LEADING THOUGHTS

Joel Klein, New York City School Chancellor, has some refreshing perspectives on how to manage the human resources of a school system. In the Oct. 12, 2009 issue of Fortune magazine, he talked about paying for performance and empowering principals. Excerpts follow.

On the culture of the public education system in the U.S.:
“Fundamentally, the only differentiator is seniority. The power in the system in fundamentally the power of the bureaucracy, of the political forces, of the union.”

On paying teachers based on performance:
“I think about it this way: Every university I know pays differently for science teachers than it does for English teachers. But I pay the exact same for a science teacher and physical education teacher. And then I pay the same whether you work in my highest-need school or in my most successful school. Money isn’t the only thing that drives teachers. . . but money is an ingredient in the mix of things that matter to people. Fairly compensating them if they take on tougher assignments, if they’re doing the work that’s harder to attract people, like science and math — that seems to me a critical component.”

On empowering principals:
“When I started, superintendents used to pick the principals and then pick the assistant principals. I said, ‘If the principal can’t put together his management team, it’s not going to work.’ And they said, ‘Well, Chancellor, you shouldn’t do that because our principals can’t pick assistant principals.’ I said, ‘If they can’t pick assistant principals, we’ve got to get new principals.’

“Isn’t that ridiculous? Shouldn’t principals be deciding which administrators they need, which guidance counsellors they need, what community programs they want to bring in . . . and start to differentiate based on their challenges and also take some risks in this game?

“I think people would be surprised by this: Every principal in New York City signs an agreement saying what their prerogatives are, what discretion they have, and also what their accountabilities are. And if they don’t meet their accountabilities, we can terminate them or close their schools. We do that. And that’s a very different way of doing business.”

photo credit: azipaybarah

Labour relations in North America’s school systems can be highly political, brutish, blamestorming affairs. Always in the middle are the hapless students who are often used as pawns.

Critics says collective bargaining raises the cost of education, blocks reform, protects incompetent teachers, and increases we-they tensions. Union supporters say bargaining empowers teachers and increases their input in policy decisions. But when you get right down to it, does collective bargaining have any impact on the academic performance of students?

It is a brave research question posed by Robert Carini of University of Louisville, Kentucky. In the Journal of Collective Negotiations, Carini writes that the “thin body of research” linking collective bargaining with academic outcomes is inconclusive and of “widely varying quality.”

As Carini points out, studies on bargaining often analyze only math gains or de-emphasize reading gains by combining math and reading gains into a composite score. In contrast, he used data from the U.S. National Education Longitudinal Study to see whether student gains on standardized math, reading, science, and history tests differed for students in public schools with and without collective bargaining.

His conclusion: collective bargaining is not negatively related to student achievement. Students in schools with and without collective bargaining showed comparable changes in
educational expectations between the eighth and tenth grades.

“Although there is mounting evidence that bargaining shapes the social organization of schools, these effects taken together do not appear to depress student achievement,” Carini writes. “There is evidence that teacher unions are more willing to be at the vanguard of reform than in the past, yet the degree to which unions oppose and effectively block reforms counter to their interests is still open to debate.”

Is Collective Bargaining Detrimental to Student Achievement? Evidence from a National Study; by Robert M. Carini; Journal of Collective Negotiations (2008, vol. 32 [3], 215-235)

Email me for a copy of this paper: Alan [at] AlanMorantz.com

photo credit: Old Sarge