TPP-related Publications

Evolution of Teacher Autonomy

This timeline traces the evolution of schools with teacher autonomy, since the 1980s. It documents the critical roles school districts, unions, and chartering laws have had since then, in developing teacher autonomy and greater professional roles for teachers.

Can Teachers Run Their Own Schools?

A case study of Avalon School and several other teacher-led schools in the upper Midwest. These schools use resources differently than traditional district schools, they have constructed a much different praxis of teaching, and they slice up authority and responsibility differently–including assigning a good bit of responsibility for learning to the students. By Charles Taylor Kerchner.

TPP 21: Teacher Professional Partnerships for the 21st Century

TPP21 is a new venture to provide assistance to teachers, school districts, and states to help them understand, support, and implement teacher professional partnerships. Interested? Contact us at teacherpartnerships@educationevolving.org.

Teacher Cooperatives in Education Next

Twenty years ago, when the late Albert Shanker, then president of the American Federation of Teachers, endorsed the notion of innovative schools operating outside conventional district bureaucracies, his aim was to put teachers at the helm. “If you want to hold teachers accountable,” he posited, “then teachers have to be able to run the school.” In the Spring 2009 Education Next, Beth Hawkins explores how some teachers are realizing his vision with the teacher professional partnership model championed by Education|Evolving.

Teachers as Leaders: Short on Power, Long on Responsibility

To upgrade teacher quality, schools need to go beyond just holding teachers more accountable. They need to give teachers more control.

How a Public School Looks When Managed by a Teacher Partnership

There's growing interest in improving (as some say) the "management of human capital" in education: teacher recruitments, teacher-retention, teacher compensation, teacher accountability. Usually this suggests 'better administration' in the standard boss/worker model. Yet it's possible these decisions might be made with greater integrity by teachers themselves within the framework of a professional partnership. This interview with Carrie Bakken is the most revealing look we've ever had at the way a teacher partnership handles the professional and the management issues in running a public school.

Teachers in Professional Practice: An inventory of new opportunities for teachers (Second Edition). (pdf)

This 2006 inventory of existing and developing teacher professional partnerships (TPPs) documents growing interest in a professional model of teaching. The inventory describes several teacher professional partnership models, offering a useful overview of the many ways in which teacher partnerships are organizing and functioning.

Teacher Professional Partnerships: Books and Media Source List. (pdf)

Several articles and book-chapters have written up the teacher partnership/cooperative idea. Click here for an HTML version of this document, with links to several of the resources.

Freeing Teachers: The Promise of Teacher Professional Partnerships. (link)

In the April 2004 American Experiment Quarterly, Ted Kolderie wrote that virtually all of our discussion about improving teaching occurs within the traditional assumption that teachers are employees managed by administrators, rather than professionals in control of their work. Current efforts to train teachers, to improve teacher practice, to recruit teachers, to retain teachers and to change the way in which teachers are compensated need not take place within this boss/worker, master/servant framework.

Teacher Professional Partnerships: A Different Way to Help Teachers and Teaching. (pdf)

It clearly is possible to organize K-12 education on a professional model. Teachers could have and should have the option to work if they wish—as many architects and engineers and consults and accountants and lawyers and doctors do—with colleagues, in a professional group which they collectively own, with the administrators working for them.

An up-to-date version of the inventory of Teacher Professional Partnerships is maintained online here.

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