A Fundamental Education Reform Teacher-Led Schools

Abstract

Neither approach to putting teachers at the center of school reform -- wholesale restructuring or incremental modification -- will be free of problems. But the prizes -- better schooling for students and greater professional status for teachers -- are worth the effort, Mr. McGhan points out. WHILE REAL change is generally slow to take root, school reform migrates from fad to fad simply because the wrong people are in charge. That's close to what education historians David Tyack and Larry Cuban seem to think: Better schooling will result in the future -- as it has in the past and does now -- chiefly from the steady, reflective efforts of the practitioners who work in schools and from the contributions of the parents and citizens who support (while they criticize) public education. . . . [In] recent years, policy elites have often bypassed teachers and discounted their knowledge of what schools are like today. . . . do not have a monopoly on educational wisdom, but their first-hand perspectives on schools and their responsibility for carrying out official policies argue for their centrality in school reform efforts.1 The view that the wrong people are running the public school enterprise does not come as news to teachers. Tyack and Cuban go on to identify a key barrier to the ambitions of most school reformers: As 'street- level bureaucrats,' teachers typically have sufficient discretion, once classroom doors close, to make decisions about pupils that add up over time to de facto policies about instruction, whatever the official regulations. In any case, then, teachers will make their imprint on educational policy as it becomes translated into practice.2 The barriers to school reform presented the fact that the wrong people are in charge go unacknowledged most reformers, who talk instead about the importance of principals and superintendents as instructional leaders. Reformers also promote instructional programs developed think tanks and universities. They push legislatures and governors to support such measures as high standards, testing of students and teachers, and a variety of other ideas. The reformers' zeal is understandable. They see themselves as leaders and as saviors of schools and schoolchildren. Their reputations and livelihoods depend on others' acceptance of their important role in bringing about change. In addition to such self-interest, though, school reformers have great optimism about their own ideas. Some believe the sensibleness of their reforms will automatically appeal to all but the most tradition-bound educators. Other reformers, equally mistaken, believe that their leadership skills are sufficiently great as to persuade those who must implement their proposals. Finally, and most disheartening, is the belief among some school reformers that teachers do not have what it takes -- the education, competence, interest, and so on -- to improve schools on their own. Tyack and Cuban make a strong case for seeking improvements from the inside out -- by enlisting the support and skills of teachers as key actors in reform.3 They would put teachers at the center of educational change. A similar idea is expressed in the work of the Foxfire Fund. Bobby Ann Starnes, then Foxfire's president and now a teacher educator and Kappan columnist, is explicit about the central role of teachers. Teachers are decision makers and central actors not only in implementing reform but also in designing, developing, and evaluating it. . . . Teaching and learning are viewed as highly individualized and fluid processes that require teachers to make hundreds of decisions each day. And decision makers can and gladly do accept responsibility and accountability when they are free to provide learning experiences that make sense in their individual classrooms and that best fit learners' individual needs.4 A critical first step to take in pursuit of teacher-centered education reform and school improvement is to shift everyone's thinking so that two things happen: * we all become more optimistic about what teachers can accomplish on their own; and * we all become less optimistic about what those who put on the mantle of traditional leadership can achieve. …