Talk Priority Schools

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

Forsyth County Association of Educators President Tripp Jeffers was in Denver this week for the Advancing Student Achievement Through Labor-Management Collaboration conference, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education.

Jeffers was part of a presenting team, along with Donny Lambeth, Chairman of the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Board of Education and Donald Martin, Superintendent of Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools. The three have a worked to build a collaborative relationship that has allowed WSFCS to move forward on a number of innovative projects in North Carolina, which is a non-bargaining state.

During the presentation, Jeffers shared an example of how collaboration guided the union and the district through a difficult Reduction in Force (RIF) policy that bases RIF decisions both on a teacher’s work experiences as well as performance on evaluations.

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By Princess Moss, NEA Executive Committee

Clark County Education Association (CCEA) President Ruben Murillo met the NEA team at 6:30 a.m. Thursday and drove us to Carson Elementary School in West Las Vegas.  At Carson, we met CCEA board members and staff.  The day would be spent talking with teachers, ESPs, building level and central office administrators.

NEA Executive Committee Member Princess Moss Speaks with staff at Carson Elementary before the school day begins.

Krispy Crème donuts and coffee awaited us in the staff lounge. As we chatted about the School Improvement Grant process, we focused on two questions:  What is working in implementing the School Improvement Grant plan and what is not working?  In answering, employees were asked to comment on four areas:  collaboration, professional development and capacity, leadership, and outreach/partnerships.

Collaboration is essential and works.  Billie Rayford, Associate Superintendent, shared with us that in addition to the 3 R’s; there is a 4th – Relationships.  Relationships are so very important.  The relationship between the Clark County Education Association and the administration has been one in which it was obvious that both had the same vision – a great public school for every student. read more »

By Peg Dunlap

This work actually started before the School Improvement Grant process. Because we had a number of districts on improvement for Title One, the Kansas State Department of Ed decided that since they didn’t have the capacity to provide assistance they would contract with an outside entity, they chose to use Christopher Cross and Scott Joftus, who have a consulting group, to come in and work with the school districts to help them figure out what could they be doing that would make it more likely that schools in their districts would be successful.

They started with a cohort of five school districts and then in the second year they added another group of about 15 and then in this third year, which is the current year, they’ve added another group of eight, based on the districts on improvement.  What they did was to bring in a protocol that’s kind of a self study for the school districts, and it focus at the central office.  It really asks the district to look at its hiring practices, its administrative procedures, its curriculum alignment, you know, all of those things that tend to happen centrally that can often get in the way of schools being successful with students and teachers being successful. read more »

By Kathleen J. Skinner, Ed.D.

I know many of us quote  that revered philosopher Pogo. ‘I have seen the enemy and he is us.’  I would rather say, ‘We have seen the solution and it is us.’  I think that’s sort of a refrain that we walk into this work with. Eight or nine years ago Massachusetts became involved with the Priority School Initiative.  And we used the initial opportunity to work with middle schools over a three year period in what we called the PSI KEYS Initiative, because we used KEYS as sort of a baseline to help identify the one or two big problems that – if they weren’t solved – made what else they did irrelevant.  And we had a lot of success with some schools and we learned a lot from our mistakes with others.  And I always think, quite frankly, failure is a better teacher than success.

The Center for Education Policy and Practice has four professional staff, support staff and a field of 12 professional development associates who work across the state on professional programs.  Based on that experience and with a lot of encouragement, we made a decision to found an education management organization, The Priority School Redesign Center. read more »

Dr. Tyna Davis

One and a half years ago, Alabama Education Association (AEA) formulated a cadre of approximately 30 educators to review the four recommended models for the School Improvement Grants (SIG). After study, the cadre recommended the transformation model.  This came after an intensive process of discussing and focusing on the pros and cons of each model.  The group unanimously agreed that the transformation model was the model that we wanted to use in our state.  Through conferences, AEA’s Alabama School Journal, editorials and news articles, we recommended to the locals the Transformation Model.  This was important because it helped shape the approaches used by our school systems.  Of 14 Alabama awardees, 13 are transformation and one is closure.  The one local that is recommending closure has had this issue on the local board agenda for several years. 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 »

By Len Paolillo, NEA Executive Committee

As you can see in the video above, I’ve had an inspiring week. I began my “listening tour” at Dunbar High School in Dayton, joined by Dayton Education Association President David Romick and Demetrice Davis and Randy Flora from the Ohio Education Association. We first met with the principal at Dunbar, Marlayna Randolph who shared some background on the School Improvement Grant (SIG) application process, and the stress of deciphering both SIG and Race to the Top requirements on a very short timeline. read more »

By Amy Buffenbarger and Staci Maiers

NEA President Dennis Van Roekel joined U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in announcing plans today to convene a national education reform conference on labor-management collaboration early next year.

The conference will highlight examples of progressive collective bargaining agreements across the country and identify opportunities for further reforms at the state and district level. Participants will include national, state, and local union leadership as well as school superintendents and school boards from across the country. read more »

By Paula Monroe

My first site visits to NEA Priority Schools were today.  What a day!

The morning started at Cleveland High School.

Seattle has three SIG schools and I got to visit two of them today.  I was joined by Seattle Education Association Vice President, Jonathan Knapp, NEA Director, Kathy Axtell and NEA Priority Schools Campaign Staff, Steve Snider.  We met the principal briefly and talked at length to the Academic Dean.  Jonathan gave us some background information on some of the local association issues as we prepared to visit some of the classrooms.  We were able to meet three of the staff who were able to speak to us about the SIG process so far.

Cleveland was in the process of implementing STEM and the consistent message was that the SIG money was supporting the STEM grant implementation.  It was difficult to separate the two.  The other consistent message was public education need stability.  We need to see if our efforts will actually pay off.  We have new initiatives every few years and we never stick with them long enough to actually determine the effectiveness or value. read more »