Executive Summary
Teachers on the Front Lines of Civilization
The future cannot be privatized. It is a shared experience.
For thousands of years, teachers have borne their societies' generational responsibilities. They have helped the young prepare to inherit a future outside of their families. They, often as some of the most respected members of society, helped the next generation to make sense of their legacy and to design their shared future. These teachers helped children, one at a time, reach beyond self-fascination to yearn for a just place in the larger world. Teachers helped open up the beauty of the world and its gifts. They helped children learn to overcome their pain by creating gifts as legacy. These gifts are immense.The responsibilities for this generational legacy are too large to be delegated to either the public or the private sector. Both must invest many, if not most of its resources in generational legacy. Both sectors have additional the social obligation to control their own and each other's excesses to maintain civility and ensure generational survival.
Teachers labor on the front lines of civilization: the next generation.
Generational security is an increasingly critical domestic and foreign policy issue. The future for the next century rests in the world's technologically complex, dense urban-centered regions. These regions are vulnerable to economic opportunists and predators. Regional security depends in no small part on the widespread acceptance of generational responsibilities. Multiple generations need the light of shared security. Children who accept personal responsibility for someone older and someone younger beyond their family create the only opportunity for continuing democracy and free markets.Today's teachers know the torch of our civilization is handed on, not as a collective experience of adventures on television, but to each child, where the light of independent imagination is lit one 'ah ha' at a time. Each child needs to grow up wanted, secure in knowing that people both within and outside of their families want to make a safe place for them. Schools must be seen as generational safe havens.
Educational reform has overfocused on institutional means and underfocused on professional ends. It has invested policy energy in institutional control (public v private) and organizational management (districts v sites). It has neglected the growing issues of generational security. Teacher empowerment policy needs to be strategically refocused on the source of its professional authority: generational responsibility.
An effective strategy for teacher empowerment must build on professional strengths.
Most teachers are white, conservative women. Teacher empowerment policies that strongly appeal to their generational commitments to children, as well as to their beliefs in public honor and duty, are also likely to strongly appeal to many other voters as well.
Focus on Competent Local Professional Capacity Building
Is this the right time to challenge electoral control of the public schools?
A current assessment is needed of the impact of teachers serving on school boards on voters. This assessment is needed quickly, given the rapidly changing public views of public education. Promoting teacher school board membership at this time may be riskier than it has been in the past. Some voters, however, might welcome a campaign to clean up predatory patronage.NEA strategy should focus less on capturing institutional authority and more on building a professional capacity to design and manage institutions. This means building a strong professional capacity within local affiliates.
NEA should extend its professional authority through its strengths: contract negotiation and professional information and development services. These directions, combined with a greater focus on the media may be more important than direct legislative incursions into electoral processes at this time.
Legislative attention might be better directed toward a closer alignment between mandates and existing school codes to help ensure more competent strategic planning at the local level. Teacher empowerment strategic goals should focus on building professional capacity for institutional management, beginning at the classroom level. Local affiliates should have strong expertise in strategic planning within their community's context.Local level strategic planning is the playing field. Local strategic planning processes should be clearly tied to student learning, institutional contracts and community development. Legislative attention should be given to the current construction of school boards to see if they adequately reflect the needs of teachers and children in classrooms. State delegation of its authority should be questioned. It may make more educational sense to put state officials on local boards in proportion to their economic contribution than to create de facto state and federal control through legislative mandates poorly coordinated at the local level.
Eight Areas of Critical Leverage of Professional Authority
NEA needs to extend from its strengths. It should move strategically from well-centered professional authority
in eight critical areas of leverage:
Strategic Direction Centered in Professional Authority
This essay construes educational governance as a balance of three powers
. The first belongs to parents and their families. The second belongs to teachers and their careers. The third belongs to community investors, local, state and national- public taxpayers, private donors and their representatives.It argues that
the consumption metaphor prevalent in the education reform discourse divides the world into producers and consumers, thus balancing only two powers. Both of these powers are assumed to exist outside of the classroom. Teachers are expected to associate themselves with the institutional authority of taxpayers or the parental authority of consumers. Neither is acceptable. Teachers are not vessels to be filled by the external intelligence of boards, governors, publishers or test manufacturers. Teachers are also not the servants of consumer sovereigns.Teaching is a profession with its own authority: responsibility for generational learning
. Like doctors, teachers' professional judgement rests on helping complex individuals get better. This professional authority should be aligned with a school's institutional authority for the creation and maintenance of high levels of professional care. It should also be aligned with parental authority to ensure just access and competent care. If institutional authority fails, then professionals can work with parents to seek redress. If parental authority fails then professionals can work with institutions to ensure adequate care for children. Professional authority must be recognizable, distinct and balanced within institutions and communities. The public needs to see professional standards set by the profession, not by governors.
Source of Professional Authority: Generational Learning
NEA's teacher empowerment strategy should focus first on the source of its professional authority: protecting children's continuous, generational learning in schools.
