Advancing the Teaching Profession

Listen Closely: Working Conditions Matter in High-Needs Schools

I know I can sound like an iPod in repeat mode. I admit to an obsession about the connections between teacher effectiveness and the conditions under which teachers work. But somebody has to crank up the noise around this issue and play it again and again for the policymakers and pundits who are hard of hearing.

We will be releasing a CTQ paper soon that pinpoints these connections and describes how we can staff high-needs schools by providing dedicated teachers the supports they need to be effective.

Meanwhile a new study from Chicago, just released, adds more volume to what I hope will one day become a crescendo of concern about the relationship between working conditions and teacher turnover and effectiveness. The study, conducted by the Consortium on Chicago School Research, found that:

On average, teacher stability rates in Chicago are not substantially different than the rates seen nationally; about 80 percent of CPS teachers remain teaching in their school from one year to the next. This is only slightly lower than the national average of 84 percent.

However, these one-year stability rates hide a sobering statistic—within five years, the typical CPS school loses over half of its teachers. Many schools turn over half of their teaching staff every three years. A focus on one-year stability rates obscures the enormous challenge that exists for many schools as they implement school improvement initiatives and professional development programs, and as they try to sustain program continuity. (emphasis added)

About 100 schools, the CCSR researchers tell us, “suffer from chronically high rates of teacher turnover,” losing more than 25 percent of their teaching staff yearly.

Collaboration increases retention

We found in our own research that for teachers one of the most potent working conditions for teaching in high-needs schools is the collective experience of a small group of like-trained colleagues who work well together and pool their skills to effectively serve students. The Chicago research uncovered similar findings:

Schools that retain their teachers at high rates are those with a strong sense of collaboration among teachers and the principal. Teachers are likely to stay in schools where they view their colleagues as partners with them in the work of improving the whole school. They are likely to leave schools where colleagues are resistant to school-wide initiatives and where teachers’ efforts stop at their own classroom door. Teachers stay in schools with inclusive leadership, where they feel they have influence over their work environment and they trust their principal as an instructional leader.

Lead CCSR researcher Elaine Allensworth lamented the study’s findings in a Sun-Times interview: "I find (this) really disturbing; I just see no way they can improve if they can't maintain a stable work force.'' With high turnover, investments in professional development are wasted and the critical role of teacher leadership in advancing student achievement is undermined.

Could the link between working conditions and teacher success in high-needs schools be any plainer? How loud will the wake-up call need to be for policymakers and reformers to stop pressing the snooze button?

In the current ed policy environment, it seems that all teachers teaching in high-needs schools are assumed to be incompetent, and extrinsic punishments (e.g., demotions and firing) and rewards (merit pay) are needed to improve student achievement. The only way to hang on to this assumption, quite frankly, is to stay out of high-needs schools. Otherwise, you will encounter a significant number of skillful, committed teachers who are (depending on conditions) either making a difference for kids or struggling mightily against the odds until they exhaust themselves and move on. And that might get you to thinking. . . .

Where do the brightest dream of teaching?

In other nations whose students outperform ours on the same international tests often lauded by teacher critics in the U.S., teachers are treated with honor — not bashed by the media for failing to work hard enough. In Finland, one of the top-scoring nations, high-stakes testing and performance pay for teachers take a policy backseat.

As Timo Lankinen, the director general of the Finnish National Board of Education, noted recently, the key to student achievement is "how to maintain good working conditions in schools." In Finland and other nations with whom we compete, optimum working conditions are considered an essential prerequisite to recruiting and retaining talented individuals to teaching.

There are no short-cuts to teacher education either — and no tolerance for poorly run education schools. In Finland, investments are made in deeply preparing teachers who are then given “broad authority to shape lessons and use strategies they believe will help students meet (academic) standards.” Teachers are valued and their growing expertise is the cornerstone of reform. As a result, Lankinen says, in Finland “people dream to be teachers.” Not cannon fodder.

Brooklyn teacher Ariel Sacks, one of the new-millennium educators in our Teacher Leaders Network, has written that in high-needs schools too many teachers are viewed as “expendable.” She poignantly points to the fact that “if policy-makers care about the lives of all students in public schools, then they need to think about the lives of their teachers — and invest aggressively” in them.

In Finland, the best and the brightest seek out teaching as a principled and intellectually satisfying profession. So why not here?

Altered Perceptions of Evaluation and Tenure

In a recent Newsweek op-ed column, Jonathan Alter, one of our nation’s most respected journalists, blames the poor state of public education on teacher unions that use tenure to prevent administrators from “figuring out who can teach and who can't.”

Dan Brown, a Teacher Leaders Network member, takes Alter to task with a sharp rebuttal at The Huffington Post — calling on the columnist and other policy pundits to “stop scapegoating teachers and their right to have a collective voice, and to start stepping into living classrooms.” Dan, who teaches at a high-needs charter school in the District of Columbia, combines both research evidence and the grounded reality of everyday classroom practice to challenge Alter's tabloid-style opinion piece.

If Alter would like to begin preparing for a front-lines journalism adventure, he might add to his summer reading list the recent report on teacher evaluation and tenure from the Center for American Progress (CAP), an organization not known for treading lightly on ineffective teaching.

