Teacher Unions: Dying dinosaurs or co-drivers of Democratic Decision Making?

A.    William Place

Director of Doctoral Studies and Associate Professor 

Department of Educational Leadership

The University of Dayton

Ohio’s governor and state legislators believed the time had come to move past employee unions, signing legislation which would have effectively done away with unions for teachers, police, firefighters and other public employees in the state.  However, the voters signed a petition to have the law placed on the ballot and it was defeated 61 percent to only 39 percent. While many administrators felt Ohio’s law is too favorable to unions and was in need of some revisions, the attempt to totally do away with unions went too far.  New Jersey also has moved to limit the unions in terms of pensions and healthcare benefits.  Other states appear to be taking similar steps Olson (2011) notes “many states have taken swift action to limit the power of organized labor in public schools.  Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Idaho and Michigan were the first, and Tennessee added itself to the list” (para. 3). 

Personally, I find this to be incongruent with concepts of empowerment and democratic leadership that many educational leadership programs espouse.  Murphy (2002) proposed reculturing the field using “three key concepts that provide new anchors for the profession—school improvement, democratic community, and social justice” (p. 66).  Furman and Starratt (2002) place even more emphasis on the concept when they note,

In considering democratic community as the center for educational leadership, we make these claims:

·         Democratic community is not a “marginalizing center for the field because it is based on acceptance and appreciation of difference.

·         Democratic community “recultures the profession” by focusing on what leadership is for—serving the common good in a multicultural society and world.

·         Democratic community is the most appropriate focus for school leadership in the “postmodern” world of diversity, fragmentation and cross-nationalism.  p. 129

Furman and Sheilds (2005) caution that “democratic community is an ideal, a moral purpose toward which educators strive, one that is never fully realized; thus, democratic community is not a specific structure to be reified, defined, reduced, observed, and replicated” (p. 120).  These conceptualizations of democratic community would move educational leadership far from the traditional authoritarian approach used in schools for most of the 20^th century (the approach which these movements to kill teacher unions seem to be reverting).

While these scholars of educational leadership do not address the role of teacher unions, I find it hard to imagine a real democratic community without an important formal structure involving unions.  Employees must have a voice in the work place.  I believe there is an important place for unions as we forge a new way for education in the twenty first century.  Some have suggested that the role of unions should evolve.  For example, Barnett Berry (2011) states “unions must be transformed into results-oriented guilds in which teaching and learning are paramount” (p. xiv).

Teachers have a long history of caring deeply about students and the teacher unions, despite what their critics claim have often, but not always demonstrated that they are focused on improving education for all children.  Administrators get frustrated when traditional negations seem to move us away from improving education for all children, but that, I argue, would be a reason to push for alternatives to traditional barraging, rather than doing away with teacher associations altogether.

References

Berry, B. & the TeacherSolutions 2030 Team.  (2011).  Teaching 2030.  New York, NY:

Teachers College Press.

Furman, G. C., & Shields, C. M. (2003, April). How can educational leaders promote and support social justice and democratic community in schools? Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, IL.

Furman, G. C. & Starratt, R. J. (2002). Leadership for democratic community in schools. In J. Murphy (Ed.),  The Educational Leadership Challenge: Redefining Leadership for the 21^st Century (pp. 105-133).  Chicago, IL: National Society for the Study of Education.   

Murphy, J. (2002). Reculturing the profession of educational leadership: New blueprints.  In J. Murphy (Ed.),  The Educational Leadership Challenge: Redefining Leadership for the 21^st Century (pp. 65-82).  Chicago, IL: National Society for the Study of Education.

K Olson.  (2011, June 5).  Tennessee trumps Wisconsin:  Kills teacher collective

bargaining. Dead. [Web log post]. Retrieved from

http://biggovernment.com/kolson/2011/06/05/tennessee-trumps-

wisconsin-kills-teacher-collective-bargaining-dead/

Please share your thoughts on how educational leaders might best support democratic communities and should there be a structured role for teacher unions.* Please participate in the poll below. Thank you!
Are teachers unions*

Increasing Professors' Voice in Policy Debate

Contact Information for Responses to "Mid-Century Schools and Universities""

Dr. Mullen's post on the future of schools and universities has precipitated some interesting responses. Thank you for participating in the discussion! 


We are trying a new system to engage and interact with readers; while linking out to Google docs has been successful, the contact information provided by the blog has not been linked. We would greatly appreciate your continued participation and to all those who have already posted, please provide your contact information (name, email address, and row number of your comments) so that your comments may be credited appropriately. Thank you very much!


Please send this information to elkorda@gmail.com. 

View others' opinions: Mid Century Schools and Universities

Did a Mentor Help You Feel Capable, Connected, and Contributing?

Linda Searby, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Educational Leadership

University of Alabama at Birmingham

            Mentoring is my passion, and the message which I continually convey to anyone who will listen is: “we all need to have a mentor and be a mentor at all stages of our lives.”  As we entered the professoriate, we all needed a mentor to “show us the ropes” and help us navigate a new culture.  All human beings have three basic psychological needs: to be capable, to be contributing, and to feel connected to others (Adler, 1930.)  Having a mentor as one enters the field of higher education can be a tremendous boon to a newly hired professor. 

