Ted Kirsch was a labor union executive and organizer in Pennsylvania who died in 2021. ¹ His career included long terms as president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, president of AFT Pennsylvania, vice president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), vice president of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, and secretary-treasurer of the Philadelphia AFL-CIO. ^{2  3}

During Kirsch’s tenure leading the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, the city’s Democratic mayor handed over control of its public school system in 2001 to the then-Republican-led state government in an effort to address the district’s poor fiscal and academic performance.  ⁴

Career

Ted Kirsch was a powerful union executive in Pennsylvania, leading first the Philadelphia and then Pennsylvania state-level affiliates of the American Federation of Teachers from 1990 until 2019.  ¹

As a Philadelphia Public Schools social studies teacher, Kirsch was an early organizer for the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, joining the union in 1964. ¹ He was elected to the union’s board in 1967, left the classroom to become a full-time union employee in 1970, and was elected vice-president of the PFT in 1983 and president of the union in 1990. ^{1  2  3}

That same year, Kirsch was elected as a vice-president of the national American Federation of Teachers. ² He sat on the union’s executive committee and chaired the AFT Defense Fund. ³

In 2005, Kirsch was elected president of AFT Pennsylvania. After his reelection to that position in 2007, he resigned as PFT president and took a newly created role as Political and Legislative Liaison.  ^{3  2}

Kirsch largely retired from his union roles in 2019. ¹ At the time of his retirement, an analysis of national educational assessment data by the center-right Thomas B. Fordham Foundation identified Philadelphia as one of four big-city public school systems that were “train wrecks” for African-American students. ⁵  He died in 2021 at age 81 of lung disease. ¹

Philadelphia

Kirsch’s time leading the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania AFT affiliates was marked by persistent poor academic achievement and fiscal stability in Philadelphia’s public schools. ^{6  7  8}

The crisis in Philadelphia Public Schools came to a head in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and then-Philadelphia Mayor John F. Street (D) and then-Governors Tom Ridge (R) and Mark S. Schweiker (R) negotiated a “friendly takeover” of Philadelphia Public Schools by the state in 2001 in an effort to address the district’s $200 million debt and poor academic performance. ^{4  9}

The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers and AFT Pennsylvania opposed the takeover, which placed a state government-controlled School Reform Commission (SRC) over the district from 2001 to 2017. ^{10  7} An anti-takeover coalition was led by the left-of-center activist group ACORN, which was opposed to the involvement of the for-profit Edison Schools in developing a turnaround plan. ¹¹

In 2014, Philadelphia schools superintendent William R. Hite, Jr. identified the PFT as one of the primary barriers to reform in the district, citing its unwillingness to compromise on issues such as teachers’ generous health coverage even as schools were being closed and employees laid off. ⁸ That year, the SRC moved to unilaterally cancel the PFT’s expired contract, but the Pennsylvania Supreme Court sided with the union and reinstated the contract. ¹²

The PFT and AFT Pennsylvania made commitments to end the state’s control of Philadelphia schools a litmus test for candidates seeking their endorsement.  ¹³  Governor Tom Wolf (D) was elected in 2014 after promising to abolish the SRC, and Mayor Jim Kenney (D) won in 2015 with the union’s endorsement. ^{13  9}

Control over Philadelphia’s schools reverted to the city in 2018.  ¹⁰

Activism

Kirsch claimed to have taught the Philadelphia School District’s first African-American history class while a social studies teacher in the early 1960s.  ¹

He was a long-time opponent of efforts to expand educational choice in Pennsylvania. In 2017, he attacked an effort to create education savings accounts by characterizing it as an effort by “hedge fund billionaires and big donors like Betsy DeVos to defund and dismantle neighborhood public schools and turn public education over to companies that see our children as new profit centers.” ¹⁴

Kirsch opposed efforts to change Pennsylvania’s teacher tenure systems after the National Council on Teacher Quality gave the state’s public school systems a “D” grade in 2010 for its efforts to identify and eliminate ineffective teachers. ¹⁵ During the 2007-2008 school year, only 16 of Philadelphia’s teachers were ranked unsatisfactory and only six were dismissed for poor performance during a time period when national educational assessment tests found Philadelphia’s fourth and eighth grade students to be performing below the national average for big-city public school students. ⁶

In 2015, Kirsch participated in an AFT leadership delegation that toured Israel and the West Bank that had been organized by the left-of-center pro-Israel lobbying group J Street. ¹⁶

