Pasadena Now

Collaboration in schools is not a hot topic in the national education discussion, and that’s unfortunate, because it’s a key to effective schools. Recent research examining efforts to enhance collaboration in districts and schools strongly indicates that purposefully building trust works.

Studies by the Consortium on Chicago School Research and the National Center for Educational Achievement (a division of the firm that develops the ACT college admission tests) bear this out, as do the examples of the Cincinnati, Union City, New Jersey, and Springfield, Massachusetts public school districts. The weight of this accumulating evidence suggests that it is time to change course from the ineffective reliance on the coercive “sticks” that have dominated education policy-making to a new set of approaches that promote effective teamwork and intensely collaborative practices...