Cooperative Effort Makes the Grade : Education: The Los Angeles schools’ new leadership councils offer the opportunity for teachers, parents and the wider community to turn dialogue into action.

Teachers care about schools. But caring about schools, or about children for that matter, is not enough to make a good environment for learning. Student achievement has suffered because our schools are outdated. Our school system has operated with a dysfunctional relationship between teachers and principals. Teachers have been relegated to passive roles, used to having to ask permission. A culture of paternalism exists in our schools that has a history as long as the existence of public education itself. This results in teacher demoralization, lack of initiative and creativity and stagnation of the educational system. But times are changing.

Within schools, in the state Legislature, among interested civic groups, businesses and in the press, a meaningful dialogue about school reform has begun at last. Teachers will be the essential contributors to this dialogue because it is teachers who are responsible for the fundamental task of education: engaging kids in effective learning.

Nationwide, strong teachers’ union leadership has been at the forefront of all significant restructuring efforts. Restructuring involves taking risks. Union strength allows members to take the initiative in improving the classroom environment and branching out more aggressively by demanding more information and more training.

Last spring, as part of the contract negotiated to improve student achievement, decentralized decision-making was introduced into the Los Angeles schools. As a result, local school leadership councils made up of teachers, parents, administrators, students, classified personnel and community members will have the opportunity to design their schools to meet the needs of their clientele through shared decision-making and, ultimately, school-based management.

For the first time, teachers will be getting a major voice, along with parents, concerning ways to educate our children. These efforts will not be uniformly productive, and change will not happen overnight. But by keeping the question of what is best for children in front of us, we can all begin to identify ways to improve the educational fortunes of our students.

We also need to ensure that as many qualified people as possible enter the teaching profession. The shortage of teachers has spawned emergency credential programs. Lowering the qualifications necessary to enter any field threatens the professionalism of those already in it. Teaching continues to attract outstanding people, but it does so despite the entry standards, not because of them. Lack of respect, low wages and little, if any, resource support are discouraging many talented people from teaching. The long-term vitality and effectiveness of our educational enterprise will be determined by the nature of the people who devote their professional lives to it.

Furthermore, we need to change the system of incentives. For teachers there are few institutional incentives that support creative, energetic efforts to improve education: Pay and performance are not linked, and advancement means leaving the classroom, so those remaining are consequently denigrated. Incentive systems must be put into place so that the best teachers continue to teach. Working directly with children needs to be both valued and rewarded.

As a community we need to do everything we can to ensure that our children are ready to learn when they start school. We need to take responsibility for students’ successful transition from school, whether directly into the work force or to higher education.

Through the leadership councils those most concerned about student achievement have the opportunity to shape our schools. Most important, the most inspired teachers will ultimately be allowed to participate in all decisions affecting the classroom. Energy previously expended on frustration finally can be redirected toward positive ends.

The need for a better-educated populace has brought our schools under close scrutiny. The emerging dialogue has thrust public education into a new era. The only question is what reforms will be adopted and with what results, in the face of inevitable, discomforting, imminent change.

School reform is everyone’s business. Reform and increased financial resources for children must be our highest priorities. We finally have a decentralized decision-making structure that should enable teachers, parents and the broader community to participate. Now is the time to transform our dialogue into action. Our future depends on it.