> 
> The Top Takeaway From the Teachers' Strike: We Need
> Collaboration to Fix Public Schools
> 
> by Amy B. Dean
> 
> Huffington Post
> September 19, 2012
> 
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amy-b-dean/the-top-takeaway-from-the_b_1891107.html
> 
> "We are striking to improve the conditions in the schools.
> Right now the children are getting a raw deal."
> 
> That statement came from a striking member of the Chicago
> Teachers' Union... in 1969. It still resonates in September
> 2012, when the CTU's members have again walked a picket line.
> Although it has often been obscured in the news headlines and
> in the rhetoric of city officials, the real message of the
> strike of the past two weeks is simple: We're for good
> schools; we're for kids; and, yes, we're for teachers too.
> 
> There's no shame in teachers standing up for their self-
> interest. When one is devoted to working for the common good
> over the long haul, taking care of oneself is a necessary part
> of being a good steward. People who go into the teaching
> profession don't do it to get rich. They do it with the goal
> of inspiring and educating the next generation.
> 
> By framing the strike as being about greedy teachers
> threatening the public well-being, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel
> and his lieutenants have not only done long-term damage to the
> cause of repairing our schools; they have engaged in a
> practice that, sadly, is all too common in our nation's
> politics. They attempted to blame a complex problem on a
> single group. It's called scapegoating. And scapegoating
> should never be a substitute for leadership.
> 
> The takeaway from the Chicago strike is that true leadership
> in education requires partnership -- an approach that supports
> what is working in our schools and creates a collaborative
> effort among teachers, school officials, and policymakers to
> make sure we build on that success.
> 
> Education as Engine of Urban Economies
> 
> There's a reason why many big city mayors are trying to take a
> stronger role in steering their cities' school systems. In a
> globalized economy, there isn't much mayors can do
> independently to foster development and improve the economic
> competitiveness of their metropolitan regions. They have some
> tools available in the realms of housing and transportation.
> But good schools are a reliable driver of economic success, as
> prominent education thinkers like University of Virginia
> President Teresa Sullivan have documented. Ambitious mayors
> recognize this fact. That's why Los Angeles Mayor Antonio
> Villaraigosa -- who himself came out of a teachers' union --
> has joined Emanuel in moving to exert more influence over his
> city's schools.
> 
> Such mayors are right to understand the economic importance of
> schools. The question is, are regional political leaders like
> Emanuel willing to work with teachers to educate poor and
> wealthy kids alike? Or will we wind up, as respected education
> scholar Diane Ravitch warns, with a permanent two-tiered
> system, with elite charter schools for the (mostly richer)
> kids who score high on standardized tests? Under such a
> system, kids who may be smart but lack the vocabulary and
> support to succeed on the tests will languish in sweltering,
> inadequately supplied classrooms.
> 
> Iconic Chicago mayor Harold Washington understood that
> collaboration around education could enhance the economic
> vitality of the city. That's why he brokered the peace in
> response to public outcry at the last Chicago teachers' strike
> in 1987. Washington saw that business leaders and parents
> needed him to work with teachers to keep the machinery of
> education running, so working parents wouldn't have to take
> more time off for the strike, and so kids could resume
> learning the skills they would need later to be effective
> members of the workforce.
> 
> The way forward is to create abundantly resourced public
> school systems that will push economic growth in cities and
> regions. Innovating and improving public schools helps attract
> middle- and upper-income families to cities and regions to
> build a healthy tax base. Mayors such as Emanuel should be
> funding public education and supporting what is already
> working -- including strategies invented by unionized teachers
> -- within public schools.
> 
> Partnership in Practice
> 
> Successful examples of smart educational investment in
> partnership with teachers' unions do exist. Take Montgomery
> County, MD, where students at one neighborhood school
> continually scored low on tests. The administration, working
> closely with the teachers' union, managed to turn the school
> completely around in just three years without using draconian
> pay cuts or firings. "We take the quality of teaching and
> learning seriously, so we jointly created and implemented a
> thorough, meaningful and transparent evaluation system that
> ensures intensive support for all new and underperforming
> teachers," said Montgomery County Education Association
> president Doug Prouty.
