Mary Futrell
Former President of the National Education Association
From "Explorations in Black Leadership"
"Teachers and Politics: A Strategy for Modern Education"
November 30, 2000

Mary Futrell: Now what I would like to do is talk about education in politics and talk about a strategy for modern education. And I have to confess and say to you that when I was putting together my remarks I assumed that we would know who the President of the United States was going to be. I haven’t listened to the radio today so I’m not sure whether we know anything. So if this sounds a little strange I thought we would know. But I wanted to preface my remarks with a comment or quote from Thomas Jefferson. And Thomas Jefferson said, "I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past." And when I thought about what he was saying, I think he is really talking about let’s look to the future and let’s dream about what things could be and how things could be and build on the past but let’s not dwell on the past.

And as I reflected on that quote and thought about the election this year…and I am going to go through this and try to stick to 15 or 20 minutes…I thought about the fact that the American people in poll after poll during this year’s campaign indicated that they wanted education to be a top priority in this country at all levels of our government, whether we are talking about the local level, the state level or the federal level. They asked the candidates repeatedly, and I did take the time to listen to the debates, if you want to call them that. They asked them, "What would you do to improve the quality of education? How would you keep our schools safe? (There were lots of questions about safety.) How would we alleviate the teacher shortage and how would we increase accountability for the schools?" And they questioned the candidates about how they would improve access to education for all Americans. How would we make sure that whether they are going into preschool or graduate school, that those individuals who desire an education would have the opportunity to receive one? And as the candidates spoke, and if you want to go to the website, you can go and look at all the commitments they have made, each one made very, very strong commitments about what he would do if elected to be the next president of the United States.

The new president, whoever it will be, will have opportunities over the course of the next four years to keep his promises to the American people. To do so, I think that the president must be prepared and willing to work with the members of Congress, whether they are Democrats or Republicans. They must be willing to work with the state legislatures, keeping in mind that education is a state responsibility in this country. They must be willing to work with the public at large, but equally important, they have to be willing to work with the teaching profession. As I reflect on the reform movement in this country over the last 20 years, I would say that one of the mistakes we have made is we made the mistake of assuming we could change schools without involving teachers, counselors, administrators, or the representatives from higher education. And if we are to assure the people of America that we will have a quality education system, then I think that we have to work with all of the key players I have just identified. The new president, I think, must be able to articulate to the American people what his vision is of what quality education means in this country, and then be able to persuade that people to work with him to turn that vision into reality. He must be able to persuade the people that we need the political will as well as the financial will to support transformation in education. A lot of what we have seen over the last 20 years has been let’s change the schools, but there is no money. Well I don’t think you can change the schools unless you have the resources to do so. To do this I believe that the American people must to come together and help define what you mean by education in the 21^st century. Does it mean the same thing that it meant in the 20^th century? Does it mean the same thing that it meant in the 19^th century? And I would submit to you that I think the answer is no. Now some things might be the same but a lot of it is going to change because of the very changes encompassing us.

Our task is, I think, to help sustain that dialogue. And when I say "our", I am including you. It is not simply those of us who are at the higher education level and the professorate. It’s not just those of us who are K-12 teachers or administrators, but it’s everyone. It’s the responsibility of the American people to sustain the need for increased and continued support for education as a priority on the national political agenda. If we don’t do that, as soon as the hullabaloo is over people will forget that this was a priority. More importantly our task is to move the conversation from that of campaign rhetoric and sloganeering to a real dialogue about how the political role of education is shaping the future of this country. In other words, we need a sustained dialogue that focuses on the hope for and the potential of our educational systems and not simply the problems. We know what the problems are. What are the solutions?

As a people, we understand the importance of education for our future as a nation. And as I travel around the world, I assure you that other nations are focusing much, much more attention on education than they probably have ever done before. Given this understanding, we must be hopeful that the new president, policymakers, and the public will be more willing in the coming decade to understand the societal changes which will affect education and that they will be more willing to invest the necessary resources to ensure that the nation’s goals are met and that our aspirations are fulfilled. To achieve these goals and aspirations, we also have to acknowledge that the major trends changing our society are also changing education.

You might say, "Well what are some of those changes?" One, I think, is globalization of the economy. That’s changing the way we educate. It has elevated education to the top of the agenda. Another one is the increased power and demands of the consumer. They want more and better education than we have ever had before. Three would be the new roles and expectations of workers. Workers want to be functioning in a much different way than the way they have functioned in the past. The hierarchical structure is going to disappear and people are going to have to learn how to work together, articulate their visions or their dreams, and be able to help put those into reality.

We have to look at the change in demographics in our communities. America is becoming more diverse, not less. So how do we build upon that diversity? I will speak more about that in a few moments. We also have to look at the speed of change. I was in Helsinki recently and they were talking about how once upon a time if you bought a computer, it would last you maybe four or five years. Then it would last you a couple of years. Now you are lucky if it’s still in vogue after two or three months. That’s how quickly things are changing. You can go around the world now in a matter of days. It doesn’t take weeks. We can find out what’s going on anywhere around the world, any time of day by simply turning on the news. If you go to another country, all you have to do is turn on the TV and there is CNN telling you everything that’s going on in this country and every place else in the world. That’s how quickly change is occurring. We also have to look at forces like technologically mediated learning environments. They are very different from the way they used to be. Yes, we still have chalkboards and erasers and textbooks, but we are finding increasingly that the classrooms are more technologically mediated than they have ever been before. Well what does that mean for the way we prepare teachers? What does that mean for the way we develop curriculum and teach children? We have to look at the emergence of knowledge and learning as the country’s greatest asset. And again this is increasingly an issue that is being addressed on the global level. How much people know and how they are able to apply it and how people learn…this is a big issue.

