Making School Reform Work: New Partnerships for Real Change

Chapter 2. The Need for New Institutions

8 paul t. hill 8 TWO The Need for New Institutions paul t. hill no one can say exactly what configuration of schools and other educational programs will ultimately solve the problem of ineffective public education in big cities. Clearly existing school districts and the schools they provide are not succeeding. And clearly the groups with the most influence over school district policy do not see experimenting and adapting until effective ways of providing instruction are found as the way to solve the problem. Instead, despite public pronouncements in support of improving student achievement and doing whatever is necessary to advance it, the real political dynamics in most urban areas revolve around protecting the jobs of adults. Recent significant concerns about federal assistance for schools in lowincome areas indicate that this judgment is not too harsh. One major result of providing federal funds for the education of low-income children for the past thirty-five years has been the establishment of a wellprotected employment service for teachers’ aides, many without teaching credentials or college degrees.1 The need for new independent capacities stems from the deficiencies of school district governance. It is not too much to say that although everyone can agree in public that the mission of the schools is the education of children, the goal of governance, in private, pivots on satisfying the needs of adults. In district after district, for example, racial tension among school board members about the ethnicity of a new superintendent is often expressed as a concern about the “openness” of the selection process or a preference that a new superintendent represent one of the dominant eth- the need for new institutions 9 nic groups in the community. Doubtless, both concerns have some validity . But what is never mentioned in public is that, in most big cities, public schools are one of the biggest employers in the community—often the major employer. Whoever presides over this system is responsible for thousands of jobs, sometimes tens of thousands of positions, all stable and relatively well paying with exceptional benefits. No elected public official , on a school board or elsewhere in the city, can afford to ignore how those jobs are filled, especially when 50 percent of them turn over every five years. It is perhaps inevitable that although their ultimate goal is students’ learning, school districts work toward that goal through alignments of adults. Citizens are represented on the school board; parents’ preferences about instruction are promised a hearing; and unions protect teachers. Teachers are further shielded by guarantees of various kinds written into state laws, local contracts, and the “contracts behind the contract,” or special language and agreements worked out around the contract.2 Many other district employees are also provided with job protections, often through unions representing, for example, bus drivers or cafeteria employees. One effect of these adult agreements is that equity and fairness often take a back seat to seniority and tenure. In practically every school district in the country, funds are not allocated to schools on a per student basis but are used to support teachers’ salaries. The lion’s share of district operating funds, therefore, is spent with an implicit understanding that little or nothing can be done about the fact that the best-paid teachers with the most seniority get their pick of teaching assignments in the “most attractive” schools. This understanding effectively consigns the most inexperienced , junior, and least well-paid teachers to schools with the greatest challenges. In truly democratic building trades unions, by contrast, lists of skilled members needing work are maintained. When a new job comes into the hiring hall, the first name on the list is offered the job, whether that carpenter has just completed apprentice school or has years as a journeyman . None of the adults connected with a public school system is indifferent to whether children are taught well. But all of them impose constraints on the way things are done. Meanwhile, even among public institutions, public schools seem peculiarly impervious to what is going on around them. In the private sector, and even state and federal government, effective CEOs and managers understand that protecting the institution for which they are responsible (and 10 paul t. hill the divergent interests of stockholders, customers, and employees) demands paying attention to social, economic, and demographic changes. Although outstanding leadership in the corporate world is as scarce as it is in the...