While writing linkI became fascinated by school boards. I had been to school board meetings before the book was in my mind. They were meetings that were not too different from the one I described in fiction. They took place during the late 1970’s, at the height of a three-week teacher’s strike.
As a high school senior, I thought that the teachers were foolish for walking out on their students. I had the union president as a teacher; she used post-strike class time to pontificate the union position—and I resented it. I felt that I was being used to carry the union’s message to my parents.
As an adult reading the accounts of those public meetings 30 years later, I realized that the school board was undistinguished in their conduct. They terminated the contract of a superintendent of schools—and paid him while he searched for a new job. They entered into contract negotiations without a superintendent to help, and paid $100,000 for legal counsel to avoid a strike. They got one anyway. The board was publicly humiliated in a public meeting. The teachers were humiliated when they were sentenced to jail time, but at least they were not sentenced in front of a packed house of unhappy parents and kids.
The school board and the union president negotiated in the media, as well as the bargaining table —and the school board lost. They signed a contract that called for a 24% salary increase over three years. I now say the school board failed the public, not the teachers; the union president outlasted them and won, while the public got stuck with the bill.
From that experience as well as other accounts I read, I wondered if service on a school board is the worst political gig in America. Whether elected or appointed, school board members are corporate directors and, just like corporate directors in the private sector, responsible for budgets in the millions of dollars. Both are responsible for compliance with government regulations. However, not all directors in the private sector get involved in difficult union negotiations.
But you don’t have to have business experience to get elected or appointed to a school board; all you need to do is win an election or convince the mayor that you’re worthy of the appointment and, that you want the responsibility.
Since 2001, school boards have had to live under the mandate of No Child Left Behind; that all students, regardless of race, disability or economic status, must be proficient at grade level in reading and math by the year 2014. Each state gets to set their own tests and standards, but the mandate is national—again for all students, emphasize the word all.
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has not backed away from this goal. I can’t imagine it will be thrown by the wayside if the act is reauthorized before President Bush leaves office. According to Secretary Spellings, 70 percent of the nation’s 90,000 schools are making Adequate Yearly Progress—if I read her statements right. Only three percent are what she calls “chronically underperforming.”
Secretary Spellings did not explain what “chronically underperforming” meant when she was interviewed on August 30 in USA Today, but to be fair, I’ll take it to mean that these schools have failed to meet Adequate Yearly Progress since the No Child Left Behind Act was passed by Congress in 2001.
I’m surprised that she didn’t say that the number of “chronic underperformers” had gone down since then. Maybe it has not, which poses further questions for a reauthorized act. It also provides more fodder for future historians to put their own report card on the Bush Administration.
No matter what school board members think of No Child Left Behind, it has meant, and will continue to mean, changes in the way they do business and look at education. Some changes are more obvious; the areas where improvements are needed to raise test scores become targets for restructuring instruction and investments—at the expense of other instruction and investments a school board, and the voters, would prefer to make.
The grades tested: 4, 8 and 11 become critical, and I dare say, strategic grades to match students with teachers. The elementary, middle and high schools, and their teachers, receive evaluations based on those test scores—and a school board is just as responsible as the superintendent, principals and teachers for results.
I’m curious to learn how they’ve prepared themselves to take on that responsibility. At first, it’s how they carried out their most important job, hiring the right superintendent and, if necessary, their management team. Superintendents are like generals in the armed forces; some are battle-hardened, some are innovative. I don’t know how many are both, but the school board that has hired a battle-hardened innovator should do whatever they can to keep him or her on board. As in business, organizational change and leadership in a school system start at the top.
What might No Child Left Behind mean to superintendents by 2014? There are several possibilities that school boards have to worry about, starting with the price of success. A superintendent who has turned around test scores will be in high demand from excellent and poor performers alike, just like a winning football coach.
Maybe their school board will need to pay more attention to a succession plan and find an up and coming young star in a smaller district, or in the assistant superintendent ranks. But, mark my words, those who post top numbers are the free agent superstars---and they will always be recruited. So, the increased cost for quality public education starts at the top—in part, because of the emphasis on test scores.
I’ll be coming back with more on how No Child Left Behind will foster organizational changes in our school systems and school boards; some changes may be good, some will be bad. I would like to do this from a simple framework: a look at two schools, one urban, one suburban, that face similar problems including schools in need of improvement and teachers who are working without contracts. I have picked the two school districts and I hope to have permission from their superintendents and school boards to learn a little more than most parents have time to learn.
Who knows, I might look at how they will affect sex education. Maybe that will lead to a 21st century Sex Ed Chronicles worth writing!
Stuart Nachbar has been involved with education politics, policy and technology as a student, urban planner, government affairs manager, software executive, and now as a writer. His first novel, link, earned a coveted “Publishers Choice” selection from iUniverse. He operates link, a blog on education politics, policy and technology.
