Julie Cook was “crushed,” ready to quit teaching. She decided to give it one more chance, accepting a new job at Souderton Charter School Collaborative — a “teacher powered school” — in Southeast Pennsylvania’s Montgomery County.
Today, she’s a teacher ambassador for the national Teacher Powered Schools Initiative. “I was invited to create, decide, collaborate, and lead,” she now says. “I no longer felt crushed.”
Teacher-powered schools use a governance approach that vests in educators the authority to design and make decisions how to operate a school rather than vesting that authority in a school district’s board of education or state bureaucracy. Those working in these schools choose to be there and to be accountable in suitable ways for achieving the student and school goals they’ve established.
Analysts have enumerated 15 domains where educators can exercise decision-making responsibility. They include selecting and evaluating colleagues; determining staffing patterns, work hours and tenure policy; developing a school budget and setting compensation levels; and shaping schedules, the learning program, and policies like disciplinary approaches.
The Teacher Powered Schools Initiative is five years old, with a network of 120 schools in 19 states. It includes charter and district public schools in urban, suburban, and rural settings, serving pre-K to age 21 students. Education Evolving, a nonprofit organization, coordinates the network.
Teachers acquire decision-making authority using mechanisms based on state law and a school district’s policies. Here are five examples from the charter and district sectors.
Charter school teacher professional partnerships: EdVisions Cooperative is a nonprofit organization that supports charter school development. It replaces traditional teacher collective bargaining with a cooperative or professional association of teacher-owners. This legal structure allows ownership and control by members. The co-op contracts with charter school boards to provide a school’s instructional program. Its first client was Minnesota New County School, a K-12 charter school. It now has 17 co-op members and delivers services through EdVisions Schools and EdVisions Leaders. It has worked nationally, with over 50 replication sites to provide services that include state approved teacher licensure renewal.
Teacher union charter school authorizer: In Minnesota, two teacher union leaders created the Minnesota Guild of Public Charter Schools, a state-approved nonprofit organization that authorizes charter schools. Since 2011, it has created 11 teacher-powered schools, with four more opening soon.
District and union bargaining agreements: Teachers in Cincinnati’s Hughes STEM High School secured autonomy to run an existing school using the Instructional Leadership Team agreement negotiated through collective bargaining between the school board and Cincinnati Federation of Teachers. The authority is broad, and almost anything that affects instruction can be voted up or down by the school leadership team, with the principal not able to veto teachers’ decisions. The approach can be used by any Cincinnati public school.
District memo of understanding and state waiver: In Colorado, the Denver Math and Science Leadership Academy has an MOU with the teachers union, requested by the school board, to have a lead teacher oversee the school rather than a traditional principal. The board also requested and received a state waiver giving the lead teacher authority to manage the school, oversee suspensions, and conduct teacher evaluations. In effect, the lead teacher approves decisions made by teachers. This model was replicated by the Denver Green School.
District pilot schools: Los Angeles and Boston have collective bargaining agreements that permit Pilot Schools. They are part of the school district but have site-based autonomy for local governing boards and teachers to organize schools and staffing arrangements. Boston has 21 pilot schools. Los Angeles has 49.
Teacher-powered schools entrust educators rather than a state or district bureaucracy with school decision-making authority, holding them accountable for results. This governance approach promotes teacher voice, power, and leadership while strengthening teachers’ commitment to the profession. Just ask Julie Cook.
Bruno V. Manno is a senior advisor for the K-12 Program at the Walton Family Foundation.
