Rosenberg, Bella

AFT Educational Issues Department Records

scaloia — Mon, 20 Apr 2015 17:20:16 -0400

The American Federation of Teachers is a labor union representing primary and secondary school teachers, paraprofessionals, higher education faculty and professional staff, and nurses and other health care professionals. The AFT Educational Issues Department, originally the Task Force on Educational Issues, is the research and development arm of the union. The department tracks education policies from local, state and national bodies, conducts research and analysis on those policies, produces briefs and reports, conducts workshops, and assists local AFT affiliates on educational issues. A major initiative of the department is the Education Research & Dissemination program (ER&D). The program began in 1981 with a grant from the National Institute of Education. It is focused on professional development through the collection of a body of research on education issues and translation of that material to classroom applications. Teachers are able to access research and apply new techniques in their classrooms. The ER&D program explores topics such as instruction methods, critical thinking, behavior management, and student motivation. Projects include the Visiting Practitioner program and Thinking Mathematics. The Educational Issues Department also organizes the bi-annual QuEST (Quality Educational Standards in Teaching) Conference.

The AFT Education Issues Department Records contain correspondence and chronological files, meeting minutes, reports, manuscripts and drafts, annotated articles, reports, conference packets, press releases, newsletters, fliers, photographs, negatives, and VHS and audiocassette tapes. The records contain communications with and publications from many education-related organizations as well as granting institutions.

AFT President's Office: Assistant to the President Bella Rosenberg Records

scaloia — Mon, 08 Dec 2014 17:21:06 -0500

Bella Rosenberg served as the assistant to the president of the American Federation of Teachers from 1984-2005, under Albert Shanker and Sandra Feldman. Albert Shanker was president of the AFT from 1974 to 1997. He was one of the first educators to embrace the findings of the report A Nation at Risk which outlined extensive problems in America’s public schools. Shanker and Rosenberg worked closely on various initiatives, many of them in response to the report. This included a peer review program started at the Toledo Federation of Teachers Local 250, a teacher certification program called the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, and in 1988, the concept of charter schools, which later took on a life of its own and became very different from Shanker’s original vision. Beginning in 1970, while Shanker was still president of New York’s United Federation of Teachers, he wrote a weekly column in the Sunday New York Times titled “Where We Stand”. He had to purchase advertising space in order to publish his writing. The weekly column lasted for 26 years. Sandra Feldman became Vice-President of the AFT in 1974, president of the UFT in 1986, and took over presidency of the AFT upon Shanker’s death in 1997. She was also involved in the AFL-CIO and Education International, a worldwide federation of teachers’ unions. During her AFT presidency, she strengthened the union’s relationship with the National Education Association, though a vote to merge with the NEA did not pass. Feldman served as AFT president until 2004.

Rosenberg collaborated with Shanker and Feldman on many projects and initiatives for the AFT. They worked together on articles and speeches, particularly Shanker’s “Where We Stand” column. Rosenberg was a primary force in AFT’s Lessons for Life Campaign in the mid-1990s, which sought to address issues raised in A Nation at Risk. Rosenberg worked on a report released by the AFT in 2004, for which she analyzed data from the 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress to conclude charter schools were performing worse than traditional public schools. She also gave many of her own speeches and interviews as a representative of the AFT.

The AFT President’s Office: Assistant to the President Bella Rosenberg Records contain correspondence, memos, notes, reports, manuscripts, books, brochures, press releases, surveys, minutes, VHS and audio cassette tapes, and photographic slides documenting the activities of the national office. The collection also contains articles, speeches, and testimonies, including, in some cases, multiple annotated drafts exchanged between Rosenberg and Shanker and Rosenberg and Feldman.

AFT Secretary-Treasurer's Office Records

dgolodner — Tue, 22 Sep 2015 14:27:04 -0400

Papers covering the activities of various secretary-treasurers of the AFT. The secretary-treasurer oversees departments within the national office, collects per capita dues, responds to affiliates’ needs such as strike and collective bargaining assistance, and is closely involved with the AFT Executive Council and the AFL-CIO secretary-treasurers.

Part I topics of note include organizing, segregated locals, worker education, international teacher unions, federal aid to education, and academic freedom.

Part II contains additional content related to the subjects in Part I, as well as material related to union finances, various assistance programs, strikes, the AFT Executive Committee and Council, AFT National Conventions, the National Education Association, and the AFL-CIO, especially jurisdictional disputes and secretary-treasurers' meetings.