Finally, the radical transformation of the workplace. It is a changing environment. I look at where I work now and if you look at where you are working here, it’s very different from how it was 15 years ago. By the way I used to teach business and I was trying to figure out the other day how a typewriter looks now. So someone brought one in and I sat down and I thought all I had to do was put my fingers on there to type and the darn wouldn’t work for me. They kept telling me, "You’ve got to program it to do this and you’ve got to program it to do that…." I said, "All I want to do is type something." But it’s very different. But the point is that education in the future will not simply occur within the confines of the traditional classroom. It will increasingly occur in a variety of settings, some of which may be virtual. How many of you are aware of the fact that we now have 8 virtual universities? There is talk about creating a virtual high school in the United States of America. So the environment in which we function is changing very rapidly.

We have to prepare faculty to teach in traditional and nontraditional environments. And we must be willing to improve the quality of the preparation and the professional development of education, whether in schools of education, schools of law, medicine, engineering, or the arts and sciences. The way we teach people, especially at the higher education level, needs to change. At the same time society needs to acknowledge that learning is a lifelong challenge, as well as a lifelong process. You don’t stop learning when you leave school. That’s the beginning of the process. You are going to be learning for the rest of your life.

The education that students acquire must enable them to apply their knowledge and skills in an ever-changing environment. It also must enable them to build on these skills to meet the needs of a workplace that increasingly transcends borders and redefines itself, a workplace that may be very different from the one for which they were specifically prepared. I work with people all the time and as they talk about what they are doing, it’s not sitting in a room working on a computer or working on a typewriter and whatever the product you finish and just hand it to someone. They are talking and meeting with and working with people all over the world while they are sitting in their particular office. So the transactions are occurring while they sit there. We need to enable students to understand that their neighbors or workers colleagues may not be the ones who are in their communities. A lot of the people with whom I work are not in the room with me, they didn’t grow up with me. And as I used to tell my students, "I want to prepare you not just for the person who is sitting next to you, I want to prepare you for the world, so you can go and work anywhere you want to, to live. And to understand that my neighbor might not be, my friends might not be, just the person who is in my community, the person who is in my workplace. It might be someone somewhere halfway around the world." That is becoming increasingly the truth.

As educational leaders, we must be willing to transform our educational system from Pre-kindergarden through graduate school to enable increasing numbers of citizens to fulfill their roles and responsibilities in our democratic society. In other words, people are going to need more education, better education not less education, if they are to survive in the society of the future. So one of the questions we have to answer is how do we guarantee a better quality of education for all of the people of this country, not the top 20% or the top 30%, but for all the people of this country? And increasingly societies are going to survive or die based on how well they educate the citizens of their country, and educate all of them. So as we look at this whole issue, to ensure this we must expand opportunities to ensure that greater numbers of students do well academically, and that they will have the money that they need to further their education if they desire to do so.

Let me step back for a moment because in America today we now have about 53 million students in our elementary and secondary schools. But how many of you have taken the time to understand that 35% of those children of those people are from language minority or racial groups. That figure is expected to increase to 40% by 2010. Let me just give you an example. I went back to the high school where I used to teach, they asked me to come back and speak, and I walked in and I had to stop because I didn’t understand what they were saying. So I said to someone, "What percentage of kids in this school do not speak English as a first language?" They said, "Probably around 70%." I left that school in 1980 and it has changed that much over that short a period of time. Concomitantly, over the next 15 years, college enrollments are projected to swell by 2 million students to 19 million, with African-Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans accounting for 80% of the growth, now this is according to the Educational Testing Service. Hispanic American enrollment was increased to 15% by 15%, African American by 13%, and Asian American by 18%. The question is how are we going to make sure that all children, especially those children, receive a quality education.

The quality of education provided to students at all levels of the system will be a central factor in helping us to achieve the goal of a unified but multicultural society. The education community on all levels must work together in a seamless manner if we are to succeed in achieving this goal. Our commitment to ensure the academic competence of all children and youth, rather than the traditional 20%, will determine the effectiveness of our higher education institutions, our economy, and our government. Our ability to help shape positive attitudes regarding cultural diversity, including racial diversity, as well as the development of individual maturity and responsibility are an integral part of our ability to grow individually and as a nation. In elementary as well as through graduate schools the curriculum would be more effectively and successfully guarantee a quality education for all students. A curriculum must include rigorous academic standards aligned with appropriate assessments. In other words, every school district has a responsibility to ensure that each student receives a quality education.

We can no longer allow 40, 50, 60% of the children to leave our schools without providing them a quality education. We have to make sure that those students will be prepared to be lifelong workers, because once you stop and get a job, you aren’t going to keep that job. You are going to change jobs at least 7 or 8 times before you decide to retire. And you are going to work longer than you would have before, not because you have to, but because you want to. Education is worth very little if it only teaches young people to earn a living and not to make a life. So we need to help to use education to help people understand the opportunities and the qualities of life. We need to make an equal effort to teach our children manners as well as mathematics. And I am amazed sometimes at the fact that they don’t know what manners mean. We need to teach them social justice as well as social studies, and we need to understand that education is our best mortar for building a well-educated pluralistic civil society.