Writing for CAP, Joan Baratz-Snowden’s analysis points out the ills of the archaic tenure system. She also explains that under the protocols current in most school districts, teacher evaluation is the responsibility of administrators who are often not competent to assess teacher performance or to provide advice and support when teachers need to improve. In such circumstances, why should we be surprised when even our best teachers are reluctant to abandon tenure rights?

Snowden goes on to challenge the either-or thinking about teacher effectiveness (you’re great or you’re terrible) that so dominates education politics. This thumbs-up/thumbs-down outlook is ludicrous, of course, but it continues to be perpetuated by ill-informed observers of America’s teaching profession, including — I’m a bit surprised to learn — Jonathan Alter.

 Joan Snowden’s analysis is refreshing, and it’s encouraging to see the Center for American Progress beginning to take teacher professionalism seriously by calling for progressive evaluation and tenure systems that “reflect the complexity of teaching and learning.” The well-positioned DC think tank proposes assessments that draw on multiple data sources, not just standardized test scores. CAP and several other influential policy shops are also drawing overdue attention to research from the nation’s most respected measurement experts, explaining how and when standardized tests can be valid and reliable in assessing student learning and teacher effectiveness — and when they cannot.

Instead of pitting teachers against principals — or unions against school districts — the CAP report points out that “too often systems of evaluation and dismissal are imposed on teachers rather than developed with them.” That's a quote worthy of celebration by teacher leaders everywhere. Fireworks and flag-waving — and not just for the Fourth of July.

Paying attention to teacher working conditions

Fueled by our own research and the insights of educators in the CTQ-sponsored Teacher Leaders Network, we've been calling for any and all education enterprises that measure teacher and teaching effectiveness to pay attention to working conditions as well as student outcomes. There's a close relationship between the two. The new CAP report raises this same issue, stating that while it is “absolutely essential that teachers present evidence of student learning” to be tenured, any credible system of evaluation must also take into account evidence of the teaching and learning environment.

Snowden points out the accountability mechanism involved:

Effective teaching and learning is a product not only of individual behavior, effort, knowledge and skill, but also of the learning conditions where teaching and learning takes place. Requiring such information when considering promotion and dismissal provides incentives for school administrators to assure that necessary tools and conditions support teachers’ efforts to educate children.

This recent report from the Center for American Progress is a must read. Jonathan Alter should peruse it this summer, as he prepares to take Dan Brown’s advice and spend some actual reporting time in the institutions of which he writes. He might even visit Dan himself. Or some of the thousands of other quality-minded teachers in the greater DC metro area. We’d be happy to provide a contact list to get him started.

I’m guessing that if Alter does opt for a substantive school outing, his future writing on the teaching profession will pass muster. A little evidence can go a long way.

Three Bullets for EduWonk

Over at EduWonk, teacher-tenure and teacher-union bashing continues. Much needs to be changed about teacher tenure, but many policy pundits ignore (for whatever reason) that union leaders do not solely construct nor are they in charge of a school district’s employment contract. Every contract is  negotiated between administrators and unions.

With this in mind, the folks at EduWonk might want to ask some additional questions:

• Are ineffective teachers in DC (and elsewhere) not fired because of archaic tenure rules, or because of incompetent or ill-trained or overloaded administrators who do not have the skill or time to evaluate teachers effectively? And if it's some of both, how much of each?

• How many ineffective teachers teach poorly because they were ill-prepared in the first place (think lousy teacher education or short-cut alternative certification programs) or forced to teach out of field?

• How often do we give our best teachers the opportunity to assess their colleagues? Evidence suggests that in school districts with peer review programs, far more teachers are removed than in locales where only administrators are in charge of teacher evaluation.

Considering these questions and issues can get us out of the either-or thinking and impulsive action that so beset education politics and reform.

Getting Real About Teacher Experience and Its Effects on Student Achievement

The debates continue to rage over the merits of school districts recruiting younger, less experienced (and cheaper and potentially more compliant) teachers, versus those who are older, more experienced (and more expensive and empowered).

Policy pundits and journalists have few qualms about calling for any seasoned teaching veteran to be put out to pasture. They aren't really interested in whether the teacher is effective, ineffective or "we don't know." These pontificators, single-minded as donkeys, tend to rely on research showing that teacher experience beyond three years does not matter much for standardized test scores. However, their interpretation of the teacher-experience data sets is rather limited, perhaps reflecting more about their ideology than any substantive understanding about teaching and learning in complex school environments.

NYC blogger Aaron Pallas recently noted how researchers miss the mark on the experience issue by ignoring the difference between a teacher’s total years of experience versus how much time she has taught a particular grade or subject. Aaron shows how NYC’s teacher workforce is not as seasoned as one might think.

Our case study research into teacher working conditions (funded by the Ford Foundation) is helping surface even more nuanced issues around teaching experience and student achievement. For example, in the more high-achieving schools we are finding what matters most is the collective experience of relatively small teacher teams who have learned how to work together and embrace doing so.

As we consider and design research, we need to pay attention not only to an individual teacher’s aggregate years of experience but how groups of teachers have used their combined knowledge over time to change the working culture of their team (or department or grade level), share teaching expertise among themselves and with others, and connect more closely with their students and their families.

