Education Evolving is launching, in partnership with the Center for Teaching Quality, an online guide: “Steps to Creating a Teacher-Powered School.”
The guide walks educators through the stages in creating a school designed and run by teachers. It’s an updated, interactive version of the PDF guide with the same name released earlier this year.
This guide is part of the Teacher-Powered Schools Initiative – one of Education Evolving’s primary priorities over the past year. The initiative seeks to raise awareness of schools where teachers call the shots, and to support teachers in starting and converting schools to such a model.
The guide can be found at:
As an example, a school in Prince George’s County, MD is attempting to put the principles of a teacher-powered school into effect. Following is an excerpt from the U.S. News and World Report article about it:
A group of teachers and union representatives gathered on a mid-summer morning in the small town of Forestville to discuss the details of opening a new school in Prince George’s County, Maryland.
The five educators discussed budgeting, facilities, community engagement and curriculum, tucked away at the teachers’ union headquarters. There were no representatives from the state education department or local school board to get involved in the planning of staffing, transportation and food services, and notably, no principal – because there won’t be one.
“Teachers don’t really get a lot of say in what goes on in schools. So I thought, why not then have an avenue where teachers really get to step up to the plate and decide how schools actually operate, what the academic program would look like, and just the overall kind of structure that would give kids more engagement in their own learning?” says Dorothy Ray, director of the Prince George’s County Educators’ Association’s UniServ program, which focuses on providing advocacy support to local union affiliates.
“Thank heavens some folks in here listened to me,” she adds.
For more information, please visit: http://bit.ly/XQsRK1
