Richard D. Kahlenberg iscurrently a Senior Fellow at The Century Foundation, where he writes about education, equal opportunity, and civil rights. He has been a Fellow at the Center for National Policy, a visiting associate professor of constitutional law at George Washington University and a legislative advisor.

He is the author of the following three books:

• All Together Now: Creating Middle Class Schools through Public School Choice, (Brookings Institution Press, 2001).
• The Remedy: Class, Race, and Affirmative Action, (Basic Books, 1996).
• Broken Contract: A Memoir of Harvard Law School, (Hill & Wang/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1992).

He is the editor of four Century Foundation books:

America's Untapped Resource: Low-Income Students in Higher Education (2004);
Public School Choice vs. Private School Vouchers (2003) ;
Divided We Fail: Coming Together Through Public School Choice. The Report of The Century Foundation Task Force on the Common School, Chaired by Lowell Weicker (Executive Director) (2002); and A Notion at Risk: Preserving Public Education as an Engine for Social Mobility(2000).
In this interview, he discusses his latest book about Albert Shanker entitled :Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles Over Schools, Unions, Race and Democracy published by Columbia University Press, 2007.

1) First of all, what made you choose Albert Shanker to write about? 

Most of us would love to do one big thing in life, and Al Shanker did three.  He was a founding father of modern teacher unions in the 1950s and early 1960s, helping create a powerful institution that stands at the intersection of the two great movements for equality in the United States: public education and trade unionism.  Then, in the 1980s and 1990s, he became the leading education reformer in the United States, unleashing a series of innovative ideas that continue to be discussed today.  Finally, he was an advocate of a unique political philosophy -- "tough liberalism" -- that I believe is more potent politically and substantively than either orthodox liberalism or conservatism is today.

2) How has Albert Shanker influenced you personally? 

I met Al Shanker when I was writing a book about affirmative action.  I made the argument that preferences in college admissions should be based on economic status or class rather than race or ethnicity.  The idea was getting much more traction from conservatives than liberals, and Al Shanker was really the only prominent figure on the left who shared with me the belief that it was important to take affirmative steps to address past discrimination, but that on the merits and the politics, it made far more sense to give a leg up to low income kids of all races.  Al Shanker and I couldn't understand why it was "liberal" to say a wealthy lawyer's kid who was African American deserved a preference over a waitresses's kid who was white.

3) What is his legacy if you will, vis-a-vis the teacher's unions? 

Al Shanker has two legacies for teacher unions.  First, he helped build them into powerful organizations, which can help shut down wrongheaded ideas, such as private school vouchers.  Second, he helped redirect teacher unions so that they are concerned not only about what is good for teachers, but also about what is good for children.

4) I used to read his column in the New York Times every Sunday. He struck me as provocative, yet an advocate for his teachers.  I thought him scholarly and somewhat erudite, yet in touch with the problems in the typical classroom. In reading his work, what perceptions did you come away with? 

In researching the book, I read all 1300 of his "Where We Stand" columns.  They took extraordinarily complex issues and presented them in an easily understandable way, without oversimplifying.  

The columns were so well done that many readers were confused and thought they were part of the editorial copy of the New York Times and would write letters to the editor in response.  

5) You refer to him as a "tough liberal ", yet others, with his approach to standards based teaching, may consider him an educational conservative. Nowadays, we have computers and the Internet in the classroom. What would be his stance on this new aspect of education? 

By "tough liberal," I mean that Al Shanker was a liberal, concerned about social mobility and a defender of public education and trade unions; but also that he was "tough," holding a realistic view of human nature and understanding the way the world works. 

On the content of education, he was a conservative, who wanted children of all backgrounds to have a basic shared understanding of American culture.  He argued, along with E.D. Hirsch Jr., that to be a political liberal, concerned about social mobility, one had to be an educational conservative, who was concerned about making sure, especially, that low income students had access to a rich curriculum steeped in American culture, institutions and democracy.

On the specific issue of technology, he was personally an enthusiast for cutting edge innovations and always wanted the AFT to have the latest.  That translated into a desire to tap into technology to improve learning for children.

6) If he were alive today, what do you think would be his top five concerns about education and teachers? 

