By Anthony Cody.

In December I published a post submitted by a group of teachers that had been working on a special project called the VIVA/NEA 360° writing collaborative. These teachers had been working on a report that was to offer a “new vision for accountability” for K12 education. Many of them were unhappy with the process that had unfolded, and what I heard from them reminded me of some experiences of my own in the past. There were 17 individuals involved, and all were offered the chance to share their individual points of view, and the posts that follow are from the six individuals who chose to write. Before we get to those posts, I want to share my own perspective.

If a singer happens to sing a tune out of key, nowadays there is a way to use technology to fix that. Their voice can be “auto-tuned,” electronically altered so that it is in key. Something similar is being done to make sure that teacher’s voices are brought into key, and sing the tune that is desired. The series of stories I am about to share will show how that hidden process works, so that we can get a bit closer to the authentic voices of the teachers behind the microphones.

Over the past decade a number of organizations have emerged that purport to provide teachers with platforms from which they might be heard. Education policy, it is well known, often suffers from the absence of the teacher, and these organizations claim that they are providing teachers with that precious “seat at the table.”

There are a number of groups that have issued such reports – and I have been involved with several myself. In 2007, I was invited to participate in a project called TeacherSolutions, a team of 18 teachers which produced a report entitled Performance Pay for Teachers, Designing a System that Students Deserve. The team was sharp and professional, and when we gathered to discuss our final draft, there was a lively discussion over whether our final recommendations should allow for the use of test scores in teacher pay. I argued quite strenuously against this. However, at a certain point, a person on staff with CTQ stepped in and said “there are certain things the funder requires.” The bottom line was our report had to include some sort of allowance for “student achievement” to be used as the basis for different levels of pay.

Thus I learned that authentic, unfiltered “teacher voice” is not always the ultimate objective in these reports. There is an agenda, a hidden script, certain notes and phrases that the funder wants in the final draft.

The stories that follow are a series of individual and collective epiphanies, described by teacher participants in a recent VIVA 360 project. This group was tasked with creating a “new vision for education accountability.” The National Education Association was the client for this report, and they started the process off by polling their members, and gathering feedback from 945 teachers from around the country. There were 17 teachers recruited to digest all this input and come up with the new vision the NEA desired.

Before we get to their story, though, let’s take a little time to learn what VIVA is all about. VIVA is a project sponsored by New Voice Strategies, which is a non-profit organization only a few years old.

Here is what NVS says they offer:

What We Provide to Our Partners

1) Meaningful insight into constituents like focus group, but at a fraction of the cost with exponentially less effort.

2) Unvarnished feedback about a potential policy change from the perspective of those most closely affected by it.

3) Specific, tactical recommendations for making the policy change. Our unique approach moves the typical online conversation to the next level by bringing passionate people together to overcome differences and solve problems.

4) A group of constituents and stakeholders who are motivated, empowered, trained and equipped to be your champions for change. Our Idea Exchange in an avenue to developing new leaders who have firsthand expertise.

New Voice Strategies was founded by a woman named Elizabeth Evans. In 2011 NVS got a grant from the Gates Foundation for $871,845, “to help build an online community of practice that will tap into the professional expertise of classroom teachers to increase their leadership, improve their classroom effectiveness and improve student outcomes.” In 2012, the organization received a $351,000 grant from the Walton Family Foundation (see page 106 here.) The organization became a nonprofit in 2013. That year the organization received a grant of $1.7 million from the Gates Foundation, “to support growth of VIVA Teachers and VIVA Idea Exchanges.”

I share these funding sources because they may help us understand what happened behind the scenes. And now, we are now going to hear the stories of seven teachers who participated in VIVA’s most recent “teacher voice” project. This is a rare look into the process at work, and it comes to us straight from the teachers themselves.

It will become clear that these teachers do not share a unified view of their experience – although they worked together, each of them experienced something different. They have different viewpoints on what unfolded, and the role of NVS/VIVA in the process. There has been no auto-tuning here, so each author has spoken her truth as she sees it.

Please read:

It’s Time to Speak Out: Comparing Reports, by Petra Schmid-Riggins

Using Our Teacher Voices: the Fight to Be Heard, by Amanda Koonlaba

Teachers Speak Out, Then Get Schooled, by Rachel Rich.

Let All Teachers’ Voices Be Heard, by Nancy Kunsman.

We Must Create Avenues for Authentic Teacher Voices to be Heard, by Enid Hutchinson.

The Process and the Report: What Went Wrong, by Joy Peters.