Reform like we said- Just Not in D11
In May 2006, the D11 school board voted to adopt a site based management system by a vote of 6-1. The purpose of this move to a site based approach was, simply put, to improve the district’s schools. Money would be prioritized to the school sites instead of to central administration. Principals and their staffs would have greater autonomy to do what was necessary to educate their students. Money would follow students to their schools using a student weighted formula.
For strong, competent principals, a site based approach is a welcome management model. Principals would have the opportunity to be leaders in their buildings rather than message takers for central administration bureaucrats. For obvious reasons, administrators would not welcome a site based approach. Terry Bishop and his staff worked hard to prevent a site based system from taking hold, and they were relieved when weak willed anti-reformers were once again firmly in charge on the board. Due to the failed leadership team of John Gudvangen and Tami Hasling, the D11 administration was able to kill the site based system before it got off the ground. Bishop is now free to direct funds away from the schools to continue his expansion of central administration.
In a Gazette article several months ago, Bishop declared that he had instituted more reforms than had the Denver school district. Bishop made this claim with the confident understanding that most people would have no idea what has been occurring in Denver. In short, Denver hired a non-educrat as its superintendent two years ago. This businessman superintendent has shown strong leadership and he has treated his district’s situation accurately like a crisis. He has been bold, forward thinking, student focused, and out of the box. Bishop and his anti-reform board partners have been nothing but “business as usual.”
Anyone who reads the Denver Post knows that it is not a conservative publication. Nevertheless, it and other large newspapers are beginning to understand the nature of the education crisis. The following article appeared in the Denver Post on December 6th:
School wants to set own course
As poor-performing Bruce Randolph Middle School improves under a reform plan by principal Kristin Waters, even further-reaching ideas are proposed.
By Jeremy P. Meyer The Denver Post
Teachers and administrators at a Denver school are seeking autonomy from union and district rules, asking for control over the school's budget, staff, time and incentives. Bruce Randolph Middle School in northeast Denver would be the first Denver public school to separate itself from key parts of the union contract.
"We don't see this as radical," said Greg Ahrnsbrak, physical education teacher and union representative at the school. "We see this as common sense. We want to be released from this bureaucratic entanglement that will allow us to do better."
The matter was presented Tuesday to the Denver Classroom Teachers Association board and will be discussed this month with the Denver school board. Bruce Randolph has been under threat of takeover by the state, which labeled it as one of the worst-performing schools in the state. For three straight years, the school had been rated unsatisfactory, but its 2006-07 scores improved and, for the first time, the school on Wednesday was rated "low." Principal Kristin Waters put in place a reform plan called Challenge 2010 and yearly is growing the school to a sixth-grade through 12th-grade program. The school day was increased 10 minutes; struggling students must attend after-school tutoring or classes on Saturday; and summer school is also a part of the plan.
Waters said the new proposal is being developed through collaboration with teachers. Ahrnsbrak said 75 percent of the school's 46 teachers have pledged their support for the proposal. It would allow the principal to hire teachers months earlier than is currently permitted. Teachers could add more classes for more money. Many of the decisions would be made by a leadership team that would be comprised of the principal, assistant principal and key faculty members. School board President Theresa Peña supports the idea. "They are not saying, 'Let it be a charter school,' " she said. "They are saying, 'Let us be a DPS school without the obstacles. It's courageous leadership saying here are policies that don't work for us. If you can relieve us of those, this is what we can do.' "
Union president Kim Ursetta said her board and the school board must approve the change. "There are a lot of questions about what they exactly want and how it would be implemented," Ursetta said. One teacher who asked not to be identified out of fear of retribution said there is concern about the proposal. Some teachers feel they cannot voice their disapproval and have not been part of the plan's development. Concern also surrounds one provision that gives the principal freedom to fire an employee without union protection, the teacher said. "They will take the calendar away, the workweek away and leave it up to this group of teachers," the teacher said.
Jeremy P. Meyer: 303-954-1367 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com
The following Denver Post editorial appeared on December 10th:
Principal is a rebel with a cause
By David Harsanyi The Denver Post
Two interesting developments occurred in Colorado education last week. One was business as usual, while the other offered us a glimmer of hope.
