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The Boston Herald
November 20, 2002, Tuesday, Op-Ed, p. 33

Selfish union wants to halt pilot schools

By Thomas M. Keane

The Boston Arts Academy is a remarkable high school. Located in the shadow of Fenway Park, it is the product of an unusual collaboration among six area colleges, including the Massachusetts College of Art and Berklee College of Music. Along with a rigorous academic program, students take at least 12 hours of dance, theater, visual arts and music classes each week. Patterned after the New York high school celebrated in the movie “Fame,” the Arts Academy gives creative kids opportunities rarely available to urban youth.

Even more striking, it’s a public school. Spend some time with its enthused and engaged students and you begin to wonder: Why can’t all public schools be like this?

The answer: Because the Boston Teachers’ Union won’t let it happen.

The Arts Academy is what is known as a “pilot school.” Pilots were the brainchild of the 1994 contract negotiations between the city and the BTU. These innovative schools were to be largely independent of the union and the school department, able to create their own curriculum and set up their own rules of operation. Pilot schools could be brand-new or could be conversions of existing public schools. Many saw them as potential salvation for a broken, underperforming school system.

Things seemed to start off well. In the first three years after the contract, the city approved 11 pilots. They now number among Boston’s most desirable schools. The Mission Hill School, for example, is an elementary school founded by famed educator Deborah Meier. It embodies her notion that schools should educate for democracy, training kids to become citizens. Another, West Roxbury’s Lyndon School, has a curriculum that teaches kids to respect one another and stresses reinforcement for well-done work. It is now the most popular school in the area.

In all, the pilot schools serve around 2,900 students, still just a small fraction of the system’s 63,000. And there, unfortunately, the drive for reform has stalled; there are still only 11 pilot schools.

Disturbed by this, Paul Grogan, executive director of the Boston Foundation, stepped into the mix. Grogan, a long-time advocate of school reform, wanted to jump-start the pilot-school process. The Boston Foundation, a local charitable heavyweight with an endowment of over $550 million, offered $15,000 planning grants to city schools that might be interested in becoming pilots.

The response was overwhelming. At an informational meeting earlier this month, more than 30 schools showed up. Grogan was stunned at the number.

So too was the BTU, which moved to quash the rebellion. Teachers were told not to apply and not to participate in the grants.

Grogan had expected to issue the grant awards before Christmas. Now he’s not sure how many applications, if any, he’ll receive. Moreover, as long as the BTU remains in opposition, the prospects of any new pilot schools are slim. School conversions require the approval by two-thirds of the teachers at a school, and most will be reluctant to cross their union.

The BTU’s move is a harsh disappointment to many - particularly to those who once dreamed that education could be reformed from within. For others, however, it’s no surprise. To them, teachers’ unions are the enemy of good education - and the BTU has once again proven their case.

The two principal teachers’ unions - the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers (the BTU is part of the latter) - have a virtual stranglehold over public education. The host of rules that govern schools - including tenure, performance reviews, merit pay, transfers, discharge, discipline, and so on - are all designed to protect teachers. And those rules, regrettably, are also a major cause of schools’ failures and a major impediment to reform.

When pilot schools were few in number, they were merely an irritant to the BTU. They didn’t threaten. But 30 new pilot schools certainly would.

All of this, of course, is a tragedy for kids and parents. In Boston, parents whose children can’t get into one of the few good schools (which essentially amount to the pilots, the city’s three exam schools and a few regular or charter schools) opt for private or parochial schools or simply move out of the city. Those without the resources to do so - overwhelmingly minority and overwhelmingly impoverished - find their kids consigned to grim schools and a grim future.

But teachers also have to wonder whether the BTU really is helping their own interests.

Teachers’ unions this fall mounted a furious campaign against the bilingual-education referendum. Their myopic, self-interested slogan was “Don’t sue teachers.” They lost overwhelmingly. Voters, apparently, thought suing was just fine - an illustration of just how much disrepute the profession has brought upon itself with its reflexive opposition to reform.

The BTU’s latest stunt disgraces a worthy profession even further.

Tom Keane can be reached at tomkeane@tomkeane.com.

Copyright 2002 Boston Herald Inc.