Northeast TURN met, January 20, 2011, in Philadelphia to continue developing local action plans around the theme "Ownership of Quality & Urgency in Addressing Teacher Effectiveness."  The date and location of the meeting was set to piggy-back on the NEA Regional Leadership Conference. 

25 people from 8 states attended (Deleware, Maryland, New York, Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island) mostly presidents and staff from NEA state organizations.

Jo Anderson, Senior Advisor, US Department of Education started the day and spoke about the two competing narratives of school reform in the media: the one of collaboration between unions and districts around real reform, and a competing narrative that attacks unions, especially in the national and state level. He identified ongoing struggles in some states that are detrimental to unions, especially around the tenure and collective bargaining.  

"In my 30 years in this work, I haven’t seen a time when there has been so many intense attacks on unions," says Anderson. He went on to say that in spite of the attacks, there are many good examples of deep reform around the country at the local level, particularly on evaluations systems and incorporating student performance measures.

The US Department of Education is sponsoring 2 conferences to promote collaborative labor management work in districts:

• The first is in Denver on February 15 and 16, with a focus on student learning.  
• The second is an international conference that will be held in New York, in March, with 25 countries invited.  The focus is on the power of collaboration and how it advances the teaching profession in other parts of the world. AFT and NEA are both helping to organize this event.  The Department wants to support this collaborative work and connect folks to move it forward.  

Anderson recommended a report from McKinsey & Company: How the world's most improved school systems keep getting better.  It speaks of the systems issue on an international level. Building a collaborative profession is the key to success in other high performing countries, as well as their high levels of unionization.

He concluded by assuring the group that the Department of Education is  getting the message that there are unions and teachers ready to create solutions, but they aren’t always finding willing partners.

Dr. W. Patrick Dolan, Lead Education Consultant, GE Foundation and Author of Restructuring Our Schools: A Primer on Systems Change, presented on the topic of The Changing Landscape of Public Education – Exploring the Union’s Roles and Responsibilities in Improving Teaching and Learning."

Dolan framed his remarks around the biggest issues for unions: quality, money and the collective bargaining agreements.  He challenged the group to understand that the good work done 30 years ago around collective bargaining agreements is outdated and too cumbersome to meet the needs of urban districts especially, and the changing nature of public education overall.  Instead of owning the debate, unions are responding to something that is ill-defined.  He challenges unions to own the quality piece and to define public education – what do we do, exactly?  Until everyone understands that, unions are not truly prepared to collaborate deeply and neither are the districts.

Steve Cantrell, a researcher from the Gates Measuring Teaching Effectiveness (MET) Project discussed preliminary findings from two years of work with 3,000 teachers in seven districts.

After lunch, Kathie Skinner & Paul Toner, from the Massachusetts Teachers Association, presented their Triangulated Standards-based Evaluation Framework.

Time was set aside at the end of the meeting so that union/district teams could work on their Action Plans, followed by a brief wrap-up to identify key learnings, questions & ocus for the next meeting.