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By Doug Cunningham

The American Federation of Teachers has created a fund supported by four major foundations to seek teacher input to improve public education. AFT Vice-President Adam Urbanski heads the AFT Innovation Fund. It’s the first union-directed educational effort of its kind backed by major philanthropies. The goal is to support local and state efforts to improve education in three major areas – providing consistently high-quality instruction, dealing with out-of-school factors that impact student achievement and supporting collaborative arrangements between parents, educators and their unions and school management to help facilitate the implementation of policy improvements. The key, Urbanski says, is getting innovative input directly from teachers.

[Urbanski]: "This is a genuine effort on the part of the AMerican Federation of Teachers to send the message we want to be part of the solution. And if you invest in the collective wisdom of teachers you will be amazed what good ideas will come from teachers."