First, here's what we've learned about Gov. Bill Ritter's education plan: It will be big on spending and short on new ideas. Let's call it the teachers union plan. More counselors? Good idea. More all-day kindergarten classes? Great. The elimination of the waiting list for preschools? Wonderful. After all, it's imperative to get children into the failing school system as quickly as we possibly can. Injecting more money — in this case, many new jobs —into public education can be helpful. But over the past 30 years, we've learned that increased funding alone rarely correlates to better results.
So where is the fundamental change in culture? Where is the independence that schools need to succeed? Where is the flexibility for teachers? Where are the enhanced choices for parents? Ritter will ask the legislature for around $115million for the plan. Quite conveniently, it will be available after his property-tax "freeze" raises taxes on thousands of Colorado homeowners. (Just in time for the mortgage crisis!) "It's a conversation that transcends dollars and cents," Ritter told folks at a dropout conference in Westminster last week. "We must get down to the business of educating kids."
Every year that we conduct this imaginary"conversation," more kids are conscripted to failing schools. Of the many factors contributing to bad schools is a bad agreement made by the district and a union more concerned with saving incompetent teachers than educating children. So now the good news: Last week, in Bruce Randolph School, administrators and a majority of teachers requested autonomy from this smothering policy. They want control of the school's budget and staff. Imagine that.
"We're looking at things like flexibility with our budgeting process and how we spend our money supporting teachers," says Kristin Waters, principal of Bruce Randolph School. "We are asking for some freedom in how we can spend the money we're allocated."
In a rational world, hiring your own employees is a no-brainer. Yet in Denver and elsewhere, schools deal with so many regulations that they are often left with a staff that either doesn't fit or is incompetent. Before hiring the right person, administrators are forced to sit around and allow the district to place teachers. Often these teachers haven't gotten the job done elsewhere. I'm told this dispersal of sub-par educators is called the "lemon dance."
Then there is the question of incentive. Hard-working teachers should be paid more. According to Waters, administrators cannot decide how to pay their staff. Denver teachers who tutor kids, for instance, are paid $20 an hour, while those who busy themselves writing curriculum are paid $30. "In my eyes, working with a student and helping a student master content is much more important but in the end, I don't have a choice in how they are paid,"she explains. "Neither does the school, the personnel staff, have a choice. We want a chance to look at all candidates when positions come available. It makes sense."
Bruce Randolph has been one of the worst-performing schools in the state until it recently began to turn things around under Waters' Challenge 2010 plan. Waters says her reform plan is working. Maybe. And if we hold schools accountable for failing, the very least we can do is provide them a fair shot at success.
"Every school is different, and I only speak for mine. I know (that) here, every decision is made in the best interest of students," Waters says. "And we see this as the next step in raising our student achievement. And in the end, that is ultimately good for teachers." Most insiders believe that the district will allow Bruce Randolph the freedom it deserves. What about the teachers union? If they vote yes, and the school flourishes, rest assured that parents across the city will demand similar independence. And school independence is the last thing the Colorado Education Association wants.
Fortunately, education reform is coming. Principal Waters gets it. She rebels.
Ritter? He's got other special interests to placate.
Principal Kristin Waters is a leader of the type that is desperately needed in D11. She knows where she wants to take her school, and she knows that she needs the education and labor union bureaucracies out of her way to get there. Waters wants the resources to come to her and she wants to make decisions with her staff that will improve the education for her students. As Harsanyi says in his editorial, the last thing that the labor union wants is independent schools. Successful independent schools will illustrate that the labor union is not needed, that it is, in fact, one of the main obstacles to educating kids. Independent schools will lead to fewer teacher dollars for labor union political causes.
The fact that the board in Denver supports Waters’ independence movement shows that these board members are focused on students, unlike the D11 board members, who serve only to run cover for the administration and labor union.
