"We cannot avoid taking sides": Teacher unions, urban communities, and social justice in historical perspective

Today's teacher unions and teacher education programs inhabit an uneasy, and often conflictual, relationship with urban communities. First, urban teachers are overwhelmingly white and middle class, while urban students are predominately students of color and often poor. In Buffalo, New York, for example, students of color constitute 74 percent of the student population and over 77 percent of the students qualify for free and reduced lunches (New York State District Report Card, 2004). The predominately white teaching force, on the other hand, lives in middle-class enclaves within the city limits or nearby suburbs and represents some of the highest paid city employees. Most teacher education students in local universities and colleges grew up and attended school in these same white, middle-class suburbs and have had little exposure to the realities of urban neighborhoods.