Bellevue teachers' strike was stoked by a push for perfection

At the center of the nine-day Bellevue teachers strike is the man who isn't there: former Superintendent Mike Riley.

Widely praised as a visionary educator, Riley — who left in November after 11 years in the district — focused on raising teacher quality and providing an education that would prepare all students for college, no matter what their background.

Newsweek magazine heralded his leadership, and three Bellevue high schools have consistently been on its list of the nation's top schools.

But within a year of his arrival in 1996, teachers worried that Riley's goal of creating a common curriculum would undermine their creativity and their ability to craft lessons to meet the needs of individual students.

As the teachers strike dragged into its second week, the evolution of the common curriculum from grade-level goals and objectives into daily, scripted lessons emerged as a central cause of teacher anger and dissatisfaction.

Teachers turned down several district compromises because they would still be required to get prior approval for any changes to the prescribed lesson plans.

Only when the district relented Friday and accepted a memorandum of understanding that allows teachers to use their professional judgment to adapt daily lessons did union negotiators agree to a tentative three-year contract.

Teachers will vote on that offer, which includes a 5 percent pay increase over three years, tonight.

"Big Brother"?

Marianne Jones, a district parent and Bellevue attorney, said the district's push for standardization had gone too far. Over the summer, she read through about 600 teacher surveys solicited by the district after Riley's departure.

"A common theme is that the curriculum has turned into a form of Big Brother, with principals coming in to say, 'It's 10:40; why aren't you handing out the list?' " Jones said.

Other parents and administrators say the daily lessons do give teachers the flexibility they need to adapt lessons. But they also acknowledge that the curriculum's evolution from teacher resource to mandated instruction plan — and Riley's insistence on its use — was at the heart of the teacher walkout.

"There was a lot of angst about how Mike handled the curriculum issue," Bellevue School Board President Peter Bentley said last week. "Much of this is trying to strike back at the district."

Riley, who left the district to take a job as vice president for college readiness at the College Board — a national membership association that administers the SAT and Advanced Placement courses and tests — did not respond to requests for an interview.

Early in his tenure, Riley recognized that Bellevue's test scores masked an uncomfortable reality: There weren't as many top-performing classrooms and schools as the high scores suggested, and minority, immigrant and low-income students, in particular, were struggling. There was no common approach to giving the district's 16,000 students the same building blocks to progress to higher grades and more challenging course work. There was no coordinated plan to help students who failed.

Michael Knapp, a professor in the University of Washington's College of Education who worked with Riley over the past decade, said Riley was an assertive, astute leader who recognized that teaching quality and a challenging, coordinated curriculum were key to raising student achievement.

But Knapp said the two goals — to encourage teacher initiative and creativity and to implement a consistent curriculum across the district — are fundamentally at odds.

"This strategy at its best tries to build teachers' abilities. But a typical pitfall is that it doesn't acknowledge teachers' skills and experience. What's sometimes communicated is the message that teachers' skills aren't that important," Knapp said.

Evolving curriculum

Under Riley, Bellevue dramatically increased the number of students taking Advanced Placement courses — from about 10 to 84 percent. He partnered with the College Board to get more teachers trained in the rigorous curriculum. A record number of teachers attained National Board certification, a recognition of classroom mastery.

But by 2003, frustrated at the uneven use of the curriculum and the persistent achievement gap, Riley stepped up efforts to develop curriculum resources down to the daily lesson plan. The lessons would be posted to the Web so building administrators, teachers and parents could see the daily activities and goals.

Dion Yahoudy, a principal and administrator in Bellevue for 14 years, said the Curriculum Web, as it came to be called, was initially envisioned as a continuously evolving document.

"Mike actually said it could be something like Wikipedia, with everyone adding to it and critiquing it all the time," she said.

A $1.9 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2006 allowed the district to pay more teachers to write curriculum for six core subjects, post it to the Web and add supplemental materials. Teachers' daily calendars and lesson goals were posted. Some teachers created videos to reteach difficult concepts.

Bellevue parent Susan Edmond remembers her daughter struggling with math three years ago as a freshman. She hadn't understood a teacher's explanation, but she went online and watched another teacher's video of the same lesson — over and over until the light went on.

"That's the beauty. Everybody is doing the same thing. It lets parents partner with teachers to make the kids more successful," she said.

As more daily lessons were developed, more teachers were expected to follow the curriculum plans and pacing guides.

Some building administrators questioned teachers who varied from the plans, said Rob Wood, a language-arts teacher at Sammamish High School.

Wood remembers a meeting at which teachers asked Riley when they could use their professional judgment to deviate from the set lesson plans.

"Riley told us that the judgment had already been made and we were to teach the lesson as written," Wood said.

Rob Prufer, a social-studies teacher at Newport High School, said Riley was an inspirational leader and a personal mentor to him, but he believes the superintendent began to view teachers as an obstacle to improving education.

"The relationship became increasingly adversarial," Prufer said.

School Board members in the spring held a series of meetings with more than 300 teachers and collected 600 responses to a survey.

The answers, many written in bold letters or underlined points, repeated similar themes: "I would like to have more flexibility to teach the lessons my students NEED"; and "Being denied changes in instruction to meet the needs of my students is unacceptable ... "

Marianne Jones, the parent critical of standardization, read the teacher questionnaires and wonders why administrators and School Board members didn't move more quickly to address the growing revolt.

"There's an absence of leadership right now," she said, noting the district is just beginning its search for a new superintendent. Karen Clark, the district's former finance director, is serving as acting superintendent.

Ironically, she said, had Riley still been here, the strike might have been averted. She said the forceful and charismatic leader "would have dealt with the problems and made it work."

Lynn Thompson: 206-464-8305 or lthompson@seattletimes.com