Meredith, my wife and a seasoned special education teacher with over 25 years of experience, has taught me a lot about this issue. For the past nine years she has learned a great deal from a close-knit group of teachers on her EC (exceptional children) team. After so many years of close collaboration, their individual expertise has been magnified in powerful ways. Don’t take my word for it. Look at the data. For the last several years, over 80 percent of their EC students have routinely met state standards on North Carolina’s End-of-Grade tests — compared to about 33 percent of EC students in their district and 21 percent statewide.

Other scholars are discovering how teachers' professional interactions within learning communities over time can best explain whether school reforms take hold. Policy pundits might have a different take on the role of teacher experience in improving student achievement if they:

(1) examined more than a simple R-squared from a simple-minded study;

(2) stepped out of their quiet, climate-controlled offices inside the Beltway; and

(3) looked carefully inside of America’s public schools where a wide range of teachers are working together to make a difference in the lives of students.

And I challenge any of the DC pundits to convince Meredith (or any other highly successful teacher) that teaching experience beyond three years does not matter for student achievement. They would receive a higher-order lesson in “get real.”

Photo: Teacher Meredith Berry with Walter and Henry, who have not yet attained pundit status.

Ending the Battles over Teaching

The Teacher Union vs. Teach for America debates are getting more and more tiresome — and seemingly not very productive. Over at the blogs of Mike Antonucci and Andy Rotherham (EduWonk) the teaching quality turf battles continue.

Maybe if we first clear a few things up, we can get closer to striking agreement.

Several studies have found that some highly selected entrants who receive most of their university training after they begin teaching in high-needs schools do as well or better than other teachers who teach in the same schools -- where those teachers are not highly selected or well-prepared themselves.

Researchers have noted, however, that highly selected new recruits (from routes such as Teach for America) are generally less effective when compared to fully prepared teachers until they themselves gain experience and certification. When they do show up as more effective, the results for students are typically not very significant (in educational, not just statistical terms).

The bottom line is that more than 80 percent of TFA recruits leave the classroom by the end of their third year. In other words, just as they are becoming more effective, they depart through a revolving door and make room for new and typically under-prepared teachers.

Andy Rotherham is on point when he says many administrators “clamor” for TFA recruits. They have few other alternatives. If they did have other promising options, the clamoring would die down.

I just returned from two very high-needs schools in Florida (in different school districts) and found that administrators there would much rather be able to recruit well-prepared teachers who know the kids in their school communities and would stick with their schools for at least 5-8 years (and hopefully longer). Administrators really want those teachers who know how to teach effectively to persist in their jobs.

And there’s more research to consider: Several new studies have found that entrants from strong teacher education programs both stay in teaching significantly longer and achieve greater student achievement gains than those of either alternative route entrants or weak traditional programs.  

One recent study points to the importance of substantive internship or residency experiences to ensuring later teacher effectiveness (as measured by value-added gains). Also check out the teacher education effects data in Louisiana where graduates of NE Louisiana-Monroe outperform other recruits, including those from TFA, the New Teacher Project and traditional graduates from the state's R1 institution – LSU. Like so much other research, this study found that there is more variation within different types of routes into teaching than among them.

One fact is certain: Poorly prepared teachers, from whatever source, who exit the profession quickly leave their students to be taught by the next round of novices who routinely replace them. In high-needs schools (where much of this quick-exiting takes place) those coming in are likely to be as ill-trained as those going out. Any program that produces this kind of result is inadequate to resolve the very real inequities in teaching quality that students in these schools suffer.

This does not mean that high-quality alternative certification should not be part of a long-term strategy to recruit and retain effective teachers for high-needs schools. Not at all. But it is time to cease the either-or debate over TFA versus traditional teacher education. It’s a policy cul-de-sac. It’s also time to stop defending the morass of teacher education and state licensing procedures and requirements that get in the way of recruiting and preparing the right mix of talented individuals to teaching. It’s indefensible.

Let’s move on to some fresh thinking, including rethinking teacher FTEs and how we organize teacher leadership in schools. Let’s consider restructuring so that high-minded but less prepared recruits (who may not stay very long in teaching) can work under the tutelage of experts who will.  At the Center for Teaching Quality we are working with TFA colleagues in North Carolina to see if we can make this happen.

See my recent Education Week commentary for more of my thoughts about how we can end the battles over teaching.

Growing NBCTs in High Needs Schools

While shortages of qualified and effective teachers persist in high-needs schools, there is no shortage of rhetoric about the proper remedy.

It’s a rare week when a think tank or research center does not produce a report on what ails the teaching profession. For example just recently, the Center for American Progress released two reports — one on attracting and retaining effective teachers for high needs schools and the other on pay for performance programs as a primary tool to do so. Both reports from the influential think tank are informative, but like many others before them, they do not address a number of critical issues. One very important missing piece: quality teacher preparation and good working conditions are critical in supplying effective, stick-with-it teachers to high needs schools. Another missing element in the discussion: The important role of growing expertise from within.

Our own research at the Center for Teaching Quality has taught us how powerful the certification process can be as a strategy in developing successful teachers in high-needs schools. We have also learned from National Board Certified Teachers, who describe the huge payoffs that come when teams of teachers sitting for the National Boards use their intensified focus on high standards to consider many teacher effectiveness issues that policy pundits overlook or do not fully understand.

