Case Study V: Gloria Davies
When Gloria Davies learned that she had been assigned to Lincoln School, one of the lowest-performing elementary schools in her district, she was determined to turn that school around. She believed that the primarily low-income students at Lincoln, many of whom lived in a nearby housing project, deserved a better education than they were getting. She wanted to implement a new, more powerful, and rigorous curriculum, especially in reading. She wanted to get teachers fired up to make the changes that were required to turn the school around. And she planned to fire any teachers who failed to get fired up on behalf of their students. This is what she believed she owed to the students. Gloria often asserted, “I don’t work for the teachers, I work for the students and their families.”
Midway through her third year at Lincoln, however, the school had failed to make the gains she had hoped for. Gloria was mired in an intense power struggle with the faculty at Lincoln. She had been frustrated by union rules and procedures that had limited authority. Faculty members had filed numerous grievances against her for what they perceived as manipulative and heavy-handed tactics. Building council meetings, a mechanism for shared decision making mandated by the district, had been reduced to a war of the rule books, each side quoting chapter and verse from the district contract or the union guidelines to bolster its position. Although Gloria had been successful in removing on untenured teacher, her attempts to remove veteran teachers had been met with resistance and rebellion that went well beyond the targeted teachers. Morale was perilously low, and student achievement scores had remained stubbornly poor. To protect herself, Gloria often confined herself to her office and was rarely seen around the school, except to make unscheduled observations of teachers she was trying to remove.
(Morgan-Tschannen, 2014)
When Gloria Davies learned that she had been assigned to Lincoln School, one of the lowest-performing elementary schools in her district, she was determined to turn that school around. She believed that the primarily low-income students at Lincoln, many of whom lived in a nearby housing project, deserved a better education than they were getting. She wanted to implement a new, more powerful, and rigorous curriculum, especially in reading. She wanted to get teachers fired up to make the changes that were required to turn the school around. And she planned to fire any teachers who failed to get fired up on behalf of their students. This is what she believed she owed to the students. Gloria often asserted, “I don’t work for the teachers, I work for the students and their families.”
Midway through her third year at Lincoln, however, the school had failed to make the gains she had hoped for. Gloria was mired in an intense power struggle with the faculty at Lincoln. She had been frustrated by union rules and procedures that had limited authority. Faculty members had filed numerous grievances against her for what they perceived as manipulative and heavy-handed tactics. Building council meetings, a mechanism for shared decision making mandated by the district, had been reduced to a war of the rule books, each side quoting chapter and verse from the district contract or the union guidelines to bolster its position. Although Gloria had been successful in removing on untenured teacher, her attempts to remove veteran teachers had been met with resistance and rebellion that went well beyond the targeted teachers. Morale was perilously low, and student achievement scores had remained stubbornly poor. To protect herself, Gloria often confined herself to her office and was rarely seen around the school, except to make unscheduled observations of teachers she was trying to remove.
(Morgan-Tschannen, 2014)