AFT-Speeches

Excerpts from an interview with Al Shanker are reproduced here. He comments on a variety of educational issues including school vouchers, tuition tax credits, employment offices that indirectly encourage high school drop-outs, teachers' unions, the creation of a separate federal Department of Education, and privatization of education.

Al Shanker testifies before this sub-committee of the Committee on Education and Labor of the U.S. House of Representative. He warns against adoption of two house bills, H.R. 3564 and H.R. 4949 which deal with regulation of standardized tests. Similar legislation had recently been passed in New York, and Shanker had witnessed firsthand the negative consequences of the law. One proviso in one of the bills required the graded tests to be sent to students so they could see where they had erred.

Al Shanker discusses the history and development of teachers' unions in the United States. He traces the changing focus of teachers' unions from collective bargaining to larger questions of education policy to an expanded approach to politics. Shanker argues that teachers should pay attention to energy, trade, and commerce policies, for instance, because these policies affect the taxes which fund the public schools. Shanker believes that interest and involvement in the larger political picture will help put teachers in a position to enhance public opinion of education.