And yes, I do believe that the education system at all levels must be held accountable. Some of my colleagues might disagree with that. I do, however, not believe that any one test should be used to determine whether or not our children are succeeding. I don’t believe that. A single test will not tell me whether or not a child should be promoted to the next grade, or should graduate, or be allowed to matriculate to a college, or to get a job. Tests are only part of the challenge. And I think an underlying problem, which no one seems to want to address, but which has implications for all levels of education, is the fact that many students are not studying curriculum on which the tests are based. So therefore they are not passing the tests. And I think that we need to stand up and we need to speak out about that, not to say that we are opposed to testing. I am not opposed to testing. I believe that students have to be held accountable but I believe that they should be tested on that which they have studied.

Why do I say what I have said? Because of an institutional educational structure called tracking, they segregated the children educationally. Somebody was asking me, "Well what do they mean by tracking?" I am assuming that everyone in this room knows, but just to be on the safe side… basically when we look at the structure as it is in place today, we have White and Asian American students are assigned primarily to the gifted and talented and the academic tracks. We have the general and vocational tracks primarily for the Hispanic American and African American students. As everyone knows, Hispanic American and African American male students are assigned primarily to, or increasingly to, special education tracks. Well, what is happening in America is that America is saying that all children must be educated better than they have ever been educated before. You aren’t going to achieve that unless you are willing to change the curriculum to change the system to guarantee that they receive the kind of education they need in order to succeed in school. We have more and more tests. I think now 48 or 49 states are testing as to whether or not you are going to be promoted, whether or not you will graduate, etc. One of the first questions I would ask is on what are they being tested. And I would be making sure that they are being tested on those things that would enhance their ability to meet the requirements they are expected to meet.

Finally, we have an obligation to help our students understand the increasingly independent, interdependent, and cultural society in which we live. We must help citizens understand the need to continue to struggle to eliminate the inequalities that we have in our society, inequalities caused by race, by gender, by economic status, and by others.

Now speaking of teaching, universities, I believe, have a critical role to play in preparing primary and secondary teachers not only to teach students to achieve at higher levels, but also to understand, respect, and teach students from diverse backgrounds. We need to development more effective strategies for attracting, recruiting, preparing, and retaining high quality teachers, counselors, and administrators. And we are very, very concerned about the fact that over the course of the next decade, we are going to need something in the neighborhood of two million teachers and counselors just to go in our schools. And the need for administrators is even greater. We are going to have to replace something like 40-50% of administrators in this country. One of the things that I find amazing is that we have enough people in America who are trained to be administrators but guess what, they don’t want to be. They don’t want to be. They don’t want to deal with all the hassles that they would have to deal with. So hey would rather stay in the classroom and teach rather than become an administrator. Well the question I would ask is, well what do we do without schools? Who will provide the leadership and the guidance for our schools?

The leaders of our educational institutions, especially the administrators of our colleges and universities, must also lead by example. This is regarding the future of higher education in our changing society. Now some of my friends don’t like me when I make these next few points, but I think I would be remiss if I stood up here and said to you that we need to make all these changes in K-12 but higher education is okay. I think the next wave of reform we want to see in America will be the wave of reform focusing on higher education. For example, when we look at higher education, what is the purpose of higher education? When was the last time we sat down and looked at what is the purpose of higher education? What should every graduate with a bachelor’s degree or a masters degree or a doctoral degree know and be able to do in his/her chosen field when he/she walks across that stage and receives his/her diploma.

Another question we need to answer is from whence will we attract the next generation of professorate. From where are they going to come? And if you think the teaching profession at the K-12 level is an aging profession, you need to look at the higher education profession…they are really aging. And I include myself in that category.

Now allow me to take just a moment to reflect on the professorate. I believe it must be the goal of each institution of higher education to attract the most talented and academically prepared faculty to their campuses. A university should also have as a goal assurance that its faculty reflects a diversity of opinions and backgrounds. Thus, a university’s goal should include the diversification of their faculty to reflect the diversity that defines the student population. The strategic intent is for universities to be more assertive in their efforts to attract, recruit, and retain a faculty that reflects the diversity that defines America. And we have to do a better job of that. And I would say to you that at this point we are failing that component of our mission miserably.

Today, as our student population becomes increasingly diverse, diversity within the ranks of faculty continues to decline at a precipitous rate. Currently, fewer than 5% of all higher education faculty within the United States of America, fewer than 5% are from racial minority groups. As a part of the recruitment and retention effort, more should be done to mentor new faculty as they assume their responsibilities. And more should be done to support strategies that will help the junior faculty members as they strive to become exemplary teachers, scholars, and participants in their professional community. In particular, support structures such as reduced course load and teaming with faculty to do research projects and so forth should be implemented which will help junior faculty, especially faculty from minority groups, to meet their tenure and promotion requirements. And I hope that some of the people in this room plan to become faculty at the higher education level. That’s why you are earning your doctoral degrees and that’s what I hope that some of you will plan to do in the future.

Now earlier I spoke, and I am going to bring this to a close, of creating a teaching profession that reflects the diversity that defines America. We also need to do more to recruit and prepare candidates for the various professions…medicine and law and business and the arts and sciences and so forth. The question is often raised about the reasons so few minorities and women are identified as candidates for these disciplines. We have so few minority candidates, and in many instances women in part, because too many do not have the educational foundation required to succeed in these fields. And they often do not have the appropriate academic backgrounds to successfully pass the gatekeeper courses such as trigonometry and calculus and physics and foreign languages required to succeed. Now and in the future we must ensure that these students are properly counseled and given opportunities to develop that academic foundation.