Newcomers to higher education are often frustrated by the differences in their own expectations and the university’s expectations for them (Johnson & DeSpain, 2004). In addition, studies show that the presence or absence of collegiality in the higher education setting is a factor in retention of new faculty (Ambrose, Huston, & Norman, 2005; Zhou & Volkwein, 2004).  New faculty members moving to the ranks of higher education can find the publishing expectations daunting, and they often lack the mentoring support they need.  There is an assumption sometimes held in universities that mentoring will occur on its own which has often meant that non-tenured professors never receive mentoring.

            Adjusting to the demands in higher education can be especially daunting if one is coming from a practitioner role in a professional setting, such as K-12 schools.  Boice (2000) gives credence to the importance of new faculty members finding support quickly, as the tenure clock begins ticking and the necessity to start publishing becomes a reality. In his study of new faculty for over two decades, he found that the failures of new faculty were easily correctable problems, if they had availed themselves to the right resources.  Two of these problems are not knowing how to manage enough writing for publication in modest amounts of time, and not learning how to elicit effective collegial support.

            As the interest in mentoring has grown across all careers and professions, the mentoring paradigm  has taken on forms other than the traditional grooming-mentoring model.

• Peer mentoring, in which a reciprocal mentoring function is provided by individuals with the same or similar professional status,
• Group or co-mentoring, in which the mentoring function is supplied by a more or less tightly constructed group of professional colleagues
• Network mentoring - In this model, early-career faculty build robust networks by engaging in multiple “mentoring partners” in non-heirarchical, collaborative, cross-cultural partnerships to address specific areas of faculty activity, such as research, teaching, working towards tenure, and striking a balance between work and life” (Sorcinelli & Jung, 2007,p. 58). This could also be called one’s developmental network (Higgins, Chandler & Kram, 2007).

            The three human needs of being capable, contributing, and feeling connected (Adler, 1930) are said to be universal.  Most faculty in new jobs likely experience these needs, whether or not they are articulated.  I would like to begin a dialogue with others reading this blog about your mentoring experiences as a new faculty member in higher education, no matter what “era” you entered the professoriate.  Were you mentor-less?  Did you develop your own mentoring network out of a need for survival?  Or were you formally or informally mentored by a more experienced colleague who took you under his/her wing?  Please share your experience and share a few thoughts about why mentoring in higher education seems to be neglected or left to chance. And finally, what are you personally doing to assist someone else in becoming capable, connected, and contributing in our profession?

References

Adler, A. (1930). The education of children. New York: Greenberg.
Ambrose, S., Huston, T., & Norman, M. (2005). A qualitative method for assessing

            faculty satisfaction. Research in Higher Education, 46(7), 803-830.

Boice, R. (2000).  Advice for new faculty members.  Boston:  Allyn and Bacon.

Higgins, M. C., Chandler, D. E., & Kram, K. E. (2007).  Developmental initiation and

            developmental networks.  In B.R. Ragins, & K.E. Kram (Eds.), The Handbook

            of Mentoring at Work: Theory, Research and Practice (pp. 349-372).  Los Angeles: Sage.

Johnson, J. A., & DeSpain, B. C. (2004). Mentoring the reluctant writer. The Professional

            Educator, 26(2),  45-55.

Sorcinelli, M. D. & Jung, Y. (2007).  From mentor to mentoring networks: Mentoring

            in the new academy.  Change, 39(6). Retrieved August 28, 2008, from

            http://find.galegroup.com/itx/infomark.do?&contentset=IAC

Zhou, Y., & Volkwein, F. (2004). Examining the influences of faculty departure

intentions: A comparison of tenured versus non-tenured faculty at research universities using NSOPF-99. Research in Higher Education, 45(2), 139-176.

                       

Blazing New Trails: Preparing Leaders to Improve Access and Equity

Dr. Gary W. Kinsey, NCPEA Past-President    

California State University Channel Islands

This summer’s NCPEA conference theme --Blazing New Trails:  Preparing Leaders to Improve Access and Equity in Today’s Schools—emanated from a suggestion by the 2011 Summer Conference planning group that consisted largely of member representatives from the Oregon Council for Professors of Educational Administration (OCPEA) and their universities.  As this nation’s early westward expansion extended to the part of the country that served as last summer’s conference site, it occurred primarily via the “Oregon Trail.”  Monumental challenges and much adversity faced those pioneers who were daring and persistent enough to make the journey to a frontier where their hopes and dreams could be realized.  The 2011 conference theme reflected the desire to explore new trails and not just the well-traveled paths in respect to how we currently view and support our public schools.  We need to be pioneers that will challenge the present day assumptions about how students best achieve and also prepare our leaders with this same mindset.

