Tomorrow begins a Conference on Labor-Management Collaboration in Denver, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, American Federation of Teachers, National Education Association, National School Boards Association, American Association of School Administrators, Council of the Great City Schools, and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. The conference aims to highlight examples of collaborative approaches that ease friction between administrators and union members, expedite education reforms, and lead to better results for students.  

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, NEA President Dennis Van Roekel, and AFT President Randi Weingarten announced plans for the conference in October while celebrating an innovative labor agreement in Hillsborough County, Florida.  

In the past several months, there have been numerous negative depictions in the media of teachers and teachers’ unions—including Waiting for “Superman,” some segments of NBC’s Education Nation summit. The messages indicate that unions are uncooperative and disinclined to education innovation. As a recent NEA press release put it, “media coverage has vilified teachers and portrayed their unions as the obstacles to school improvement.” However, Van Roekel asserts that “there are innovative and creative collaborations happening in our public schools. Not only do we need to highlight this great work, but we need to share lessons learned and figure out how great ideas can be replicated.”

Similarly, AFT President Randi Weingarten emphasized critical themes for the conference: that “school leaders and teachers unions, working as partners, have been able to develop strategies to . . . revamp teacher evaluation systems to inform instruction and boost student achievement, and engage parents and the community.”

In a NSBA press release on the conference, NSBA Executive Director Anne Bryant agreed that “effective labor-management relations are an important part to supporting school improvement and driving student success.”

To this end, teams of local union or association leaders, superintendents, and school board presidents representing 150 school districts from 40 states (chosen through a lottery) will participate in the conference. The cross section of participating districts largely reflects the make-ups of schools nationally: about 34% of those participating are from cities, 34% from suburbs, 8 percent from towns, and 24 percent from rural areas. They are also fairly evenly divided between districts with fewer than 10,000 students, and districts with more than 10,000.

The Ford Foundation is providing funding to support the conference, including paying airfare and hotel expenses so that cash-strapped districts don’t have to choose between taking important resources out of the classroom and attending this valuable professional development activity. Participants will share strategies on collaboration, and the conference will highlight about a dozen school district teams that will offer lessons learned through their initiatives to create effective labor-management collaboration. Those districts range from those that have gotten great play in the national education news, including New Haven and Baltimore, as well as those who have received less attention for their impressive work, like Douglas County (CO) and Helena (MT).

Since education issues easily fall prey to combative struggling - and since recent developments in some states appear to indicate a top-down approach to handling labor relations in general - it’s refreshing to see a conference that aims to give voice to the parties involving in labor-management issues, and to seek collaborative solutions.