One of the best examples can be found in a crime-riddled, impoverished neighborhood in Phoenix, Arizona, where 20 of Mitchell Elementary School’s 34 teachers are either National Board Certified or in the process of earning the performance-based credential. Mitchell serves a community where less than 25 percent of the adults have a high school education. Over 50 percent of the students are second language learners; 96 percent are on free/reduced lunch, and 96 percent are Latino. The school was once in NCLB corrective action. Now Mitchell meets all its AYP goals each year.

The district did not recruit expert teachers to high needs school; they grew them from within. In addition, most of their home-grown NBCTs have roots in the community. Most are minorities, like the students they teach.

Most importantly, Mitchell teachers claim the process has transformed their teaching and given them newfound opportunities to take more control over their professional development. With support from the Arizona K-12 Center and its director, Kathy Wiebke, teachers are using the National Board process to better understand their teaching and how it directly impacts student achievement — as a collective. In particular, together these teachers are learning more about how to teach students with special needs and work more closely with parents.

As the district’s associate superintendent, Suzanne Zentner, noted, “We believe in the NBC process" as an “alternative approach to improving student performance” and closing the achievement gaps.  Teacher turnover is no problem at Mitchell Elementary School in inner-city Phoenix.

We all agree that we must pursue fresh approaches to recruiting and retaining effective teachers for high needs schools. The strategy of growing NBCTs from within is showing promising results where it has been tried. It's the best of all worlds -- combining rigorous professional standards, teacher collaboration, and bottom-up leadership. We need to give this promising strategy every chance to succeed.

How Teacher Education (and Master’s Degrees) Make a Difference for Student Achievement

 I must say I am little weary of policy pundits who say that schools of education and master’s degree programs make no difference in the lives of teachers and the students they serve. Certainly there are some that do not. As Linda Darling-Hammond said in a recent interview, “probably a quarter of the teacher-education enterprise” is of very high quality. Other programs are “pretty good,” she said, “but they could be a lot better if there were incentives and supports to get them there. And there are some that need to be put out of business.”

One of the high quality programs is at the University of Florida — where a group of teacher educators, non-profit leaders, and children’s advocates have created a Ready Schools Strategy that connects teacher preparation and professional development with health and social services in Florida’s high-needs school communities.

Last week I was fortunate to work with Don Pemberton of the UF Lastinger Center for Learning, Dave Lawrence and Ana Sejeck of the Early Childhood Initiative Foundation, and Dorene Ross of the College of Education as well as several terrific teachers. During my visit I learned a great deal about their Teacher Leadership and School Improvement Initiative in Miami-Dade and its powerful impact on Redondo Elementary, located in Homestead, Florida. Redondo serves a beautiful multi-ethnic group of Pre-K through third grade students (of which almost 50 percent are English Language Learners and over 90 percent receive free or reduced price meals).

Let’s start with what matters for the kids: In 2005 less than 50% of the Redondo’s students were proficient in reading or math. Since the launch of the Ready Schools Strategy, including a specialized master’s program for a core group of teachers, the student achievement has escalated. In 2008, over 67% of the school’s third graders were proficient in reading; over 92% in math. Rene Baly, the school’s principal, credits hard-working teachers who have learned to teach differently. He also credits working conditions, which give teachers more time to learn from each other and to work closely with health care, social work, and community outreach professionals who help connect the work of teaching to the lives of students and their families.

The school’s health practitioners see 60 students a week – treating a variety of illnesses and eye and ear problems – to ensure students are ready to learn as well as feel safe and loved. Family engagement efforts bring the school to the neighborhood, but also offer tailored training in English and parenting skills to the mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles of Redondo’s children. On a weekly basis at least 25 of the school’s parents attend sessions.

Teacher preparation and support are critical components as well. Don Pemberton’s vision and entrepreneurial skills have brought a fully-paid, job-embedded advanced degree program to the school’s teachers. The UF education school has orchestrated a set of research-focused learning experiences that cultivate new teacher skills related to differentiated instruction, data driven decision-making, culturally responsive teaching, classroom management, and leadership — while giving individual teachers opportunities to specialize in literacy or second language learners. What's most striking is that the education school program is highly adaptive. It's equally helpful to a recently minted novice who had little training in how to teach in a high needs school; an alternative certification recruit who knows her content but has few pedagogical skills that enable her to teach it to diverse learners; or a veteran teacher who needs to develop new research-based skills in literacy and assessment.

During my visit I met several outstanding teachers. They were not graduates of elite colleges or individuals enticed with bonuses and performance pay to teach in high needs schools. Instead, most were from the community and represent a new vision for “growing your own” effective teachers for challenging schools. In return for being able to earn a “no-cost” master’s degree, the teachers agree to teach at Redondo for at least 5 years.

Zolia Esteve, an 11-year veteran, says that as a result of the program she is now much more effective at teaching reading. She described a second grader “Julia” who was reading less than 20 words a minute now being able to not just read but comprehend 120 words a minute. She also has the “confidence to challenge” the administration on how to better deliver services to students. Principal Rene Baly is grateful for Esteve's newly developed leadership skills and the new ideas she brings to table.

