Another report, another disagreement . . .

I found some interesting articles in the November 11th issue of Newsweek. I’ll share one in this post and others in future posts. A report is shared in this article that includes policy recommendations for improving the quality of teachers in the nation’s 100 largest school systems. The recommendations range from raising the bar for who can enter teacher preparation programs, to recruitment strategies, to evaluation and salary schedule changes.

Like many reports in our profession the release is followed by concerns from other education agencies. Of particular interest with this one is the inclusion of the AFT President on the panel as well as the NEA President and two other representatives of teacher associations. Panel member Francine Lawrence, Toledo Federation of Teachers, shared the following.

“There weren’t many of us on the task force speaking for teachers, and I think the report reflects that, especially in the lack of emphasis on principal effectiveness,” said Francine Lawrence, the president of the Toledo Federation of Teachers, an AFT affiliate, and a member of the panel. “It doesn’t speak to the professionalization of teaching at all, which is a real disappointment.”

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, task force chair, shared the process used to reach agreement or lack of agreement on the final document.

“. .said the panel had a “consensus on much of what’s in the report,” but he explained that there had been no formal vote of its members to endorse the report because of some disagreements.
“We wanted the recommendations we put forth to be significant and specific, so we did not water it down in order to get agreement from everyone,” said Mr. Pawlenty, a Republican.

With this type of process, having dissenting opinions should be no surprise. The six guiding principles and the twenty recommendations are worthy of consideration, but once again we find ourselves in the all too frequent position of disagreeing on process and focus that precludes collaboration around the intent and recommendations of this effort. Unfortunately, it will be viewed by some as another example of teachers being against change and for maintaining the status quo in our profession. We believe that this is not the case in our system, but I wonder if those in our community know.

Crystal at maybecrystal taught me how to embed a pdf today by walking me through a jing. It worked and I was able to do it with the report cited above. THANKS Crystal!