Stories by Sherry Posnick-Goodwin
Photos by Scott Buschman
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With collaborative efforts under way at Gratts Elementary in Los Angeles, teachers are more prepared and students have a clearer picture of what they need to do to, says second-grade teacher Monica Solis. |
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
— Margaret Mead
A group of thoughtful, committed CTA members has been meeting regularly for the past few years to talk about meaningful ways in which public education could evolve. The group is small — just 13 people — but it has covered much ground on the topic of teaching and learning.
The purview of the CTA Educational Change Workgroup goes far beyond the latest education fad. Its members have traveled around the country to pick the brains of education reform leaders. They have conducted exhaustive research and analyzed extensive polling and focus group data. Now they have put forth their own recommendations for meaningful change and are eagerly awaiting reaction.
The proposals cover the areas of school finance, assistance to schools, professional development, school leadership and teacher compensation. Recently added to the mix is the area of testing and assessment, recommendations for which are not yet finalized.
Who are these visionaries?
In addition to being educators who love a good challenge, they are dynamic, enthusiastic and open-minded. They are ethnically diverse, represent rural, urban and suburban schools, and work with student populations from all socioeconomic levels.
The workgroup recently presented its recommendations to the CTA Board of Directors. Before the recommendations were forwarded to CTA's State Council of Education, they were refined further in meetings with committee chairs. Council is now in the process of comparing the workgroup's recommendations with existing CTA policy. The recommendations will soon go back to the workgroup for refinement before being put to a vote by the entire Council.
The workgroup sees its recommendations as seeds that it hopes will sprout into proposed legislation or pilot programs that have the potential to transform public education in new and more positive directions.
The timing could not be better. When the group was given its charge, no one could have foreseen the political climate that would envelop its final recommendations.
"It's time for us to be proactive," says CTA President Barbara E. Kerr, who founded the group two years ago and kept it going - even during the fight against the governor's initiatives — in the belief that CTA should not abandon its long-range goals in favor of winning short-term victories. "People know what CTA is against because we have been fighting things that have been imposed upon us. Now it's time to let everyone know what it is we stand for."
Serving on the workgroup and having that much exposure to people with new and interesting ideas was exhilarating, says Kendall Vaught, a member of the Los Alamitos Education Association.
"We set our own goals and were given free reign to brainstorm," says CTA Board member Larry Carlin, liaison to the workgroup. The result was "amazing ideas about ways to improve education in California for students and for teachers."
What follows is a look at the workgroup's recommendations, the questions they raise, and some real-life examples of how they might come into play if they catch the imagination of the teaching profession as a whole.