I also met Melissa LaRosa, a finalist for Reading Coach of the Year in Florida, who spends countless hours team teaching and providing support and advice to her colleagues, who view her as a “teacher’s teacher.” For Melissa, who proudly wore her Edugator t-shirt during our visit, the University of Florida master’s degree program and its focused inquiry approach made her a better coach, providing her much needed skills in using data and understanding why students were learning or not.

Finally, I was proud to meet Cathleen Caves, another teacher in the program, who actually went to Redondo when she was in elementary school. She began her career as a teaching assistant and is now one of the school’s experts in the use of a variety of formative assessments to drive instruction. Cathleen told me that the UF graduate program "is fantastic.” Pointing to Zolia and Melissa, who were in room with us, she added: “We are more like a family than ever before.” Perhaps most importantly, she asserted, “With my salary I sure could not pay for this degree myself — and now I want to teach here for my whole career.”

The Teacher Leadership and School Improvement Initiative has just graduated its first class. Next year the University of Florida expects to serve 400 graduate students (pending funding). Don Pemberton, at the helm of Lastinger Center's Ready Schools master teacher strategy, envisions preparing and supporting – and networking – 10,000 Florida educators who are all dedicated to teaching effectively in high needs schools.

Smart teacher preparation and support may just be the solution we've been searching for to end the current maldistribution of effective teachers. If so, the University of Florida is blazing a trail that other education schools and master’s degree programs can follow if they really want to make a difference.

Peer Assistance and Review: Challenging Conventional Wisdom About Teacher Evaluation

Susan Moore Johnson and her Next Generation of Teachers Project (NGT) colleagues have just launched an impressive array of evidence and resources for policymakers and practitioners to use in rethinking conventional wisdom about teacher evaluation. Dr. Johnson’s website on peer assistance and review (PAR) — a district-union collaborative where expert teachers assist their colleagues, assess them, and can make recommendations for dismissal — offers compelling facts, carefully crafted research papers, and practical tools.

No doubt teacher evaluation is a problem — one that has been well documented for generations. At the risk of some overgeneralization, most evaluation systems are comprised by perfunctory classroom visits performed by overburdened and/or ill-trained principals who generate little relevant feedback for the struggling teacher or opportunities to identify and spread the skills of the expert one.

Researchers have documented that fewer than 1% of all teachers are terminated through a formal dismissal process. As a result, policy analysts are given fodder to point their fingers at the unions, whom they claim, protect their less than competent members through ironclad collective bargaining deals that easily hand out teacher tenure and make it almost impossible to fire incompetent educators. For example, Mike Podgursky (who is a college professor with tenure at his university) often calls for teacher tenure laws to be rescinded and for building principals to be given the sole authority to hire and fire teachers with ease. State tenure laws – designed to protect teachers from administrative abuses and support academic freedom — may in fact be very outdated, but the NGT researchers have documented that principals rarely dismiss even (non-tenured) novice teachers with temporary contracts. 

Other researchers, including Jennifer Goldstein, have recently shown how “peer assistance and review results in dismissal rates significantly higher than those stemming from traditional teacher evaluation by a principal (while also supporting the retention of strong beginning teachers).” This is no surprise to me — the best teachers are going to be better at documenting their colleague’s strengths and weaknesses.

Although PAR can be expensive (approximately $4000-7000 per teacher), in a recent NGT report on the costs and benefits of PAR, the Montgomery County, MD, Superintendent called the approach “priceless.” While school district HR directors often lament the cost of firing a tenured teacher, the NGT researchers show how PAR “limits the legal expenses associated with dismissing tenured teachers.” PAR programs have not been implemented widely, but they offer a way to transcend the rancorous debates over tenure and implement a rigorous evaluation system that makes sense for retaining the teachers that students deserve.

Washington Post To Replace Veteran Journalist Jay Mathews?

Last week (April 27th) veteran journalist Jay Mathews of the Washington Post concluded — despite compelling counterfactuals from research studies — that our nation’s highest need public schools “need (youthful) energy more than experience” in their teaching ranks. In discounting a very thoughtful analysis of how untested teachers negatively impact low performing schools (also reported in the Post), Mr. Mathews’ online article ignores a host of research evidence and good old-fashioned logic.

I wonder now whether the editors of the Washington Post will replace Mr. Mathews — one of the nation’s most respected and seasoned education journalists — with a young whippersnapper right out of college. If the Post editors follow Mr. Mathews' thinking, we'll all have to say goodbye to "Jay's take" — and disagree though we may, I'd venture to say that Post readers would be worse for it.

But let’s get real: Contrary to what is portrayed in the popular media, preparation for teaching actually does matter for teacher retention and student achievement. While current teacher education and licensing standards leave a lot to be desired (and need a good overhaul), teachers with preparation and those who successfully complete an internship before they begin teaching are more effective and more likely to stay in teaching.

In fact, researchers have found a strong relationship between preparation and teacher retention. Richard Ingersoll and Tom Smith, for example, found that the more teachers learned about teaching in their pre-service training programs, the longer their student teaching lasted. And the more comprehensive their support was during the induction years, the longer these teachers stayed in teaching (Ingersoll & Kralik, 2004). Others have found that teachers’ academic ability and commitment to teaching in high needs schools are insufficient — confirming that knowing how to teach is also a critical predictor for effective teaching (Monk, 1994 & Wenglinsky, 2000 and 2002).