Randolph Middle School in Denver is improving because of site based management. It will continue to improve as the principal receives even more autonomy. We reformers put a site based system in place in our own district. We gave D11 schools a chance to break free from the smothering bureaucracy. We gave principals and teachers a chance to show leadership. They didn’t want this chance. It was too hard.
Note the reason that the anonymous teacher gave for opposing a site based approach in Denver. She was concerned that principals might be allowed to fire incompetent teachers and she was afraid that she might have to work longer than her labor union contract allows. In a crisis situation, principals SHOULD fire incompetent employees and staff SHOULD work longer and harder. Teachers in D11 who opposed the site based approach here made the same argument as the Denver teacher.
Governor Ritter wants more money for education. He wants to hire more labor union members and bureaucrats. D11 has a $500 million budget already. It doesn't need more money. It needs leadership.
For strong, competent principals, a site based approach is a welcome management model. Principals would have the opportunity to be leaders in their buildings rather than message takers for central administration bureaucrats. For obvious reasons, administrators would not welcome a site based approach. Terry Bishop and his staff worked hard to prevent a site based system from taking hold, and they were relieved when weak willed anti-reformers were once again firmly in charge on the board. Due to the failed leadership team of John Gudvangen and Tami Hasling, the D11 administration was able to kill the site based system before it got off the ground. Bishop is now free to direct funds away from the schools to continue his expansion of central administration.
In a Gazette article several months ago, Bishop declared that he had instituted more reforms than had the Denver school district. Bishop made this claim with the confident understanding that most people would have no idea what has been occurring in Denver. In short, Denver hired a non-educrat as its superintendent two years ago. This businessman superintendent has shown strong leadership and he has treated his district’s situation accurately like a crisis. He has been bold, forward thinking, student focused, and out of the box. Bishop and his anti-reform board partners have been nothing but “business as usual.”
Anyone who reads the Denver Post knows that it is not a conservative publication. Nevertheless, it and other large newspapers are beginning to understand the nature of the education crisis. The following article appeared in the Denver Post on December 6th:
School wants to set own course
As poor-performing Bruce Randolph Middle School improves under a reform plan by principal Kristin Waters, even further-reaching ideas are proposed.
By Jeremy P. Meyer The Denver Post
Teachers and administrators at a Denver school are seeking autonomy from union and district rules, asking for control over the school's budget, staff, time and incentives. Bruce Randolph Middle School in northeast Denver would be the first Denver public school to separate itself from key parts of the union contract.
"We don't see this as radical," said Greg Ahrnsbrak, physical education teacher and union representative at the school. "We see this as common sense. We want to be released from this bureaucratic entanglement that will allow us to do better."
The matter was presented Tuesday to the Denver Classroom Teachers Association board and will be discussed this month with the Denver school board. Bruce Randolph has been under threat of takeover by the state, which labeled it as one of the worst-performing schools in the state. For three straight years, the school had been rated unsatisfactory, but its 2006-07 scores improved and, for the first time, the school on Wednesday was rated "low." Principal Kristin Waters put in place a reform plan called Challenge 2010 and yearly is growing the school to a sixth-grade through 12th-grade program. The school day was increased 10 minutes; struggling students must attend after-school tutoring or classes on Saturday; and summer school is also a part of the plan.
Waters said the new proposal is being developed through collaboration with teachers. Ahrnsbrak said 75 percent of the school's 46 teachers have pledged their support for the proposal. It would allow the principal to hire teachers months earlier than is currently permitted. Teachers could add more classes for more money. Many of the decisions would be made by a leadership team that would be comprised of the principal, assistant principal and key faculty members. School board President Theresa Peña supports the idea. "They are not saying, 'Let it be a charter school,' " she said. "They are saying, 'Let us be a DPS school without the obstacles. It's courageous leadership saying here are policies that don't work for us. If you can relieve us of those, this is what we can do.' "
Union president Kim Ursetta said her board and the school board must approve the change. "There are a lot of questions about what they exactly want and how it would be implemented," Ursetta said. One teacher who asked not to be identified out of fear of retribution said there is concern about the proposal. Some teachers feel they cannot voice their disapproval and have not been part of the plan's development. Concern also surrounds one provision that gives the principal freedom to fire an employee without union protection, the teacher said. "They will take the calendar away, the workweek away and leave it up to this group of teachers," the teacher said.
