Articles in the Teachers category

The week in blogs

Many, many years ago, my brother fought in The Battle of Nashville.

Maybe I should qualify that: He helped re-enact the Civil War Battle of Nashville. And since we were from St. Louis, a nominally Yankee town, he was part of a ridiculously undermanned squad of union re-enactors that somehow managed to overcome a massive army of Confederates. (We’re talking Tennessee, remember?) But even re-enactors must be minimally accurate, so yes, the Yankees won.

Just who will win today’s Battle of Nashville — a battle for public opinion similar to those that have erupted in Ohio, Illinois, and Wisconsin — is hard to say. But as many as 10,000 teachers are gathering to demonstrate at the capitol in Nashville as I write, preparing to march against a bill in the Tennessee legislature that would limit teachers’ collective bargaining rights.


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Lawrence Hardy|March 5th, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Budgeting, Diversity, Dropout Prevention, Governance, Policy Formation, Student Achievement, Teachers, Week in Blogs|

Riffs cause rift between RI union and district officials

1194985021415637292axe_peterm__svg_medI just love a good fuss. There’s something truly entertaining about adults frothing at the mouth and blowing an issue all out of proportion.

That seems to be the case in Providence, R.I., where the teachers union is all up in arms over the school system’s decision to send out dismissal notices to all 1,926 teachers in the city.

School officials say the notices make sense. As Superintendent Tom Brady told the Providence Journal, state law requires the district to notify teachers by March 1 if there’s the possibility that their employment status could change.

And, confronted with a potential $40 million budget deficit next year, “a dismissal letter to all teachers was necessary to give the mayor, the school board, and the district maximum flexibility to consider every cost savings option, including reductions in staff.”

That makes sense to me. It would be a tad difficult to balance the budget if you tell only 100 teachers that they might lose their jobs—and then you need to lay off 150.

It also makes sense because, if there’s any flexibility in state law and the teachers’ contract, the sweeping dismissal notice allows school officials to avoid the first-hired, first-fired phenomenon that so often surrounds teacher layoffs.

Why lose a promising young talent or hard-to-find science teacher when there are less effective teachers who can go on the chopping block?

I like the idea that teacher layoffs might actually be determined by the educational needs of students.
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Naomi Dillon|March 3rd, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Governance, Teachers|Tags: , , , , |

NSBA President: Getting real results to advance student achievement

By Earl C. Rickman III

The recent Conference on Labor-Management Collaboration in Denver showed that when school boards, administrators, and teachers work as a team to improve student achievement, we can greatly strengthen the quality of education we provide to our students and our communities.

I was part of the 12-person delegation of school board leaders from NSBA and state school boards associations participating in the event. I was proud to also represent Michigan’s Mount Clemens Community School District Board of Education, where I serve as board president. My school district was one of the 150 school districts from across the country that participated in the conference.

This first-of-its-kind conference, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, brought national and local school leaders to hear from other superintendents, school boards, and teacher leaders who are working together to redefine the labor-management relationship in their communities, and it highlighted the successes some districts have achieved and how they got there. Through the conference and online resources now on the Department of Education’s website, districts across the country will now be able to share information about their collaborative success and have the resources to design teacher compensation, incentive, and development programs that meet their unique local needs to reach their goals for raising student achievement.

We know a broad base of support is required to achieve successful labor-management relations that drive student success. School board members, administrators, and teachers must all come together to find new ways to focus on increasing student achievement and strengthen our schools. Also, districts must have their community’s support to improve their schools — something that is not a given, considering that 75 percent of adults don’t have children in the public schools.

Throughout our country, school board members understand the importance of increasing student achievement through developing collaborative relationships in the labor management process. No one suggested that tackling controversial issues such as tenure or teacher compensation would be easy and we know that conditions in some districts may not currently exist to adopt these types of approaches. Additionally, the collaborative successes produced in the districts featured at conference can also be achieved in other districts regardless of whether they engage in collective bargaining or whether specific agreements for raising student achievement are contained in the contract.

Local school leaders must rethink collective bargaining to focus on the most important priority —increasing student achievement. A recent NSBA report, “School Boards Circa 2010,” found that 37 percent of school board members surveyed felt that collective bargaining, under the way currently practiced, was a barrier to improving student achievement.

