"Tap Young Teachers For Innovation in Schools"

By Mary Welsh Schlueter

Op-Ed Columnist, Cincinnati Enquirer - March 1, 2011 (reprint)

Giggling babies, toddlers playing on carpeted steps, and fidgeting parents waiting their turn at the microphone. It's not the typical crowd waiting to speak at CPS Board of Education meetings. But with schools fighting for more space, or debating admissions procedures, the Burnet auditorium has been seeing increasing numbers of young professionals who have the future + literally + sitting in their laps.

As a parent of young public school children, I know individuals born after 1980 (Gen Y) bring dynamism and impatience to education debates. With emotional and financial commitment to their schools and neighborhoods, they demand accountability and transparency. Those that cannot find such traits, choose to move elsewhere.

But urban school districts desperately need valuable Generation Y advocates. And not only as mentors and volunteers + we need the same entrepreneurial commitment in our classroom teachers.

However, younger teachers are getting buried in no-win situations throughout American school districts. For instance, LIFO (Last In-First Out) has become a hot topic within the recent collective bargaining debates in Wisconsin and Ohio. Teacher seniority guidelines typically place young, tech-savvy and technology-trained teachers into high poverty, low performing schools with little training to deal with poverty, homelessness, hunger, and parental neglect. Author Diane Ravitch indicates 50 percent of newly minted teachers "jump ship" within five years. Clearly, dumping Gen Y teachers into sink-or-swim assignments isn't beneficial.

Michelle Rhee, former DC Schools chancellor, states the LIFO rule is a contractual collective bargaining provision that "makes absolutely no sense for children." Which begs the question: Why are we placing young, tech-savvy teachers into no-win situations?

Instead, shouldn't we be piggybacking their distinct communication, media and digital knowledge to create a new educational perspective? In fact, why couldn't our Gen Y brethren further establish a new entrepreneurial reality by spawning new learning tools and opportunities like American legends Andrew Carnegie, Nelson Rockefeller, and Steve Jobs?

How do create win-win solutions for our youngest -- and eldest -- teachers? I support pay for performance measures. Some union contracts are now calling for 10-15% of teacher compensation to be drawn from hitting benchmarks based on individual student academic growth. It's not a perfect solution, but we can get an idea of teacher competency and skill based on select performance measures.

Bottom line, we need to coax innovation from everyone. What better way to "think outside the box" than to introduce a different box? Maybe it's not a box at all. Why not ask our youngest educators to suggest ways to improve their teaching situation, and create a district-wide or regional innovation roundtable filled with our most capable, youngest educators.

Let's be entrepreneurial now. Watch our impatient young teachers work some magic. Opportunity can't wait.

Reprint of article originally published by The Cincinnati Enquirer via Cincinnati.com on March 1, 2011.