Learning Improvement Teams-- not an improvement

The Illusion of Local Control
by Mère Fâchée

In the mid 1990’s, I served on a Learning Improvement Team (LIT) in an elementary school in a large district in south King County. I struggled to get some semblance of representative government in this body, which was designed to make decisions impacting the entire school.

The typical LIT structure at that time was that the principal would appoint the entire committee, selecting several representatives among the teachers of different age groups, and the classified staff. There would generally be one parent representative – usually from the PTA – and one community representative – either a retiree or a business person. There was no set term of office. Members served until they got tired of it or their kids moved out of that school – or until the principal was tired of them.

The LIT’s were designed to have decision-making capability, specifically to spend the grant money provided by the state. The money was to be used to benefit student learning, but – ironically – could not be spent on classroom materials like textbooks, supplies, software, etc. Some LIT’s were used as pilot programs for other kinds of decision-making – like conflict resolution among the staff and school level policy-making.

Because of their unique role to spend taxpayer money and make other decisions, I thought it inappropriate that the LIT’s were structured as they were. When a boundary change landed my kids in a new school that was just beginning its LIT, I lobbied to get on it. Against his better judgement, the principal did appoint me. (This principal turned out to be a fine man, equally liked and respected by the students, teachers, and parents, alike – a rare individual, and one I found to be an ally as often as an opponent during our discussions.)

The original LIT at our school was composed of the principal, three teachers (one each from K-2, 3-4, and 5-6 grades), one classified staff person, the PTA rep, a community person, and me – in other words, five district employees, two parents, and a community member. I thought this was very lop-sided, considering whose children would be affected, and said so. I lobbied for at least even representation between school employees and non-employees, and for elections to choose whom those people would be. We set up three regions from the attendance area from which to choose three elected parent representatives, with one-year terms of office. The PTA members ratified their representative. We could not decide how to make the community representative elected, so we just left that as a volunteer appointed by the principal. Teachers were to set up their own selection process for their representatives. We also ended up with a parent from our school who was the “diversity” representative. That would seem to give non-district staff the edge, but the “diversity” rep was also the PTA rep, so we ended up at five employee reps and five community/parent reps.

Some issues we didn’t even begin to touch. Were the parents who voted for their representatives registered votes? Citizens even? Did the community rep live in the attendance area? Why should employees (staff), who may not live in the attendance area have a say in how taxpayer money is spent? Why are parents out-numbered by the teachers and staff? A parent rep might be representing 100 or 150 parents. A teacher rep was representing only three, himself and the other two teachers for his age group. Is that really fair representation?

The next job we had as LIT members was to create our mission statement. I pushed very hard to get the term ‘academics’ in the mission statement. One of the teacher reps (My husband and I privately referred to him as Mr. Flake. And he was, oh, he was!) said, “Well, what does ‘academics’ really mean? Is it art and music and PE?” I about had apoplexy during that meeting. The teachers all lined up on Mr. Flake’s side and the parents all lined up on my side. It was pretty much a deadlock until the principal spoke. All he said was, “I think we need to respect the parents’ wishes on this one.” So, ‘academics’ made it into the mission statement. (And Mr. Flake and one of the other teachers on the LIT later became principals.)

As part of our ‘training’ the LIT was sent to a decision-making seminar. We were all trained in the process of “consensus decision-making” – a process I came to refer to as organized peer pressure. We were essentially prepared to be fodder for any Delphi Technique facilitator we happened to meet. (If you are not familiar with this particular technique, please see http://www.learn-usa.com/transformation_process/~consensus.htm.)

Then there was the teacher continuing education seminar that the LIT was invited to … The continuing ed. classes are theoretically provided to help teachers become better at their jobs – teaching knowledge to children. This one spent the entire time training attendees to influence community leaders, shifting public opinion to a more positive perception of the school and the district. An example of the knowledge we gained was that only 30% of the households in our community even received a newspaper, so positive news articles, while valuable, have limited effectiveness. The real game is played among the “opinion leaders” of the community: Kiwanis, Rotary Club, and Chamber of Commerce. Join those and become friends with the opinion leaders, and lead them to a favorable impression of … whatever you like.

Even though our LIT was less controlled and manipulated than most, I found the experience frustrating and disenchanting. It was one of the factors that ultimately convinced me that I needed to homeschool, which I did for the next eight years.