The Leadership Limbo

In the era of No Child Left Behind, principals are increasingly held accountable for student performance. But are teacher labor agreements giving them enough flexibility to manage effectively? The Leadership Limbo: Teacher Labor Agreements in America's Fifty Largest School Districts, answers this question and others.

The main findings:

Thirty, or more than half, of the 50 districts have labor agreements that are ambiguous. The collective bargaining agreements and the formal board policies in these districts appear to grant leaders substantial leeway to manage assertively, should they so choose.
Fifteen of the 50 districts are home to Restrictive or Highly Restrictive labor agreements. Nearly 10 percent of the nation's African-American K-12 students population attend school in the 15 lowest-scoring districts-making these contracts major barriers to more equal educational opportunity.
The study also found that districts with high concentrations of poor and minority students tend to have more restrictive contracts than other districts-another alarming indication of inequity along racial and class lines.
The labor agreements of the nation's 50 largest districts are particularly restrictive when it comes to work rules.
Most of these agreements are also quite restrictive when it comes to rewarding teachers for service in hard-to-staff subject areas such as math and science, with 31 actually prohibiting districts from doing so.

Individual District Reports

Related Resources

Click here to read the "In A Nutshell" summary of The Leadership Limbo.

Click here to see the fifty districts ranked from top to bottom.

Panel Discussion

On February 20, Frederick M. Hess, co-author of The Leadership Limbo, was joined by the following distinguished panelists to discuss the report:

Dr. Terry Grier, Superintendent, Guilford County (NC) Schools
Gail Littlejohn, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Center for Reform of School Systems
Bill Raabe, Director of Collective Bargaining and Member Advocacy, National Education Association
Moderator: Chester E. Finn, Jr., President, Fordham Institute

Opening remarks from Chester Finn and panelists

Chester Finn asks panelists questions

Q & A

Policy Priority:

High Expectations

Topics:

Governance

Teachers & School Leaders