{"id":631,"date":"2013-01-25T16:16:34","date_gmt":"2013-01-25T23:16:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/?p=631"},"modified":"2013-02-08T17:34:35","modified_gmt":"2013-02-09T00:34:35","slug":"i-would-prefer-to-trust-our-teachers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/?p=631","title":{"rendered":"“I would prefer to trust our teachers…”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Gov. Jerry Brown delivers state-of-state address<\/p><\/div>\n

California\u2019s Back!\u00a0 Gov. Jerry Brown did himself proud in Thursday\u2019s state-of-the-state speech, and he did California proud, too.\u00a0 In the details of the speech, there are prospects for boldness, greatness, and innovation, not the tire patching and gridlock we\u2019ve experienced as government.<\/p>\n

Others will comment in great length on the wisdom of the San Joaquin delta tunnel project and whether high-speed rail is prescient or folly.\u00a0 And educational interests are putting the pencil to whether they win or lose under the governor\u2019s plan for simplifying public education funding and regulation.\u00a0 (See David Plank\u2019s Los Angeles Times<\/em> commentary<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Instead of joining these conversations, or commenting on the literary illusions in the governor\u2019s speech, please zoom in one sentence that has revolutionary importance:\u00a0 \u201cI would prefer to trust our teachers who are in the classroom each day, doing the real work\u2014lighting fires in young minds.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Brown knows that we live in a world that profoundly distrusts teachers.\u00a0 Most of what passes for education reform has been crafted with the assumption that teachers are incompetent or malfeasant.\u00a0 Education systems, therefore, are layered with micromanagement rather than characterized by useful feedback mechanisms that make teachers smart about their work.\u00a0 It bends the mind to contemplate what a radical change would be required if public education were built around high-trust assumptions.<\/p>\n

But there are places that trust teachers with substantive decisions and hard-nosed accountability.\u00a0 I\u2019ve written about some of them<\/a>, including the Avalon School in St. Paul, and in a new book Trusting Teachers with School Success<\/a>, <\/em>Kim Farris-Berg and Edward Dirkswager describe practices that build high commitment and performance in schools where teachers:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Select their colleagues.<\/li>\n
  2. Evaluate them, transferring or terminating them if necessary.<\/li>\n
  3. Set the staffing pattern, including the allocation of personnel to teaching and other duties.<\/li>\n
  4. Select leaders.<\/li>\n
  5. Determine the budget.<\/li>\n
  6. Determine salaries and benefits.<\/li>\n
  7. Choose and build the instructional program.<\/li>\n
  8. Set schedules including school day and year.<\/li>\n
  9. Set school policies including those for homework and discipline.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Teachers in real schools\u2014some district schools, some charters\u2014work with all or most of these powers.\u00a0 These schools are essentially producer cooperatives.\u00a0 Most don\u2019t have a principal, but this doesn\u2019t mean that there is no leadership.\u00a0 There is often a designated teacher leader, and other roles are designated or exercised in common. \u00a0Authority vests in a professional community rather than a hierarchy.<\/p>\n

    Along with the shift in authority comes inevitable responsibility, and in the schools I visited teachers coached and evaluated one another, and teachers who couldn\u2019t teach were asked to leave.\u00a0 Teachers balanced the school\u2019s budgets, including cutting their own salaries when times were tough.\u00a0 They built and rebuilt the curriculum to make it responsive to student wishes. \u00a0And when, as sometimes happens, their bright ideas didn\u2019t work they closed down their schools.<\/p>\n

    While Gov. Brown\u2019s school finance plan will help move money to districts with fewer restrictions, it won\u2019t go very far toward creating the kinds of jobs that Farris-Berg and Dirkswager write about.<\/p>\n

    There need to be policies that establish legally protected zones of professional practice, and there are several policies the governor might consider:<\/p>\n