> 
> Mayor Emanuel's great failing in his approach to the strike is
> that he did not come to the conversation about reform with an
> attitude of building on what is going right. Even Chicago has
> had areas of hope and progress in public education. Chicago's
> public school teachers have proven they can academically
> outcompete just about anyone. This last year, more than 24,000
> children competed for about 5,000 slots in the top 5 selective
> enrollment high schools. The students and families lining up
> to apply to selective enrollment high schools accept that
> public schools can achieve excellence with unionized teachers.
> The principals at these schools accept it too, providing
> leadership development and mentoring for teachers and rewards
> for their good work.
> 
> Emanuel could have started the discussion by celebrating these
> successes and looking for ways to spread them. To be fair, the
> mayor has done some work to improve public education in the
> city. He created 10 new International Baccalaureate (IB)
> academic excellence programs in existing high schools
> throughout the city. He also lengthened the school day, which
> was sorely needed as Chicago had one of the shortest school
> days in the country.
> 
> Rather than saying to teachers, "I did this in spite of you,"
> he could have asked, "How can we do more of this together?"
> For we know from best practices in the business world that
> without cultivating buy-in from all the key stakeholders,
> efforts to promote change are destined to be far less
> effective.
> 
> Underneath the Chicago Strike Headlines
> 
> The stories about the strike printed in the media have often
> perpetuated an unhelpful framing of the issues at hand. We
> were told teachers didn't want a longer school day. However,
> the true issue was not whether a longer day should be
> implemented, but rather what the process for putting this into
> practice could be. With real input from teachers, rather than
> a heavy-handed move to shove an altered school day down the
> throats of those who do the educating, this issue might not
> have reached an impasse.
> 
> Likewise, we were told that teachers did not want to be
> evaluated. But that was not the case. Educators merely wanted
> to be evaluated based on meaningful criteria that they could
> actually impact in their work -- not just high-stakes test
> scores whose value as a measure of students' success is highly
> questionable. In Cleveland, the teachers' union and the school
> district worked together to create and implement a totally new
> teacher evaluation system that will phase in over a four-year
> period. As Cleveland Schools CEO Eric Gordon noted, using
> teamwork to resolve such a big, contentious issue is worth the
> longer timeline: "This is complex work and it takes time to
> build it thoughtfully and carefully. It really has been a
> joint commitment in the beginning. We all believe that this is
> the right [approach]."
> 
> Emanuel has said he favors the Waiting-for-Superman strategy
> of linking teacher pay and job security to students'
> performance on standardized tests. But that approach has been
> found by education experts to be no more effective than
> traditional teaching and evaluation methods.
> 
> Simply corporatizing the schools is not going to magically
> make students learn. The use-tests-to-declare-public-schools-
> failing-and-siphon-the-money-to-corporate-branded-charters
> methodology has been discredited as bad pedagogical practice
> and thinly disguised union-busting.
> 
> Teachers have rightly asked, if they are only going to be held
> accountable for teaching to tests, when is the real educating
> supposed to happen? Sadly, this pressing question has not been
> heard above the din of political rhetoric.
> 
> Beyond the Strike
> 
> By making some of the changes teachers have called for, like
> installing air conditioning in classrooms and creating a
> teacher evaluation system jointly with the union, Emanuel
> could have made the teachers' union into a powerful ally for
> improving schools. Instead, he yanked the already-stretched
> thread of teachers' goodwill toward the school system, and it
> snapped.
> 
> Pointing fingers and placing blame is not the way to build
> partnerships, and it's not the way to move forward on
> education. Whatever happens with the strike in Chicago, maybe
> we can look at some of the case studies of successful
> initiatives in education and see that strong respect for
> teachers is not at odds with the interests of students.
> Conversations about how to replicate and build on the things
> that are working in our schools need to be happening not just
> during contract negotiations, but on an ongoing basis.
> 
> For those conversations to happen, city officials must repair
> the relationships that were broken in the hardball politicking
> around the strike. They need to embrace teachers as full-
> fledged partners in conversation about reform. That's harder
> than just placing blame. But it is needed if we're serious
> about fixing our kids' schools.
> 
> [Amy Dean is co-author, with David Reynolds, of "A New New
> Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor
> Movement" and is president and founder of ABD Ventures, and a
> Fellow of the Century Foundation. She worked for nearly two
> decades in the labor movement and now works to develop new and
> innovative organizing strategies for social change
> organizations. You can follow Amy on Twitter at @amybdean, or
> she can be reached via www.amybdean.com.]
> 
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