Massachusetts Educational Partnership Established Within the Collins Center

UMass Boston's Collins Center for Public Management, in collaboration with MIT and Northeastern University, has established the Massachusetts Educational Partnership, a labor and management collaboration for the enhancement of education in the Commonwealth.  Launched earlier this fall, with generous funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), and the NEA Foundation, the Massachusetts Education Partnership seeks to improve student achievement and success through collaborative labor-management relations in school districts across the Commonwealth. The partnership's purpose is to help labor-management teams of superintendents, union leaders, school committee members, teachers, and administrators to develop active collaborations in the area of labor-management relations and school-site operations, in order to:

*    Accelerate student achievement and promote student success;
*    Increase teacher engagement and leadership in school and district governance;
*    Improve the productivity of bargaining practices; and
*    Institute policies, structures, and practices for sustainable collaboration and reform.

The partnership's governing board is led by a cross-section of Massachusetts leaders in education (K-12 and higher) and labor-management relations. They include Barry Bluestone, Northeastern University; Chad d'Entremont, Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy; Thomas Gosnell, American Federation of Teachers, Massachusetts; Thomas A. Kochan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Glenn Koocher, Massachusetts Association of School Committees; Monica R. Lamboy, University of Massachusetts Boston; Thomas Scott, Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents; and Paul Toner, Massachusetts Teachers Association.  Nancy E. Peace will serve as executive director.

The District Capacity Project

Over the long term, the Massachusetts Education Partnership hopes its work will foster sustainable cultures of collaborative practice in schools, districts, and the Commonwealth.  To this end, it has launched a workplace-level initiative in which one or more consultants will work intensively with labor-management teams in selected school districts on an issue or issues of the team's choosing that impact student achievement.  The selected districts will also be given the opportunity to participate in capacity institutes for skill development, planning, and networking; to join other District Capacity Project teams in an online community that will foster shared learning; and to have access to experts in specific areas of education reform.  Districts selected for the initial phase of the project are Berkshire Hills, Boylston Elementary, Brockton, Fall River, Leominster, Malden, and Springfield.

Interest-Based Bargaining Institute

The process by which school districts negotiate their collective bargaining agreements affects both the tone and outcomes of their bargaining and the tenor of their ongoing relationship.  The Massachusetts Education Partnership believes that an interest-based approach to collective bargaining is more likely than traditional positional bargaining to support districts' efforts to build sustainable cultures of collaborative practice.  For this reason, the partnership has created the Interest-Based Bargaining Institute. 

The institute will offer training and direct technical assistance to school districts wishing to transform the way they engage in contract negotiations, moving from a positional and often adversarial process to one grounded in a full exploration of the parties' shared and competing interests.  School districts that adopt an interest-based approach to their bargaining commonly achieve contracts that more fully respond to the needs of students and parents, by enabling labor, management and the communities they serve to work together more effectively on their shared mission of advancing student success.  All school districts in the Commonwealth are eligible to apply for this program. 

Leading Change:  Improving Student Achievement through Labor-Management Collaboration

On December 3, 2012, the Massachusetts Education Partnership will host a conference at the Best Western Royal Plaza Marlborough in Marlborough, MA from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Featured speakers will include S. Paul Reville, secretary of education, Commonwealth of Massachusetts; Mitchell D. Chester, commissioner, Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, Commonwealth of Massachusetts; W. Patrick Dolan, author of Restructuring Our Schools: A Primer on Systemic Change; and Jo Anderson, Jr., senior advisor to the U. S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan. 

Breakout sessions will address four topics of great importance to today's educators, administrators and school committee members:  educator evaluation, innovation schools and extended learning time, peer assistance and review, and interest-based negotiations and processes.  During lunch, a distinguished panel of local and national education leaders will discuss education reform and why it is important that the education community lead change and not be the subject of it. 

Resources

Massachusetts Educational Partnership website

Interest-Based Bargaining Institute
For more information, contact Nancy E. Peace at nancy.peace@umb.edu or 617.287.7185.

Leading Change:  Improving Student Achievement through Labor-Management Collaboration
Register by Friday, November 16, 2012. For more information and to register for this free event