Tag Archives | Teacher empowerment

Understanding our two education reform movements

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On September 6, 2011 in Education and Public Policy, General, Parent empowerment, Parental Choice, School Boards, Teacher empowerment, Unionism

Two parallel and at times interdependent education reform movements are occurring in Florida. They differ in how they’re attempting to improve public education and in the political responses they’re generating.

The largest and most contentious effort is trying to improve public education by giving school districts more power over personnel decisions. Weakening tenure, tying teacher evaluations and pay to student achievement and eliminating the role of seniority in transfer decisions are core features of this district-centric reform.

Teachers strongly oppose these efforts to empower school district managers because they believe this power will be abused. Fifty-years ago teachers organized themselves into industrial unions and used their collective power to reduce the power of school district managers because too many managers were putting politics and patronage over student achievement. Today’s teachers have no intention of returning to those days without a fight.

The second reform attempts to improve public education by empowering teachers to create more diverse learning options and empowering parents to match their children with the learning options that best meet their needs. Whereas the first reform movement is focused exclusively on school districts, this second effort is advocating for greater teacher and parent empowerment in and out of school districts. School districts oppose this latter movement because they fear teachers will create — and parents will choose — learning options they don’t control, thereby causing districts to lose market share. And because the potential market share of a teacher union is tied to its school district’s market share, teacher unions also oppose this effort, even though teacher empowerment is one of its core components.

The political opposition to the within-district reforms has been more intense than to the teacher and parent empowerment movement because the empowerment reforms have focused primarily on low-income and exceptional education students and programs for these students are harder for school districts, teacher unions and Democrats to oppose. In addition, district employees are increasingly choosing non-district learning options such as charter and virtual schools for their own children. The within-district reforms, on the other hand, are universally opposed by teacher unions and elected Democrats since the impact of greater management power is more visible and threatening to teachers.

Understanding there are two distinct education reform movements occurring in Florida is a precursor to understanding the politics of improving public education in the Sunshine State. Eventually the teacher and parent empowerment movement will prevail because it is the best way to maximize public education’s greatest resource — its people. And when it does most of the contentious issues in the district-centric movement will become moot as key decision making moves from school districts to schools.

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Unions and entrepreneurs — finding common ground leads to freedom for each

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On May 23, 2011 in General, Teacher empowerment, Unionism

Writing in the newest edition of The Washington Monthly, Barry C. Lynn says unions need to find common ground with entrepreneurs as a counterbalance to the centralized power of large monopolies. Here’s the crux of his argument, which has relevance for public education:

… the great middle class of twentieth-century America stood atop two foundations. One was freedom to organize the industrial workplace, to erect a ‘countervailing power’ within a necessarily hierarchical governance structure. The other was freedom from organization, the freedom to be one’s own boss, the freedom to build up a business that — thanks to anti-monopoly law — was largely safe from predation. Every American could choose the path that fit best.

School districts are monopolies with hierarchical governance structures, and over the last fifty years their employees have successfully organized industrial unions to protect themselves. But teacher unions strongly oppose the existence of entrepreneurs in public education, and they are especially hostile toward teachers being entrepreneurial and having the freedom to be their own bosses. Today’s teacher unions are the foot soldiers of school boards and protecting school board monopolies is a top priority.

Teacher unions are under siege, in part, because they insist on putting the power of school boards over the needs of teachers, parents, students and taxpayers. Embracing Lynn’s call to find common ground with entrepreneurs and abandoning their faith in school district monopolies will enable them to regain their status as a progressive force in education and the larger society.

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What local control means today

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On February 10, 2011 in Education and Public Policy, General, Parental Choice, School Choice, Teacher quality

The U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce, chaired by John Kline, R-MN, heard today from several educators and policy analysts on the challenges facing public education today. In announcing the hearing, a press release from the committee made no attempt to conceal its contempt for the growing federal role in education. But in her testimony, Lisa Graham Keegan, former Arizona state schools superintendent and education adviser to John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, urged caution before embracing locally controlled solutions versus top-down mandates.

“Where education is concerned, the most successful local action has had to develop outside the traditional confines of ‘local control,’ Keegan said. “Because, unfortunately, ‘local’ lost out long ago in school districts and ‘control’ took over … Ironically, true local control has moved to schools of choice, and true teacher leadership and potential exists outside the teacher contracts originally intended to empower their work.”

Empowerment was a major theme in Keegan’s remarks, particularly as it relates to creating entrepreneurs out of teachers: “When our nation first envisioned a system of public schools, the quality of the system lay in the hands of the school teacher. He or she was hired to create the school, lead the school, and manage the school. The effectiveness of the teacher leader has always been the most important determinant of success in any school. Over time, however, as systems began to centralize and hundred page contracts took the place of leadership, the role of the teacher has not become less important, but made less effective by illogical constraints”

Her entire written testimony can be found here.

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Merit pay the MLB way

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On January 29, 2011 in Education and Public Policy, General, Teacher empowerment, Teacher quality, Unionism

As redefineED editor Adam Emerson observed last week, Andy Rotherham and I both like using professional sports comparisons when discussing how to improve teacher employment and compensation practices. But whereas Andy thinks school districts should “act more like professional sports franchises so they can protect and incentivize the talent they most want to hold onto,” I see individual schools as being analogous to professional teams and school districts functioning as the league office.