In 2018, Kirsch signed a coalition letter organized by the Islamic Networks Group that blamed rhetoric from President Donald Trump (R) and other Republican officials for inciting a mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and other acts of antisemitic and racial violence. ¹⁷ The letter claimed, “Antisemitism today is not always as overt as the Tree of Life Congregation shooter’s social media posts, but it is rampant, and it has been embraced by President Donald Trump and others with influential positions in our country.” ¹⁷

1. Graham, Kristen. “Ted Kirsch, Longtime Philadelphia Teachers’ Union Chief, Dies at 81.” Inquirer.com, January 20, 2021. https://www.inquirer.com/news/ted-kirsch-pft-labor-leader-philadelphia-obituary-obituaries-20210119.html.
2. “Aft Leaders Mourn Passing of Longtime Colleague and Aft Pennsylvania President Ted Kirsch.” American Federation of Teachers, January 19, 2021. https://www.aft.org/press-release/aft-leaders-mourn-passing-longtime-colleague-and-aft-pennsylvania-president.
3. “Ted Kirsch.” American Federation of Teachers (accessed via Wayback Machine), July 14, 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20200714005913/www.aft.org/about/leadership/ted-kirsch.
4. Gewertz, Catherine. “It’s Official: State Takes over Philadelphia Schools.” Education Week, November 29, 2020. https://www.edweek.org/leadership/its-official-state-takes-over-philadelphia-schools/2002/01.
5. Eden, Max. “The Worst News from NAEP.” Thomas B. Fordham Institute, November 14, 2019. https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/worst-news-naep.
6. “Mathematics 2009 TRIAL URBAN DISTRICT  ASSESSMENT RESULTS AT GRADES 4 AND 8.” National Center for Education Statistics, 2009. https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pdf/dst2009/2010452rev.pdf.
7. Mahnken, Kevin. “Philadelphia School Reform Commission Votes to Abolish Itself after 16 Years.” The 74, November 20, 2017. https://www.the74million.org/philadelphia-school-reform-commission-votes-to-abolish-itself-after-16-years/.
8. Hurdle, Jon. “Philadelphia School Chief Faces down Budget Cuts and Crises (Published 2014).” The New York Times, February 10, 2004. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/11/education/philadelphia-school-chief-faces-down-budget-cuts-and-crises.html.
9. Otterbein, Holly. “The Brief: Why the Philly Teachers Union’s Endorsement Matters.” Philadelphia Magazine, March 16, 2015. https://www.phillymag.com/citified/2015/03/16/the-brief-why-the-philly-teachers-unions-endorsement-matters/.
10. Graham, Kristen. “Notable Moments during 17 Years of Philly’s School Reform Commission.” Inquirer.com, June 29, 2018. https://www.inquirer.com/philly/education/src-timeline-20180629.html.
11. Socolar, Paul. “From the Archives: Coalition Forms to Fight Takeover.” Chalkbeat, 2001. https://www.chalkbeat.org/philadelphia/2014/10/24/22181737/from-the-archives-coalition-forms-to-fight-takeover/.
12. Felton, Emmanuel. “Pa.. Supreme Court Sides with Teachers in Contract-Cancellation Case.” Education Week, August 16, 2016. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/pa-supreme-court-sides-with-teachers-in-contract-cancellation-case/2016/08.
13. Thomas Fitzgerald and Robert Moran, Inquirer Staff Writers. “Wolf: Abolish Src, Make Phila. School Board Elected.” Inquirer.com, November 23, 2018. https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/politics/20141010_Wolf__Abolish_SRC__make_Philly_school_board_elected.html.
14. “Ted Kirsch Slams Senate Voucher Bill.” AFT Pennsylvania, May 23, 2017. https://pa.aft.org/press/ted-kirsch-slams-senate-voucher-bill.
15. Denvir, Daniel. “Teacher Tenure Comes under Fire.” Chalkbeat, November 1, 2023. https://www.chalkbeat.org/philadelphia/2010/12/1/22180606/teacher-tenure-comes-under-fire/.
16. Abunimah, Ali. “Why Is the American Federation of Teachers Promoting Israeli Apartheid? .” The Electronic Intifada, March 26, 2015. https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/why-american-federation-teachers-promoting-israeli-apartheid.
17. “An Open Letter to American about Anti-Semitism.” ING, October 29, 2018. https://ing.org/open-letter-america-anti-semitism/.