More recently, a New York City study found that first-year teachers who produced higher student achievement gains graduated from education programs with tightly supervised student teaching experiences aligned with their initial teaching assignment (Boyd, et. al., 2008). In reality there is a plethora of research proving that short-cut training programs “add to the revolving door of ill-prepared individuals who cycle through the classrooms of disadvantaged schools, wasting district resources and valuable learning time for their students” (Darling-Hammond & Sykes, 2003).

Effective veteran teachers, like my special education teaching wife, could tell Mr. Mathews that experience (coupled with smarts and training) counts when it comes to managing classrooms, as well as working with parents and families and the many social service agencies and community organizations needed to serve students well. As her work with the Project on the Next Generation of Teachers, Harvard University professor Susan Moore Johnson has noted that "teachers with no training had a 335 percent higher hazard [attrition] rate than those with preparation." Johnson and her colleagues have “document[ed] the stress that teachers experience when they are unprepared for the subjects they are assigned to teach” and their “struggles” to prepare lessons that can inform, engage, and empower their own students (Johnson, et. al., 2005).

Teaching experience also counts when it comes to helping all the novice teachers who desperately need help to survive teaching in high needs schools. Contrary to Mr. Mathews’ claims, what high needs schools require is a thoughtful calculation of well-trained experienced teachers with the energy and zeal of more youthful ones.  Hopefully, before the Post replaces him with an energetic 23-year-old, Mr. Mathews will take a harder look at the facts.

References

Boyd, D., Grossman, P., Lankford, H., Loeb, S. and Wyckoff, J. (2008). Teacher preparation and student achievement. Albany: Teacher Policy Research, SUNY-Albany.

Darling-Hammond, L.. and Sykes, G.. (2003, September 17). Wanted: A national teacher supply policy for education: The right way to meet the "Highly Qualified Teacher" challenge?. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 11(33). Retrieved [Date] from http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v11n33/.

Ingersoll, R, M. & Kralik, J.M. (2004). The impact of mentoring on teacher retention: What the research says. Denver: Education Commission of the States, pp. 1–23; Ingersoll, R. M. & Smith, T.M. (2004). Do teacher induction and mentoring matter? NASSP Bulletin, 88, (638), pp. 28–40.

Johnson, S.M., Berg, J.H., Donaldson, M.L. (2005) Who stays in teaching and why: A review of the literature on teacher retention. Boston: Harvard Graduate School of Education: The Project on the Next Generation of Teachers. Retrieved April 1, 2009 from http://assets.aarp.org/www.aarp.org_/articles/NRTA/Harvard_report.pdf

Monk, D. (1994). Subject area preparation of secondary mathematics and science teachers and student achievement. Economics of Education Review, 12(2), 125-142;  Wenglinsky, H. (2000). How teaching matters: Bringing the classroom back into discussions of teacher quality. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service; Wenglinsky, H. (2002). How schools matter: The link between teacher classroom practices and student academic performance. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 10(12); retrieved from http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v10n12/.

Beyond the Hype: Asking Better Questions About Teacher Preparation

Be sure to check out Dan Brown’s latest Huffington Post essay on the considerable publicity of Teach for America and the misunderstanding of the human capital challenges facing our nation’s highest-need schools. Dan, an excellent young teacher in a DC charter school, offers up key facts typically ignored by policy pundits and journalists in their ongoing analysis of the teaching profession and all its ills. Even bright college graduates need the right kind of training and support to be effective — and need to stay in teaching for longer than two years to make a meaningful difference.

Dan, a former NY Teaching Fellow and author of The Great Expectations School, describes in his must-read book how his lack of preparation left him unable to meet the needs of the students he served. Researchers like Richard Ingersoll, who does not have a dog in this ideological fight, have documented carefully that poorly prepared teachers (from whatever source) who exit the profession quickly leave their students to be taught by the next round of ill-trained novices who routinely replace them. A recent investigation has shown that “schools with high teacher turnover rates have difficulty planning and implementing a coherent curriculum and sustaining positive working relationships among teachers.”¹ Other studies have found that entrants from strong teacher education programs both stay in teaching significantly longer and achieve stronger student achievement gains that those of either alternative route entrants or weak traditional programs.²

TFA has developed a masterful teacher recruitment strategy and created a potentially powerful mechanism to replenish the teaching profession with bright young minds eager to make a difference. But what if TFA worked to support a cadre of its Corps members to develop their teaching talents in a “residency” program (which I have written about at length), with incentives and supports to remain in teaching for five years? What if TFAers worked under the tutelage of seasoned experts — ensuring that all students have access to a stable team of teachers, organized and supported to maximize their collective skills and energy? What if we got out of the either-or rhetoric that so dominates the teaching quality debates of late and moved to some and/both thinking and action? We need to be thinking about what will make teaching a career that TFAers want to stay in. Keep an eye out for more from Teacher Leaders Network on this front — as Dan (a new member) and other Gen Y and X teachers join us in finding fresh solutions to the vexing problem of ensuring a qualified and effective teacher for every child. If we are willing to ask the questions differently, we might find some innovative answers that actually work.

