E|E Teacher Professional Partnerships

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Teacher Cooperatives in Education Next

Twenty years ago, when the late Albert Shanker, then president of the American Federation of Teachers, endorsed the notion of innovative schools operating outside conventional district bureaucracies, his aim was to put teachers at the helm. “If you want to hold teachers accountable,” he posited, “then teachers have to be able to run the school.” In the Spring 2009 Education Next, Beth Hawkins explores how some teachers are realizing his vision with the teacher professional partnership model championed by Education|Evolving.

Teachers as Leaders: Short on Power, Long on Responsibility

To upgrade teacher quality, schools need to go beyond just holding teachers more accountable. They need to give teachers more control.

How a teacher partnership manages a public school

There's growing interest in improving (as some say) the "management of human capital" in education: teacher recruitments, teacher-retention, teacher compensation, teacher accountability. Usually this suggests 'better administration' in the standard boss/worker model. Yet it's possible these decisions might be made with greater integrity by teachers themselves within the framework of a professional partnership. This interview with Carrie Bakken is the most revealing look we've ever had at the way a teacher partnership handles the professional and the management issues in running a public school.

Teachers in Professional Practice: An inventory of new opportunities for teachers, Second Edition. (pdf)

This 2006 inventory of existing and developing teacher professional partnerships (TPPs) documents growing interest in a professional model of teaching. The inventory describes several teacher professional partnership models, offering a useful overview of the many ways in which teacher partnerships are organizing and functioning.

Teacher Professional Partnerships: Books and Media Source List. (pdf)

Click here for an HTML version of this document, with links to several of the resources.
Several articles and book-chapters have written up the teacher partnership/cooperative idea (in addition to what is provided on this Web site). Updated June 2006.

Freeing Teachers: The Promise of Teacher Professional Partnerships. (link)

In the April 2004 American Experiment Quarterly, Ted Kolderie wrote that virtually all of our discussion about improving teaching occurs within the traditional assumption that teachers are employees managed by administrators, rather than professionals in control of their work. Current efforts to train teachers, to improve teacher practice, to recruit teachers, to retain teachers and to change the way in which teachers are compensated need not take place within this boss/worker, master/servant framework.

Teacher Professional Partnerships: A Different Way to Help Teachers and Teaching. (pdf)

A brief and simple introduction to the notion of teacher professional partnerships. Teachers could have and should have the option to work if they wish—as many architects and engineers and consults and accountants and lawyers and doctors do—with colleagues, in a professional group which they collectively own, with the administrators working for them. Also, read what teachers have to say about what its like to work in a TPP.

An up-to-date version of the inventory of Teacher Professional Partnerships is maintained online here.

Democratic Learning and Leading: Creating Collaborative School Governance. (pdf)

The above link is an excerpt from this book. In selections from this title, Ronald J. Newell and Irving H. Buchen describe the collaborative culture and democratic-governance structure embodied and promoted by EdVisions Cooperative—a teacher professional partnership. They describe how the collaborative school governance model works in practice, the critical success factors, and the perceptions of teachers who are actively engaged in the democratic practice.

Teacher Ownership and Teacher Unions. (pdf)

A teacher from Milwaukee describes for the Teacher Union Reform Network the arrangement in Milwaukee—a variation on Wisconsin's chartering law—that gives a partnership of professional teachers full authority and responsibility for the school while protecting both the teachers and the union on the economic front.

Teacher-ownership as entrepreneurship in public education. (pdf)

Teachers could own their work; could manage, or arrange for the management of, a department of a high school, a discrete school, a program district-wide. The text appears in a special issue of the International Journal of Entrepreneurship Education (IJEE) Volume 2. To purchase this edited volume visit the Senate Hall website at www.senatehall.com. Once on the Senate Hall Web site, click "entrepreneurship" on the navigation bar.

National Meeting on Teacher Ownership: Concept and Implications. (pdf)

Visitors look at a chartered school in Minnesota that has no employees—as well as no courses and no classes. Notes of the discussion at a national meeting at Hamline University in September 2001.

Professional Control of Practice: Physicians and Teachers. (pdf)

The medical director of a big multi-specialty hospital/medical group—in which the doctors are employees—describes how the professional and ‘business’ decisions are divided between physicians and managers. Ted Kolderie’s notes from a conversation with Dr. George Isham.

Reflections on Forty Years in the Profession. (pdf)

The late Albert Shanker, long-time President of the American Federation of Teachers, summarizes public education over his then 40 years in the profession. He reviews years of teacher negotiations and identifies the unfair placement of responsibility and blame on teachers, as opposed to the system which under-funds and denies support. Shanker challenges the current structure of the education system with respect to meeting the needs of individual students, and ends with strong support for public education, noting its important place in U.S. ideals of equality and diversity.

Leased vs. Owned Departments (and Some Implications for Schools). (pdf)

Teachers, principals, superintendents, union leaders listen to an executive describe how a department store is a combination of ‘owned’ and ‘leased’ departments. Ted Kolderie shares his notes from the discussion. “We could organize a high school like this!”