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Helen Raham
The traditional teacher contract no longer meets the goals society has set for its schools. Once necessary to advance teachers’ economic welfare, guarantee equal benefits and working conditions, and ensure due process, today’s massive collective agreement is seen by many as an obstacle to both teacher professionalism and high-performance schools. Its ironclad inflexibility drives virtually everything allowed to happen in the classroom, creating insurmountable barriers for educators and managers experimenting with promising new practices.
Laboring in the Past
The outcomes of industrial bargaining in our schools are well known: Rigid class size, work schedules, and personnel classifications that prohibit creative ways to meet specific learning needs
The eroding ability of administrators to manage their schools
Seniority clauses that prevent having the right teacher in the right place
Schools with little ability to design appropriate site-based professional development to assist them achieve their goals for students
A salary grid lacking incentives for excellence, preventing schools from rewarding skilled professionals for extra effort and success
Teacher evaluation that has not kept pace with rigorous personnel evaluation practices in other sectors. The central problem may be that neither management nor union views the contract as a tool to further the educational welfare of students. A review of the Milwaukee School District contracts and student achievement from 1964 -1996 concluded that bargaining as practiced in Milwaukee had a negative impact on educational outcomes. "In sum, while bargaining has enabled teachers to achieve many of the objectives they have identified, the hope that it would also improve academic outcomes has not been realized. Both labor and management have failed to use the bargaining process in a way that increases academic achievement." School authorities and teachers must find ways to use the bargaining process to negotiate provisions that increase the prospects for student success. - Adam Urbanksi, Teacher Union Reform Network (TURN), Many policymakers and education leaders now agree the old labor relations model cannot assist in meeting the expectations for today’s schools. Signs of Change
Some courageous union leaders and their districts have deviated from the standard contract to better link bargaining and learning. These examples –although none could be found in Canada- include: Pilot Schools’ jointly approved by the Boston Teachers’ Union and the school district are given freedom from collective agreement work rules to experiment with new school settings and delivery models to improve achievement.
The collective agreement between Seattle and its teachers enables schools to hire teachers based on qualifications rather than seniority, links teacher evaluations to student achievement, and pays teachers for a longer school year.
Denver teachers negotiated a three-year pilot pay scheme, linking teacher bonuses to value-added student achievement.
Contracts in Toledo and 19 other districts include peer review processes, where teachers assume major responsibility for policing professional quality.
Contracts in Rochester and Minneapolis have a joint commitment to collaborative labor relations as a means for improved student achievement.
The Cincinatti contract has established a process for re-staffing low-performing schools. While these and other breakthroughs reinforce quality performance and teacher professionalism, the vast majority of our schools still labour under collective agreements unsuited for the knowledge economy. Tomorrow’s Contract
As schools shoulder increasing responsibility for student success, they will require greater control over how they employ their resources to achieve results. The American Teachers’ Federation, the Teacher Union Reform Network (TURN) and others have proposed a new model to focus the substance of collective agreements on meeting individual school needs. They suggest a two-tiered contract. A "thin master contract" at the district or state level will contain only the basic teacher pay-schedule and portable pensions and benefits. Detailed school-specific contracts will build on this floor. The important decisions about teaching and learning will reside in this school contract, developed by the people who work there. Legally binding and enforceable, school contracts will spell out measurable student performance targets, how resources will be allocated, class sizes and instructional time, the criteria for hiring and evaluating staff, and a professional development program to reflect the goals of each individual school. Teachers are rewarded above the base scale according to their responsibilities and demonstrated expertise. The school as the employer becomes responsible for the quality of the instructional program, and all parties assume responsibility for student growth and performance. Getting There from Here
This is the new frontier of teacher unionism. From a policy perspective, the benefits of the flexible school contract to the system and the profession are obvious. It will grant innovators an opportunity to shed the straightjacket that impedes high performance teaching and learning. But before schools can reap such rewards, these major changes will be required: Labour laws must authorize schools to enter into contracts augmenting the master contract.
Districts must support the authority of schools as the basic unit of management.
Improved student learning must be the primary shared objective in negotiated contracts. Employers must invest in the professionalism of their staff and employees must gain the right to make workplace-specific decisions while assuming responsibility for educational performance.
Parents and community must participate in decisions and have access to information in previously taboo areas as staffing and contract decisions.
The primary focus of teacher unions must become supporting professional quality in schools. Further Readings School Reform, TURN and Teacher Compensation. Urbanski and Erskine. Phi Delta Kappan. January 2000. pp. 367-370. Organizing Around Quality: the Frontiers of Teacher Unionism. Koppich and Kerschner in Conflicting Missions. Tom Loveless (ed.) c2000. Brookings Press. Washington . pp. 281-313. United Mindworkers: Unions and Teaching in the Knowledge Society. c 1997. Koppich, Kerchner & Weeres. Jossey-Bass. San Francisco. 236 pp. Websites Teacher Union Reform Network (TURN) http://www.turnexchange.net United Mindworkers. http://www.mindworkers.com |