1 Guin, K. (2004, August 16). Chronic teacher turnover in urban elementary schools. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 12(42). Retrieved April 23 from http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v12n42/.

2 Boyd, D., Grossman, P., Lankford, H., Loeb, S., & Wyckoff, J. (September 2008). Teacher preparation and student achievement. NBER Working Paper No. W14314. National Bureau of Economic Research. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1264576.

The Strategic Mismanagement of Human Capital

I am off to meet with some very thoughtful educators, policymakers, and business leaders in Colorado this morning to assist the state in its efforts to strategically manage human capital for its public schools.  Conventional wisdom is that the path to teaching quality is best taken by recruiting more talented individuals to the profession and paying them for performance goals. Worthy goals — for sure. But if you have not paid much attention to ongoing efforts to better understand the role of working conditions in strategically managing human capital, it is time to do so. If you believe working conditions do not matter, take a look at this description by a well-prepared newbie in Dallas — suggesting that school districts seem to be in the business of mismanaging human capital. In this district, this new teacher was misassigned to teach the wrong classes, had to work out of four portables, was required to attend mandated professional development that ran counter to research-based teaching practices learned in teacher education, and was given no access to the internet to use the system’s computerized attendance and grading program, and more.  I wonder how long this teacher will make it.

KIPP & Teacher Unions: A Growing Need for A Collective Voice from Those in the Classrooms

Alexander Russo’s recent blog points to the growing unionization of teachers at KIPP (and other charter) schools. The issue is not just pay and the typical working conditions — class size and the like.  As noted in the Chicago Catalyst story, “more than anything, (teachers) want a formal way to influence how schools are managed, from professional development decisions to curricular choices.” As a recent report from Ed Sector surfaced, since 2003 newcomers to teaching have come to believe even more so that their unions are “absolutely essential.” Why? Administrative fiats and policy mandates  often are built without knowledge of what works in the classroom — where teachers teach and students learn.  I guess there is something to teachers having influence on their professional lives and the students and families they serve.  Advocacy for teacher leadership and a collective voice for classroom experts may be the best path for closing the achievement gap.

Fix the Boat and Race to the Top

Today’s Education Week commentary by Linda Darling-Hammond and David Haselkorn points clearly to how American policymakers are missing the boat when it comes to teaching quality. Instead of relying on false dichotomies (traditional versus alternative certification) and poorly designed studies,  Ms. Darling-Hammond and Mr. Haselkorn note, “The answer is not to jettison teacher preparation, but to transform it, applying lessons from both traditional and alternative programs in new syntheses that substantially increase teachers' knowledge and skills.”

Policymakers can be distracted by misinterpreting empirical studies — like the recent Mathematic teacher education investigation  — which can come with missing context and overstated findings.

The recent McKinsey report on teacher quality pointed to Singapore and Finland, where they invest in the right kind of teacher education and professional development as well as performance pay. It is time to stop debating the merits of traditional teacher education (with its disconnected content and pedagogical courses, and weak student teaching) versus alternative certification (with its short-cut training regime that gives recruits few opportunities to learn on the job or develop adaptive teaching strategies to meet the needs of diverse students). As Darling-Hammond notes, “We must move beyond studying whether one weak approach to teacher training is no worse than another and focus on significantly increasing teacher capacity and effectiveness. Instead of tinkering at the margins, it’s time to fix the boat.”  

Getting Beyond the Ripe Rhetoric

Dan Brown’s recent piece on the HP is a must read. Dan, an excellent charter school teacher (and author of  The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle), has penned an insightful retort to Nicholas Kristof's “effusive essay” on DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and her vilification of teacher unions along the road to reform.

Dan’s essay raises several questions: Just how many terrible teachers are there who need to be removed immediately? Will test scores serve as the single arbiter of who is and is not an effective teacher? If principals are going to be the ultimate judge of who teaches, then are they ready for the task and do they know how to make sound personnel decisions? (Remember Rhee has fired one-third of the district’s principals. Are the ones she replaced them with any better? How do we know?)

You get my point — and Dan’s as well. The issue of improving teaching and learning is a bit more complicated than Mr. Kristof’s portrayal suggests.

Reformers might start with identifying the best teachers — using a mix of measures such as peer review, student work samples, contributions to school-community partnerships, test scores, National Board Certification. Then they need to give these successful teachers more opportunities to prepare and induct the next generation of teachers — and help design the teaching policy reforms we so desperately need. 

Top-down solutions to the problems facing the teaching profession have not worked for 150 years. No doubt, unions have to change – and a lot. But so do many of our school administrators. Dan is not a member of any teachers' union — nor was I when I taught. Journalists should take note and try to see  through the ripe rhetoric. Dan gets it just right in his headline: "Teachers are the keys, not the roadblocks to reforming schools."