Jeremy P. Meyer: 303-954-1367 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com
The following Denver Post editorial appeared on December 10th:
Principal is a rebel with a cause
By David Harsanyi The Denver Post
Two interesting developments occurred in Colorado education last week. One was business as usual, while the other offered us a glimmer of hope.
First, here's what we've learned about Gov. Bill Ritter's education plan: It will be big on spending and short on new ideas. Let's call it the teachers union plan. More counselors? Good idea. More all-day kindergarten classes? Great. The elimination of the waiting list for preschools? Wonderful. After all, it's imperative to get children into the failing school system as quickly as we possibly can. Injecting more money — in this case, many new jobs —into public education can be helpful. But over the past 30 years, we've learned that increased funding alone rarely correlates to better results.
So where is the fundamental change in culture? Where is the independence that schools need to succeed? Where is the flexibility for teachers? Where are the enhanced choices for parents? Ritter will ask the legislature for around $115million for the plan. Quite conveniently, it will be available after his property-tax "freeze" raises taxes on thousands of Colorado homeowners. (Just in time for the mortgage crisis!) "It's a conversation that transcends dollars and cents," Ritter told folks at a dropout conference in Westminster last week. "We must get down to the business of educating kids."
Every year that we conduct this imaginary"conversation," more kids are conscripted to failing schools. Of the many factors contributing to bad schools is a bad agreement made by the district and a union more concerned with saving incompetent teachers than educating children. So now the good news: Last week, in Bruce Randolph School, administrators and a majority of teachers requested autonomy from this smothering policy. They want control of the school's budget and staff. Imagine that.
"We're looking at things like flexibility with our budgeting process and how we spend our money supporting teachers," says Kristin Waters, principal of Bruce Randolph School. "We are asking for some freedom in how we can spend the money we're allocated."
In a rational world, hiring your own employees is a no-brainer. Yet in Denver and elsewhere, schools deal with so many regulations that they are often left with a staff that either doesn't fit or is incompetent. Before hiring the right person, administrators are forced to sit around and allow the district to place teachers. Often these teachers haven't gotten the job done elsewhere. I'm told this dispersal of sub-par educators is called the "lemon dance."
Then there is the question of incentive. Hard-working teachers should be paid more. According to Waters, administrators cannot decide how to pay their staff. Denver teachers who tutor kids, for instance, are paid $20 an hour, while those who busy themselves writing curriculum are paid $30. "In my eyes, working with a student and helping a student master content is much more important but in the end, I don't have a choice in how they are paid,"she explains. "Neither does the school, the personnel staff, have a choice. We want a chance to look at all candidates when positions come available. It makes sense."
Bruce Randolph has been one of the worst-performing schools in the state until it recently began to turn things around under Waters' Challenge 2010 plan. Waters says her reform plan is working. Maybe. And if we hold schools accountable for failing, the very least we can do is provide them a fair shot at success.
"Every school is different, and I only speak for mine. I know (that) here, every decision is made in the best interest of students," Waters says. "And we see this as the next step in raising our student achievement. And in the end, that is ultimately good for teachers." Most insiders believe that the district will allow Bruce Randolph the freedom it deserves. What about the teachers union? If they vote yes, and the school flourishes, rest assured that parents across the city will demand similar independence. And school independence is the last thing the Colorado Education Association wants.
Fortunately, education reform is coming. Principal Waters gets it. She rebels.
Ritter? He's got other special interests to placate.
Principal Kristin Waters is a leader of the type that is desperately needed in D11. She knows where she wants to take her school, and she knows that she needs the education and labor union bureaucracies out of her way to get there. Waters wants the resources to come to her and she wants to make decisions with her staff that will improve the education for her students. As Harsanyi says in his editorial, the last thing that the labor union wants is independent schools. Successful independent schools will illustrate that the labor union is not needed, that it is, in fact, one of the main obstacles to educating kids. Independent schools will lead to fewer teacher dollars for labor union political causes.
