http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-maryland-schools-number-one-20100422,0,758859.story
In her recent Baltimore Sun article, Liz Bowie calls into question Maryland’s number one ranking by Education Week, wondering if Maryland is doing all it can to advance with school reform. Among the questions are that of whether or not the poor relationship between the governor and the state superintendent has prevented them from presenting “a united front,” and also the degree to which strong unions in Maryland are responsible for resisting reform.
The more I look, the more I see pay for performance measures advancing. Charter schools and merit-pay programs have apparently been typically supported by politicians to the political right, but, as we all know, the Obama administration also supports these pursuits and the result is that they’re happening all over. We are all also familiar with the argument that teacher’s unions often thwart change and with it, progress by maintaining positions that protect teachers and not students. In my personal opinion, though a strong union may resist change, that is not the same as opposing change. It is clear that strong unions in Maryland have not prevented an increasing number of jurisdictions (and the Maryland state legislature) from beginning to tie student achievement to teacher evaluation. As these experiments are conducted and good practices are explored and established, the teacher’s unions will respond, slowly, with greater openness. It may be a lofty challenge to sway the collective will of the teachers toward adopting reforms such as pay for performance, but it is a worthy one because winning the support of the unions will entail advancement to the transition stage mentioned by Beverly Anderson in her 1993 article on the stages of systemic change in schools, where the school policies as a whole begin to tip toward the new vision. It may well be that teacher’s unions will protect teachers and students by tempering the process of transition in such as way as to ensure it’s sustainability.
3 comments:
Interesting, though I'm not quite sure I understand the distinction you try and make between resisting and opposing change. Is that kind of like a 2 year old who isn't opposed to taking a bath but kicks and screams all the way until he is actually in the tub? That seems almost worse than just plain opposing it.
Is this your reference?
http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/sept93/vol51/num01/The_Stages_of_Systemic_Change.aspx
Yeah, I guess you could compare the unions to the 2-year-old, or you could compare them to a stubborn 82-year-old who knows what will come from moving too quickly and has no other way to convince us youngins than to be stubborn.
In other words, I think it's an important balancing factor for the unions to be continuously skeptical. They're only being too skeptical when we see no evidence of change due to their resistance. That is not the case right now.
Post a Comment