Book illuminates UFT's role in struggles over teacher selection, diversity in NY
by Ron Whitehorne on Sep 13 2011
In 1968, the United Federation of Teachers(UFT) went on strike over the involuntary transfer of 19 teachers by a newly empowered community-controlled school board in the city’s Ocean Hill-Brownsville neighborhood. The controversies at the heart of that bitter strugglelive on in current debates over the methods of teacher selection, the role of seniority and due process in teacher assignment, and the appropriateness of affirmative action in the composition of urban teaching corps.
Then, as now, the role of educators of color in urban school districts was an issue that sparked controversy. In recounting how rules for teacher selection evolved in New York, Christina Collins' book, “Ethnically Qualified”, Race, Merit and the Selection of Urban Teachers, 1920-1980, illuminates the failure of the city's teachers' unions to effectively challenge the exclusion and marginalization of