The fact that the board in Denver supports Waters’ independence movement shows that these board members are focused on students, unlike the D11 board members, who serve only to run cover for the administration and labor union.
Randolph Middle School in Denver is improving because of site based management. It will continue to improve as the principal receives even more autonomy. We reformers put a site based system in place in our own district. We gave D11 schools a chance to break free from the smothering bureaucracy. We gave principals and teachers a chance to show leadership. They didn’t want this chance. It was too hard.
Note the reason that the anonymous teacher gave for opposing a site based approach in Denver. She was concerned that principals might be allowed to fire incompetent teachers and she was afraid that she might have to work longer than her labor union contract allows. In a crisis situation, principals SHOULD fire incompetent employees and staff SHOULD work longer and harder. Teachers in D11 who opposed the site based approach here made the same argument as the Denver teacher.
Governor Ritter wants more money for education. He wants to hire more labor union members and bureaucrats. D11 has a $500 million budget already. It doesn't need more money. It needs leadership.
posted by Craig Cox | 9:02 PM
5 Comments:
Sad, sad, sad. So much could have been accomplished in D-11, but now, nothing will is my guess.
Years ago, I read a story in Reader's Digest about a new teacher in an inner city school. One of her students hacked and spit on the window. She called for the janitor to clean it but was told by him that he couldn't. It was Tuesday and his contract said he only had to clean windows on Thursdays. Unions protect the incompetent and set up outrageous rules that have nothing to do with doing a good job.
Good thing D-11 is down in the Springs. If there was a paper here actually interested in reporting stories, they'd be in trouble. As it is they just continue to spend money as if it was from a Monopoly game, they don't ask for results, they discourage the good teachers, and they provide a safe haven for those who have no business being in the classroom.
Nonsense, utter nonsense. Do people actually think that union contracts prevent custodians from cleaning windows except on one day of the week? Heck, custodians aren't even unionized in D-11.
As for the Randolph school, it will be interesting to see how it all works out. Cox left it out, of course, but the union rep at te school co-sponsored the waiver request with the principal. Egads! A union person wanting meaningful change! They're not as rare as you might think.
The fact that the labor union rep at Randolph helped with the waiver request just makes you and your D11 labor union leadership look all the more behind the times. The autonomy and budget control that Randolph is asking for is exactly what we instituted for all D11 schools until you and your personally purchased school board pulled the plug. So much for meaningful change in D11. What meaningful change have you or your school board offered for a dieing D11? Tami Hasling is board president. Somehow that points towards another couple of meaningless years ahead rather than meaningful anything.
The best quote from the Randolph labor union rep was this one with regards to pulling out of the labor union contract: "We don't see this as radical. We see this as common sense. We want to be released from this bureaucratic entanglement that will allow us to do better." Your Randolph hero agrees with what we reformers have been saying for years. Getting out from under the bureacratic nightmare that is your labor union contract will allow all schools to do better. Maybe you will even notice cleaner windows.
My bad. I meant to say it was an inner city school in New York City. My point was that union rules generally make no sense in terms of what school should be about - kids learning. That goes whether it's unionized janitors in NYC schools, or unionized teachers in Colorado Springs.
I agree and disagree with anonymous, but I am sure for very different reasons. I disagree that there are silly instances where union contract provisions stop common sensical things from happening. (re: janitor analogy). I agree that the Randolph union rep was involved in this innovative efforts to more appropriately educate one school's students. I believe, however, that the union rep saw the proverbial writing on the wall and rather than see another charter, agreed to go this route. If the union contract holds provisions that block, stutter, hamper, negatively impact educational delivery systems anywhere, then it should be reworked. To continue operating under such constraints benefits nobody but the union politicos. Not what public education is supposed to be all about.
As far as touting this school's efforts, can you include some hard facts to support this school's claims?
Anonymous, face it, by word of mouth, through grassroots efforts, your union is being exposed for what it is. The noose may be loosened and some folks may not be the power brokers they once were.
Is that really a bad thing?
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