Portland, OR
For working families, education opens opportunities. It enriches Americans with choices -- in deciding on the jobs we want, the political positions we take, and the personal growth we prefer. And that is the fundamental job of unions: to open opportunities for working families.
Working families recognize that quality public education is crucial to all Americans. When a union advocates genuine equality of educational opportunity and high standards for achievement and conduct in all our public schools, it speaks for working families -- and builds the commitment that makes the union even more effective. That's a key reason education is central to the American Working Families Agenda the Executive Council endorsed in December.
The time to focus on education is now. In 1996, voters forced the Republican majority in Congress to retreat from its attack on education programs. The Washington Post front page for September 18, 1996, told the story: "GOP Restores $2.3 Billion It Cut in Education Funds
{--} Republicans Want to Avoid a Preelection Gridlock." The same story quotes Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi who said: "We can either get our brains beat out politically or we can get in there . . . ."
Americans want education, they want their public schools to work effectively for them, and they want to ensure that the financial resources are provided to meet the needs of all working families to get a quality education. Americans believe that the opportunity for quality education is not just for the privileged few. They see educational opportunity and the necessary action to achieve it as a matter of the highest national priority. A January 1997 poll (by the Coalition for America's Children) found Americans see improving education as the top priority for Congress
-- and 76 percent favor increased federal funding. Another poll that month (by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press) found 75 percent of Americans set improving education as the top priority for the President and Congress, tied only by fixing Social Security.
Not only has President Clinton put education at the top of his agenda, he has also made greater access to lifelong learning and reaching high standards of achievement and conduct the centerpiece of that agenda. That focus was evident in his February 1 State of the Union address, in the budget he released on February 6 and in his legislative proposals of the last four years.
The AFL-CIO American Working Families Agenda spotlights improving education. It continues the commitment in the AFL-CIO Constitution to "providing the nation with the highest standard of education at all levels."
The Standing Committee on Education mission statement, delivered to the Executive Council in August 1996, stresses the need for the Federation and its affiliates to shape education and training policies: "Those policies should extend to every working family opportunities for the highest standard of education, whether in schooling or adult basic education, lifelong learning, post-secondary study or skills . . . ."
We need fairer access to a first-rate education at all levels -- for all working families. Public schooling and access to affordable higher education are under unprecedented assault. If the assault succeeds, it will undermine the foundations for citizenship, work and growth. Through unions, working families together can stop the attack.
School voucher proposals threaten universal free public education. They are a variant of privatizing and contracting-out that would undercut the common good, drain the public schools of much needed resources, and bring greater fragmentation by class, race, ethnicity and religion. They would betray this nation's commitment to equal educational opportunity and they would exacerbate inequality.
In February 1996, the Executive Council denounced a federal voucher proposal for the District of Columbia. It recognized that the chief priority for our schools, and the foremost wish of parents and the public, is establishing and following through on high standards for achievement and conduct. But voucher schemes "take the resources that constructive measures require. They undermine the system of public education that working families have fought so hard to obtain." For now and for the future, the overwhelming majority of youngsters will depend on public schools, and these schools must be at least the equal of the best in the world.
Rather than divert resources, we should increase and target them -- and use them more effectively. We must develop a strategy that builds on our traditional support for Title I of the Improving America's Schools Act (the former Elementary and Secondary Education Act), which focuses on basic subjects and higher standards for children in our poorest school districts. Our strategy should encompass federal, state and local measures. Its goal will be to provide our public schools, wherever their location, with the teachers, materials, physical environment and safety that enable all students to meet higher standards for achievement and conduct.
Access to education is a vital part of any strategy. The recommendation of the FCC's Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service to adopt a policy by the FCC favoring universal access to the Internet for all classrooms and libraries in America is a step in the right direction. But, access is only a step. President Clinton put that step in this context: ". . . every 8-year old reading, every 12-year old able to use the Internet, every 18-year old able to go to college and every classroom with Internet access."
Access for working families to higher education is decreasing. Most Americans consider access to college very important for themselves and their families -- and they're right. Between 1979 and 1995, according to Larry Mishel, Jared Bernstein and John Schmitt of the Economic Policy Institute, the real hourly wage for workers with less than a college degree -- some three-quarters of the workforce -- fell 11.9 percent. For those with a college or advanced degree, it rose.
But access is under attack. State support for public colleges and universities has dropped. Federal aid to students has shifted increasingly from grants to loans. Tuition and fees mount at rates far exceeding inflation. Colleges and universities grow ever more stratified by family income. Too many students face the terrible dilemma of abandoning college or burdening themselves with excessive debt that limits their life and career choices.
Working families must share the returns to education. Expanded educational opportunities brought our country great benefits. The GI Bill of 1944 propelled more than 12.4 million veterans and their families into the middle class. Federal student aid dramatically increased college enrollment, especially among minority Americans, and the number of higher- wage earners (and taxpayers).
If our unions are to serve working families, build union strength and create a worthwhile future for our country, we must act on education. We need schools that set and follow through on high standards for achievement and conduct, and we need access to higher education based on hard work and merit rather than family income. Only with these basics in place can we reduce the disparities in educational opportunity that threaten not only working families but our democracy.