Talk Priority Schools

A new report out today highlights how strong labor-management partnerships between teachers’ unions and administrators are transforming schools in communities from coast to coast. The report, from American Rights at Work Education Fund, presents nine case studies demonstrating how “collective bargaining has provided a path for teachers and administrators to work together to find solutions and create opportunities” for their students.

At a time when some governors are trying to strip educators and workers of their collective bargaining rights, unions like the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers have stood strong in their knowledge that collective bargaining can be an asset in helping achieve education reform. “Partnerships between schools, school districts and educators may be surprising to many people exposed to a steady diet of attacks on unions,” said NEA President Dennis Van Roekel. “But across the country, in community after community, collective bargaining and other forms of consensus and collaboration are transforming public education.”

NEA’s Priority Schools Campaign has featured several of the success stories included in the “Partnerships in Education: How Labor-Management Collaboration Is Transforming Public Schools” report:

• In Evansville Indiana, union members and management jointly redeveloped Delaware Elementary School into an equity school, where teachers and the administration maintain consistent communication with parents.
• At John Muir Elementary in Merced, California, the administration and the union refocused reform efforts based on a strategy of “meeting students where they’re at.” The school has created targeted professional development programs, reduced class sizes, and provided intervention assistance for kids who are struggling.
• In Columbus, Ohio, the discussion surrounding Linden McKinley STEM Academy’s ability to close the achievement gaps was community-wide, involving more than 300 parents, business leaders, teachers, administrators, and faith and political leaders in community meetings.
• At Putnam City West High School in Oklahoma, an energetic partnership between educators and community members has helped close achievement gaps.

Learn more about the report and download it at the American Rights at Work website.

At the same time educators in several states face legislation to strip their right to bargain with school districts on most issues, teachers and support professionals in those states and across the country have entered a new era of collaborative reform with their school districts.

Despite the deep-pocketed promotion of an anti-union narrative in media and government, in state after state, unions are showing the way, not only in education reform, but specifically in strategies to close the achievement gaps and raise student achievement in struggling schools, what NEA calls Priority Schools.

• In Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Education Association Council developed a plan for pay differentials and evaluation aimed at ensuring effective teachers in every classroom. The state’s governor is now trying to break the union’s right to bargain despite WEAC’s open offer to do its fair share in compensation and benefits to meet the state’s budget shortfall.
• In Hamilton County, TN an initiative formed around five inner-city middle schools that tended to perform less well than the other middle schools. The district and union together formed networks to share and implement best practices throughout the district. Since the program was expanded to every one of Hamilton’s middle schools in 2005, the percentage of middle school students passing the state’s reading exam increased from 84% in 2005 to 90% in 2009.  The percentage of middle school students passing the state’s mathematics exam increased from 86% in 2005 to 89% in 2009.
• In Nevada, the Clark County Education Association initiated the Empowerment School Project. Under collaborative management teams, teachers were able to choose textbooks, they organized the day around a block of focused reading in ability-level groups, and initiated small-group tutoring after school. When Paul Culley Elementary joined the empowerment school project in 2005, fewer than a quarter of its students read on grade level. By 2008, 57 percent did.
• Just five years ago, John Muir Elementary in Merced, CA was the lowest-performing elementary school in California’s Merced City School District. Now, thanks to a new focus on professional development and collaboration – and a seven-year grant from a union-backed program – John Muir is now one of Merced’s top-performing elementary schools. The school uses California’s Quality Education Investment Act funds to focus on professional development, reducing class size, and a boot camp where kids who were falling behind could receive additional instruction.
• In Indiana, Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation and the Evansville Teachers Association jointly developed a plan called Equity Schools, targeting two elementary schools and a middle school where scores on the state test were low and falling. The plan includes increased professional development designed jointly by teachers and the district, and compensated longer school days and a longer year. The district and union bargained the changes, including a requirement that, beginning in the 2010 school year, teachers wanting to work in the three schools were required to first pass through a rigorous Equity Academy program designed by the district and the union. More teachers applied than there were positions available.
• In Illinois, three unions representing more than 230,000 education employees, the Illinois Education Association, the Illinois Federation of Teachers and the Chicago Teachers Union jointly developed a proposal to streamline the process for removing underperforming teachers and resolve teacher dismissals in a much shorter time, helping to reduce costs associated with dismissals for both districts and employees. The unions also proposed that evaluations be clearly tied to a teacher obtaining due process rights, usually known as “teacher tenure.”

Steve Snider

By Christy Levings, NEA Executive Committee

How do you define leadership?  Is it being brave enough to try all new things when the comfortable that you know might be okay?  Is it taking a stand and giving it your all? Is it demanding excellence from yourself in order to support excellence in your colleagues?

I saw leadership at its best this week at Lincoln Elementary in Richmond, CA.  I saw talented professionals who are by anyone’s definition leaders.  Every employee in the school is demonstrating leadership – standing up and pushing themselves in order to move their children forward to be more successful in life.

