Stop Playing Defense

Resident Scholar
Frederick M. Hess
Educational leaders lament that their hands are tied by contracts, policies, and regulations--especially when it comes to hiring and firing teachers or making work assignments.

Yet there is reason to believe that reform-minded administrators could do much more to make use of existing authority. In a 2008 analysis of work rules, teacher compensation, and personnel policies in collective bargaining agreements in the nation's fifty largest districts, I found that most represented a less explicit or substantial barrier to school improvement than is often believed.

Vanderbilt University Professor Dale Ballou has reported that, in Massachusetts, "on virtually every issue of personnel policy there are contracts that grant administrators the managerial prerogatives they are commonly thought to lack. . . . When more flexible language is negotiated, administrators do not take advantage of it . . . [but still] blame the contract for their own inaction." . . .

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Frederick M. Hess is a resident scholar and the director of education policy studies at AEI.

About the Author

 

Frederick M.
Hess
  • An educator, political scientist, and author, Frederick M. Hess studies a range of K-12 and higher education issues. He is the author of influential books on education including The Same Thing Over and Over, Education Unbound, Common Sense School Reform, Revolution at the Margins, and Spinning Wheels, and pens the Education Week blog "Rick Hess Straight Up."  His work has appeared in scholarly and popular outlets such as Teachers College Record, Harvard Education Review, Social Science Quarterly, Urban Affairs Review, American Politics Quarterly, Chronicle of Higher Education, Phi Delta Kappan, Educational Leadership, U.S. News & World Report, The Washington Post, New York Times and National Review. He has edited widely-cited volumes on education philanthropy, stretching the school dollar, the impact of education research, and No Child Left Behind.  He serves as executive editor of Education Next, as lead faculty member for the Rice Education Entrepreneurship Program, on the Review Board for the Broad Prize in Urban Education, and on the Boards of Directors of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, 4.0 SCHOOLS, and the American Board for the Certification of Teaching Excellence. A former high school social studies teacher, he has taught at the University of Virginia, the University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown University, Rice University, and Harvard University. He holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University as well as an M.Ed. in Teaching and Curriculum.

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  • Email: rhess@aei.org
  • Assistant Info

    Name: Rebecca King
    Phone: 202-862-5904
    Email: Rebecca.King@aei.org
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