This weekend, public school teachers from across the state of New York will descend on the Hilton Hotel in Midtown Manhattan for the annual Representative Assembly of New York State United Teachers (NYSUT), the state-level teachers’ union federation. Representing 600,000 teachers from 1,200 locals, the assembly will vote to elect the federation’s leadership, the liaison between the classrooms and the statehouse.

Since their last meeting, popular opposition to the increased use of standardized testing has heightened, with delays on the implementation of the Common Core, a growing opt-out movement, and a federation vote of no-confidence in the state education commissioner. Finding their school districts squeezed by a municipal tax cap, and their children bombarded with what they consider to be uselessly stressful standardized tests, a vocal contingent of teachers and parents has emerged to oppose state education policy in New York.

This represents an opportunity for teachers’ unions, but whether they will be able to fold broad opposition to standardized testing into a positive alternative to competitive funding schemes will depend on breaking with labor’s established political strategy in Albany. If teachers’ unions hope to reverse competition-based reforms, they will have to move past merely opposing policy. They will have advance an alternative to the ruling consensus that refuses to redistribute the tax burden upwards to adequately fund public education.