Where Teachers Rule
By SARAH CARR
Milwaukee JourWhere Teachers Rulenal Sentinel
July 18, 2005
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=341727

A school with no principal? MPS and others are trying
it, and some people like what they see

As a freshman at Vincent High School, Trinisa Johnson
didn't even know the name of the principal and would
never have considered taking her questions or concerns
there.

But as a sophomore last year at Milwaukee's Community
High School, Johnson was well-connected to people in
high places.

That's largely because Community High lacks a
traditional hierarchy. The school is one of a rapidly
growing number of so-called "teacher-led" schools that
operate without administrators - including principals
and assistant principals. The teachers make decisions
about the curriculum, the budget and student discipline.
They perform peer evaluations of each other. Often, they
come to decisions through discussion and debate, taking
a vote if a consensus is not reached. The buck stops
with them, not in the principal's office.

In Milwaukee, which is a national leader in the movement
toward teacher-led schools, there will be at least 14
such programs next year, and that figure does not count
private schools.

Appleton will have two teacher-led schools next year.
Minnesota, another leader in the movement, has 15
schools where the teachers are part of a workers'
cooperative structured much like a law firm, so they not
only make most of the decisions related to the school,
but also set their own salaries. Education officials and
teachers unions in California, Chicago and other places
are studying the teacher-led model.

"If it catches on, it could absolutely revolutionize the
public system and the bureaucracy surrounding it," said
Doug Thomas, executive director of EdVisions Cooperative
in Minnesota.

Even staunch supporters of the model concede that it is
not for everyone: It requires extra time, will not work
if the teachers don't familiarize themselves with the
policies, procedures and politics of the district, and
can be difficult to adapt to larger schools.

In Milwaukee, not all of the teacher-led schools are
structured in the same way. Some schools have a clear
"teacher leader" who does most of the administrative
tasks but lacks the title and some of the authority of a
principal; others are more pure "teacher cooperatives"
where the decision-making and administrative tasks are
spread out to include all of the teachers more equally;
still others are a hybrid.

Olivia Kleser, 15, a classmate of Johnson's last year at
Community High School, said she did not know the school
was teacher-led until she started there. "But I liked it
better," she added. "In my old school, you would be sent
to the principal if you had problems with other students
or at home, or in general. But my principal hated me."

At Community High, Kleser said, you can always "talk to
some other teacher" if you have issues.

'The staff is a unit'

For Roxane Mayeur, one of her teachers, the biggest
difference in being at a teacher-led school is that the
"sense of hierarchy is eliminated."

"That's a powerful thing," she said. "The students
understand that the staff is a unit. There is no playing
one teacher off another."

"We don't think administrators are useless or a negative
thing," Mayeur added, saying the trend is more about
empowering teachers than dissing principals. "It's
important that this movement be about teachers having
more of a voice."

Pioneering efforts

The first public teacher-led school in the city, the
Milwaukee School of Entrepreneurship, began 11 years
ago. That school uses more of a "lead teacher" model,
where serious issues concerning the budget, discipline
or parent concerns are all brought to John Polczynski,
the teacher in charge.

Many of the decisions are made by the staff, but in his
school's structure, "one person is consistently at the
bottom of the funnel or the head of the school,"
Polczynski said. He said he thinks many schools find
that they need someone to be the go-to person on
discipline or budget issues.

But in 2001, the IDEAL Charter School, a more pure
"teacher cooperative," opened. "We take a lot of pride
in the fact that we all have a vote and say in things,"
said Barbara Ernest, a teacher. "It's a lot of work
sometimes, but it's worth it."

Ernest said union officials from New Jersey and school
officials from Boston visited IDEAL to see how the
teacher cooperative model looks in practice. "This idea
has gained a lot of acceptance in recent years," said
Jennifer Carter, a teacher.

Although specific tasks at the school might be
delegated, everyone has a say in the major issues.
"There is one main teacher in charge of the budget, but
everybody has input and knowledge about it," Ernest
said.

At IDEAL the teachers have many meetings, where they sit
in a circle and go around, giving each of the 10
teachers the chance to speak. Usually, the teachers
arrive at a decision through discussion. Occasionally,
they vote.

One time, the teachers wound up voting to decide what to
do with the open position after a technology specialist
left the school. They ended up hiring a classroom
teacher and a paraprofessional with the extra funds.

Ernest and Carter said their model works because they
respect each other, involve the parents, and take time
to understand district policies.

For ALAS (Advanced Language and Academic Studies), a
charter school that opened last year, becoming a true
teacher cooperative is a work in progress, according to
Linda Peters, the lead teacher. "We had planned on
sharing responsibilities," Peters said. "And while some
of that happened, it's still apparent that I'm almost in
an administrative role here. . . . I'm like a principal
without the money and title. But, yeah, the buck stopped
here" with me.

Now that the first year is behind them, the teachers at
ALAS plan to divide up responsibilities more evenly. "In
a situation like this, you really need to be meeting
once a week," Peters said. "I thought it would just
happen, but it doesn't. You have to plan for it, and you
have to work on it."

A personal approach

Most of the teacher-led schools are small programs
chartered by the district. Charter schools are publicly
funded, but have more flexibility and autonomy in
decision-making. The growth of the teacher-led schools
has been fueled by the high school's reform initiative,
which calls for the creation of dozens of small, more
intimate high schools, many of them designed to
personalize education to a greater degree.

"The teachers here, they know the students more than a
principal would, so the decisions they make are more
catered to the students' needs," said Trinisa Johnson.
"They ask each other everything. They all have these
meetings in a place they call 'the war room.' "

The teacher-led schools are supported by the MPS
administration and the Milwaukee Teachers' Education
Association, the local teachers union - as long as they
follow the rules laid out in their contracts, which, for
instance, detail how the peer evaluation process can be
done.

Teachers at teacher-led schools cannot hire and fire
people from the district, although they can ask that a
teacher be moved to a different school or that an
employee be investigated.

Teachers at the schools say the district isn't set up to
deal with them in some respects, even though the
situation is slowly improving. Meetings for principals -
now called "leadership" instead of principal meetings -
are often held during the school day, for instance,
making it tough for representatives from teacher-led
schools to attend since it means leaving their
classrooms.

"The district wants them to be administrators, and they
want to be teachers," said John Parr, who helped write
the bylaws for IDEAL and provides support to teacher-led
schools in Milwaukee and elsewhere.

Parr and others said one of the biggest challenges is to
prevent teacher burnout. "I don't really take a position
one way or the other," said Bob Anderson, the assistant
executive director of the teachers union. "But I say,
'How do you do all this work?' "

The payback comes in terms of autonomy and the closeness
of the school communities, according to those on the
ground level. Said Mayeur: "It's worth it, but the
commitment has to be really strong because there is no
punching out at 3 p.m."

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