Teachers’ unions may now be at the height of their unpopularity.

This spring, not only did President Bush’s first education secretary, Rod Paige, march out a book warning of their “death grip” on American schools, but the New York City Schools Chancellor, Joel Klein, privately told Mr. Paige that his critique was too kind. By fighting for what is best for teachers rather than what is best for students, the unions have become a “worm in the apple” of American schools, one author, Peter Brimelow, put it.

So it might come as a surprise that “Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles Over Schools, Unions, Race, and Democracy” (Columbia University Press, 552 pages, $29.95) — a biography of the man who made teachers’ unions the political powerhouses they are today — is an unapologetic appreciation of Shanker. Richard Kahlenberg proclaims Shanker, who led the New York City teachers’ union between 1964 and 1974 and then the national American Federation of Teachers until his death in 1997, the best and most important educator since John Dewey.

Shanker was a stubborn and skeptical participant in the history of modern liberalism. The child of Jewish immigrants at a time when the masthead of the local Yiddish language newspaper screamed “workers of the world unite,” Mr. Shanker stood on a soapbox in Union Square to argue against communists. In college, Shanker, who had been terrorized by anti-Semite neighbors as a child, worried about the effect a homeland in Israel would have on the region’s Arab population, but later became a strong supporter of Israel. By Mr. Kahlenberg’s account, this same stubborness was behind Shanker’s push to organize the United Federation of Teachers. After abandoning a philosophy Ph.D. to teach in public schools, Shanker found a workplace where administrators preyed on teachers, sometimes literally spying on them with binoculars. The treatment was not justified by the pay, which averaged $66 a week in the early 1950s. Yet unlike his mother, whose seamstress job improved considerably following her membership in the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union, Shanker had no organ for protest. His mission to expand the right of collective bargaining to New York government workers — begun, Mr. Kahlenberg discloses, at after-school whiskey sour parties for teachers at his Queens junior high school — ended in victory, inciting a wave of copycat movements across the country.

Mr. Kahlenberg’s story also stresses that Shanker fought on behalf of more than just teachers. “Teachers Want What Children Need,” his members’ signs read during a 1967 strike, and Mr. Kahlenberg digs up copious and convincing proof that Shanker truly aspired to fulfill the message. “Teachers will earn the right to the support of the public only as they give leadership within the community on issues which go beyond narrow self-interest,” Shanker said in 1965, responding to teachers concerned that a union meant to advocate for the interests of New York City teachers had taken a detour in a civil rights battle in Selma, Alabama. Going against the immediate interests of his members, Shanker would also fight for educational innovations such as higher pay for teachers who performed better, charter schools that would be free from district bureaucracies, and strict national standards in schools.

This history is an important revision to critiques of teachers’ unions that are now at risk of solidifying into dogma: The presumption that what is best for teachers is never the same as what is best for children. As Shanker’s life bears proof, the presumption is untrue. A coalition behind the “tough-liberal” principles Shanker supported — causes such as high educational standards, better pay for more accomplished teachers, more innovation through charter schools, and tough requirements to stay in the profession — could include teachers as well as business-minded reformers such as Messrs. Paige and Klein. Giving up on teachers’ partnership would be a foolish shot in the foot.

Yet, in exulting not just Shanker but in the institution he built, Mr. Kahlenberg takes his argument a step too far. “If teachers have too much power in education, who should have more?” Mr. Kahlenberg writes, dismissing alternatives such as parents, principals, and corporations, pointing out their various flaws of narrow interest. Even Mr. Kahlenberg acknowledges that the self-interest of unions complicated many of Shanker’s battles, including probably the most important of all: the tremendous barriers to firing bad teachers, which he was never able to win.