We are currently on a trail in this great country, that I fear is taking us completely the wrong direction as a means to improve access and equity for all children.  There is indisputable evidence about the effects of poverty on both family life and student motivation that is completely contrary to what policymakers and the public have been hearing so pervasively.  As presented by Diane Ravitch (2011) in her recent writings, there is a clear “need to reverse the increasingly narrow focus on testing and accountability.”  What is remarkable, is that Ravitch was once a proponent and key player in the current accountability movement that we are so caught up in.  She provides a few suggestions as policymakers look to ESEA reauthorization:

1)     Given the remarkable progress in math that schools serving poor and disadvantaged children have made, we should use data collection as a tool to figure out what has worked well – such as improved curricula and class size – and to help schools and teachers improve, rather than as a weapon to punish schools and fire teachers, which further destabilizes already fragile communities.

2)     The current system forbids us to say openly what we all know: Students who live in poverty and isolation face tremendous hurdles to learning, and they bring those problems with them to school every day.  If schools are to succeed, and students to reach their full potential, teachers, principals, and parents need to have the necessary resources to help them do so. This means helping all students arrive at the kindergarten door ready to learn through quality early childhood education, parent education, targeting scarce resources of money, small classes, and the best teachers to at-risk students to maintain those early gains, and linking schools to the range of community supports, such as after-school and summer programs and mentoring opportunities that middle-class children already enjoy.

3)     The federal mandates in No Child Left Behind that require schools to demonstrate Adequate Yearly Progress in reading and math embody a utopian goal that no state or nation has ever met: 100% proficiency on state tests. This has resulted in accountability measures that narrow the curriculum, especially for poor children, and game the system rather than helping students learn more. Measures that help schools, teachers and administrators determine how well they are serving their at-risk students require: enhancements to NAEP that will allow it to provide disaggregated data in more nuanced ways and to assess a much broader range of subjects; additional tools to assess children’s health, values, civic engagement, and other curricular and societal goals; and state flexibility in designing accountability systems so that a range of models can be tested to meet district needs.

In order to put us on a different trail that will allow all children to achieve their hopes and dreams in our present day and for the future, we need to be the new pioneers tenaciously blazing the trail to a strategy of building a strong education profession and attending to the conditions of young people's lives.   Our efforts should be changed from the current punitive approach of rankings, score comparisons and “races to the top.”  We should instead be taking steps to recruit, support and respect those who work in our nation’s schools.  Rather than ignoring poverty and its negative consequences, we should be designing programs to help families and children achieve social justice in education.  As McKerrow and Shockley-Lee (2005) so adeptly point out, “social justice is defined not only by what it is but also by what it is not, namely injustice.  By seeking justice, we anticipate the ideal.  By questioning injustice we approach it.  Integrating both, we achieve it.”

In our leadership programs we have an obligation to equip school leaders to pursue social justice and undertake a change of direction from the trail we are now on in respect to the overemphasis on assessment and accountability.  As Marshall and Oliva (2006) state, “…educational leaders are the people who must deliver some version of social justice and equity” (p.1).  As stated in her message to the NCPEA membership in 2007, Past-President, Linda Morford, commented “that many critics of school leadership preparation contend that many of our programs have failed to produce credible leaders capable of addressing the complex demands placed on contemporary schools.”  In fact, we “have a clear choice.  We can continue to defend ourselves against detractors such as Arthur Levine (2005), the business community, government and others, or we can …create an epidemic in our profession where we summon the will to work with others to address issues facing schools and, thus, improve our preparation programs.”  I encourage you to pursue the latter and be among the new pioneers and “voices of reason” pursuing a change of direction in achieving a new frontier of equity and access for all our nation’s schools.

REFERENCES

Levine, A. (2005).  Educating school leaders.  The Education Schools Project.  Retrieved on April 1, 2005 from http://www.edschools.org/reports_leaders.htm .

Marshall, C., & Oliva, M. (Ed.). (2006). Leadership for social justice:  Making revolutions in education. Boston, MA: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon.

Morford, L. (2007).  President’s message.  Lancaster, PA: ProActive Publications.

Ravitch, Diane (2011).  We must change the narrative about public education.  Edutopia.  Retrieved on May 2, 2011 from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/diane-ravitch-reframing-narrative-public-schools

Shockley Lee, S., & McKerrow, K. (2005, Fall).  Advancing social justice: Women’s work.  Advancing Women in Leadership, 19.  Retrieved March 25, 2006 from http://www.advancingwomen.com/awl/awl.html.

New ELCC Standards

NCATE has approved the new ELCC standards for use by programs in educational administration. The 2002 standards will be replaced with the 2011 updated standards beginning in the fall. Keep in mind that NCATE has also approved new accreditation options. How the standards will be utilized by programs varies depending upon the accreditation option an individual program chooses. Here is a link to the options an individual program may use to achieve ELCC accreditation:

http://www.ncate.org/Accreditation/ProgramReview/GuidelinesAndProcedures/NewOptionsforProgramReview/tabid/650/Default.aspx

The ELCC Standards can be viewed on the bulletin board at the NCPEA Website - http://www.emich.edu/ncpeaprofessors/bulletinboard.html