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The Possibilities and Problems of Collaboration By Chris Pipho Illustration © 1998 by Mario Noche

WHEN GROUPS of adults get together to fix education, the result is often one loud voice pitted against another loud voice. While student achievement gains, or the lack thereof, are always the primary focus of the would-be fixers, they are also used to justify or degrade solutions offered by others. Meanwhile, students who cannot read, older students who are at risk of dropping out, and violence and crumbling infrastructure - all of which could benefit from simple commonsense collaboration - get tangled up in debates in the courts, in the state legislatures, and in the corporate board rooms.

Collaboration on the National Scene

Working with someone you don't always agree with in pursuit of a common solution is a rare ingredient in education reform. When an individual or organization tries to collaborate, any support proffered tends to come with backhanded compliments. Leaders trying to bring an organization into a collaborative activity find themselves facing irate members who charge that the leadership has sold out to the enemy. The collaborators can find themselves fighting a rear-guard action while trying to keep their focus on the goal ahead.

In late September, 12 major education groups stepped forward to start what could become the largest collaborative effort attempted in the last 15 years of education reform. The Learning First Alliance brings together groups representing teachers, parents, administrators, community leaders, curriculum experts, and a wide range of policy makers. Their goal is to combine their efforts to improve reading and mathematics achievement. The first project of the group is a gathering of the elected and appointed leaders of the 12 organizations at a summit in Washington, D.C., in late January. The goal will be to find next steps that all the organizations can agree to take in order to improve reading and mathematics achievement. A common concern among the groups is that public education may be running out of time to get its collective house in order.

The groups involved in the Learning First Alliance came out of the Forum of Education Organization Leaders. Since January 1997 the members have directed their efforts toward transforming the organization from what one member called a "meet and eat" group to one that could agree to take action on specific problems. The search for common ground led to the subjects of reading and mathematics, and the group members agreed to set aside debate on other issues in order to focus on improving achievement in these two areas.

The 12 organizations are the American Federation of Teachers, the American Association of School Administrators, the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, the Council of Chief State School Officers, the Education Commission of the States, the National Association of Secondary School Principals, the National Association of Elementary School Principals, the National Association of State Boards of Education, the National School Boards Association, the National Education Association, and the National PTA.

The new group has incorporated and has employed a director. Now the hard part begins: keeping the group focused on a message that the organizations' leaders and members can agree to support. A delicate balancing act lies ahead.

A Local Example

Stories of successful collaboration probably exist in hundreds of school districts and cities around the country. Finding reports of them takes good newspaper sleuthing, with eyes and ears tuned to events that editors don't usually put on the front page. Peggy Lowe, a staff writer for the Denver Post, dug up a story about cooperation between the richest and poorest parts of the Denver metropolitan area in which even something as mundane as six large cans of Beefaroni might contribute to higher student achievement.

The story centered on a three-year-old program that provides food and tutoring. It was started on the premise that, when students get bad grades, they lose their interest in school and so turn to gangs, petty crime, and more. A school district, a city council, a school social worker, a retired high school counselor, and others now run the Glendale Tutoring Center. Four nights a week they start with food and then move to help on homework for up to 87 low-income students. On Wednesday night, they serve dinner, and that is where Beefaroni helps out.

Glendale is a small enclave on the edge of Denver and of the Cherry Creek School District. The population of Glendale is just 3,500, and there are no schools, so the children can choose to attend either the Denver schools or the southeast suburban district that serves Cherry Hills and other upscale areas. More than 200 children from Glendale go to the Cherry Creek schools. However, since many of them come from low-income families and often speak English as a second language, school officials have found these students to be at a disadvantage when compared with their classmates. Crowded apartments with no school supplies and little encouragement for doing homework are no match for home computers, fax machines, and other high-tech tools found in the upscale neighborhoods of Cherry Creek.

The City of Glendale pays for the building in which the Glendale Tutoring Center operates and for school buses for field trips; the district helps with the social worker and assists with support groups and tutors. Food comes from donations, and even the cook (a retired high school counselor) sometimes donates what she cooks. This simple idea - get to kids' hearts and brains through their stomachs - is working. Not much about this program is political, and no arguments over reform-minded agendas are required.

Fixing public education may happen, but progress will depend on adults' seeing the same problem and working jointly to solve it. However, a couple of recent events give cause for concern.

In the District of Columbia, Retired Army Gen. J. W. Becton, Jr., who is currently CEO of the D.C. public schools, recently wrote an op-ed article in the Washington Post asking a group of parents to drop a lawsuit that would force students to be moved any time repairs are needed on a building. According to Becton, the average age of the D.C. school buildings is 60 years. Roof repairs have been neglected for years. He claims that the lawsuit puts the spotlight on issues unrelated to the real problem. Becton thinks the public has been led to believe that poor planning, lack of funds, and lack of interest in students are the issues. He maintains that federal buildings - such as Walter Reed Hospital, the White House, and the D.C. Superior Court buildings - have all had major roof repairs while people worked inside. The original lawsuit, filed by Parents United, was over the concern for the safety of the students. Becton thinks the repeated court action is now directed at the school administration in an attempt to show that one group of adults cares more about the welfare of children than another group of adults. In one instance a leak in a boiler room was fixed in half the time that the legal arguments required.

Meanwhile, the Public Agenda Foundation can always be counted on to bring interesting new data to the public education debates. Public Agenda's most recent effort, Different Drummers: How Teachers of Teachers View Public Education, was released in late October. Deborah Wadsworth, the executive director of Public Agenda, summarized the report, saying, "Education professors . . . speak with passionate idealism about goals of teacher education programs and the qualities teachers should bring to the classroom. But . . . their views are frequently dismissive of the views of many Americans who are deeply disturbed by what they see as widespread lack of skills and motivation by today's students." A summary of the findings includes these points:

• Teachers of teachers envision classrooms where students are active lifelong learners, where struggling with questions is more important than knowing the right answers.
• Teachers of teachers want to discard outdated tools of teaching - things the public sees as part of good schooling. They resist approaches that rely on competition, reward and punishment, memorization, or multiple-choice testing.
• Professors of education hold views that are at odds with the public's priorities with regard to discipline, basic skills, and good behavior in the classroom.
• Many professors feel out of touch with classrooms and have concerns about the quality of prospective teachers.
• Education professors support a core curriculum but balk at supporting testing programs that would measure the acquisition of the skills taught in such a curriculum.
• Teachers of teachers think of public education as an almost sacred democratic institution that is under siege. They are also concerned that their own programs are unfairly blamed and unappreciated.

What's the future for collaboration in school reform? Can the Learning First Alliance move beyond the vested interests of its members and take on the problems that they want to fix? How many more Glendale Tutoring Programs will it take before adults everywhere learn to cooperate?

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Last updated 21 January 1998
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