Now you notice that I didn’t say to lower the standards. What I said is help the students meet the standards. And I want to make sure that, that point comes across. Often people say, "Well you want to lower the standards." I haven’t met a black person or Hispanic person or Asian person or woman who said, "Lower the standards so I can walk through the gate." What I have heard them say is, "What do I need to know and be able to do in order to meet the requirements that are in place for me to successfully matriculate at this particular college or university and to earn this degree?" So what we are saying is that if we want people to be the future doctors and physicists and engineers and CEO’s and lawyers and have those areas reflect America, then we have to do a better job of making sure all Americans have the foundation that they need in order to open the gate and not just open it, to be able to walk through it. I am always reminded of Chappy Brown, the first African American general. Chappy Brown said, "It doesn’t do you any good to knock on the door, and then when somebody has opened it you reach down and say wait a minute, I gotta get my bag." Because when you reach down to get your bag, what’s going to happen?…somebody else is going to walk through the door in front of you. So, you have to be prepared to walk through the door and be able to perform the responsibilities that are there.

I think that administrators working with faculty and students should plan accordingly for the futures of their institutions and the publics that they serve, and we serve many publics. I believe that institutions of higher education must adapt to the fact that students will increasingly define what and where they want to learn and further to work together to establish greater expectations, not only for students but also for all of academia. I think that that is absolutely critical. As I said, I think we are the next ones on the horizon to undergo the same kind of scrutiny that we have seen for K-12 over the last 20 years.

However, just having higher expectations for students is not enough. In order to ensure that we will fulfill our obligation to better prepare citizens for a more global technological-oriented society, I think the college and university administrators must ensure that sufficient resources are allocated to support the fulfillment of their institutions’ missions. And let me just digress for a moment and say that on most campuses, schools of education are at the bottom of the list when it comes to resources, when it comes to support. And that has rather astounded me. My background has been primarily K-12 and I was rather astounded to learn that the schools of education are at the bottom of the list. So I think that when we talk about the future, we need to say to the Boards of Trustees, and we need to say to the Presidents and to all of the Vice Presidents of these various institutions, you need to invest in your schools of education and you need to make sufficient investments so that we can attract and support the best students and so that we can provide them with the best education.

I think there has to be a stronger commitment to support the academic programs, the development of more and better services, and the provision of environments that encourage the best teaching, research, and scholarship on every campus in the Commonwealth and every campus in the United States of America. I am sorry to report to you today though, that the financial commitment to achieve those goals, that that commitment is seriously lacking. We have entered an era when the old education paradigm may not work, and the new paradigm of the 21^st century. What we do know is that the quality of education we provide will shape the future of this great nation. The education the current generation of students receives will continue to influence the aspirations and the potential of their children and their grandchildren. We must be part of the effort to sustain the dialogue, to create and implement an education agenda for the 21^st century, an agenda built on the quality of ideas offered rather than the source of those ideas. Toward that end, colleges and universities, especially schools of education such as GW’s Graduate School of Education and Human Development and UVA’s Curry School of Education, must be ready to work with the next President of the United States, whoever it is whenever it is decided, and with the committee at large to ensure that all Americans have access to the best education this nation can provide.

In closing, let me just say that if we want to build and sustain a civil society predicated on bridging divides rather than creating divides, we must start by educating our children and ourselves on how to do so. A critical component of the leadership needed to foster that dialogue, I think, is seated right here in this room. Those of you who are here, and especially those who plan to become educators, who plan to become teachers, I would submit to you that as we look at the 4000 colleges and universities across this great country, as we look at the 15,000 plus school districts across this great country, you really hold the future of America in your hands. I thank you very much for inviting me to come.

Julian Bond: Thank you, Mary. Earlier today when we were talking over at Darden you talked about your career entering the activism in the VEA and the NEA just as these groups and teachers both here in Virginia and nationwide were becoming much more aggressive. Why did this happen then, and is it still so that teachers are seeing themselves more as, I hate to say, more as a sort of beleaguered group or has the situation improved?

Mary Futrell: That is a difficult question to answer. Has the situation improved? In some ways, yes. The attacks are not as vicious as they were in the 1980s, especially immediately following the report of "A Nation at Risk". But are schools still under attack? The answer is yes to that as well. There is still an enormous amount of criticism leveled against schools as to whether or not we are doing our job. We could see that in the accountability movement and the increasing number of tasks being leveled against students…and if you don’t pass, you can’t move to another grade. If you don’t pass, you can’t graduate. If you don’t do this that and the other.

We also see it in relation to the accountability system being put in place that if certain numbers of children fail, then schools will lose their accreditation or teachers will lose whatever they have. So it’s rather widespread, probably more so than I would like.

But I would like to submit to you that I think some good things have also come out of those criticisms. I sometimes wonder if we would have made some of the changes that we have made if we had not been criticized. I think that in many instances we were slow to respond and in many ways when we did respond we were very defensive. And in some of those instances that was justified. But as I look at what is happening today, I think we are making progress. I think we have turned the situation around, not probably as rapidly as some would like, or even as we would like. I talk to teachers all the time. Do we have more progress to make? The answer is yes. But I think we also need to make sure that schools have the resources that they need in order to accomplish the job that we have to accomplish. Our schools are more diverse than they ever have been before, especially when we talk about language. The demands are greater than they have ever been before. And I think the schools can respond and will respond in a positive way if they have the support of the community to do so.

