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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2019
While the American teachers’ unions are commonly understood to be guarantors of public school teachers’ job security through their backing of teacher tenure laws, the relationship between tenure and teachers’ organizations is historically contingent. This article shows how in 1937 Pennsylvania teachers pushed their state legislature to pass what was at the time the most empowering teacher tenure law in existence. Using primary documents, the article examines how nonunionized teachers politicized tenure in the early 1930s, before the New Deal reshaped the political environment. Women activists from Philadelphia’s AFT Local 192 successfully lobbied the legislature in Harrisburg in 1937 to pass a far-reaching tenure law that not only guaranteed due-process rights for teachers, but did so without allowing for a probationary period and without exception for married women teachers. Pennsylvania’s teacher unionists fought against efforts to reform the law in the years that followed.
The author would like to thank Jeff Selinger of Bowdoin College, John Krinsky of City College of New York, and the anonymous reviewers from the Journal of Policy History for their thoughtful comments on earlier drafts of this work. Their advice and recommendations helped to make this a better piece of scholarship than it otherwise would have been.
1. For a reasonable overview, see Kahlenberg, Richard D., “Tenure: How Due Process Protects Teachers and Students” American Educator 39, no. 2 (Summer 2015): 4–11, 43.Google Scholar
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4. Temple University Urban Archives (TUUA hereafter), Philadelphia Teachers Union papers (TU hereafter) Box 5, folder 73 (5/73 hereafter), “The Status of Teacher Tenure,” report prepared by the NEA “for limited distribution among consultants,” 9.
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8. Indeed, some of the Philadelphia teachers literally knew the New York teachers whose radical politics Taylor describes so provocatively. See Taylor, Clarence, Reds at the Blackboard: Communism, Civil Rights, and the New York City Teachers Union (New York, 2013).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9. Along with Murphy’s Blackboard Unions, Urban’s Gender, Race, and the National Education Association, and portions of Tyack’s One Best System, see, in particular, Tyack, David, Lowe, Robert, and Hansot, Elisabeth, Public Schools in Hard Times: The Great Depression and Recent Years (Cambridge, Mass., 1984), andGoogle Scholar Altenbaugh, Richard, ed., The Teacher’s Voice: A Social History of Teaching in Twentieth-Century America (Bristol, Pa., 1992).Google Scholar
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11. TUUA TU 4/69, “In Re: Refusal of School Board to Renew Contracts with Teachers Who Are Members of the American Federation of Teachers, Affiliated with American Federation of Labor,” Department Reports, Harrisburg, Pa., 30 July 1920, 6.
12. Ibid., 7.
13. Ibid., 9–10.
14. “Teachers Forbidden to Affiliate with Labor Federation” Philadelphia Inquirer, 29 July 1920.
15. “The Status of Teacher Tenure,” 9.
16. “Penna. Teachers Seek Tenure Law,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 28 December 1928.
17. “Teachers Benefit Through Measure,” Scranton Republican, 26 June 1929.
18. “Penna. Teachers Seek Tenure Law.”
19. “Educators Decide to Enter Politics,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 2 March 1930. All other quotations in the paragraph are from this article.
20. TUUA Mary Foley Grossman papers (MFG hereafter) 2/26, “Origins of the Pennsylvania State Teachers’ League,” Pennsylvania Teacher 8, no. 6 (Spring 1933): 11.
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22. “Senate Group Defers Action on Tenure Bill,” Wilkes-Barre Record, 22 April 1931; “Teachers’ Bill Given Hearing,” Bradford Evening Star and Bradford Daily Record, 21 April 1931. McGlynn later came to own the pen that Governor Earle used to sign the 1937 tenure law. See “Death Claimed Advocate of Teacher Tenure,” Jim Thorpe Times News, 5 January 1965.
23. “Remove Teachers Tenure Provision,” Harrisburg Telegraph, 28 April 1931.
24. “Teachers Tenure Law for Pennsylvania Has Been Proposed by League,” Lebanon Semi-Weekly News, 9 March 1931; “G.O.P. Women Vote to Aid Tenure Bill,” Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, 10 April 1931.
25. “G.O.P. Women to Plead School Teachers’ Cause,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 22 March 1931.
26. “Directors Strike at Teacher Tenure Law,” Mount Carmel Item, 21 April 1931.
27. “Lively Row over Teachers’ Tenure Bill Continues,” Harrisburg Telegraph, 22 April 1931.
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31. “Legislation Discussed by Teachers’ League,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 16 March 1935.
32. “Capital Carousel,” Reading Times, 5 June 1935.
33. Keller, Richard C., “Pennsylvania’s Little New Deal” Pennsylvania History 29, no. 4 (1962): 391–406.Google Scholar
34. “Anthracite Bloc Is Organized in State Assembly,” Evening News, 26 November 1936.
35. TUUA MFG 2/27, “Let’s Fight for Real Tenure!” Philadelphia Teacher 1, no. 7 (May 1935): 4.
36. TUUA MFG, 4/8, Foley Grossman, Mary, “Annual Report for District Comprising Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland,” 15 July 1938, 2.Google Scholar See also “Local Teachers Join Tenure Bill Backers,” Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, 24 March 1937.
37. Grossman, Mary Foley, “Redefining the Relationship of the Federal Government to the Education of Racial and Other Minority Groups” Journal of Negro Education 7, no. 3 (1938): 450–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
38. “Mary Grossman, English Teacher” Philadelphia Inquirer, 9 May 1972.
