Schools Our Teachers Deserve A Proposal for Teacher-Centered Reform

By improving the morale of even a handful of a school's faculty, the "teacher-centered" reforms that Ms. Cohen suggests cannot help but benefit students. And best of all, many of them cost nothing. IT SEEMS that a spate of recent books has appeared on the old, familiar subject of school reform. As always, some of these works have focused on the curriculum and call for more progressive approaches and an end to standardized testing.1 Others have addressed the issues of low standards or parent involvement or the moral culture of the schools.2 However, not one has focused its arguments on the one indispensable element in all successful schools -- the one variable always given short shrift, it seems, whenever reformers think about school change -- the teacher. For more than five decades now, warehouses of writing on school reform have focused on the needs of the students, calling for the creation of "child-centered classrooms" and "learner-centered schools. " Every administrator in America intones, "It's all about the kids! " And those words echo through every disaffected, demoralized student-centered high school building in the land. The whole failed history of modern education reform -- from the prescriptive lesson-plan formats of the 1970s to the restructuring plans in the 1980s to the state testing and curriculum of the 1990s -- has addressed the "needs of the child. " It has paid hardly any attention to the work of the teacher, the one critical player in the school who makes the biggest difference. "In this school, the teacher comes first. " I would wager there isn't a public school in the land with such a motto. School reform efforts most frequently proceed despite, not because of, the teacher. When states impose new curricular mandates or introduce new statewide standardized tests, teachers are often viewed as stumbling blocks to implementation. Administrators try to "get the teachers on board," as if they were prisoners diving seaward to escape the shackles and whip. Even "bottom- up" reform is rarely that. In most districts that tried site-based management, it came and went a decade ago with hardly a teacher mourning its passing. Frequently, such "teacher-centered" strategies simply burdened faculty members with the minutiae of daily governance without relieving them of any other responsibilities. The teacher's job was not redefined; rather, it was extended and expanded. Newly "empowered" teachers were burdened with clerical work and logistical concerns about building maintenance and scheduling -- the very concerns that many teachers enter teaching to avoid. Indeed, such teacher- empowering reforms seemed calculated, in advance, to fail. Everyone knows that teachers resist change.3 Why shouldn't they? Any teacher who has spent more than a decade in the profession has already intuited what school reformers haven't gleaned in a century of tinkering: lasting and meaningful change doesn't come from fiats, whether external or internal. It doesn't have anything to do with long blocks or short blocks, cooperative learning or direct instruction. It has to do with how an individual teacher feels about his or her work and how the school perceives that teacher. If the teacher is perceived as a hero, the school will flourish. If the teacher is perceived as a pain in the ass, the school is going downhill -- long blocks, cooperative learning, and all. For a school to be an intellectual center, for it to have the ethos, the sense of community, and the "spirit" that so many parents and administrators seek, it must celebrate the work of its teachers in a way that is rarely seen in public schools. It must attend to the needs of teachers, it must accommodate their sensibilities, and it must treat the teachers' contributions with as much genuine concern as it does those of any other constituency -- maybe more. Why Focus on the Teacher? One good reason to focus on the teacher has to do with the nature of healthy institutions. …