Margaret Crogan: Mary, as an activist in your early years with NEA and VEA, your audience was somewhat different from the ones that you are leading now. Do you see yourself as an activist dean, and if you do, how does one carry out one’s role as an activist dean?

Mary Futrell: Ah, that’s a tough question. Well I think that we are always activist in some way. One of the things that I have had to learn…and let me back up. My background was not higher education. My background was basically junior and senior high school and when I stepped down as the president of the National Education Association, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, so I decided to go back to school and earn a degree. I had always promised myself I wouldn’t get into a doctoral program because I didn’t want to deal with all the stuff. So when I finished up as president of NEA I said, "Well you know what you’re going to do with the rest of your life?…Go to school and get another degree." So I did and they asked me to be a part of the faculty.

And as I look at what’s going on now in the country…and I hope I’m answering your question since I digress… when I look at what’s going on now in the country at the higher education level, I find that schools of education (and I guess this has been a real education for me) do not have the clout that other schools on the campus have. I think the schools of education play a critical role in preparing people for every single profession in the world because we prepare the teachers who then work with the students. But on most campuses, schools of education are held in low esteem and on most campuses schools of education are generally at the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to resources. Now I know my colleagues here are going to say, "Well, that’s not true here at UVA. Well we’re at the top of the ladder." But when I talk to my colleagues across the country, that’s basically what they tell me. Do I think we need to change schools of education to be more responsive to the needs and to the concerns of the answers? Yes. We need to be more responsive to the changes taking place in our society, especially the demographic changes. We need to do more to make sure that we are prepared for the technological changes that are taking place. I would like to see us work more closely with other schools on campus. But I don’t know about here at the Curry School. I found that somewhat difficult because other schools feel that they are up here and you are down here, so why should they work with you. I have to remind them that if it wasn’t for us you wouldn’t be here. But I hope I have answered your question so.

Julian Bond: Earlier today when we were talking, Dr. Leffler, you described a style of leadership both in the Virginia Education Association and in the National Education Association that was consultative. That is, that for the minority that had opposed you for both positions, you brought into part of your leadership circle and you consulted with them, and when appointments came up you appointed them, and you made sure that simply because they had disagreed with you on one thing, they weren’t enemies and you could work with them on others. Dr. Leffler asked whether or not that was a result of your gender and/or a result of the fact that both of these organizations are gendered organizations, overwhelmingly composed of women, whom even though you reminded us that women are the bulk of the population, they don’t occupy the bulk of the leadership positions. But is that style you evidenced a result of these gendered groups that you associated with?

Mary Futrell: I’m not sure I would not say it is a result of the gendered groups with which I work as opposed to it was a result of trying to make the organization work and trying to do whatever I needed to do in order to make sure we were successful. I was, as I told Julian, the first African American president of the Virginia Education Association. I was not the first African American president of the NEA. I was the third. The people probably remember me because I was there longer than anyone else. I was there six years and the others were there for one year. So that was part of the issue. As I reflect on what it was like to be a leader in those days…it was tough. When you fight and the fight is over, what do you have? And can you fight when you issue and still keep the organization together? So part of what I found that I had to do was do what I needed to do…and I’ve always believed in being a principled fighter. I’m not a lowland fighter. I guess I could be if I had to be but I’ve always tried to fight my battles up here.

I remember somebody telling me one time, "Mary, if you allow the people to do so, they will divert your campaign by making you get down in the mud, and therefore you aren’t focusing on the issues. What you need to do is to stay with the issues, stay on top." So what I decided to do was, yes I want to fight, I want to win, but I want to also keep the organization together. I want the organization to be able to function. And simply because you and I were not on the same side didn’t mean that we couldn’t work together. So when the elections were over, I would oftentimes make it a point of reaching out to people that opposed me. Sometimes people would say, "Well you’re crazy! Why would you want to bring in the folks who worked against you?" Well those people had so many ideas to offer and I wanted them to be part of the process. So I would reach out to you and bring you in. You would be part of a committee or task force as well as people who had supported me and worked with me. We would work together to try to heal the organization and move the organization forward. We have to remember not to forget the larger picture. Now sometimes we get so caught up and are so narrow focused on what you did to me, we forget that, "Okay we disagreed but can we work together?" And I was looking at, "Can she help me make this organization become what I want it to become?"

Julian Bond: Some people would suggest that that’s a feminine style of leadership and I wonder if your own background, your family might have had something to do with that?

Mary Futrell: I doubt it very seriously, since I had to fight for everything I got from my sister. Maybe that’s why I got tired of fighting, because I had to fight all the time. But no, I think that feminists…one of the ways that I learned how to fight was to become a feminist and to stand up and speak out for my rights. Before I became a feminist, I used to sit back and say, "I wonder what they’re doing and why they’re raising those issues?" But when I became involved I understood why they were fighting for some of the issues for which they were fighting. But my job I saw it was president, and it was more so at the national level than at the state level, my job was to bring the organization together and for us to move the agenda. And how we did that was to try to say, "Okay, just because you oppose me doesn’t mean we can’t work together, doesn’t mean I don’t respect your ideas. So let me bring you together and let us try to move forward. Now did you have people who didn’t want to work with you? The answer is yes. Did you have people who tried to undermine you? The answer is yes. You have to be smart enough to figure out whether the person is really trying to work for you and help or whether they are trying to undermine. You have to be smart enough to know that.