School districts and teacher leaders must create contracts that benefit students—taking into account factors such as the qualifications and evaluations of the teacher, the length of the school day, and the special needs of the students, the school, and the community. This takes guts and sometimes makes you unpopular, but it can be done.

We must change the culture from one of traditional confrontation over compensation and working conditions to collaboration to design those components around a shared vision for raising student achievement in that particular school district, including appropriate rewards and incentives for improvement.

An important part of advancing our public education system is developing successful teacher incentive compensation plans to reward success. NSBA has partnered with American Association of School Administrators, American Federation of Teachers, and the National Education Association to develop guiding principles for these plans.

These principles center on collaboration and support between school boards, administrators, and teachers leaders at the local level. If a local school district decides to create an incentive plan as part of its school improvement efforts, such a plan should be in line with the district’s mission and strategic plan, and should be integrated into other components including evaluations and training.

We’ve now seen great firsthand examples of how school leaders have come together to put their trust in one another and worked together as a team and made an impact on student achievement. These were real people, doing real work, and getting real results.

Going forward, we need to examine this teamwork further, ask some tough questions, and find ways we can replicate it in other communities and school districts with respect to local circumstances.

It’s time to rethink the relationship of teachers, administrators, and school board members in terms of the larger mission of the school system. Especially given the challenges and pressures that many districts face, collaboration along these lines may prove to be more productive than the traditional confrontational approach.

NSBA is looking forward to working with other national associations and the Department of Education to support local leadership and this collaborative approach as our labor management negotiations continue to evolve.

It’s time for education leaders to come together and do the right things for the children we serve.

Earl C. Rickman III is the president of the National School Boards Association and president of the Board of Education of Mount Clemens Community School District in Michigan.

Andrew Paulson|March 1st, 2011|Categories: School Board News, School Boards, Teachers|

The education reform hype

Blogger, E.D. Kain, has a great commentary today on his Forbes.com blog stating “there are no silver-bullets in education reform.”

Kain notes:

School reformers create a seductive narrative for the media and lawmakers alike. Foundations are lured to support radical changes because they promise radical results. It’s much more glamorous, after all, to put money into shiny new charter schools than to give those dollars to school districts. School choice and accountability sound good on paper, and films like The Lottery and Waiting for Superman pull on our heartstrings and paint pictures of selfish teachers lobbying hard against their own students. These films ignore not only the external factors leading to school failure – including poverty, lack of funding, and other societal issues – they also gloss over the many failed charter schools and choice programs across the country. Advocates of choice and accountability and the modern charter-school movement brush off the wildly varying results found from one charter school to the next. Like traditional public schools, charter schools with a higher percentage of white and Asian students and lower numbers of ESL students and other disadvantaged students fair much better than those with more mixed populations.

Top-down reformers demonize teachers, shut down ‘failing’ schools, and attempt to implement reforms without the input or buy-in of teachers, parents, and the community. This is why Michelle Rhee and Adrian Fenty are no longer serving in Washington, D.C. It’s why Alan Bersin, who publicly fired school administrators and whose tenure saw the highest turnover of teachers and principals in San Diego history, was eventually removed in San Diego. And it’s why Mayor Bloomberg fights so hard to retain total authority over all education decision-making in New York City. Without support from the rank-and-file, school reform is impossible.

American public education is inherently democratic and decentralized, and no amount of dictatorial reform efforts will change that. It’s also about more than simply teaching kids how to take tests in reading and math. We cannot constantly compare American schools to those in other nations – American culture is different from Asian culture or Northern European culture. The accountability movement has shifted the focus away from American ingenuity and creativity in favor of strict testing regimes in an attempt to compete with Japan and Finland. This is the wrong approach. As our nation grows in wealth and technology, American public education should be a reflection of these changes. American schools may have been founded along industrial lines, but accountability efforts only entrench this attitude. If anything, we should be looking for ways to make education more creative and diverse, and to make American students more well-rounded and independent. The current reforms achieve just the opposite.

Let us know what you think?

