The challenge of reopening US public schools in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic has high-lighted the significant role that local teachers unions play in setting policy. The politics of school reopening during the pandemic has brought to the national spotlight the outsized role that teachers unions play in managing big cities. Bureau of Labor…

The United States has, for the last generation, been going through a significant and highly contested period of change in its schools. A bipartisan consensus around a reform agenda of accountability and choice was rolled out nationwide, with promises of closing achievement gaps and raising standards, all without the infusion of new resources. This…

A strike last week by some 29,000 teachers in Chicago pushed long-simmering tensions over deeply divisive school improvement ideas--including changes in teacher evaluation and the takeover or closure of underperforming schools--into the national spotlight. A framework for a tentative agreement emerged last Friday, and the union's house of…

In comparing one public school to another, discussions frequently include talk concerning the socio economics of a school or district, which then leads to talk about the advantages that one socioeconomic setting has over another. Educators tend to agree that low academic achievement frequently associated with a low socioeconomic status is a…

The unionization of teachers has had consequences beyond traditional trade union objectives and now encompasses educational and sociopolitical goals. The American Federation of Teachers and the United Federation of Teachers of New York have used their organized power to influence school administration policies, to better the educational…

This study deals with the urban school system as a contracting agency which must negotiate with an organized group of employees who formerly were relatively powerless in presenting demands. The focus of the study is on the contracts drawn between the boards of education of New York City and Detroit with the respective teachers' unions in these…

This study documents the legal, political, economic, and managerial constraints in the Philadelphia Public School System and traces their impact on the policies and practices of the system. Specifically, the study focuses on collective bargaining relationships and on their impact on the system. The first section outlines the basic constraints that…

This collection of articles revolves around the struggle for full racial equality through community control of schools by the black and Puerto Rican people of New York City. The opening chapter describes the city Board of Education's deliberate policy of intensifying and consolidating segregation during the very years when it was most volubly…

This document contains testimony presented at the public hearings of the New York City Commission on Human Rights. The hearings of this commission focused on two problem areas--decentralization and teacher training, and curriculum. The burning issues of anti-Semitism and black or white racism in the schools were concerns of a special investigatory…