We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed. — Thomas Jefferson
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First-grade teacher Kelli Meeker at Highland Elementary in Richmond finds it empowering to have a say in what her students need to succeed. |
What would it take to attract teachers to low-performing schools?
When members of CTA's Educational Change Workgroup looked at research from teacher surveys, they got a big surprise. While pay is definitely a consideration, it isn't the only one. Teachers would react favorably to schools offering smaller class size, adequate supplies and materials, and a highly qualified principal on site. They're also attracted to a collegial atmosphere, professional development opportunities, a support structure for new teachers and a chance to have a say in decisions that affect their school and their students.
"People may think it's all about money, but it's also about working conditions," says workgroup chair Terri Jackson.
"The part about principals shocked us," says CTA Board member Larry Carlin, who serves as the workgroup's liaison. "But perhaps it's time to take a look at what makes a highly qualified principal in the same way we look at what it means to be a highly qualified teacher under No Child Left Behind. In order to attract and retain good teachers, you need to have good leadership. And we don't want people going into administration just for the higher salary."
"Teachers want to have an administrator that they are working with, not fighting against," adds Jackson.
"Administrative training is always something that CTA has stayed away from," says workgroup member Kendall Vaught of the Los Alamitos Education Association. "Once we had an understanding of how much teachers want to work with qualified administrators, we could make recommendations in that area. We started looking at ways that teachers and administrators could work together to make decisions at schools."
The workgroup looked at the literature on schools serving as learning communities in which teachers are learning from each other, supporting each other and being treated as stakeholders in decision-making.
The research — including the work of Susan Moore Johnson at Harvard University, Andy Hargreaves at Boston College, Amanda Datnow at the University of Southern California and Milbrey McLaughlin at Stanford University — supports the workgroup's conviction that it's time for schools to "bring together all the stakeholders and become involved in reform from the ground up rather than the top down," says CTA President Barbara E. Kerr.
One way to do that is to strengthen school site councils, says Jackson. "A school site council can be a very powerful group for making decisions, including decisions about how money can be spent."
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Discussing the benefits of the collaborative process are Highland teachers Francesca Mann, Diane Draper, Christina Lambie and Tom Cuffe, and Principal Sara Danielson. |
The top-down, directive style of leadership found in most schools today does little to promote the collegiality that is associated with an extremely effective and highly motivated teaching staff, say workgroup members. "The current hierarchical system of school governance is outmoded and at cross-purposes with improving student learning. Teachers must have authentic authority over decisions affecting their students, and they must have quality leadership that recognizes the necessity of a collaborative approach."
Observing that teachers in low-performing schools take more flak — often for decisions beyond their control — Vaught says, "We need to look at distributed leadership that fosters a culture of trust and promotes creativity in the classroom, which is something we need more than pacing schedules, scripted lessons and a loss of creativity that is an unintended consequence of how far standards-based and assessment-driven education has come. Teachers in schools that are in Program Improvement are being treated in a punitive way that doesn't make sense. In some places, it's really sad."
Workgroup member Don Steinruck, a member of the Del Norte Teachers Association, says that teachers at his school site banded together and collaborated on strategies to bring up the test scores of English language learners (ELL).
"We sent people to training, bought additional ELL materials, and worked with the students an extra 35 minutes a day, five days a week," he recalls. "We have a very tight-knit staff at our rural school, with only 14 K-8 teachers. We took it upon ourselves because we saw a need and believed we could work together to improve."
"Teachers need to have a lot of authority, input and control over what goes on," says Steinruck. "If you don't have that, you might have nothing. The teachers at my school really had buy-in and said, 'Let's make this work. We know what we need to do.' The kids were drawn into that. It really worked for us. If our reform had been top-down, it wouldn't have worked as well."
Like many schools with a challenging student population, there has been a revolving door of administrators at the site, which makes it difficult for teachers to be consistent. "This is the first full-time principal we've had in two years," says Steinruck. "We have had so many. This one is very supportive and wants us to maintain and keep our standards up. We hope he stays."
