July 22, 2009
IPS Educators Say They'd Welcome Changes
Survey Finds Support for Overhauling Seniority and Hiring Policies at IPS
Indianapolis Public Schools teachers and principals say burdensome personnel policies and an inefficient human resources department are having a negative impact in the classroom, according to a survey to be released today.
Teachers and principals faulted both the central office and policies cemented in the district's contract with the teachers union, according to a copy of the report obtained by The Indianapolis Star.
Eighty-five percent of principals and 75 percent of teachers participated in the survey by The New Teacher Project, a nonprofit that focuses on such issues as teacher shortages and teacher quality, especially in urban school districts. IPS supported the survey.
More than half of those teachers were willing to be judged in part on their students' performance, and three in four want layoffs to be based on more than seniority -- steps the teachers union has opposed.
District officials, who have struggled with classroom performance, would like more flexibility in layoffs and favor performance-based pay. Gov. Mitch Daniels and state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett say those factors are crucial to improving schools.
The survey's most serious findings are aimed at central office practices that tie the hands of principals. Half of principals said they frequently lose teachers they want to keep when the central office forces transfers, and three-quarters of principals said they lost good outside candidates because the district didn't act quickly enough to hire them.
An education leadership professor at the University of Indianapolis said the less control a school's leadership has over hiring, the more likely it is that students there will not perform as well academically.
IPS Superintendent Eugene White said the district used to give schools total control over staffing but that students still did not do well. Instead, he said, he has pulled back that authority to the central office until he can fix other district problems.
"The performance of schools was not good, and they had autonomy of who came and who left," he said. "I think the more teachers and parents involved in selecting the staff, the better the performance. We're working toward that."
Teachers union President Ann Wilkins said she thought the district's human resources office "probably could do better, but overall I think they're doing the best they can with what they have."
The finding that a majority of teachers may want to jettison seniority, Wilkins said, was more alarming.
That system, she said, was put in place to protect teachers from the whims of administrators and to keep the district from abandoning older veterans in favor of cheaper, younger teachers. Wilkins acknowledged that some teachers should be removed but pointed to existing processes the district could use to remove them.
"We feel if the administrators would do their part, we wouldn't have senior teachers who aren't effective in the classroom," she said. "The seniority piece, that's something we're not going to give up."
But School Board member Kelly Bentley said she's not surprised to see teachers supporting a change.
Many teachers, she said, were upset to see good teachers being laid off this spring while less-effective teachers with more seniority kept their jobs.
The system would be better managed if principals had more control over all personnel decisions -- from who gets hired to who gets laid off, she said.
"Principals ought to be in charge of all of that," she said.
John Somers, an education leadership professor at UIndy, said research is clear that the more authority a local school has to control its staff, the better students will do.
In schools where that doesn't happen, he said, districts run the risk of having teachers whose skills aren't well-suited to the students they will teach.
"You're a principal sitting there running a really complex building, kids with a great diversity of learners, and you're getting teachers who you have never laid your eyes on," he said. "That makes no sense whatsoever."
White said that is his goal, too, but that until the rest of the district is in order, he needs more control over how staff members are arrayed.
The district, he said, plans to carefully review the findings in the report and will use it as it makes decisions, including on negotiations with the teachers union.
"People have to know that we invited The New Teacher Project to do this for us," he said. "We really wanted this information. Hopefully we can use some of this information."
Additional Facts:
» 90 percent of principals lost a teacher they had wanted to keep because of layoffs.
» A third of teachers said they had been placed by the district's human resources office within the past five years without interviewing with anyone at the school.
» Less than 20 percent of teachers who had been laid off in the past five years and then recalled said human resources had been helpful during that process.
Read TNTP's press release about its analysis of Indianapolis Public Schools.