39. After her death in 1968, some of her friends worked with the York County school district to establish the Sarah Walsh Wepman Fund to provide scholarships for African American youth. See “Three Get Wepman Fund Scholarships,” Gazette and Daily, 9 September 1969.
40. While the creation of such legislation was surely a collaborative affair, the obituary of Nathan Shrager, the union’s financial secretary during this time, cites him as “author of the state’s Teacher Tenure Law, which was written to protect teachers from dubious hiring and firing practices.” See “Nathan Shrager, 88, A Retired Educator,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 26 November 1999.
41. The full text of the law can be found in TUUA TU 5/75.
42. TUUA MFG 2/8, “Administration Tenure Proposal Scheduled for Final Passage,” Education Bulletin 5, no. 24 (1937): 94.
43. “Politics in Pennsylvania,” Harrisburg Telegraph, 2 April 1937; “Teachers’ Tenure Bill Passes Assembly: Earle Will Sign It,” Pittsburgh Press, 6 April 1937.
44. Legislative Journal of Pennsylvania, House 1937 (5 April 1937), 2146–47.
45. Ibid., 2072.
46. TUUA MFG 1/29, letter from Harkins to Grossman, 20 November 1936. Harkins also took this opportunity to inform Grossman that he had just been reelected and that “we will have overwhelming Democratic majority in both the House and the Senate.”
47. TUUA MFG 1/29, letter from Grossman to Harkins, 30 November 1936.
48. “Functions of School Boards,” Wilkes-Barre Semi-Weekly Record, 2 January 1911.
49. TUUA MFG 2/26, “Education and the Mounting Cost of Government,” Pennsylvania Teacher 8, no. 6 (Spring 1933): 7–8. The Economic Council had recently produced a report on the Harrisburg school system that accused Harrisburg of “overexpansion” of public school expenditures. See “Politics Score by Council in School Survey,” Harrisburg Telegraph, 24 July 1933.
50. “Denies Teachers’ League Agitating for Higher Pay” Harrisburg Telegraph, 29 December 1930.
51. TUUA MFG 2/26, Riesing, John J., “A Friend Indeed,” Pennsylvania Teacher 8, no. 6 (Spring 1933): 6.Google Scholar
52. “Legislation Discussed by Teachers’ League,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 16 March 1935.
53. TUUA MFG 2/5, “Clip-Sheet Bulletin from the National Office of the American Federation of Teachers” 1, no. 1 (8 December 1937).
54. “Tenure Act Voids Usual Dismissals,” News-Chronicle, 4 May 1937; “New Contracts Will Be Given to Teachers” Mount Carmel Item, 4 May 1937.
55. TUUA TU 5/71, Tenure cases.
56. “Hanover Board to Ban Married Women Teachers,” Evening News, 3 May 1937; “Teachers Swear Still Are Single,” Indiana Gazette, 5 May 1937; “Board Hits Tenure Act,” Wilkes-Barre Record, 7 May 1937.
57. “Clip-Sheet Bulletin.”
58. “Bloomsburg School Board Ousted: Fails to Obey Tenure Act,” Daily Courier, 29 October 1937.
59. TUUA MFG 2/15, Union News-Flash 1, no. 25 (26 April 1937).
60. One of the state’s new Republican congressmen was Chester Gross, the president of this association.
61. “Teacher Tenure Act Changes Would Take ‘Teeth’ Out of Law,” News Herald, 31 January 1939.
62. TUUA TU 5/72, “A Brief on Tenure,” prepared by a special committee for the national legislative committee, Mary Foley Grossman, chairman.
63. Ibid.
64. Raleigh Warren Holmstedt, A Study of the Effects of the Teachers Tenure Law in New Jersey, No. 526, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1932; Cecil Winfield Scott, Indefinite Teacher Tenure: A Critical Study of the Historical, Legal, Operative, and Comparative Aspects, No. 613, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1934. The union’s brief does not mention the fact that the Scott study also recommends a probationary period.
65. Murphy, Blackboard Unions, 177.
66. TUUA TU 5/77, “Tenure and the Married Woman Teacher,” issued by the Pennsylvania Federation of Teachers, 21–23.
67. See “Appeals of Dunn, Victoria E. and Steinberg, Ruth, Temporary Professional Employees, from a decision of the Board of Public Education of the School District of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania” Bulletin of the Department of Education 20 (1952): 74–77.Google Scholar
68. Quoted in TUUA TU 5/82, letter from the AFT Legislative Committee to All Temporary Professional Employees, 7 December 1940.
69. TUUA TU 5/82, letter from Local 192 to the President and Members of the Board of Education, School District of Philadelphia, 9 January 1940.
70. TUUA TU 5/82, letters from Walsh to Dunn and Steinberg, 18 July 1940.
71. Walsh lost the case in state superior court. See Walsh v. School District of Philadelphia, 343 Pa. 178 (1941); TUUA TU 5/86, “The Philadelphia 1940 Salary Cut Case,” statement prepared by Legislative Research Committee, American Federation of Teachers, Local 192, Philadelphia.
72. TUUA TU 5/82, “Digest of Briefs written by Abraham Kopelman, hearing at Harrisburg,” 3 May 1940.
73. TUUA MFG 2/5, “Clip-Sheet Bulletin from the National Office of the American Federation of Teachers” 3, no. 7 (1 February 1940).
74. Ryan, Francis, Philadelphia’s AFSCME Story: Municipal Workers and Urban Power in the Twentieth Century (Philadelphia, 2011), 96.Google Scholar
