State affiliate sets the table for success
A lifeline for low-performing schools

A school building can seem like a pretty lonely outpost when education reform hits the landscape. Ask Pat Durkin, teacher at George Patton School in Riverdale, Ill., a one-school district located about 20 miles south of Chicago.

Patton School had regularly come up short on student achievement tests, and the PreK-8 school had been cited as a low-performing school by the state. Morale was low. Turnover of students, teachers and administrators was high. And the sense of isolation and frustration among staff was hard to ignore, says Durkin. "We were working our butts off here but we weren't getting anyplace. As teachers, we just felt overwhelmed in terms of [student] behavior and achievement, and there wasn't any time to do any searching for ways to improve things."

The problem, she stresses, wasn't the lack of a school improvement plan. After 20 years and five superintendents, Durkin had seen plenty of plans. Some sat on shelves and desks in offices around the school--and the teachers three doors down barely even knew they existed. What was really needed, she explains, was a culture of change in the school, one that would unite students, staff and administrators around a shared vision of improvement.

At Patton School, that culture of learning is beginning to build, thanks in large part to assistance from the Illinois Federation of Teachers, one of a rising number of AFT state federations that is making the point of helping turn around low-performing schools. Or, more precisely, helping stakeholders at low-performing schools help themselves.

"Our teachers are showing up in the classroom every day, working as hard as they can. Still, many are not feeling successful and are being criticized by the community, business leaders and in the media," explains IFT secretary-treasurer Ed Geppert. "It is time the IFT help our colleagues to obtain the skills they need to be successful teachers."

That's the thinking behind the state federation's Project LEARN, short for Labor Educators Assistance and Redesign Network. Thus far, Project LEARN has trained 25 teacher-members across the state to serve as facilitators and resource specialists who can help schools develop and implement a plan of improvement. All members of the Project LEARN team receive one year of training that gives them cutting-edge knowledge of some of the most important concepts in standards-based school reform--instruction, assessment, professional development, support services, school leadership. The facilitator's goal, explains Project LEARN trainer Sue Walter, is not to deliver education reform "tablets from the mountaintop" but to set a table for constructive, productive dialogue that empowers people at the building level. "We try to get people to look at the whole picture and improve communication in the building. Too often we see in the school improvement plan something that is not a living document... .They have to put together a collaborative culture."

For a school to participate in Project LEARN, a commitment to cooperate must be there from the beginning. Project LEARN members meet with local union leaders, teachers, superintendents and principals to assess the climate and, if it looks promising, meet with staff at low-performing schools. A secret-ballot vote is then held, and Project LEARN seeks at least 80 percent staff buy-in before proceeding. In schools that meet the prerequisites, staffers complete a confidential school profile in which they identify what they perceive to be the school's weaknesses and strengths. The results, along with vital information such as school discipline codes, professional development plans and collective bargaining agreements are analyzed by Project LEARN. Representatives of Project LEARN then work with the existing school improvement team, asking questions based on the profile results and other data, and putting together a two-day training program, which culminates in a school-developed action plan that the internal school team takes back to staff for discussion and refinement. Project LEARN then follows up regularly with the internal school team, suggesting university support and other resources that might be available to jump-start the plan, and helping the school design a review and assessment plan.

From the teacher's perspective, Project LEARN brings a degree of credibility that is hard to match, says Lanita Koster, educational issues director for IFT. "This is not some consultant getting $10,000, and it's not some administrator who went off to a workshop and came back saying 'this is the best thing since sliced bread,'" she explains.

The action plan developed over the last year at Patton with Project LEARN assistance is now in its early implementation stages. Broad-based participation in the process has provided some new supports. For example, the profile results at Patton revealed that teachers needed more time to plan with each other. That was a major reason the most recent contract for teachers includes a duty-free lunch period.

American Federation of Teachers, AFL•CIO - 555 New Jersey Avenue, NW - Washington, DC 20001