From the Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights' new report, "National Teachers' Unions and the Struggle Over School Reform":

Over the last decade, the national leaders
of the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers have made their unions implacable foes of laws and policies designed to improve public education for disadvantaged children.

The unions have battled against the principle that schools and education agencies should be held accountable for the academic progress of their students. They have sought to water down the standards adopted by states to reflect what students should know and be able to do. They have attacked assessments designed to measure the progress of schools, seeking to localize decisions about test content so that the performance of students in one school or community cannot be compared with others. They have resisted innovative ways--such as growth models--to assess student performance.

In their attack on education reform, the national unions have often been unconstrained by considerations of propriety and fairness. They have sought to inject weakening amendments in appropriations bills, hoping that they would prevail if no hearings were held and the public was unaware of their efforts. They have used the courts to launch an attack on education reform, employing arguments that could imperil many federal assistance programs going back to the New Deal. They have failed to inform their own members of the content of federal reform laws.

Worse yet, the NEA has on more than one occasion counseled disobedience to the law.

This history is not consistent with the long record of the two unions to advance equality of educational opportunity and with the leadership of former AFT President Albert Shanker in seeking to make teaching into a profession which would be responsible for the academic progress of students.

The Commission does not believe that the recent records of the NEA and the AFT are etched in concrete. Both unions have new leaders who could take their argumentations on a more constructive path. Groups espousing reform have recognized that there are weaknesses in the current law that necessitate change, including improvements in assessment, increasing incentives for teaching, and eliminating rigidities in the law. These groups would undoubtedly be willing to enter dialogue with the unions on changes as long as they preserved the basic principles of reform.

We urge that the NEA and the AFT reconsider their positions on the critical elements of reform--accountability, standards, and assessment. We urge also that they review the progress schools and students have made under The Improving America's School Act and No Child Left Behind law and make constructive recommendations for improving the laws without weakening their basic principles.

We urge that the national unions provide a forum for the reform initiatives put forward by local union leaders and that they undertake a dialogue with teacher education institutions about how they can better prepare their students to serve students with special needs.

We firmly believe that this is the course unions must take if they wish to preserve public education as a vital institution in American society.