Minnesota teachers' co-op serves rural charter schools
by Katherine L. Hanson, Education Specialist
USDA Rural Development
In Minnesota, a group of teachers and education professionals has turned to a cooperative in an attempt to improve accountability for student performance and overall school success. Its members are seeking alternatives to the existing framework of traditional educational governance and structure through a teachers' cooperative. They have taken control of their instructional programs and professional futures.
In 1994, a group of educators at the Minnesota New Country School (MNCS) in the Minnesota River Valley, took these goals to heart by forming EdVisions Teacher Cooperative. MNCS was originally located in three storefront buildings in the sponsoring district of LeSueur-Henderson, about 60 miles southwest of Minneapolis. The school opened its doors with 65 students, and has since increased its enrollment to 130 students in grades 7-12. The increased enrollment forced MNCS officials to relocate from LeSueur to a new, $1.2 million facility in Henderson. The new building was the result of a partnership between USDA Rural Development and local investors.
It is no coincidence that MNCS is an innovative public charter school enjoying substantial success in terms of state-measured student achievement. The MNCS teachers were confident their approaches to teaching would make a difference, and they were eager to have more control over the educational process.
The cooperative of professional teachers would operate on a new premise quite different from that of a large teacher's union. As member-owners, they would gain true site-based management and control of educational resources.
Ted Kolderic of the Center for Policy Studies in St. Paul supported the EdVisions Cooperative from its inception. He says
many educators were disenchanted with their teacher's union, and viewed the organization as a "protector of the teaching profession, rather than an enhancer of education." He believed teachers would act differently if they were at least "spiritual owners" of their instructional program.Likewise, fellow EdVisions founder Ron Newell felt a teacher cooperative would encourage professional collegiality and nurture a sense of responsibility for professional development. Teachers were eager for the opportunity to have a say in the quality and quantity of their training. Many teachers said they felt as though they were working at the will of the administrators in the traditional public school. By marketing their services to the school board, the members of this cooperative ensured that the administrators were instead working at the will of the teaching professionals. By becoming their own bosses, the EdVisions teachers could influence career decisions directly impacting themselves and their program.
Cooperative Advantages
According to Newell, one very positive aspect of the teacher cooperative is that student learning activities benefit from money saved in the system. The advantages a teacher cooperative can offer in terms of increased autonomy are obvious. However, what are some other benefits of this type of worker cooperative?
In EdVisions, the educator-owners carry many different responsibilities in addition to teaching. Some of these duties include establishing and maintaining insurance and benefits packages for co-op employees, marketing the school to attract students, and preparing payrolls. By serving as their own governance system, the members eliminate about 20 percent of the costs normally associated with administrative staffing duties. This can be especially difficult since charter schools deal with twice as much paperwork as do their traditional counterparts.Dean Lind is a veteran teacher at MNCS and a charter member of EdVisions. Like many in the organization, Lind must assume responsibility for a portion of the administrative operations of the cooperative." The original intent of the charter school law was to help reduce the paperwork associated with school operations. However, because were present small, independent schools, EdVisions can't take advantage of the economy of scale in a larger administration to spread the workload more evenly," Lind explains. " Further, charter schools are scrutinized much more closely in terms of accountability, which contributes to the paperwork burden."
Membership in this worker-owned cooperative is not limited to professional educators. EdVisions provides a voice to the people who are directly involved with, and affected by, decisions regarding teachers. In their eagerness to make the educational process an interactive one, EdVisions members invite parents to join the co-op. Since parents are "outsiders" to the teaching profession - and not directly affected by administrative decisions such as salary, benefits, and staff development - the potential for friction exists.
According to Newell, there has been no dissension among the members based on whether they are teachers or parents. By contrast, the parents defer to teachers on career-affecting decisions and are more concerned with curriculum and instruction issues.
Another cooperative advantage is its ability to pool resources and ideas with other teacher-members who are also striving to deliver guaranteed academic achievements that ensure job retention. If a particular method or activity proves highly successful to one teacher, it benefits the entire cooperative to share that success and spread the educational wealth. In this way, school "A" can help train school "B" in the successful cooperative principles. Cooperatives can share state-required standardized testing materials, thus reducing costs and increasing efficiency.
One distinguishing feature of a teacher cooperative is its reimbursement system. Teachers no longer receive their paychecks from the district. Instead, the sponsoring district pays the school to hire teachers, the school pays the cooperative for the teachers' services, and the cooperative pays the teachers. There is no relationship between the teachers and the sponsoring district, but legislation entides the cooperative's teachers to the same state retirement benefits as non-co-op teachers.
EdVisions teachers are employees of the school, employees of the cooperative, and self-employed member-owners. In a sense, the triple-employment aspect of this cooperative offers the best of two worlds - teachers gain educational independence and governance control without sacrificing the benefits and protections normally associated with traditional teacher employment situations.
Cooperative growth
What began as a handful of visionary teachers and education professionals has grown to include nearly 90 members. This cooperative has been so successful that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded it a substantial grant (see sidebar) to replicate the governance system by creating 10 new organizations in 15 new charter schools in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
As EdVisions implements the 10 new co-ops, it will realize its vision of becoming a "nationwide cooperative," with "individual cells of locally controlled cooperative members." In achieving that goal, EdVisions will grow large enough to gain economy-of-scale for administrative purposes, benefits packages and professional development opportunities, while retaining teacher-level control. As it grows, so will there pository of available teaching strategies, activities, and creative practices of its member-owners.
Based on the success of the EdVisions Teacher Cooperative and the satisfaction of its professional member-owners, the future looks bright for others in the field of education who want to create opportunities for increased involvement in owning and operating educational entities. Prospective members will be entrepreneurs who are ready to challenge the existing molds of educational thinking, and lead the way into a new century of changing educational paradigms.