Alexis Rice|February 28th, 2011|Categories: Comparative Education, Conferences and Events, Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Federal Programs, Mayoral Control, NSBA Opinions and Analysis, Student Achievement, Teachers|

The week in blogs

Tripoli aside, the biggest story this week was the same as last: the extraordinary standoff in Madison, Wis., between Gov. Scott Walker and thousands of unionized teachers and other public employees. Pundits of all political stripes agreed that it marked a new chapter in labor-management relations.

For you pessimists out there (or is that realists?), Russell Walter Mead, of the American Interest, says the events in Wisconsin depict a national economy undergoing a wrenching change similar to the one that befell the proverbial buggy whip manufacturers in the early 20th century. But this time, he says, it’s not just laborers who will feel the distress.

“The US manufacturing sector has actually grown since 1973, producing more even as it has shed workers,” Mead writes. “There is no reason why the same thing can’t happen to lawyers, middle managers, government bureaucrats and many more white collar workers as computers get smarter and firms start outsourcing professional work overseas.”

For a more political take on the confrontation, see Understanding Government (“Scott Walker’s Union Dismemberment Plan”) which links to an earlier New Republic article on the efforts of several Republican governors to change the prevailing management-labor dynamic.

Moving further left, we have Mother Jones on how the billionaire,  staunchly anti-labor Koch brothers helped fund Walker’s gubernatorial campaign.

On the right, there’s the Heritage Foundation, with a sit down interview with Gov. Walker himself, and the MacIver Institute blog on how much protesting teachers could be costing taxpayers in missed classroom time. (Nine million-plus, it says.)

Finally, we have some relief in the form of Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert and his priceless interview with AFT President Randi Weingarten.

Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor

Lawrence Hardy|February 25th, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Budgeting, Governance, Policy Formation, Teachers, Week in Blogs|

Rethinking collective bargaining to focus on student achievement

Anne L. Bryant, the National School Board Association’s (NSBA) Executive Director, is part of National Journal’s expert blog on education, and posted a response to this week’s question on labor-management collaboration following attending the Conference on Labor-Management Collaboration.  NSBA was a partner in the conference and Bryant served as a panelist.

Bryant noted, “The collective bargaining process must be focused on promoting our most important educational priority — increasing student achievement.”

Regarding the conference, Bryant said, “we were exposed to 12 school districts with various styles of innovation. All these districts had ‘collaboration’ as their strategy and outcome. Two great examples that should be applauded are Hillsborough County’s (Fla.) and Montgomery County’s (Md.) efforts to advance the effectiveness of their education professionals. Going forward, we need to find ways to replicate throughout the country these successful teacher compensation, incentive, and development models, while taking into account the local circumstances of every community.”

Check out Bryant’s entire National Journal posting.

Alexis Rice|February 25th, 2011|Categories: Conferences and Events, NSBA Opinions and Analysis, School Boards, Student Achievement, Teachers|

Robots as instructors?

TechNewsDaily reports on new research suggesting that robots could someday assist in classroom instruction. The article focusing on toddlers notes:

A robot named RUBI has already shown that it can significantly improve how well infants learn words, and the latest version of the bot under development should also be able to wheel around classrooms, too.

The idea to develop RUBI came to Javier Movellan, director of the Machine Perception Laboratory at the University of California, San Diego, when he was in Japan for research involving robots and his kids were in a child care center.

BoardBuzz finds it interesting that robot instructors in the future may improve the student learning experience.

Alexis Rice|February 23rd, 2011|Categories: Educational Technology, NSBA Opinions and Analysis, Student Achievement, Teachers|

Share your ideas on labor-management collaboration

This week’s Conference on Labor-Management Collaboration, which the National School Boards Association was a partner in, showed that when school boards, administrators, and teachers work as a team to improve student achievement, they can greatly strengthen the quality of education we provide to our students and our communities.

Through the conference and online resources now on the U.S. Department of Education’s website, school districts across the country will now be able to share information about their collaborative success and have the resources to design teacher compensation, incentive, and development programs that meet their unique local needs to reach their goals for raising student achievement. You can also “share your ideas” on how to transform the relationship between teachers and school management on the website.

Alexis Rice|February 18th, 2011|Categories: Federal Programs, NSBA Opinions and Analysis, School Boards, Teachers|

The week in blogs

Library of Congress photo

Library of Congress photo

What a week of contrasts for labor unions. On Wednesday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and other education leaders praised school districts and teacher unions that have largely put aside their differences and worked together for higher student achievement.

