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Though the titles and acronyms of policies differ from one country to another, throughout the world a political project has taken root with the assumption that to reduce poverty and inequality, governments should privatize school systems, alter teaching from a career to contract labor, use standardized tests to make students and teachers accountable, and curtail the power and legal rights of teachers unions. This article explores how teacher activists might help reverse neoliberal educational politics by developing mutually-respectful collaborations among teachers, parents and youth in poor communities, in school-based and system-wide partnerships that involve teachers unions. Analyzing events as they were experienced and influenced by a New York City-based NGO of teachers committed to educational justice, the author examines the landscape of educational reform politics and the creation of new spaces and organizational forms not confined by collective bargaining jurisdictions and traditional bargaining demands. The study suggests that development of a social movement of teachers that might edge teachers unions in the direction of social movement teacher unionism may not occur in a linear fashion. Rather, a complex push-pull dynamic occurs with each change, opening and retracting space, remaking networks and influencing longstanding personal ties among activists. ; Aunque los títulos y acrónimos de las políticas difieran de un país a otro, en todo el mundo, un proyecto político basado en la suposición que para reducir la pobreza y la desigualdad, los gobiernos han de privatizar los sistemas escolares, está alterando la docencia desde la promoción hasta el contrato laboral, el uso de tests estandarizados para rendir cuentas con el profesorado y el alumnado, así como el recorte del poder y de los derechos legales de los sindicatos de profesorado. Este artículo explora como el activismo del profesorado puede ayudar a cambiar la política educativa neoliberal establiendo colaboraciones de mútuo respeto entre profesorado, familias y jóvenes de comunidades en desventaja, en un sistema de partenariado con base en la escuela y que involucra a los sindicatos del profesorado. Analizando los eventos promovidos por una ONG de profesorado comprometidos con la justicia educativa en Nueva York, la autora examina como se crean nuevos espacios y formas de organización no confinadas a procesos de negociación colectiva tradicionales. El estudio sugiere que el desarrollo de un movimiento social de profesorado que pueda acercarse al de un movimiento social de profesorado podría no ocurrir de forma lineal. Más bien , resultaría fruto de dinámicas complejas de acción-reacción a cada cambio, apertura o cierre de espacios, regeneración de redes e influencia de lazos personales duraderos entre activistas.

In the past five years, we have witnessed a demonization of teachers unions that is close to achieving its goal: destruction of the most stable and potentially powerful defender of mass public education. Teacher unionisms continued existence is imperiled -- if what we define as 'existence' is organizations having the legal capacity to bargain over any meaningful economic benefits and defend teachers rights to exercise professional judgment about what to teach and how to do it. Adapted from the source document.

The author's participation in the Educational Summit of the Americas, a counter-summit held while the People's Summit of the Americas convened in Mar del Plata, Argentina, in November 2005, is shared to demonstrate the possibility of including US teachers' unions in the formation of a hemispheric teachers' collective organization. An overview of the various participants at the Educational Summit of the Americas, particularly the Initiative for Democratic Education in the Americas, is presented. After acknowledging differences in various contingents' objectives for regional education policy, multiple reasons for including US teachers' unions in the hemispheric educational movement are given & the circumstances that must be satisfied before US teacher activists become more involved with the hemispheric movement are noted, eg, their repudiation of the US government's regional imperialist goals. Summit participants' impassioned reaction to the author's proposal for establishing online language learning programs as a means of challenging neoliberal educational policies & more positive reception of the Cuban contingent's presence at the regional meeting are also addressed. Various issues that require attention from the hemispheric educational movement, eg, gender inequality in education, are also highlighted. J. W. Parker

Introduces a symposium on the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, designed to ensure an adequate education for every child in America. Adapted from the source document.

Education around the world is plagued with low salaries, inadequate funding, & the takeover of public education by entrepreneurs who determine what is taught. Solidarity & strong unions are the most powerful weapons teachers have in the war on schooling as "public good." The Global Assault on Teaching, Teachers, & Their Unions (2008), edited by Mary Compton & Lois Weiner, describes the many problems facing education & the potential for teachers & unions to stop neoliberal reforms like privatization. Adapted from the source document