So what I tried to do was bring these different groups together. And what I found, Julian, was a lot of times people would say, "You know, I never thought you would give me a chance. I thought because I opposed you, I wore somebody else’s button, I gave somebody else money, I wore their hat, I was out campaigning for them, that you would never give me a chance." My point was that this is a democratic organization, just like this is a democratic society. You can support whomever you want, but when it’s over, and we have decided who the winner is, if I think you have an idea to help this organization move forward, I am going to come and ask you to work for me. And that’s the way I live.

Margaret Crogan: I want to ask you a question along those lines. Often it’s said that women have difficulty with power. And People Magazine said that you were one of the most powerful black women in America in 1983. I guess my first comment is what did you think about that statement?…

Mary Futrell: Do you really want to know the answer to that?

Margaret Crogan: Yeah, I really do. And the other part is how does a black women get power, and do you think it’s the same in 1983 as it is in 2000?

Mary Futrell: Well, I have to confess and say that when I remembered that statement and others like it, I would say to myself what does blackness have to do with it. And then you have to remember, look, you see yourself one way but others see you as a black person. It doesn’t matter what you try to do or how good you are, etc. So you find yourself a lot of times trying to say, "Am I going to spend a lot of my time trying to prove that my blackness is okay or am I going to spend a lot of time trying to prove that I am a leader?" So you have to make those decisions and I decided that I wasn’t going to worry about those people who were concerned about whether I was black or brown or what color I was. My concern was what can I do to be the best leader for this organization? What can I do to help improve the quality of education for children everywhere? It doesn’t matter what color they were. What can I do to give the teachers more support to make sure they had what they need in order to do the job? So that’s basically the way that I approached it. My approach was basically that it’s their problem that they are worried about my blackness or my femininity. It’s not my problem. I am going to deal with the issues. I am going to be the president of the organization. And I am going to move the agenda. Otherwise you get sidetracked dealing with all these other issues. And I did not want to get sidetracked. I knew I had a certain amount of time to achieve a certain agenda, and that agenda was how do I work with teachers and how do I work with people to provide a better quality education for the children in this country. And that’s where I concentrated my efforts.

Margaret Crogan: Now talk power for a minute. Were you comfortable with the notion that you did have power? And if you are, how does one get power?

Mary Futrell: Oh, Lord. [Laughter from the audience] Was I comfortable with the fact that I had power? Well I think first of all I tried not to let it go to my head because obviously I had a lot of power. I was the head of the largest teachers organizations, probably one of the largest union organizations in the country. I was the head of an organization with, at that time, 1.8 million members representing teachers, administrators, educators from all over the United States of America and parts of overseas. And by the way now I am the president of the international organization. I represent 23 million educators worldwide. So you look at it…does it bother you, how you deal with power. The power really belongs to the members. And I believe as, I can’t remember, somebody said, "The delegates giveth." Oh I know it was a president we had and he was an incumbent and he ran for re-election and he didn’t win. And I thought his statement was interesting. He stood up and he said, "The delegates giveth, and the delegates taketh away." So I am sitting here thinking, they have elected me and they say they love me but if I mess up, I am outta here. But at the same time, I had to be my own person. I had to stand up and articulate those things which I believe and I also had to make sure that I represented them.

Julian asked me earlier, "Well how did you deal with the collision sometimes that you faced?" Well, the way I dealt with the collision, I stated my opinion, but who did I represent? I represented those 1.8 million members. And once I stated my opinion, whether it was in agreement or disagreement, I was obligated to represent them. Now, did I sometimes change some of those things. Yes, I would go back and say I think we ought to change. I’ll give you a classic example. I thought we took the wrong position on testing of future teachers. So I asked them. I said, "We need to go back and change it. We need to put in that we support assessment but then help shape what that assessment should look like. To just come out and say that we oppose without giving any rationale does not solve the problem."

How many of you know what A Nation At Risk is? Anybody know about that report? We had folks who when that report came out wanted us as an organization to say no. I said, "If we do that, that’s political suicide. No one will ever believe that we are quality again." So I took the position of there are some things that we don’t like, but we can support the report and we will work with it. So when I go back and look at whether you are a black leader or a female leader, I was the third black president, not the first. A lot or people think I was the first. I was not. Nor was I the first woman. About half of the presidents of the National Education Association were women, and I was one of a long stream. I happened to be the first black, or the first minority woman to serve a multiple year term, and I served for 6 years. I was re-elected three times. So my point was I am here to represent the membership. I am here to advocate for children. I am here to try to provide leadership, and to try to provide a perspective for the organization that will move us forward, not take us backwards.

Julian Bond: Over the last, more than a decade, we’ve seen this great movement in America calling itself a reform movement for both vouchers and charter schools. And we’ve heard that racial minorities support this more than anybody else, even though on November 7 in both California and Michigan racial minorities voted against voucher programs more than anybody else. But what does the popularity of these programs tell us about American attitudes toward public education?

Mary Futrell: I think the popularity of vouchers and of tuition tax credits and other things basically say that there are people who are very unhappy with what is going on in the public schools. Fortunately they are willing to give us a chance to improve the schools and they are not simply going to walk away. I think a lot of people thought that in the 80s when all of this first surfaced, and these are not new ideas by the way, the issue of vouchers and tuition tax credits have been around since 1925. If you go back and look at, there is a case out of the state of Washington where this issue first became a legal issue. But people, this is their way of expressing their dissatisfaction with the way that schools have been functioning. I don’t think that vouchers or tuition tax credits are going to become the majority in this country. But at the same time I don’t think they are going to go away. So the issue becomes what do we need to do to improve the quality of education in this America?

