AFT Announces Groundbreaking Fund To Foster Reform, Support Risk-Taking, and Share Responsibility for Strengthening Public Schools

WASHINGTON – Taking a long tradition of union-led education reform to a new level, the American Federation of Teachers announced today the creation of the AFT Innovation Fund, a groundbreaking initiative to be funded by the union and philanthropies to support sustainable, innovative and collaborative reform projects developed by members to strengthen our public schools.

 The Innovation Fund will provide financial and organizational resources for educator- and union-generated ideas that aim to meet our nation’s goal of giving each child a world-class education. The AFT is committing an initial and unprecedented investment of $1 million as seed money and is seeking additional support from private philanthropic organizations.
 
“This is union-led reform that will incubate promising ideas, promote proven programs, support risk taking, and encourage shared responsibility for strengthening our public schools. Our intention is to support innovations from the bottom up—and move away from the top-down corporate model,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten. “What we bring to the table with this initiative is built-in voice and built-in buy-in.”

The Innovation Fund has three major goals—to build capacity to provide consistent, high-quality instruction; to help close the achievement gap by addressing out-of-school factors directly affecting student achievement; and to foster collaborative relationships among educators, their unions, management, parents and communities.

Research shows that when teachers and other school employees work collaboratively with administrators and others on school improvement, students do better. “Real reform is a collaborative process that requires teacher input from the beginning. From their unique classroom perspective, teachers know what does and does not work,” Weingarten said.

The Innovation Fund will be overseen by the nonprofit AFT Educational Foundation and supported by an advisory board consisting of community, business, union, political and educational leaders. After a strategic planning period, the Innovation Fund intends to provide grants to AFT local unions for fall 2009 pilot projects.

Initial discussions about the Innovation Fund with political, community and foundation leaders have been extremely positive, she said.

 “The AFT has a long-standing history of reform,” Weingarten said. “With the Innovation Fund, the AFT will be able to support and expand these types of reforms in a systemic way. This means they will be sustainable, measurable and replicable.” Examples of AFT-led reforms include:

• Improvement Zone schools, such as the former Chancellor’s District in New     York City and those in Miami-Dade, Fla.
• Peer Assistance and Review programs, such as Toledo, Ohio’s, nationally recognized, groundbreaking program for teacher mentoring and evaluation.
• Union-partnered charter schools, such as those in New York run by the United Federation of Teachers.
• Differentiated-pay plans, such as the long-running program in Douglas County, Colo., in which the union and school management jointly developed several incentive components for bonus pay, and a similar plan in St. Francis, Minn., that factors in demonstrated student growth and annual teacher performance reviews.

Projects will be funded based on criteria determined by the advisory board and the best outside and in-house research. Funded projects also will be studied and evaluated for their effectiveness based on an established set of criteria. The AFT will draw on the experience and suggestions of distinguished educators from across the country and provide technical assistance.

Appointments to the advisory board and additional seed funding for the Innovation Fund will be announced this fall. For more information and updates, please check the Innovation Fund’s Web site at www.aft.org/innovate. 

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