Second, it should focus on protecting and improving the quality of professional careers. Third, it should focus on developing professional capacities for institution building at the local level. If public commitment to education grows, then teachers can build with communities. If the public abandons its responsibilities to children, teachers need to know how to work with parents to pick up the pieces.
School Councils: Feeder Patterns
A strategic balance of these three authorities should be the guiding principle of NEA's strategy for educational governance. Professional authority needs to be clearly recognized through contractual agreements with institutions and parents. These relationships through school boards or school councils should be contractual, with clearly defined, differentiated roles and responsibilities. Councils should reflect a 'balance of power' structure. Some communities may prefer the more traditional collective consensus structure typical of boards and councils; others may need much clearer boundaries. Councils should be organized to balance institutional, professional and parental authority. Councils should be cooperatives formed from working members of existing organizations: affiliates, PTOs, and administrative teams.
School site management councils are interesting but limited because they cannot adequately focus on the core of professional authority: longer-term student learning.
Primary professional attention should focus on the development of governance systems for 'feeder' patterns of schools, those that track the flows of children from primary through secondary schools. Successful student longevity is at the core of teaching as a generational responsibility.Many NEA school districts are already constructed around feeder patterns with a single high school. School board subcommittees on strategic planning and feeder councils should interlock with collective bargaining committees and should include board and affiliate members. State and local affiliates should develop strong capacities in professional information systems and services for strategic planning. Local affiliates should also have signoff rights on district plans. Legislation may be necessary to create this opportunity in some states.
Empower Teachers through Internationally Recognized Certification
Professional authority needs to be recognized generationally. NEA and AFT should accredit teacher education programs to ensure a consistent flow of high quality graduates.
NEA should consider creating a teacher education program along the lines of the International Baccalaureate. Its purpose would be set 'world class' standards that would be recognized in all fifty states and internationally. This portability should be enhanced with career support services such as recruitment and placement services, and portable and/or supplemental health, insurance and pension plans.
Empower Teachers through Shared Professional Development Across Affiliates
Professional authority needs to extend to continuing education. Experience counts.
Affiliates should be primary sponsors of regional continuing education services through peer learning and mentoring. Affiliates should be encouraged to develop regional and national niche markets in educational training, not only for schools, but also perhaps for businesses and nonprofit organizations as well. Affiliates should be able to contract with other affiliates for access to professional development services, as part of a district's strategic plan.
Empower Teachers by Sharing Their Materials
Professional authority needs to extend to the development of teaching and learning materials. Why should others profit from teachers' creativity?
NEA should provide rapid access to high quality teacher-made materials in digestible formats at reasonable prices. NEA should also consider promoting national level involvement in setting 'world class' standards for textbooks and assessment tools. Teachers cannot be seen as containers for the intelligence of others. They are not shop clerks assisting consumers in the purchase of curriculum packages. They are the source of not the means for professional judgement.
Empower Teachers through School Construction Planning
Professional authority needs to extend to school construction. Affiliates should serve on school board subcommittees on capital planning and budgeting.
Affiliates should have signoff rights on major construction projects because these projects should be integrated into the districts' strategic plan. Strategic planning for classroom teaching and learning, and not construction planning should drive school budgets. State affiliates need to offer local strategic planning communities high quality information and legislative self-defense against 'construction fever.'
Empower Teachers through Technology Literacy
Professional authority needs to extend to telecommunications
. State affiliates need to offer local strategic planning committees high quality technology planning and technology literacy services, as well as legislative self-defense against 'technology frenzy.' Networks of peer learning and distance mentoring are important not only to teachers, but students, school boards and communities as well. NEA should develop high quality regional, national and international networks for on-line professional development and classroom instruction. Some schools may want to become telecommunications centers for their communities.
Need to Move Quickly
If NEA does not move quickly, it may be nibbled to death by economic competitors.
Accounting firms offer externally-designed MIS systems. Publishing companies offer externally-designed classroom materials. Testing companies offer externally-designed evaluations. State departments of education offer externally-designed curriculum standards. Construction firms offer externally-designed facilities. States manage pension funds. Insurance companies manage benefits? Telecommunications firms offer electronic access. E-commerce offers curriculum and diplomas. What is left? low-wage employment for poor Christian women?Should NEA become a mega-conglomerate encompassing the education-related areas of these industries? Perhaps. In the meantime it should consider teacher empowerment within the context of an 'education economy.' Education-related economic activity is not insignificant. Well-harnessed, it can help build, revitalize, even regenerate local communities.
Affiliates can make important contributions to community and regional development through well-constructed strategic planning that accounts for economic contribution both to individual children and to community development.Professional authority needs to extend to legislative interests. NEA is losing legislative authority because of changes in campaign financing. NEA is, on no small part, a victim of its own success. When parties had control of most campaign resources, legislative bargaining was a more orderly process with fewer players. NEA and the state affiliates played the game well.