And why do so many minorities support vouchers, and why do they support tuition tax credits? Because they are very unhappy with the quality of education their children are receiving. And let me just be very candid with you, because I have been a teacher for over 30 some years. When you look at the schools in America, the vast majority of African American and Hispanic kids are in either the vocational track or the general track and an over-representation of African American boys and Hispanic boys are in special education. And there is nothing that you or anybody else can tell me that would say that that proportion of African American boys and Hispanic boys should be in special education. I just do not accept it. I just do not believe it. I am not an advocate of doing that. Are there children with special needs? Yes. And the program should be designed for those children. But to simply put children in those programs, I think, is an insult. Let me give you a classic example. Texas has statewide testing now with mandated testing. The Rand Corporation put out a report stating that they thought it wasn’t a bad idea. But there were also criticisms but they ignored the criticisms. Then there was a report put out by Boston College, Boston University, and one by the University of Texas, I believe at San Antonio. And basically this is what they found. African American and Hispanic American children were disproportionately were being removed from regular classes and placed in special ed. And then those kids were not tested so it made it appear as though the test scores were going up and the schools were making enormous improvements. That’s a bald-faced lie. Now once those kids get into those special education programming, it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to get out. So I am trying to figure out why didn’t the parents and the NAACP and the people in Texas stand up and protest this. Well probably they don’t know a whole lot about it. And a lot of us didn’t know anything about it until these other reports were put out. So my point is that the minority kids can perform, they can do. I don’t think tuition tax credits or vouchers will solve the problem. And I don’t think putting them in special ed will solve the problem. What will solve the problem is you make sure that all children are taught a curriculum that will prepare them to pass whatever assessments they have to pass, and they are taught by teachers who believe that they can pass. And that’s what I think will make the difference. You didn’t want my strong opinion though, did you? [Laughter from audience]

Margaret Crogan: Mary, you said a little while ago in 1988, you said, "A nation at risk will be saved only by a nation of risk takers." Do you see yourself as a risk taker and do you think leaders need to be?

Mary Futrell: Yes.

Margaret Crogan: Tell us about your risks.

Mary Futrell: Yes, yes, I think that you have to be a risk taker, but you can’t be foolish. I think you have to be a thoughtful risk taker, and you have to think about what it is you are trying to do and why you are trying to do it and how you are going to do it and who is going to work with you to achieve it. For example, do I think the schools in this country need to change? The answer to that question is an unequivocable yes. Now how to do that…we have to come together and figure out how to do it. And some of what we are proposing would be a risk for one group as opposed to another. For example, what happens when we decide in America that all children must study a core curriculum? What would happen? How do we do that without frightening away a lot of the people that we need to support public schools? How do we achieve that goal? And yet we have to achieve it because if all children are not taught that core curriculum, when they take that now mandated test, they are not going to pass. So we are caught in a catch-22.

So when I think about A Nation At Risk. And by the way if you go back and read A Nation At Risk and read the press clippings that came out, the press clippings did not reflect the report. The report does not talk about vouchers. The report does not talk about tuition tax credit. But yet when the statement was made by the leaders of the government, they made it appear as though that was what was in there. So when I think about A Nation At Risk I think that it had a lot of good recommendations that were overshadowed by these other agendas that people put out there. When I think about what we need to do to improve the schools, what’s best for the richest kids in the schools should be the best thing for the poorest kids in the school.

Julian Bond: I wonder if we might see if members in the audience have some questions as well. If you could raise your hand and speak very, very loudly so our microphones can pick you up. But it might very well be that we have a microphone in the back of the room and it’s coming down right the aisle now. Or if we could have people go to the microphone if they have questions, that would facilitate this progress a great deal. Yes, sir?

Audience Member #1: How you doing this evening, Ms.Mary?

Mary Futrell: Hi.

Audience Member #1: I have one question. One of the things that were passed around a lot during the campaign was about the achievement gap. Basically the gap exists upon the advantaged and disadvantaged kids and basically the jinx fell along the black white test score gap. What are your thoughts about that, especially as it relates to economics and the whole equality of educational opportunity that talks about kids from certain homes which do not mirror what schools mirror and how that has an effect on them not being able to come to school and achieve and those kinds of things? How can we work with homes that they mirror what’s going on in the school system? Many schools are a middle class conduit. So how do we get to work with those populations of families and things that are not doing…well, not that they are not doing those kinds of things but making sure that the things that are going on at home are mirroring the things that we want them to do in school?

Mary Futrell: Well let me answer your question by saying that I was one of those children. Single parent, extremely poor, my mother was not an educated person. She understood and valued education but she was not an educated person. She insisted that we get a good education. Her point was, she used to talk to us later, she used to say things like, "I wasn’t sure that I would be around when you guys grew up, so I wanted to make sure that you had the best education you could get in order to survive so you could take care of yourself." She worked very closely with the teachers. We didn’t have cars so she used to ride the bus two or three times change buses just to work with the teachers. Somewhere along the way we’ve lost that. Schools cannot do the jobs by themselves. You’ve got to have the parents. You’ve got to have the community involved in the process. But the schools have to make parents feel welcome. You can’t make parents feel if they come that you’re the dumbest thing in the world because maybe you don’t speak perfect English or perfect grammar. So we have to reach out to those parents. And if you reach out to the parents, the studies show that the mother has more of a direct influence on the quality of education a child receives than anything else. If you reach to those parents, especially the mother and get the mother involved, and you are working with those children and working with the parents, then you can probably have a better chance of those children succeeding. And you have to start that in elementary schools and work it all the way through.

