New York City Teachers Union’s Sordid History

It was interesting to read Gary Shapiro’s account of Baruch historian Clarence Taylor’s lecture about the New York City Teachers Union [“A Baruch Professor Lectures on Race And Education,” Knickerbocker, March 3, 2005]. He mentioned that the union “existed between 1916 and 1964” but explained neither why it ceased to exist nor the larger political context in which it functioned.

The battle for the soul of the Teachers Union is one of the most fascinating chapters in New York City’s history. In the 1930s, the union was torn by a power struggle between communists and anti-communists. In 1935, communist sympathizers took control, and the leadership of the union walked out and created a new organization, called the Teachers Guild. The story of the split within the union is told in Robert W. Iversen’s “The Communists and the Schools” (Harcourt, Brace, 1959).

In 1941, the NYC Teachers Union was ousted from the American Federation of Teachers because of its adherence to the party line. During Senate hearings in 1952-53, a star witness was Bella Dodd, who described her role as a link between the Teachers Union (in which she was an official) and the Communist Party.

In 1961, teachers in the New York City public schools held their first election to choose an organization to represent them in collective bargaining. The election was easily won by the United Federation of Teachers, which was led by the anti-communist descendants of the Teachers Guild. Three years later, the T.U. went out of existence.

DIANE RAVITCH
Brooklyn

Teachers’ Race & Class Size

Re: “Teacher’s Race May Play a Role in Student Achievement,” Meghan Clyne, Page 1, February 25, 2005. The finding that a student assigned to a class with a teacher of the same race may in some cases lead to higher achievement is well known. Thomas Dee, a professor at Swarthmore, recently published an article in which he looked at data from the STAR study in Tennessee, one of the few times teachers have been randomly assigned to different classrooms, to see if this large-scale experiment would shed light on this issue. Sure enough, he found that both white and black students learned more when they had teachers of their same race. According to Mr. Dee, students did better every year they were taught by a same-race teacher, and these benefits were cumulative; others fell further behind every year that they had a teacher of a different race.

But Mr. Dee found something even more interesting: For those students who were in smaller classes, the race of their teacher no longer mattered. Indeed, both white and black students did better in small classes, whatever their teachers’ racial backgrounds.

These findings are especially illuminating, since they suggest yet another reason why reducing class size here in New York City and in other large cities with a large number of minority students is so important. When teachers have a class so large that they cannot get to know each student individually, they are often forced to ration their time by affording only some of them the full benefit of their attention. It is not surprising that their efforts are usually focused on those students with whom they can easiest identify, especially those who sit in the front and seem eager to connect with them.

The same phenomenon probably occurs on the students’ side – but if they are able to get to know their teacher as an individual as a result of being placed in a small class, the barrier of their own racial stereotypes can be more easily transcended. As LouAnne Johnson has written, “When classes are small enough to allow individual student-teacher interaction, a minor miracle occurs: Teachers teach and students learn.”

LEONIE HAIMSON
Class Size Matters
Manhattan

‘Academe Gone Mad?’

S. Yusem sees no rationale for life tenure for academics [“Academe Gone Mad?” Seymour Yusem, Letters, February 24, 2005]. He should ponder the message in your lead editorial the next day. Professor Khalidi earned tenure at two world-class universities based on rigorous assessment of his scholarship.

He is not the first academic whose views attract the attention of the lynch mob ready to punish those who offend the powerful. That is why tenure was fought for and won; it protects and empowers independent thinkers who give meaning to the principles that universities honor.

All would learn some lessons from the exhibit now at the CUNY Graduate Center about the persecution of radicals and leftists at City College in the 1930s and 1940s.

SUMNER M. ROSEN
Professor emeritus
Columbia University Manhattan

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