Teachers As Owners: A Key to Revitalizing Public Education
Series: Innovations in Education #1
| Edward J. Dirkswager |
(click to enlarge)
|
ScarecrowEducation |
ALSO OF INTEREST:
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
"While [others] diagnose the disease, Edward J. Dirkswager's Teachers as Owners provides a cure. Teachers as Owners offers much needed hope for reforming schools in ways that will empower teachers, and ultimately lead to innovations as yet undreamt of."—Robert Maranto, NCSC REVIEW
"What if teachers were owners, not employees?" Teacher-ownership is a revolutionary way to put excitement and meaning back into the teaching profession and to revitalize public education. This book demonstrates how being an owner rather than an employee can give teachers control of their professional activity, including full responsibility and accountability for creating and sustaining high performing learning communities. It presents examples of teacher-ownership in practice and provides practical models for those who would like to experience the professional satisfaction found in ownership.
Like doctors, lawyers, and other professionals, teachers have the same opportunity to work for themselves through ownership of professional partnerships. In a professional partnership, the teachers are the leaders and decision-makers. They control their own work and their own relationships to students, including determining curriculum, setting the budget, choosing the level of technology available to students, determining their own salaries, selecting their colleagues, monitoring performance and hiring administrators to work for them, not vice versa.
The teacher ownership concept injects an exciting new perspective into the teaching profession and raises many important questions. Some addressed in this book are:
· What is teacher ownership?
· How can teacher-ownership give teachers more control over teaching and learning?
· What are the models for the design and operation of teacher-ownership through the creation of professional partnership?
· Who are the potential clients?
· Why would teachers want to do this?
· What can students and parents gain?
· Which teachers are likely to be attracted to teacher ownership?
· What are the key ingredients of success?
· What lessons can be learned from existing examples of teacher-ownership?
· What resources are available to create teacher professional partnerships?
· How do teachers professional partnerships relate to school boards?
· What are the broader implications for public education and what happens when the teaching profession changes from an employee dominated model to a professional partnership model?
About the Editor
Edward J. Dirkswager is an associate at the Center for Policy Studies, St. Paul, Minnesota. He was a health care business executive and consultant with a long-term involvement in public education. He worked on a task force of the Minnesota Business Partnership that recommended the legislative enactment allowing students freedom of choice among public schools.