I think you need to get the churches involved, get the sororities involved; you need to get the civic groups involved in providing the base of support for the children so that they know that they can be successful and they know that people care about what is going to happen to them. Then I think you also have to set high standards. And I think we need to stop saying because you’re from a certain economic group or whatever that the standards are more for you than they are for other people. And we have to make sure that we provide the support system in the school so that when those children enter those courses, that they will have the support they need in order to pass. And this is to help understand, not to do the work for them.

I think that we need to invest more in our neighborhood schools. I think we need to do more to get parents or guardians involved in the education of children. I think we need to work with the groups in the community to get them more involved to be supportive. My mother used to work sometimes 18 hours a day. Sometimes I didn’t see her for three or four days during the week, and she wasn’t out running around. She was going from one job to the next just to make enough money for us to survive. But in the evenings we had to leave the report card on the table, leave the homework on the table. There was no such thing as saying you didn’t have homework. Absolutely no such thing. If you didn’t have homework, where is the book you read? And she was not a college educated woman, but she understood education.

She visited the school any old time. We used to have classes like this and the kids would say, "Mary Alice, that’s my real name…Mary Alice, here comes your mother." And we would freeze. We would freeze because there was mama. I didn’t appreciate it at the time…not the freeze part but my mother coming. But later in life I appreciated the fact that she cared enough to come to that school to ride the bus two or three times to get there. We have a lot of kids who don’t have that kind of support. So what do we have to do? I think the school has to make the difference. The school has to reach out to the children. The school has to be there for them and to help them. So those are the kinds of things I think that we need to do in order to help children succeed in school.

Julian Bond: Yes?

Audience Member #2: You spoke a little bit about the linguistic difficulties facing the country. You mentioned that the high school you used to teach at has a great difference of the number of people who are not speaking English. What are your thoughts about how to deal with things, particularly bilingual education, and with the steps recently taken in California to handle the linguistic disparities?

Mary Futrell: As I recall in California they have rejected the bilingual program and they have done that in a couple of other places. It’s a tough issue. It’s a really tough issue. It’s tough because I have not been in that situation. But I have had children come in and as a teacher, can you imagine trying to teach a child and the child doesn’t speak the language that you speak? You don’t speak that language. You are trying to explain to that child what to do and the best you can do is hope for this person who does speak it can explain it to her and she can explain it. So it is through this circle. I personally think that we have to understand that all children are not going to learn if they are simply thrown into the water. Some will. At the same time, I have a concern about putting kids in these classes and they stay for years and they never really learn to speak English and they aren’t able to make the transition. I think you provide the support that they need. And you provide it in a way they transition into speaking English. And you make sure that the support is there, not just for the child, but you’ve also got to support the parent because the parents have to be involved. A lot of those parents are not going to be involved in education if they feel uncomfortable about coming to school and trying to speak a language that they don’t understand and that the teachers don’t understand them.

I think bilingual programs have a place. I don’t know what it would be like to be in a classroom if people didn’t understand me because I spoke another language. It’s difficult for me to relate to that. So I think we have to understand that yes there are differences. Some children will make the transition very quickly. They will learn the language very quickly. Others will need more time, more help, more structured help. I think you provide the help where it’s needed, but you don’t let it go on forever.

Julian Bond: Yes? Why don’t you both go, one at a time.

Audience Member #3: Dr. Mary…

Mary Futrell: Just Mary.

Audience Member #3: My friend Mary, my question has to do with the gifted and talented end of the spectrum. I have taught in four different school systems over 25 years and though the populations have been increasing for academic and political reasons I think, I have always seen the lowest numbers of minority students in the gifted program. Through the formal testing methods that we use to find out who these students are to serve them, the results seem to yield very few African American or other minority students. And in some cases girls have often not been selected for these programs. And yet subjectively you can look around and see the minority student who might become a great numbers runner out in the city outside of the school carrying mathematical equations in his head, but can’t take that test to come to the program. How would I or other teachers, rank and file, work to help change the testing measures, or the perspective, or the vision of what giftedness is and how to open the door for more students?

Mary Futrell: Fairfax County has just introduced a program where they are going into some of the poor schools in the county. What they are trying to do is to identify and work with children who have academic ability. These are primarily children from poor families and children who are from racial or language minority groups. They are training teachers to work in those schools with those teachers. I think they have identified maybe 10 or 15 schools, I don’t know an exact number. But the argument that they used was just because these kids are poor or a language minority or whatever doesn’t mean that they can’t be gifted and talented as well. And they have provided special training for the teachers who work with them in the schools. They have coordinated. They have invested a lot of money into trying to help these children. Normally in those schools they would not have a teacher for the gifted and talented and they would not bother to identify these kids. And what they have found so far, the program has been in place about a year, it has made an enormous difference, not only in the lives of those children, but in that school as well because what the teachers do and when they designed this program is not just that she is working with the gifted and talented, she also has to work with the teachers and help the teachers work with the other children in the classroom even though all the children in the classroom may not be identified as gifted and talented. So a lot of the strategies and the skills that are being used over here, this person is also using. I would like personally to see that replicated and to see more students and teachers involved in those kinds of programs. Unfortunately, in most schools, when you look at them, it’s not…mostly you don’t see a lot of racial minority kids, but you also don’t see a lot of poor kids in those programs either.