AFT

  • Building a Coalition from the Grassroots
    Howard Ryan
    Sep 16 2011 - 12:30pm

    New York is a tough town for education advocates. The mayor is a corporate operator with a privatization agenda. The city’s teachers union offers meager resistance. Rank and filers are building a no-cuts coalition, showing activists they shouldn't wait for permission.

  • The NEA’s Circus

    At times a P.T. Barnum-like spectacle conducted under the thumb of staff, the assembly representing the National Education Association is also an impressive demonstration of a democratic decision-making body.

  • Mass Teacher Layoffs and School Closures Hit Detroit
    Howard Ryan
    Apr 19 2011 - 6:08pm

    Detroit is now a trendsetter in the dismantling of public schools and stripping of teachers’ union rights. The schools' chief handed layoff notices to all 5,466 teachers and staff, in a bid to pick and choose who stays and who goes.

  • Troublemakers on the West Coast, Too

    Far from the snowy battles of Wisconsin and Ohio, organizers had hoped for 100 people to attend the Labor Notes Troublemakers School in San Diego last Friday. But 284 packed the halls and classrooms.

  • Teachers’ Union-Management Collaboration Fails To Prevent Mass Firings in Providence
    Simone Landon
    Feb 26 2011 - 1:03pm

    Exactly 1,926 pink slips will soon make their way to the homes of Providence’s public school teachers. That’s one termination notice for every teacher in the system. Providence's teachers union has been one of the foremost advocates of the “collaborative” approach to labor-management relations.

  • Unions Beat Anti-Teacher Agenda in Illinois
    Howard Ryan
    Feb 3 2011 - 10:00am

    A billionaire gang headed by Bill Gates and Eli Broad wants to capture the billions spent on America’s public schools and convert them into a corporate-owned test-score factory. But their plan faces teacher resistance, and nowhere more than in Chicago, where a feisty new leadership is heading the Chicago Teachers Union.

  • How’s Partnership Working for Teachers?
    Howard Ryan
    Feb 2 2011 - 10:17am

    With a few local exceptions, America’s teachers unions have met billionaire school reform with surrender, accommodation, and ill-advised partnership. The AFT’s largest local is a case study in the turn-the-cheek approach.

  • Privatizers Chase Education’s Billions
    Mark Brenner
    Feb 1 2011 - 3:39pm

    Wonder what’s at stake in the charter school debate? How about a pot of money as big as the Pentagon budget? That’s about $562 billion in the 2006-07 school year, according to the latest numbers on local, state, and federal education spending.

  • Billionaires’ School Reform: What It Means for Teachers and Students
    Julie Cavanagh
    Feb 1 2011 - 3:17pm

    It’s no coincidence that those fueling and funding school reform are millionaires, billionaires, and large corporations. To believe that their interest lies in helping children would require a suspension of logic and a denial of our history.

  • Reformers in Chicago Teachers Union Grapple with Leadership Challenges
    Jackson Potter
    Jan 13 2011 - 11:48am

    Chicago’s Mayor Daley and his corporate allies had a plan: cripple the Chicago Teachers Union. They nearly got away with it.