.
As a high school senior, I thought that the teachers were foolish for walking out on their students. I had the union president as a teacher; she used post-strike class time to pontificate the union position—and I resented it. I felt that I was being used to carry the union’s message to my parents.
As an adult reading the accounts of those public meetings 30 years later, I realized that the school board was undistinguished in their conduct. They terminated the contract of a superintendent of schools—and paid him while he searched for a new job. They entered into contract negotiations without a superintendent to help, and paid $100,000 for legal counsel to avoid a strike. They got one anyway. The board was publicly humiliated in a public meeting. The teachers were humiliated when they were sentenced to jail time, but at least they were not sentenced in front of a packed house of unhappy parents and kids.
The school board and the union president negotiated in the media, as well as the bargaining table —and the school board lost. They signed a contract that called for a 24% salary increase over three years. I now say the school board failed the public, not the teachers; the union president outlasted them and won, while the public got stuck with the bill.
From that experience as well as other accounts I read, I wondered if service on a school board is the worst political gig in America. Whether elected or appointed, school board members are corporate directors and, just like corporate directors in the private sector, responsible for budgets in the millions of dollars. Both are responsible for compliance with government regulations. However, not all directors in the private sector get involved in difficult union negotiations.
But you don’t have to have business experience to get elected or appointed to a school board; all you need to do is win an election or convince the mayor that you’re worthy of the appointment and, that you want the responsibility.
Since 2001, school boards have had to live under the mandate of No Child Left Behind; that all students, regardless of race, disability or economic status, must be proficient at grade level in reading and math by the year 2014. Each state gets to set their own tests and standards, but the mandate is national—again for all students, emphasize the word all.
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has not backed away from this goal. I can’t imagine it will be thrown by the wayside if the act is reauthorized before President Bush leaves office. According to Secretary Spellings, 70 percent of the nation’s 90,000 schools are making Adequate Yearly Progress—if I read her statements right. Only three percent are what she calls “chronically underperforming.”
Secretary Spellings did not explain what “chronically underperforming” meant when she was interviewed on August 30 in USA Today, but to be fair, I’ll take it to mean that these schools have failed to meet Adequate Yearly Progress since the No Child Left Behind Act was passed by Congress in 2001.
I’m surprised that she didn’t say that the number of “chronic underperformers” had gone down since then. Maybe it has not, which poses further questions for a reauthorized act. It also provides more fodder for future historians to put their own report card on the Bush Administration.
No matter what school board members think of No Child Left Behind, it has meant, and will continue to mean, changes in the way they do business and look at education. Some changes are more obvious; the areas where improvements are needed to raise test scores become targets for restructuring instruction and investments—at the expense of other instruction and investments a school board, and the voters, would prefer to make.
The grades tested: 4, 8 and 11 become critical, and I dare say, strategic grades to match students with teachers. The elementary, middle and high schools, and their teachers, receive evaluations based on those test scores—and a school board is just as responsible as the superintendent, principals and teachers for results.
I’m curious to learn how they’ve prepared themselves to take on that responsibility. At first, it’s how they carried out their most important job, hiring the right superintendent and, if necessary, their management team. Superintendents are like generals in the armed forces; some are battle-hardened, some are innovative. I don’t know how many are both, but the school board that has hired a battle-hardened innovator should do whatever they can to keep him or her on board. As in business, organizational change and leadership in a school system start at the top.
What might No Child Left Behind mean to superintendents by 2014? There are several possibilities that school boards have to worry about, starting with the price of success. A superintendent who has turned around test scores will be in high demand from excellent and poor performers alike, just like a winning football coach.
Maybe their school board will need to pay more attention to a succession plan and find an up and coming young star in a smaller district, or in the assistant superintendent ranks. But, mark my words, those who post top numbers are the free agent superstars---and they will always be recruited. So, the increased cost for quality public education starts at the top—in part, because of the emphasis on test scores.
I’ll be coming back with more on how No Child Left Behind will foster organizational changes in our school systems and school boards; some changes may be good, some will be bad. I would like to do this from a simple framework: a look at two schools, one urban, one suburban, that face similar problems including schools in need of improvement and teachers who are working without contracts. I have picked the two school districts and I hope to have permission from their superintendents and school boards to learn a little more than most parents have time to learn.
Who knows, I might look at how they will affect sex education. Maybe that will lead to a 21st century Sex Ed Chronicles worth writing!
Stuart Nachbar has been involved with education politics, policy and technology as a student, urban planner, government affairs manager, software executive, and now as a writer. His first novel, link, earned a coveted “Publishers Choice” selection from iUniverse. He operates link, a blog on education politics, policy and technology.
.