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11 Responses to “The Next NEO: New compensation for teachers”

1. J Murray Says:
   September 15th, 2008 at 3:22 pm

   The Kauffman Foundation is doing very good work across society. I hope the ideas in this report are adopted.

   Ed, what role did teacher’s unions play in the development of this report. Support? Financing? Advocacy? Or opposition?

2. Ed Morrison Says:
   September 15th, 2008 at 9:09 pm

   Jonathan:

   I have no idea. Having worked in regions across the country for a number of years, I’ve become very vocal about the need for education transformation. We’ve passed through an era of education reform (starting in the mid-1980s) with very little improvement.

   We need to elevate our sights and move past old debates. I commend you to websites. The first is called 2 Million Minutes (the amount of time a teenager spends in high school).

   This documentary, funded by venture capitalist, highlights the different high school experiences in the US, India and China.

   You can watch a brief excerpt on YouTube here.

   http://snurl.com/3qkhg

   The second site is ED in 08. this website is designed to highlight some of the most important issues in education facing our country.

   Sadly, our mainline media is largely ignored these issues. They would rather treat this campaign as a celebrity contest.

   You can get an overview of the candidate differences here:
   http://snurl.com/3qkin

3. J Murray Says:
   September 15th, 2008 at 11:07 pm

   Ed, the answer is that the unions are against anything that resembles reform and they are the central block to reform. The media can do whatever it wants (though it’s usually biased towards unions) and candidates for office can say whatever they want, but until the unions are unblocked as an obstacle no serious education reform will occur. You may be tired of old political debates, but this one is not just a political debate. It’s a structural obstacle to real education reform and, until it’s resolved, there will be no substantive improvement.

4. Ed Morrison Says:
   September 16th, 2008 at 12:28 pm

   Jonathan:

   Your certainty astounds me: “the answer is that the unions are against anything that resembles reform”.

   Your ideological framing simply stands as an excuse for doing nothing, I suspect. Blaming unions is an easy out.

   Unions, like most big, bureaucratic organizations, focus on self-preservation. Self-deception becomes a large part of the behavior pattern.

   So, we need new strategies to accelerate innovation. In Indiana, we are establishing networks of high schools embracing whole school reform around science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). These New Tech high schools focus on team teaching and project-based learning.

   In Ft. Wayne, education reform is focusing on career academies. I have written in this space about career academies:

   http://snurl.com/3qqq5

   and

   http://snurl.com/3qqqd

   In Southern Ohio, President Nancy Zimpher at the University of Cincinnati has joined with President Jim Votruba at Northern KY University to promote Strive Together.

   Across Ohio, you see P-16 councils forming to redesign how education systems integrate, with the active encouragement of the KnowledgeWorks Foundation based in Cincinnati. Closer to home, Roy Church at Lorain County Community College is leading this effort in Lorain.

   Kalamazoo has kicked off a national movement to change student expectations with a simple “Kalamazoo Promise“.

   And, as you can see from this morning’s BFD, I have posted about what’s taking place in Philadelphia.

   Blasting unions might feel good to you, Jonathan, but it’s not helping one child get a better education in Cleveland.

   (It fits your persona, though, Jonathan: a blacksmith toiling at the forge of free enterprise. At least you are consistent.)

   Remarkably, our civic “leaders” are more estranged from the new realities shaping regional economies: They are wasting precious time and squandering scarce public resources building a big (soon to be largely empty) $400 million box at Tower City.

   How sad.

5. J Murray Says:
   September 16th, 2008 at 4:03 pm

   Ed, show me one shred of evidence that I have no grounds to be certain. Not once, in any of the conversations about education reform that I hear and read about, in your postings and elsewhere, is there any mention of unions taking any ownership or leadership position. This is not an idealogical position, but a statement of fact.

   People like you, who live in the hope of reform, are operating with the blithe hope that you can innovate around these dinosaur unions, and are avoiding a direct confrontation with union intransigence. This is the way that auto company executives managed their labor problems in Detroit for decades, and we can now see the consequences of that: what unions thought they were protecting is at risk anyway, along with the entire U.S. auto industry. We have witnessed over the last 30 years a massive wealth transfer from shareholders to union members, most of whom are out of jobs or soon to be out of jobs anyway, to the ruination of the U.S. auto industry.

   What makes you think that by avoiding the needed direct confrontation with teachers unions you will be able to avoid the same outcome? None of these wonderful innovations you link to will go anywhere without teacher union cooperation. This puts them, and their ideological political views, in a control position. You will have to buy them off, the cost will be massive, and it will be borne by the taxpayer. And you won’t get all of what you want, either.

6. Ed Morrison Says:
   September 19th, 2008 at 2:25 am

   And your solutions is?

7. J Murray Says:
   September 20th, 2008 at 1:54 pm

   Direct confrontation with the unions is the only way out of this trap, a la the Reagan standing down of the flight controllers’ union and the recently (and wildly belated) contract signed by the UAW with the formerly Big Three and future Small Two automakers.

8. Ed Morrison Says:
   September 21st, 2008 at 3:27 am

   And, just precisely how does this idea work?

   The flight controllers were a federal workforce with one contract.

   Teachers are employees of local school districts, each with different contracts.

9. J Murray Says:
   September 21st, 2008 at 5:46 pm

   Ed, here’s how I would do it. In every one of these innovative education programs, I would send a letter to the top teachers union official(s) in the region. In the letter, I would invite the teachers union to participate in the program.

   I would publish the letter in the local newspaper op-ed page, and on blogs like this one. If the union responds, I would publish their letter, too. If they don’t respond, I would publish a followup to the invitation letter pointing to that fact.

   My guess is that sunshine of that kind would pretty quickly force the union to take a public position: “we support this idea/innovation/program,” or “we oppose it.”

   You’re in a position to do this, as you seem to be involved in many programs in this area. Why don’t you experiment with this and report back to us on what happens?

10. Ed Morrison Says:
    September 21st, 2008 at 11:14 pm

    Jonathan:

    Now you are on to something. I think that transparency is the answer to a lot of dysfunctional behavior. I’ll talk to the superintendent in Rochester, IN about this idea.

    In addition, I plan to discuss this with the staff at the Center for Excellence in Leadership of Learning in Indianapolis. That’s the organization that is spearheading a lot of these K-12 reforms in Indiana.

    I’ll let you know.

11. J Murray Says:
    September 22nd, 2008 at 11:31 am

    Ed, thanks for considering it. I’ll be interested to hear what you find. I hope that fear of unionn power doesn’t create an unwillingness to engage with them. Teachers unions are often the “elephant inn the room” that all see, but nobody wants to talk about…