Teacher Union President Urges School Autonomy

The head of the nation’s second-largest teachers’ union called Friday for a major restructuring of educators’ contracts that would give wide autonomy to individual schools on issues ranging from hiring to instructional design.

Sandra Feldman, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said a new relationship must emerge between teachers and school districts in which the instructors accept responsibility for boosting the achievement of their students but are given significant flexibility and resources in deciding how to bring their pupils up to standards.

Feldman’s proposal, in an address at a union conference here, comes amid a tumultuous debate across the country over finding the best way to enhance educational quality, with policymakers clamoring for more accountability by students and their teachers on test scores.

Under the AFT proposal, district-wide contracts for teachers would continue to regulate broad issues like salaries and benefits. The faculties of individual schools would make decisions about issues tied to instruction, such as curriculum and class size, recurring topics in discussions about education reform.

Feldman’s speech represented a commitment by the AFT, which has 1 million members, to accountability and standards in education but signaled a desire to meet those goals other than through increased control from state and local officials.

“That way of doing things cannot possibly provide the autonomy and flexibility that professionals need to organize their schools or schedules or instructional programs around meeting the particular needs of particular students as they work to master high standards,” Feldman said.

The AFT plan, hailed by some backers as “revolutionary,” met with approval from both the rival National Education Assn., which, at 2.4 million members, is the largest teachers’ union in the country, and the chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee.

“It seems very consistent with the type of things we’ve been proposing,” said NEA spokeswoman Kathleen Lyons, adding that the two unions are “very much on the same page.” Through a spokesman, Rep. William F. Goodling (R-Pa.), the education panel chairman, applauded the plan for trimming “top-down bureaucracy.”

Despite the support, it is unclear whether many districts would be able to implement the proposed contracts, as they will require better cooperation between teachers’ unions and school district officials, in addition to basic changes in the format of such contracts.

Day Higuchi, president of United Teachers-Los Angeles, said he would “love” to bring the plan to the city but noted that he doubts it would be accepted by administrators.

Feldman conceded in an interview that the new approach “can only work where there is a really good relationship between labor and management.” And she emphasized that the shift to a “school-centered” approach could only succeed if districts provide enough support for teacher training and professional development.

“Greater professional accountability should come with greater autonomy and flexibility,” she noted, “and with the sufficient supports needed for high-standards teaching and learning.”