“It takes trust between administrators, school board members, and teachers,” said NSBA Executive Director Anne L. Bryant, one of the participants at the U.S. Department of Education’s Education Conference on Labor-Management Collaboration in Denver.

Now move to Madison, Wis., specifically, to the state house, where nobody was talking “collaboration.” That’s where hundreds of public employees (including teachers) and their supporters gathered this week to demonstrate against Gov. Scott Walker’s efforts to sharply curtail their collective bargaining rights.

None other that President Obama came to the workers’ defense, calling the governor’s actions an “assault” on unions. Said the National Journal’s Matthew Cooper: “Collective bargaining is the infrastructure – the essential core of labor’s rights and power – and so attacks on that right go to the heart of the union movement. That’s why the president weighed in…”
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Lawrence Hardy|February 18th, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Budgeting, Governance, Policy Formation, Student Achievement, Teachers|

State associations support governors’ moves to curb tenure, union influence

(updated to include letter from Wisconsin Association of School Boards, Ohio governor’s plans to scale back proposal).

As school board members, administrators, and teacher representatives met in Denver on Feb. 15 and 16 for the  first-ever conference on labor-management issues, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, lawmakers in several states were proposing plans to end or rework teacher tenure, collective bargaining, and other measure designed to curb the power of the unions. CNN reports that “States, GOP go after teachers unions in budget crisis.”

Some of the most notable actions include:

In New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie’s education commissioner announced a plan that would grant tenure only after a teacher had been judged effective for three years in a row, and revoke tenure after two consecutive years of poor ratings, The Record reports. The plan would also base a portion of teachers’ evaluations on student performance.

The New Jersey School Boards Association supports the plan. “Tenure now serves as nothing more than a lifetime system of job protection that makes removal of an underperforming teacher difficult, time-consuming and expensive,” said NJSBA Executive Director Marie S. Bilik in a press release.

The Tennessee School Boards Association is supporting a move by the state legislature to repeal the state’s collective bargaining law for educator unions. The bill is expected to clear both chambers of the GOP-led legislature and has the support of new Gov. Bill Haslam, a Republican, The Commercial Appeal reports.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has proposed a “budget repair bill” that would remove most of the collective bargaining rights of public employees, including teachers. The measure would remove the ability of unions to bargain over pensions, health insurance and working conditions. Employees would be required to contribute significantly to pension funds and school districts would have more control over health insurance and Increases in wages would be limited to increases in the Consumer Price Index, according to the Wisconsin Association of School Boards.

“Gov. Walker’s proposal will provide school boards with flexibility in containing benefit and wage costs. Together, these measures will assist school boards to ensure limited resources are going to the classroom to provide the best classroom experience for our state’s students,” WASB Executive Director John Ashley wrote in this statement. However, in a Feb. 15 letter to leaders of the state legislature, Ashley indicated that the state’s school board members were “deeply divided” on the issue of curtailing collective bargaining, as many were concerned that it could erode local control and established relationships between board and union leaders. While many WASB members appreciate the flexibility the measure could give them in crafting budgets, it “goes well beyond anything the
WASB’s members have requested in terms of altering the employer-employee relationship,” Ashley wrote.

In what could best be described as a volatile and political landscape, Gov. Walker threatened to lay off more than 12,000 state employees on Feb. 25, while union supporters in New Jersey and Indiana rallied to support the Wisconsin workers and stave off similar efforts in their states, the Washington Post reported.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican, has also laid plans to dismantle most of the state’s collective bargaining laws for all public employees as part of his budget plan.  Republicans say the plan is needed to prevent the state from going bankrupt, but the state legislature made some modifications to allow negotiations over wages, the Associated Press reported.

And Florida Gov. Rick Scott wants to restructure the state’s pension system and require teachers and other public employees to make contributions. FSBA Executive Director Wayne Blanton explains the proposals and potential impact for school boards in this video: http://www.associationstudios.com/Publisher_Main.aspx?PublisherId=1169

Joetta Sack-Min|February 18th, 2011|Categories: Announcements, Educational Legislation, School Board News, Teachers|
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