I think Al Shanker would be concerned about the following:  1. Preserving public education as an instrument of social cohesion and economic mobility, against proposals for private school vouchers.  2. Raising standards for students by fixing No Child Left Behind to ensure high quality national standards.  3. Making teaching a profession rather than just an occupation.  4. Supporting strong discipline policies in schools.  5. Making sure that public education was geared toward Americanizing students of all different backgrounds, rather than teaching children to identify with particular racial, ethnic or religious groups.

7) You just participated in a presentation "Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles Over Schools, Unions, Race, and Democracy". Could you please indicate what you believe the school battles were, the union battles, the race battles and the democracy battles? And who did he fight these battles with?

The title of the book goes to the four areas Al Shanker engaged in.  In schooling, he advocated for public education, for higher standards and the professionalization of teaching.  In the union world, he battled for a stronger role for trade unionism in American society and sought to have the NEA become part of the AFL-CIO. 

In the area of race, Al Shanker fought for civil rights and against racial preferences and quotas.  It all came together on the issue of democracy, which Shanker championed abroad and at home.  He believed public schools were more than institutions to train employees; they were places to train democratic citizens.  Free trade unions were more than just organizations for improving wages and benefits; they were vital institutions to check the power or corporations and dictators.   In a democracy, it was critical to have people of all races held to a single standard.  Finally, in the area of foreign policy, it was important to put democracy promotion at the center of a liberal international agenda.  In this last area, the disastrous Iraq War has left many jaded about the goal of promoting democracy abroad.  AFT vice president Herb Magidson has noted that George Bush has done for democracy promotion what Joseph McCarthy did for anti-Communism.  But the principle is still worth preserving today.

Shanker battled many people on these issues -- from the NEA on racial preferences to Ronald Reagan on trade unions -- but he had an answer to the question: what do you stand for?  Al Shanker stood for political and economic democracy.

8)  I have often lamented the death of Albert Shanker, and  in my opinion, no one has appeared to take his place. I have been sorely disappointed with the leadership of the various teachers unions over the past few years. Has the leadership of the various teachers' unions been co-opted, or are they simply content with the status quo? 

Al Shanker had enormous shoes to fill, and there is no one quite like him.  Having said that, Shanker left a powerful legacy at the AFT today.  Ed McElroy continues to lead a union that is far more progressive and intellectual than the NEA; today, the AFT is pushing teacher peer review programs, for example.  Randi Weingarten in New York City stands in Al Shanker's tradition when she advocates higher pay on the schoolwide level for higher performance; UFT-run charter schools; and the organizing of child care workers.  Adam Urbanski in Rochester, likewise, follows in Shanker's tradition through the Teacher Union Reform Network.  Of course, there are many teacher union leaders who aren't doing enough to live up to Al Shanker's legacy, but he did lay down a marker by which all subsequent union leaders must be measured.

9) What question have I neglected to ask about Albert Shanker, who unquestionably had a pervasive effect on teachers, education, and the teacher's union  movement? 

One of the pivotal moments in the history of teacher unions (and modern American liberalism) were the strikes Al Shanker led over community control in New York City in 1968. In what was the first assault on labor from the Left, Black Power advocates in the ghetto of Ocean Hill-Brownsville fired several white educators, without providing a justification.  Shanker responded by shutting down the New York City schools for 36 days.  It was a turning point for American liberalism, as many upper middle class whites sided with Black Power advocates against the union, jettisoning principles like school integration and the right not to be fired without good reason.   Al Shanker was on the right side of history, and American liberalism is continuing to recover from that watershed strike.

10) Is Albert Shanker turning over in his grave when No Child Left Behind is discussed? Or would he be happy with this legalistic approach to education?  

I think Al Shanker would have supported the grand bargain of NCLB -- more resources for greater accountability -- but would have strongly opposed several provisions in the law (including the failure to keep the funding portion of the bargain.)  Shanker believed in national standards, not 50 different state standards.  He believed 100% proficiency was an impossibility.  He believed that it was unfair to hold teachers accountable if kids weren't also held accountable.  (He quipped: telling kids that if they fail the test, their teachers would be punished, did not set up the right set of incentives.)  And he was for high quality tests which would be good to teach to.  NCLB is off the mark on all those points. Many wish Al Shanker were still around to help restore the original vision of standards-based reform.

Published November 15, 2007