The Courage to Collaborate

Ken Futernick is an educational consultant to schools, school districts, and policy makers across the United States. He’s a member of a team supporting the California Labor-Management Initiative, which provides technical assistance to state and local school leaders who are pursuing labor-management collaboration.

Futernick began his career as an elementary teacher near Sacramento and, after earning his MA and PhD in education at the University of California, Berkeley, he worked at California State University, Sacramento, for twenty years. There, he taught courses in education and conducted research on teacher retention, educational policy, and preservice teacher training programs. He also served as chair of the Department of Teacher Education for three years.

In 2008, Futernick helped found and direct the School Turnaround Center at WestEd, a national nonprofit educational research and service organization based in San Francisco. He and his colleagues helped school leaders across the nation improve student outcomes by strengthening teaching and learning conditions and targeted professional development programs for teachers and administrators. He conducted research on labor-management collaboration, and he coauthored several publications on this subject, including a chapter he wrote with Adam Urbanski for the book The State Role in School Turnaround.

He lives with his wife, Joy, in the Sierra foothills of California. He can be reached at kenfuternick.org.