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| Resident Scholar Frederick M. Hess |
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.




