Charting new paths in our schools
By Richard Stutman | December 23, 2007
THE PEOPLE who spend every hour of their working day in a Boston public school would like to offer a reminder to those who haven't seen the inside of a classroom since they played "Principal for a Day": Boston public school teachers and staff have a lot to be proud of these days, and it's not just successful pilot schools.
Last year, our school system won the prestigious Broad Prize, the Super Bowl for urban excellence in education. We placed first among the 100 largest and most economically disadvantaged urban school systems in the country. Boston public school teachers, staff, and administrators are proud of the award and the hard work that it recognizes.
The award highlighted the union's flexibility in hiring teachers, new teacher mentoring programs, and a commitment to transform all large district high schools to small learning communities.
Teacher turnover, particularly in urban schools, is a national crisis. Nearly 60 percent of new teachers in urban schools leave within the first five years. Boston is a national model for attracting and retaining the best teachers because the union, school administrators, and the mayor have made it a priority.
That said, members of the Boston Teachers Union are not satisfied, and never will be, until each child reaches proficiency. This is why our members find it so frustrating when part-time school observers reduce the entirety of the improvement process to the rate of conversion of traditional schools to pilot schools. It's a simplistic view that demonstrates a one-dimensional grasp of the complex issues facing urban schools.
Let me set the record straight. The Boston Teachers Union embraces the pilot school model. In fact, we are going to open up our own in 2009. We created this initiative along with the school department in 1994. In the 13 years since, we have never wavered from, nor looked back on our agreement.
Boston is also one of the first urban districts in Massachusetts to create Extended Learning Time schools. While many other districts couldn't reach an agreement on the start-up of these schools, the teachers union initiated three such schools out of an initial statewide group of only 10. The highly regarded Mass 2020 just released research highlighting this new model's noteworthy results.
Last year, we negotiated an agreement to set up 10 superintendent schools. It's a new model that also has an extended day program. Moreover, the contract includes newly-conceived discovery schools - a model that we hope will extract some of the best ideas from pilots and adapt them to other environments.
We are working with Superintendent Carol Johnson to create a variety of different schools that will continue to pioneer best practices in the decades to come. We are excited about all these models and we rejoice that there is room for all of these, and more, in our system. We don't claim that any of the above school models are the answer. We do believe, however, that each is part of the solution. And we believe that pilot schools are part of the mix.
What teachers feel sensitive about, however, is the trumpeting of pilot schools above all other reform initiatives. It appears to us that many pilot advocates support this model solely because the model calls for us to surrender many of our workplace rights - rights that generations of teachers have fought to achieve.
In Boston, we are creating exciting schools that offer a variety of approaches. We are doing so, in great part, while honoring the collective bargaining rights of teachers. There is nothing mutually exclusive about creating models for school improvement while at the same time protecting teachers' rights and benefits.
Our union's view filters up from 7,000 members working every day in more than 140 schools. Where the pilot model makes the most sense, our members support it. Where other innovations make more sense - the discovery school model, for example - our members want and expect those. We will continue to seek out the best of new educational models, and look forward to continuing improvement and new awards for the Boston Public Schools to which we are strongly committed.
Our members welcome change, they are not afraid to take risks, and they want to see school improvement. But the change has to work, the risks must come with protections, and the improvements must be real.
Richard Stutman is president of the Boston Teachers Union