The game has changed and NEA's approach has not changed fast enough. Campaigns are highly individualized and require strong grassroots connections to votes and money. Conservatives learned that lesson quickly and headed out of the capitols in two directions. First, they helped organize at the grassroots level through local churches. Second, they moved beyond organized major media campaigns to establish an ongoing media 'presence' to continuously generate financial support through issues rather than party loyalties. Rush Limbaugh is marketing genius. The game now is very simple: win the war of public portrayal through 'infotainment. '
Need for Greater Attention of Public Portrayal of Teaching Profession
Teachers are currently weak players in the game of public portrayal. It is contrary to their core beliefs. They are primarily truth seekers. They are easy prey for spin experts who focus on repetition in the popular culture.
A simple change of language from 'public schools' to 'government schools' is worth millions in votes and campaign backing. These boys are hunting with infra-red scopes. We are using cap guns.The major thrust for a teacher empowerment strategy must focus on controlling our own professional portrayal. How is NEA losing the portrayal game? Its 'presence' in the popular culture is too limited. The game is portrayal control. Losers are marginalized through isolation, distortion and deflection.
Teachers are isolated because the public does not 'see' who they are, what they do and how important they are. The teaching profession is mostly white, female and conservative. This portrayal used to be dominant in the popular culture, but often negatively - the rigid, mean schoolmarm.
Teacher professional associations are distorted through demonization. Washington spinners portray with impunity professional associations as ultra-liberal labor thugs. This message is hammered in unison in many places in the popular culture. It doesn't have to be true; it just has to be repeated.
Teachers themselves are deflected through reification. In films they are often portrayed as heroic men of mythic proportions who fight valiantly against an indifferent or corrupt system. The distancing creates the trap of 'rugged individualism.' The hero cannot join a legitimate group like the NEA without losing his mythic identity.
It is a simple game of repetition. Some of it is deliberate. Republicans know it is easier to destroy Democrats' financial sources than to raise money the old fashioned way. Some of it is cultural myth. Men will pay to see male heros on the screen but not female ones.
Empower Teachers through Media 'Presence' for Generational Responsibility
What is the counter to such overwhelming wealth and cultural tradition? A major national and international 'presence' for generational responsibility. We cannot leave our democracy and free market society to chance. Our children need to learn that their teachers cared enough about them to leave them the greatest legacy they could offer: independent judgement.
How? NEA should develop, as part of its teacher empowerment strategy, a long term media 'presence' for the issue of generational responsibility. There are three directions for this approach: education for civility, the educational experience of generational cohorts and media and technology literacy.
NEA should develop a market niche for research into the educational investments and consequences for generational cohorts. Annual reports should be issued at the federal, state and local levels. The national report should compare the educational experiences and consequences of cohorts through indicators and long term intra and interregional case studies, both domestically and internationally.
NEA should also develop a strong professional capacity for media literacy. Research is needed to assess the profession's current capacity so that training and curriculum programs can be developed.
Need for On-going Policy Research and Dialogue
Finally, NEA needs to strengthen its capacity to develop teacher empowerment strategy. Strategy is not a project. It is the whole game. NEA needs to build a strong internal capacity for strategic policy research and dialogue in this area of teacher empowerment.
One way to build this capacity quickly is through strategic alliances with others. Policy research is unique because it involves both the research itself and the need for high level engagement within the policymaking community. Media visibility is increasingly a major ticket in.
NEA should initiate two series of policy research and dialogue 'seminars' on teacher empowerment strategy for generational responsibility. One seminar should focus on regional issues within a national context. Primary participants should be federal and state affiliate researchers working in the area. Federal and state level researchers in other strategic organizations might also be invited. This seminar should identify emerging policy topics, indicators and research methods. Each participant should be asked to prepare a brief report on their group's research direction and anticipated response to the issue. It should be low profile, but might use on-line conferencing for increased affiliate participation.
The other seminar should focus on national issues of generational responsibility within the domestic and international context. It should be an annual 'tour de force' presented in partnership with the AFT, the Departments of Education, as many other departments as possible, along with groups such ECS, NCSL, etc., as well as international agencies such as USAID, the World Bank and the UN. Major mainstream church groups are also needed. It should present an annual report of its generational cohort findings to senior policymakers on the Hill, and in education-related federal and international agencies. It should be a major media event, and also include Internet conferencing. The 'seminar' should develop a high-level Internet-based discussion group on teachers as generational guardians. The seminar should be hot but cool. The purpose is a lively dialogue that improves civility within the educational reform debates.
NEA should cast a wide, smart net to draw in a range of intellectuals interested in teacher empowerment. They should invite in liberals and conservatives, both domestic and international. NEA should not be afraid of civil religious groups or the military. In humanitarian assistance conditions, they work shoulder to shoulder as generational guardians, risking their lives to help children who are not their own.