Boston and Chelsea, Mass., are linked by a bridge and by their similar educational problems: high dropout rates, low test scores, teenage pregnancy. Both cities' public schools are attended by a majority of poor and minority students, many of whom are new to English. Both cities also have had their share of teacher unionmanagement conflict and money problems, and both school systems have failed to win the confidence of parents or the business community. But as of last week, Boston and Chelsea appear less like neighboring cities linked by similar problems than different countries under different forms of government. Why and how?
Last week, Boston school officials and the Boston Teachers Union announced a historic contract agreement focused on education reform and restructuring, school accountability and parent and community involvement. If this contract is ratified -- and signs are good -- Boston will become one of the national leaders in education reform and labor-management cooperation.
The contract provides for shifting authority for a number of important decisions from central headquarters to individual schools, the places where children, teachers and parents have to live with those decisions. Each school will be governed by a school-site council comprised of the principal, teachers, parents and, in high schools, students. The councils also will have representatives from business, higher education and community groups.
School-based management in Boston will mean making collaborative decisions on all matters that relate to the operation of a school: its goal and how to meet and measure them, the instructional program, distribution of the budget and staffing, including new hires and transfers. For the first time, schools will be able to design and manage themselves according to what's best for their particular students instead of struggling to fit kids into a prefabricated mold.
School-site councils will have to comply with applicable federal and state laws, district policies and union contracts. But if a council believes that a district, union or state education board regulation is preventing its school from doing what's necessary for kids, it has the right to request a waiver - and a new joint unionmanagement steering committee is pledged to facilitate the school's request.
In addition to an unprecedented degree of participation and flexibility, the contract also provides for accountability. First is the accountability provided by the representative school-site councils. All the stakeholders in a school -- parents, teachers, business, etc. - will know exactly what's going on in that school because they'll be making the decisions and monitoring and measuring the results. Second, district officials and the public don't have to take anyone's word for how well an individual school is doing because they'll also be measuring results. Schools that meet their goals will be rewarded. Schools that don't will be given help by a new labor-management assistance team - and, if that doesn't work, there will be consequences. And all this is only a short list of the contract's initiatives ....
Much of the credit for this extraordinary contract goes to the Boston Compact, a business and civic group dedicated to helping the city's public schools. Despite its efforts and the examples of other AFT-represented districts that had broken through to education reform, the school system was still preoccupied with who would lose power to whom if it tried bold new reforms. But the Boston Compact decided to give one last, mighty push -- and got the school system to study the lessons of the reform districts and try collaboration instead of confrontation. Thanks to its efforts and the hard work of representatives of the Boston School Committee and the Boston Teachers Union, the city that led the way to American democracy and public education is leading again.
Unfortunately, Chelsea is headed in the opposite direction. For months now, Boston University, a private institution, has been trying to take over the Chelsea public schools and set itself up as the school committee, superintendent and administration. BU said that will enable it to reform the schools efficiently and get them lots of much needed money. BU also said it won't and can't help Chelsea unless BU is given exemptions from the state's public interest laws that protect the rights of children, parents, citizens and public employees. A majority of Chelsea's school committee and aldermen, eager to be rid of the responsibility of running a troubled school system ( even though they had run for office to do just that), went along.
BU next needed the permission of the local affairs committee of the state legislature. Rumor had it that BU would get it no matter what the committee's hearings uncovered. Rumor proved accurate. Despite the objections of Chelsea's Hispanic community - the majority in the school district - the teachers, the state's education board and the Commissioner and its Inspector General, the PT A, unions, public interest groups and distinguished education leaders, BU got its way. I was there, too, and asked a simple question that never got an answer: Why does BU need exemptions from the state's public interest laws in order to set up early childhood or scholarship programs or curriculum reforms in Chelsea? Is it necessary to abolish democracy and set up a dictatorship in order to reform a school system?
Obviously, it's not. As Boston and other school districts demonstrate, you certainly can initiate and achieve major reforms without suspending democratic rights, and you can also get accountability within a democratic framework. Certainly, without such a framework, all you get is a bunch of unverifiable promises - and little prospect for the participation and collaboration necessary for real and lasting reform. In fact, if the literature on successful management is right, what Boston did was not only more notably democratic than what happened to Chelsea, it's much more likely to turn the schools around.
The tale of these two cities is not over yet. But one lesson should already be clear: If we cherish America's fundamental principles and if we want to make reform work, the one thing a democracy should never compromise on is democracy.