Major League Baseball does not hire and fire players, nor decide their pay. These decisions are made by individual teams. This decentralized decision making benefits teams and players. Teams are able to hire the players that best meet their needs, and players have 30 different employment opportunities rather than just one. Multiple employers enable baseball players to earn more money by selling their services to the highest bidder, a process called free agency, and to customize their contracts within the parameters of league rules. Some players prefer the security of longer-term contracts, even if it means less money, while others accept less job security in exchange for more money. The players’ union would fiercely resist any attempts by MLB to centralize hiring, firing and compensation decisions, as would the teams.

If public educators were interested in replicating the success of Major League Baseball, we’d move hiring, firing and compensation decisions to the school level. School districts would stop owning and managing schools and instead focus on providing an effective regulatory environment within which the publicly-funded schools under their jurisdiction would operate. In essence, every district school would operate like a charter school. Teacher unions would represent teachers’ interest by ensuring state and district regulations were good for teachers and helping them negotiate contracts with their preferred schools.

The few professional sports leagues that have tried centralized team ownership and player employment have all failed. Public educators understand why.

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The consequences of treating all teachers alike

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On January 27, 2011 in Customization, Education and Public Policy, General, Teacher empowerment, Teacher quality

Andrew Rotherham, in his weekly Time.com column, explores the move among many states to reform laws governing teacher tenure. But when weighing ending the practice of tenure altogether or at least expediting the process of removing teachers guilty of misconduct from the classroom, Rotherham’s commentary takes an intriguing turn toward teacher empowerment (redefinED host Doug Tuthill similarly framed the issue last month):

… both these approaches reinforce an underlying problem in that they basically treat all teachers alike. Why not look to empower teachers and administrators by giving them the ability to negotiate more flexible contracts? Let school districts act more like professional sports franchises so they can protect and incentivize the talent they most want to hold onto. Contracts could offer more than monetary incentives. Excellent teachers could be protected from layoffs, for example, or given enhanced professional development experiences. Most of us are not professional athletes, but you see the same approach in a variety of workplaces all the time.

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In reform, ownership matters

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On January 20, 2011 in Education and Public Policy, General, Teacher empowerment, Teacher quality

RedefinED editor Adam Emerson’s blog entry on Tuesday about the importance of teacher ownership reminded me of an experience that has informed my approach to improving education for the last three decades.

In 1983, I moved back to St. Petersburg, Fla., to help start an International Baccalaureate (IB) program at St. Petersburg High School (SPHS). I bought a small house in a transitional neighborhood near downtown and began meeting my new neighbors. After a few months I noticed a pattern. About half my neighbors owned their homes. The other half was mostly renters. When I took friends through the neighborhood they could accurately identify which homes were occupied by renters and owners. It was obvious because the owners, with few exceptions, did a better job taking care of their property.

I observed a similar pattern when I walked the halls of SPHS and met my new colleagues. The faculty was comprised of “owners” and “renters.” The owners were hard working, conscientious, and passionate about teaching, while the renters were just going through the motions. Most teachers go into education with a sense of ownership and passion about teaching, but large school districts often crush this passion and turn many teachers into renters. At SPHS, the renters included younger teachers who wanted to leave but couldn’t find another job as well as burned-out veterans who were not yet eligible for retirement benefits and were running out the clock.

I decided public education needed to be transformed so that more teachers and students owned their work. I also concluded that how a reform is implemented is as important as the initiative itself. A brilliantly designed merit-pay plan, for instance, will fail if teachers don’t own it.

Failure to understand the power of ownership has undermined many of the education improvements I’ve worked on over the last 33 years, and education reformers today continue to repeat this mistake. Too often we erroneously assume that getting input from a small group of teachers or inserting a provision in a collective bargaining agreement means we’ve got teacher buy-in.

I support well-regulated school choice programs because they tend to foster greater teacher, student and parent empowerment and ownership. Empowerment and ownership are not panaceas, but sustainable improvements in teaching and learning are impossible without them.

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Building an upside-down pyramid in a pyramid structure

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On January 18, 2011 in Customization, General, Parental Choice, School Choice, Teacher empowerment

Education Week follows the development of more and more teacher-led schools in an age of reform and today brings us the latest example in Detroit. A system as troubled as the Motor City’s probably stands to gain the most from such an experiment, but we should be careful to avoid a liberal use of the word “innovation” here as well as avoid the use of the word “ownership” as teacher/administrator Ann K. Crowley uses here:

It has taken a commitment by teachers to stick with the schedule, but teachers seem to feel that they have more ownership over student success …

While we applaud the experimentation the district, the teachers and the union have undertaken at Palmer Park Preparatory Academy, we would argue that allowing teachers to lead and manage district schools is different from empowering them to own their own schools.

Our recognition of ownership, in this sense, comes from encouraging teachers to be entrepreneurs, giving them the freedom to develop and implement their own curriculum and instructional style, and connecting them with the children who would benefit from this enterprise.

A district school that mostly transfers administrative duties to teachers doesn’t meet this definition, and many schools that have tried this have shown mixed results. Charter schools and private options for low-income students foster a model of public education that empowers families to find the right school for their child, and policies that build this infrastructure create opportunities for experienced teachers to freely develop an educational style and truly take ownership.

This is not to say that the teacher-led schools borne in Detroit, Denver, Boston, Los Angeles and Newark, N.J., would not attract families with an atmosphere unlike other traditional schools in their respective districts. Indeed,  650 students attend the Brick Avon Academy in Newark, a school run by a half-dozen veterans of Teach for America and one where the principal calls herself the “principal teacher.” (Brick, which stands for Building Responsible Intelligent Creative Kids, plans to seek International Baccalaureate status and require Mandarin as well as Spanish)

But as education policy adviser Tim McDonald told the New York Times:

You’re trying to run an upside-down pyramid in a pyramid structure. There is so much momentum against being completely different in most districts.

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