Creating a "win-win" labor-management collaboration
HGSE Professor Paul Reville

Increased pressure to perform in a high stakes environment has also put pressure on the traditionally tense relationship between labor and management in schools. How do school leaders at all levels think about creating better relationships in order to improve student outcomes? According to Paul Reville, HGSE faculty member and president of the Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy, it is all about creating new, more flexible ways for professionals to work together in schools and keeping the focus off the adults and on the students. In this question and answer interview, Paul discusses the Center's new book Win-Win Labor-Management Collaboration in Education: Breakthrough Practices to Benefit Students, Teachers, and Administrators highlighting innovative best practices for improving labor-management relations in public education.

"Creating Win-Win Labor Management Collaboration" – A Q+A with Paul Reville

1. Why is it important to consider labor management issues when thinking about school improvement and increasing student achievement?

"It becomes imperative on school leaders, both at district level and at the individual school level, to create new, more flexible ways for professionals to work together in schools..."
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2. How can the book Win-Win Labor Management Collaboration in Education: Breakthrough Practices to Benefit Students, Teachers, and Administrators help education professionals reform the collective bargaining process for the benefit of students?

"Breaking through into new practices that tend to put student achievement into the center of the relationship between adults in schools..."
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3. What is an example of an innovative practice discussed in the book and how can it help other school districts?

"Administration and union leaders at the district level agreed to create various forms of autonomy for individual schools..."
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4. What would you say is one of the most important things to keep in mind about creating win-win collaborative action in schools? What is a key piece of information school leaders should have?

"The importance of communication – regular, transparent, no surprises, kind of communication between teachers and administrators ..."
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5. Summary comments.

"These contracts that govern the relationships between adults in most of our districts form serious constraints upon our capacity to move forward and meet the learning needs of all children. And until such time as we're willing to step back from those agreements, which are almost exclusively about adults and about adult relationships to one another, and to think about the primary focus and emphasis of this sector being on students and student achievement – that is the product by which public education is going to be judged..."
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Interview conducted by Kerry Venegas, doctoral student in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy: Communities and Schools, at HGSE.