“Breaking the Rules,” Can School Districts and Teacher Unions Collaborate to Encourage Innovative Educational Practices at the School Level?
Education is rules-driven: state laws and regulations, school district policies and school level compliance monitoring; “faux-innovation” is implementing an innovation mandated from the aeries of leadership, lockstep “innovation” is the goal of school systems.
Over the decades schools “innovated,” quietly, in the teacher rooms of schools. I worked in a large urban high school, over 200 teachers. The Social Studies Assistant Principal left and we asked the principal to allow us to “elect” a teacher to lead the department. He smiled, “We’ll try it,” we wrote bylaws, we elected a steering committee; we set up an alternative to formal supervisory observations (Teacher A observed B who observed C who observed A within a week). Teachers observed each other, met, asked pre-agreed upon questions; the notes of the meeting were in lieu of a formal observation. A couple of years later the supervisory union (CSA) complained, the principal left, our innovation disappeared.
The New York City teacher union (UFT) negotiated a school-based option clause in the 90’s,
A School-Based Option (SBO) allows staff at a school the ability to collaboratively modify contractual articles or to create positions not automatically allowed under the contract.
The UFT and the Board of Education agreed upon a new teacher transfer plan to replace the seniority plan, applicants were interviewed at the school level by a CONTINUE READING: “Breaking the Rules,” Can School Districts and Teacher Unions Collaborate to Encourage Innovative Educational Practices at the School Level? | Ed In The Apple
