Teacher-Ownership as Entrepreneurship in Public Education

This paper discusses teacher ownership as a new form of entrepreneurship having considerable potential to change the structure and practices of the K-12 institution. Teacher cooperatives allow teachers, as owners, to make changes and improvements in education that have so far been impossible through the traditional school structure.

Mr. Kolderie begins by describing why it is impossible for entrepreneurship to have an effect on education without first rearranging the education institution. He then argues that the advent of "chartering" has allowed the traditional arrangements to be challenged and reinvented. The opportunity to open and operate charter schools has created a real market for the services of entrepreneurs, because the "buyer" of educational services is no longer limited to a political body. Furthermore, the charter sector serves as a Research and Development sector within K-12 education, because it contains incentives for schools to behave differently. Mr. Kolderie defines an incentive as a reason combined with an opportunity and argues that the charter sector contains both the reason and opportunity for educational reform. The charter sector is the country's principal experiment with school-based decision-making, because a charter school is responsible for managing its budget, assembling its teachers, managing its facilities and support services, and selecting its learning program. It, therefore, serves as a real market for quality services.

Next, Mr. Kolderie describes teacher cooperatives as one kind of entrepreneurship that has manifested as a result of the growth of the charter sector. He provides the example of the Minnesota New Country School which has a collection of contracts for transportation, extracurricular, lunch, facility and instructional services. It has a contract with EdVisions, a teacher cooperative, to provide the learning program. The teachers of EdVisions select their colleagues, decide on the instructional methods and materials, evaluate performance and decide their own compensation. At New Country School, the teachers have elected to have virtually all learning be project-based. EdVisions currently operates in 11 different schools and, in 2000, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation invested $4.5 million in having this model replicated in 15 more schools over the next four years.

Mr. Kolderie concludes that the idea of teacher ownership is generalizable to other parts of K-12 education. He argues that the traditional arrangement, in which teachers work as employees for administrators, is not essential to education. Furthermore, he asserts that teacher ownership has significant implications for changing and improving K-12 education including: 1) allowing teachers to take on professional roles, 2) changing teacher practice and improving student learning, 3) enlarging the supply of quality teachers, 4) speeding the introduction of learning technologies, and 5) containing the costs of education while maintaining program quality.

Summary of Questions & Answers and Suggestions for Modifications/Enhancements

Dr. Kourilsky asked how the teachers at EdVisions reconcile the increased emphasis on standards and standardized testing with the authentic, project-based learning that they advocate. Mr. Kolderie responded that the teachers at EdVisions do not "teach to the test." They believe that by teaching students in a more authentic way, they will indirectly become better prepared for standardized tests. Of course a caveat is that they are fortunate to be in Minnesota where the graduation requirement is a portfolio demonstrating competency rather than passing a standardized test.

Ms. Downing asked how project-based learning would work in an urban school district where the transiency rate is very high. For example, in the Sacramento middle schools there is on average a seventy percent turnover of students each year. A standardized curriculum in Sacramento has ensured that when a child moves from one school to another, he or she has the same curriculum and textbooks. Mr. Kolderie responded that he did not think it would be difficult for students to transfer from one project-based school to another project-based school, because the students could simply take their project with them. EdVisions is currently expanding from rural South Central Minnesota to Avalon, St. Paul, Okoleo and Duluth. It will be interesting to see what happens if students transfer from one EdVisions school to another.

Dr. Kent asked how it works for teachers to actually own the teaching experience, considering that the school boards would be very resistant to that. Mr. Kolderie responded that a distinction must be made between a school board and a district Board of Education. Traditionally, we have had district Boards of Education which are in the business of "doing it all" from management to food service to security to transportation. Some states are beginning to change that by opening to door to charter schools which each have their own school boards that assemble a package of continually improving learning opportunities for the students. In order to allow innovation and entrepreneurship, Boards of Education must transition from perceiving themselves as owners and operators of schools to advocates of better learning opportunities for the children of the people who elected them.

Dr. McNeil commented that it is essential that teachers take ownership of the learning process with the authority to make decisions in the best interest of their students. In the 1960s and early 1970s we had succeeded in breaking down formal schooling to some extent. There were storefront schools, schools on wheels, and people barter systems. Somehow we have regressed since then. Mr. Kolderie agreed that teachers must be viewed as instructional leaders. Student learning should not be controlled by superintendents and principals with teachers serving merely as employees. The current structure of education is administrators at the top of the pyramid, responsible for both administrative and instructional leadership and being paid twice what teachers, the professionals, are paid who sit at the bottom of this pyramid. There is an alternate model presented by the fields of medicine and law. In these fields, the pyramid is turned upside down, with the professionals at the top. At the bottom are the administrators who are hired to support the work of the professionals and consequently are paid half of what the teachers are paid. In this professional practice/partnership model the administrative leader and the instructional leader do not have to be one and the same.

Ms. Holman asked if there are certain environments more conducive to the formation of teacher cooperatives than others. Mr. Kolderie commented that he was not certain because teacher cooperatives are still very new and they are developing in an organic fashion rather than in a highly systematic and organized way. Teacher cooperatives are also not a one-size-fits-all model. They have developed in different ways in different settings. For example, in Wisconsin, teachers were weary of committing both their professional and economic lives to the partnership. Consequently, they found a way to split the two: economically, these teachers are still district employees, who receive retirement benefits and union support, but professionally, they own the charter of their school and make all of the curricular and instructional decisions.

Dr. Levin suggested that Mr. Kolderie use the long, rich history of cooperatives in general to inform his research on teacher cooperatives. A lot has been learned about how to avoid the pitfalls which cooperatives face and how to sustain them. Dr. Levin further suggested that Mr. Kolderie look at Casa La Boral Popular in the Basque Region, a type of corporate cooperative.