D.C. Teachers Have a Role To Play in School Reform

For too long, the D.C. public schools have languished at the bottom of the academic barrel and suffered from a systemic failure of consensual neglect. The mandates of the No Child Left Behind law highlight our failures and serve as an annual reminder of what we, as a city, have created for our students: a school system that has cut dreams short.

Until recently, promises of student achievement, accountability, teacher support, academic standards, student assessments and adequate funding were merely lip service and were rarely acted on. The school system didn't change; it simply evolved in a state of arrested development. Superintendents came and went with little to show for their efforts, except for the remnants of scattered reform models that were never effectively implemented.

However, we have learned that complacency and constant change in management are vision-killers for young minds. As teachers we can no longer afford to be complacent spectators on the sidelines of educational reform; on the contrary, we must demand meaningful involvement.

The Washington Teachers' Union supports reform-oriented policies and practices whose outcomes will produce positive results: specifically, improved and sustained student achievement and improved working conditions for teachers. Some say that the union contract presents a barrier to educational reform in the District. As a union, we are willing to assess those issues and be flexible where needed without buying into union-busting. As a union, we must ensure that we are part of the solution and not an embedded part of the problem.

We are experiencing unprecedented instructional changes, including school closures, restructuring and consolidations; changes in grade-level configurations; a downsizing of our workforce amid declining enrollment; and potential contracts with educational management companies to run some of our schools. Many of these changes are prompted by the dictates of No Child Left Behind, and others are a result of administrative decisions seeking to improve delivery of instructional support to our schools. With this enormous amount of simultaneous change, the school system must ensure that it can manage these reforms effectively to achieve positive results.

We are in contract negotiations with the school system's leadership. We anticipate a productive agreement that will support the needs of our teachers and provide a support base for successful reform.

As president of the Washington Teachers' Union, I have a duty to represent more than 4,000 teachers. I also have a responsibility to work with our schools chancellor to improve the learning environment for students and teachers. At times it may appear that my duties of teacher advocacy and management collaboration conflict, which is not the case. The old-school paradigm of union rigidity must give way to a new-school approach of working productively with school leaders to improve student achievement.

-- George Parker

Washington

The writer is president of the Washington Teachers' Union.