The Newark Teacher Strikes

The Newark Teacher Strikes

Author: Steve Golin

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 9780813530574

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After interviewing more than fifty teachers who were on the front lines during these strikes, historian Steve Golin concludes that another, equally important agenda, ignored until now, was on the table. These professionals wanted a voice in the decision-making process."--BOOK JACKET.


The Newark Teacher Strikes

The Newark Teacher Strikes

Author: Steve Golin

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2002-05-01

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 0813547024

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For three weeks in 1970 and for eleven weeks in 1971, the schools in Newark, New Jersey, were paralyzed as the teachers went on strike. In the wake of the 1971 strike, almost two hundred were arrested and jailed. The Newark Teachers Union said their members wanted improved education for students. The Board of Education claimed the teachers primarily desired more money. After interviewing more than fifty teachers who were on the front lines during these strikes, historian Steve Golin concludes that another, equally important agenda was on the table, and has been ignored until now. These professionals wanted power, to be allowed a voice in the educational agenda. Through these oral histories, Golin examines the hopes of the teachers as they picketed, risking arrest and imprisonment. Why did they strike? How did the union represent them? How did their action—and incarceration—change them? Did they continue to teach in impoverished schools? Golin also discusses the tensions arising during that period. These include differences in attitudes toward unions among black, Jewish, and Italian teachers; different organizing strategies of men and women; and conflict between teachers’ professional and working-class identities. The first part of the book sets the stage by exploring the experience of teachers in Newark from World War II to the 1970 strike. After covering both strikes, Golin brings the story up to 1995 in the epilogue, which traces the connection between educational reform and union democracy. Teacher Power enhances our understanding of what has worked and what hasn’t worked in attempts at reforming urban schools. Equally importantly, the teachers’ vivid words and the author’s perceptive analysis enables us to view the struggles of not just Newark, but the entire United States during a turbulent time.


Teacher Strike!

Teacher Strike!

Author: Jon Shelton

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2017-03-21

Total Pages: 371

ISBN-13: 0252099370

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A wave of teacher strikes in the 1960s and 1970s roiled urban communities. Jon Shelton illuminates how this tumultuous era helped shatter the liberal-labor coalition and opened the door to the neoliberal challenge at the heart of urban education today. As Shelton shows, many working- and middle-class whites sided with corporate interests in seeing themselves as society's only legitimate, productive members. This alliance increasingly argued that public employees and the urban poor took but did not give. Drawing on a wealth of research ranging from school board meetings to TV news reports, Shelton puts readers in the middle of fraught, intense strikes in Newark, St. Louis, and three other cities where these debates and shifting attitudes played out. He also demonstrates how the labor actions contributed to the growing public perception of unions as irrelevant or even detrimental to American prosperity. Foes of the labor movement, meanwhile, tapped into cultural and economic fears to undermine not just teacher unionism but the whole of liberalism.


An African American Dilemma

An African American Dilemma

Author: Zoë Burkholder

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 0190605138

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"Since Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 Americans have viewed school integration as a central tenet of the black civil rights movement. Yet, school integration was not the only-or even always the dominant-civil rights strategy. At times, African Americans also fought for separate, Black-controlled schools dedicated to racial uplift, community empowerment, and self-determination. An African American Dilemma offers a social history of debates over school integration within northern Black communities from the 1840s to the present. This broad geographical and temporal focus reveals that northern Black educational activists vacillated between a preference for either school integration or separation during specific eras. Yet, as there was never a consensus, this study also highlights the chorus of dissent, debate, and counter-narratives that pushed families to consider a fuller range of educational reforms. A sweeping historical analysis that covers the entire history of public education in the North, this study complicates our understanding of school integration by highlighting the diverse perspectives of Black students, parents, teachers, and community leaders all committed to improving public education. It finds that Black school integrationists and separatists have worked together in a dynamic tension that fueled effective strategies for educational reform and the black civil rights movement. This study draws on an enormous range of archival data including the black press, school board records, social science studies, the papers of civil rights activists, and court cases"--


