Reform Ideas For SF Schools

By Starchild

Putting Students, Parents, & Teachers First!

(For REAL, Not Just Window Dressing!)

"They all want more accountability, they all want more transparancy, they all want to close the achievement gap, blah blah blah. Does anyone have any specific ideas for how to get the job done, or anything new to say that everyone else is not already saying?"

My response to the person who wrote that is, "I hear you!" As a School Board candidate, I have been struggling during forums with my fellow candidates to communicate to audiences that I'm not just another politician repeating platitudes, that I am serious about improving the schools, and that I'm not afraid to rock the boat in order to do it!

Because it is indeed easy to toss out words like "transparency" and "accountability", and many of the candidates do, but I believe these things will not happen without major changes!

The biggest change I am advocating, which I think has the potential to be more transformative than anything being proposed by any of the other candidates, is to turn the educational hierarchy upside-down.

Let me explain what I mean by this. First of all, virtually everyone acknowledges that teachers have the most difficult and important jobs in education. So my question is, why are they typically paid much less than administrators? And why are administrators telling them what to do, and not the other way around?

I propose to raise teacher salaries to make them the highest-paid district employees. However I absolutely oppose any new taxes or fees -- instead, I would cut administrator salaries in order to pay for it. Many non-teaching personnel in the school district are taking home six-figure salaries. According to SF Budget Blog, only 45% of money in the district is going to the classroom, compared with a 62% statewide average. Even 62% is low, if you ask me. I want to see that figure raised significantly.

I further propose to put teachers in charge of each school, to the maximum allowed by state law. Have a teacher council at each school that effectively runs the school, with each teacher who wants to be involved in such decision-making given a seat on it (inevitably a few teachers will prefer to simply put all their energies into the classroom, and that's a good thing). Each teacher council would hire a principal, who would have roughly the relationship to them that the district Superintendent currently has to the School Board. The principal, who would be paid less than the teachers, would be in charge of non-teaching aspects of running the school on a day-to-day basis, but he or she would be accountable to and directed by them, not the other way around.

The goal would be to maximize teacher control over curriculum, hiring, school programs, and so on, so that the whole school structure would be based around serving their needs and making sure they have the tools and resources to be as effective as possible in the classroom.

While teachers would have much more power and authority than at present, under my proposal, they in turn would be accountable to students and parents.

This accountability would be guaranteed by several different factors. First and most importantly, I would abolish the current complicated "school assignment system" and let each student attend his or her first choice school.

Under the current system, students and parents make their school requests each year via a complicated and non-transparent school assignment system. I want to see the data from these requests made public, in a readily understandable format, showing how many first-choice, second-choice, third-choice, etc., requests each individual school received.

Clearly some schools are much more in demand than others. Some of this disparity may be based on school locations, but I think most of it is due to perceived quality. This represents a loud message that students and parents are trying to send, which is not being heard.

I believe the district should honor this message by expanding the popular schools to meet demand, and shutting down the unpopular schools.

If a particular school has way more students wishing to attend it than it has the capacity to handle in a given year, students and parents should be notified of this, and given the opportunity to pick a different school rather than go to a school that will be overcrowded. Or they can stay with their first choice pick and be at a school that will have large class sizes and strained facilities, at least until the following year when the extra money given to the school as a result of its high enrollment can be used to hire more teachers, expand facilities, etc.

The important thing is that either way it will be their choice. Bottom line is we need to make education more consumer-driven, more responsive to the needs and desires of education consumers (students and parents).

With funding being tied strictly to enrollment, parents and students would hold the power of the purse by virtue of being able to freely choose which school to attend.

Also enhancing accountability is that parents and students would be free to attend the teacher council meetings and speak during public comment.

I further propose to require teachers to put their lesson plans online for review by students and parents. Also available online would be background information about each teacher, his or her teaching style, and reviews written by former students.

Just as I favor maximizing choice over school selection, I also support giving each student the freedom to choose his or her own teachers and classes, to the maximum extent allowed by law. The teacher reviews and information on teaching styles and lesson plans would give students and parents the data needed to make informed decisions on which teachers and classes to sign up for.

I believe empowering students in this manner would quickly tend to sort out who the good teachers are, and which teachers perhaps need more training or aren't cut out for the job. When lay-offs were needed (i.e. when not enough students chose to attend a particular school, and it had too many teachers), parents and students at that school could vote by secret ballot on which teachers to let go. In other words, base employment on merit, rather than seniority. Your children deserve no less.

While teachers' unions might normally be expected to oppose merit-based employment, my hope is that they would go along with this plan in consideration of the higher salaries and greater authority I propose to give them.

I think I can safely say the ideas outlined above are very much in the interest of students and parents, and of good teachers as well. Overpaid administrators and less talented teachers, admittedly not quite so much!

Your feedback is encouraged -- please feel free to email me at RealReform(at)earthlink(dot)net, or call me at (415) 625-FREE.

Love & Liberty,

((( Starchild )))