is a step toward national standards. I can say this and at the same time speak out against high stakes testing and linking test scores to teacher evaluations. I can protest that schools have not been aided properly in implementing the Common Core. I can denounce the privateers who think they can use CC to destroy public education. But throwing national standards in the garbage will not further our cause.
We teachers have needed something to change the conversation in our schools from test preparation and skill drilling to critical thinking and teaching writing. I am seeing this happen with CC. Im secondary ed, however, and I understand how K-3 teachers are furious. I think Shanker was good at listening to what outside dereformers were arguing and encouraging teachers to implement change on our own terms.
In my many many conversations with Shanker, and speaking trips we made together, plus NBPTS meetings, we argued about many things. He claimed to agree with me that schools were not doing any worse than before and that A Nation at Risk was nonsense, BUT he argued, we need the attention it offers us to improve what we have, get more money out of D.C. and so forth! We need to be scared into action. I insisted that accepting a lie because it was useful was a mistake. So we argued on. He created the with the NEA the NBPTS because he wanted more complex and sophisticated standards for what it meant to be a good teacher, and he wanted them set by the profession. His so-called flirtation with charters had in mind precisely what District 4 and some schools in Philly were exploring–schools freed from so many management/labor restrictions. I welcomed that support, of course, and do not recall anyone ever suggesting he might prefer a voucher system or a semi-privatized system, etc. And he believed in the rights of teachers, of course. We had plenty that we disagreed about–including aspects of the 1967 and ’68 strikes, his “critical” support for the Vietnam war and his lack of support for McGovern. Indeed he could be ruthless. But his ideas bear absolutely no link to the so-called reforms we are seeing rushed through our legislative bodies today–led by people whose agenda was certainly not Al’s.