The Encyclopedia of Strikes in American History

The Encyclopedia of Strikes in American History

Author: Aaron Brenner

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-01-28

Total Pages: 791

ISBN-13: 1317457072

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Strikes have been part of American labor relations from colonial days to the present, reflecting the widespread class conflict that has run throughout the nation's history. Against employers and their goons, against the police, the National Guard, local, state, and national officials, against racist vigilantes, against their union leaders, and against each other, American workers have walked off the job for higher wages, better benefits, bargaining rights, legislation, job control, and just plain dignity. At times, their actions have motivated groundbreaking legislation, defining new rights for all citizens; at other times they have led to loss of workers' lives. This comprehensive encyclopedia is the first detailed collection of historical research on strikes in America. To provide the analytical tools for understanding strikes, the volume includes two types of essays - those focused on an industry or economic sector, and those focused on a theme. Each industry essay introduces a group of workers and their employers and places them in their economic, political, and community contexts. The essay then describes the industry's various strikes, including the main issues involved and outcomes achieved, and assesses the impact of the strikes on the industry over time. Thematic essays address questions that can only be answered by looking at a variety of strikes across industries, groups of workers, and time, such as, why the number of strikes has declined since the 1970s, or why there was a strike wave in 1946. The contributors include historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and philosophers, as well as current and past activists from unions and other social movement organizations. Photos, a Topic Finder, a bibliography, and name and subject indexes add to the works appeal.


The Teacher Insurgency

The Teacher Insurgency

Author: Leo Casey

Publisher: Harvard Education Press

Published: 2020-11-24

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 1682535568

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In The Teacher Insurgency, Leo Casey addresses how the unexpected wave of recent teacher strikes has had a dramatic impact on American public education, teacher unions, and the larger labor movement. Casey explains how this uprising was not only born out of opposition to government policies that underfunded public schools and deprofessionalized teaching, but was also rooted in deep-seated changes in the economic climate, social movements, and, most importantly, educational politics. With an eye to maintaining the momentum of the insurgency, the author examines four key strategic questions that have arisen from the strikes: the relationship of mobilization to organizing; the relationship between protests and direct action; the conditions under which teacher strikes are most likely to be successful; and the importance of “bargaining for the common good.” More broadly, Casey examines how to organize teachers for collective action, focusing on four discourses of teaching: teaching as nurturance; as professionalism; as labor and craft; and as a vocation of democratic intellectual work.


Worth Striking For

Worth Striking For

Author: Isabel Nunez

Publisher: Teachers College Press

Published: 2014-04-15

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13: 0807773638

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Written by activist educators, Worth Striking For speaks to teachers and teachers-to-be about the drastic changes in the landscape of public education in recent decades and focuses on what they need to know about the debates and complex issues of reform affecting their lives and professions. The book identifies the most significant shifts in education policy, including how policy has helped or hindered the broader educational purposes of schools. Using the 2012 Chicago teachers strike as a framing device, the authors demonstrate how each of the policy areas addressed is critically important to teachers’ lives and work. Each chapter describes one of the Chicago teachers’ demands, and then explores a related policy arena through the lens of an associated philosophical purpose of education. The text features individually authored vignettes that juxtapose the authors’ personal experiences with the issues, bringing policy and policy activism to life. This hopeful book will inspire and empower teachers to take action in their schools, communities, districts, and states. "Grounded in Chicago-based education activism, Nuñez, Michie, and Konkol provide compelling lessons for urban education across the country. From union reform to diversifying the teaching force to challenging school closings, the analyses and narratives of these Chicago activist-scholars are a much needed guide for the rest of us. Spread the word!" —Gary Anderson, New York University "As a future teacher, I am so thankful that this book exists. Worth Striking For's empowering lessons are rarely taught to preservice teachers like myself. Reading this book has reminded me that impacting our students' lives is not limited to what we do inside the classroom, but what we fight for outside of it, too. It's a must read for anyone who believes the future of education and our youth are worth fighting for." —Stephanie Rivera, future teacher and graduate student, Rutgers University


Blaming Teachers

Blaming Teachers

Author: Diana D'Amico Pawlewicz

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2020-08-14

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 1978808429

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In Blaming Teachers, Diana D'Amico Pawlewicz reveals that historical professionalization reforms subverted public school teachers' professional legitimacy. Policymakers and school leaders understood teacher professionalization initiatives as efficient ways to bolster the bureaucratic order of the schools rather than as means to amplify teachers' authority and credibility.