A new report from the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation looks at the ostensibly black and white world of accountability vs. union contracts, and finds a surprising amount of grey area. The ultimate responsibility for student achievement tends to fall to principals. But do they have the power to run their buildings like true managers? The Leadership Limbo: Teacher Labor Agreements in America’s Fifty Largest School Districts looked at labor contracts in three areas—compensation, personnel policies, and work rules—and concluded that more than half of the districts studied have labor contracts that are ambiguous. “The collective bargaining agreements and the formal board policies in these districts appear to grant leaders substantial leeway to manage assertively, should they so choose,” the report concludes. Only 15 of the 50 contracts studied are deemed “restrictive or highly restrictive.”
“Districts with high concentrations of poor and minority students tend to have more restrictive contracts than other districts, the report notes. “Another alarming indication of inequity along racial and class lines.”
In Fordham’s Education Gadfly, Checker Finn and Michael Petrilli opine that they tend to see the situation “as more good than bad, for it means, at least in the short run, that aggressive superintendents and principals could push the envelope and claim authority for any management prerogative not barred outright by the labor agreements. And it means that, for a majority of big districts, the depiction of The Contract as an all-powerful, insurmountable barrier to reform may be overstated.”
Stay tuned.