Do not be mistaken, I am not talking only about the highly experienced and highly professional principal.  She is doing fabulous work and more importantly, she understands how to work with a staff of talented professionals.  As one teacher said, “She just gets it.”  She understands that respecting her staff and making decisions together allows them to feel respected as professionals. She also works to create a working environment that pushes and prods the entire staff to use their talents and unleash their creativity. read more »

By Christy Levings, NEA Executive Committee

If you are a fan of science and space films, the phrase Houston, we have a problem is a clear warning of danger ahead.  After spending two days in San Francisco visiting two schools identified as NEA Priority Schools that will receive School Improvement Grants, I feel that phrase sums up the message I would like to share with Education Secretary Arne Duncan:

Mr. Secretary, you are creating a launch problem for schools that are already filled with hard-working professionals who work with kids that bring tough problems to school with them every day. The schools I visited have not been given time to implement the models for major change that the U. S. Department of Education told school districts they must adopt.  Mr. Secretary, you must carve out time for schools to determine what programs are needed in their schools. They must have time to plan and collaborate together. read more »

Watch Dr. Sheila Simmons, Director of NEA’s Priority Schools Campaign, talk about collaboration and engaging educators, administrations and the community to achieve results during her testimony to the West Contra Costa School Board in Richmond, California.

By Steve Snider

Recent reporting in the Los Angeles Times linking standardized test scores to individual teachers and threatening to label thousands of teachers by name as “effective or “ineffective” based on the scores, has ignited debate far and wide. NEA President Dennis Van Roekel’s letter to the editor in Friday’s Times, called the paper’s plan “irresponsible” and “misleading.” A former high school math teacher, Van Roekel said the value-added approach to measuring effectiveness is “famously inconsistent. In one case, 30% of math teachers who ranked in the bottom quintile one year were above the median the following year.”

Cynthia McCabe’s excellent reporting on the controversy at NEAToday.org found a wide range of critics across the spectrum. A little closer to the ground in LA, the United Teachers Los Angeles held their Leadership Conference over the weekend. While presenting information about NEA’s Priority School Campaign, we had a chance to catch up with a UTLA member who provided real 101 on the controversy and the issue beyond.

Alex Caputo-Pearl is Lead Teacher at the Social Justice and the Law Academy at Crenshaw High School in West LA and here’s what he had to say about the LA Times, about measuring teacher effectiveness and more importantly, about using evaluations to make a real difference in students’ lives:

“In a nutshell, the Los Angeles Times is an institution in the city of Los Angeles that has typically and historically been anti union, using a tool, this value added measure, which uses standardized tests in a high-stakes way to say whether a teacher is quote, unquote effective or quote, unquote ineffective. The problem with it is that we know standardized tests are one important thing to look at in student development, in teacher formative assessment; they can’t be used in a high-stakes way with kids or teachers. Every study that’s been done on that says that you can’t just rely on that single measure because it’s not reliable and it’s not even made for that purpose.

“What we’re trying to do at UTLA – we have a teacher effectiveness group that’s been working since this spring. We are trying to come out with policy for the UTLA House of Representatives to adopt in the Fall and then move into a plan and political strategy. What we want to do is take a proactive approach to this issue and we take the best of what’s out there in terms of Linda Darling Hammond’s work up at Stanford, Diane Ravitch’s work, work that we have here in LA like the Institute for Standards, Curriculum and Assessments; take the best elements at work and propose a real plan for teacher support, development and evaluation. And we’ve got some real allies in that fight – we’ve got West Ed working with us. It’s not an issue of us not wanting to put something out there; it’s going to happen. It’s complicated to put that together; it’s a complicated issue.

“The way the Los Angeles Times spins it and the way that some of the most anti-union board members spin it is that this issue is only about teachers who need to be dismissed, the so-called ‘bad teachers.’ One of the things we have to do is reframe it and say that’s actually not true at all; this is an issue about the 10 percent 15 percent, 20 percent of teachers who are exemplary and how they can help others; the few on the bottom end who are right now ineffective but need support and then the huge number in the middle. The real question for teachers and for kids is ‘how do we move the mediocre teacher to a place where they’re good? How do we move the good teachers to a place where they’re very good?’ – those are things that will make a difference. It’s not going to be dismissing 200 teachers out of a system of 45,000 – so we’re trying to take a comprehensive view and really talk about what kind of formative evaluation for a teacher over time supports their development and what kind of ultimately summative evaluation do we need to put in place where in fact you can dismiss teachers if they haven’t responded to support.”

From The Record in Stockton, CA, some interesting detail in a report from Roosevelt Elementary about starting work on the Transformation model, beginning with the new school motto: “Collaborate! Empower! Succeed!”

“Collaboration has been ongoing since the transformation model was adopted. Last week outside the Roosevelt office, (the leadership team including teachers) wrote their goals for the first 30, 60 and 90 days of the new year on sticky notes and covered the wall with them. Among the items on the wish list:  ‘Info for parents on homework and minutes of home reading’ and ‘clear procedures for updating info for new or existing students’ and planning of a ‘family math night.’

“Empowerment will come through portfolios all 483 students are expected to receive on opening day. The students will maintain the portfolios through the year, chronicling their own progress and reminding them of the gains they have made.

There also will be student-led conferences where children will share their successes and challenges with parents and teachers, with whom they will work to develop academic and social goals. Increasing parent involvement through regular school events is another part of the package.

“…teachers unions universally have deep reservations about their members being evaluated based on test scores. The district and the Stockton Teachers Association have not reached an accord on this issue…Despite the challenges, (the ‘school leaders’) seem to be onboard with the transformation. This week, there was a clear common thread in comments from several of them: hopefulness.

“’I feel our administration is wonderful,’ fourth-grade teacher Sheryl Simmons said. ‘(The principal) wants input from everyone. It’s driven from everyone. I love everyone I work with. We’re different but the same. We want the best for the children. It’s not just a job. It’s life.’”