Flawed Research on Teacher Education and How Teachers Need to Be Educated

In an earlier post I was pretty hard on Mathematica – whose flawed research on effects of so-called traditional and alternative teacher education inform policymakers and practitioners of little if anything on what to do to improve the education of teachers. Now Jennifer Jennings (of EduWonkette fame) and Sean Corcoran of NYU offer a much deeper, scholarly analysis, rebuking Mathematica’s claims that there was “no benefit ... but ... no evidence of harm, either” to student achievement from “placing an alternative certification teacher in the classroom when the alternative was a traditionally certified teacher.”  Jennings and Corcoran pointed to the fact that the Mathematica study failed to “distinguish the treatments” and drew upon primarily K-2 teachers (and thus is not generalizeable to a larger group of either alternatively- or traditionally-prepared teachers). They pointed to several instances where the Mathematica researchers “minimized results” when the actual data showed that alternatively-prepared teachers’ students performed more poorly. The Jennings/Corcoran examination is a must read for anyone serious about improving teacher education.

However, I have been making the argument that it is past time to transcend this worthless debate over teacher education — alternative or traditional.  It is not a case of “either-or;” it is a case how do teachers need to be prepared for the 21st century.

Yesterday’s New York Times piece on education and the “assimilation” of the dramatic rise in English Language Learners could not make a more powerful case. The poignant piece, penned by Ginger Thompson, describes how schools —yes, even those in suburban Virginia — are struggling to both properly educate and integrate a new class of immigrants to America. Teachers are just not prepared to do more than help these students, with big ambitions of fulfilling the American dream, to pass the state test.  Well-meaning and dedicated teachers just do not have the tools to get beyond helping their ELL students learn the “sound bites” that can connect them to the answers on the state’s high stakes standardized tests.

Among many powerful points, Thompson paints a teaching corps that does not have the “cultural knowledge” to teach English Language Learners effectively and schools that are not designed to assimilate them with other students. Good teacher education can do both.

Performance Pay and Using Test Scores to Assess Teachers: So What Did the President Mean?

Yesterday’s speech by President Obama on education (and the teaching profession) was important. He pointed out even more clearly the need to advance performance pay, use data to track student progress (like in Long Beach, California), and take a hard look at charter schools (closing those that do not work and are bilking the taxpayers). The policy pundits at EduWonk suggest that teacher unions are “scrambling” because when the President said, “Good teachers will be rewarded with more money for improved student achievement,” he meant using test scores to judge teachers.

Outcome data must be used in any performance pay system worth its salt — but I am certain President Obama and the terrific team he is putting together know full well that current standardized tests cannot be the sole metric in judging which teachers add value and should be paid more. The reasons are legion — but tops on the list are the factors that only 30% of our nation’s teachers can have a standardized test ascribed to them, the current tests address so little of the 21st century skills the President is touting, and value-added estimates are not stable enough to be used as a sole arbiter of who is an effective teacher. This is the conclusion of many labor economists — including one who is a good friend of mine who is reporting that value-added estimates of teacher effects tallies just a mere .3 correlation from one year to the next. Not so good if one is to make a valid, high stakes decision.

So why does the question of whether test scores are to be used in P4P plans have to be yes or no? Why not — in Obama-like fashion — advance both ideas? Why not ask teachers, who cannot be judged solely according to test scores, to use the data in explaining why their students are doing better or not? Why not ask teachers, like they are doing successfully in Denver and Austin, to assemble other valid data on the effects of their efforts to raise student achievement? Why not ask teachers to design new 21st century assessments, as a part of a new P4P plan, and use the data to inform a more robust accountability system? Why not ask our best teachers (like our TeacherSolutions team or the Kansas team sponsored by the Kauffmann Foundation) to design the pay for performance systems that students deserve — and get beyond the either-or thinking and action of the past.

Indeed, the President himself has articulated his vision for the future of education by calling for higher quality tests that can tell us more about the knowledge and skills our students are learning and the system (not just the teachers) that enables them to do so.

The Right Stuff for 21st Century Teaching

The debate over 21st-century skills seems, unfortunately, to rest on century-old thinking. Ed Week reported recently on the “flak” over whether schools should focus on the  “soft skills” of creativity, collaboration, and communication  — as called for by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills — or more on the procedural skills of reading and math — as called for by reform groups such as Education Trust, Fordham Foundation, and the National Center for Teacher Quality.

What seems to be left out of the debate is that if schools are to produce more academically able  students, then teachers need to be prepared and supported to help students develop ALL of the skills they will need for successful lives in a world that is being transformed by digital technologies and connectivity.

We are learning a great deal from our teacher colleagues who participate in the Teacher Leaders Network and our TeacherSolutions 2030 team. Among other skills, 21st century teachers need to be prepared to connect subject matter for their students while also serving as coaches and information mavens for the “Googled Learner” who will increasingly need to be able to collaborate and produce in networked virtual environments.

The new generation of teachers must have more pedagogical preparation, not less, but focused on the right stuff -- like teaching second language learners or using varied student learning data to drive instruction. To teach effectively, teachers will also need the right kind of working conditions — that give them time to learn from their expert colleagues and participate in a wide array of school-community partnerships needed to serve diverse students and their families. 

However, too many so-called reformers, according to Deborah Meier, treat teachers — especially experienced ones — as the “main stumbling block.” Until these “reformers” cease vilifying teachers as the problem — and draw upon them to find unique solutions — efforts to improve students’ thinking and basic skills only will advance student achievement incrementally

MetLife: 25 Years of Listening to America’s Teachers

Since 1984, MetLife has listened to America’s teachers. Its most recent national survey, released last week, celebrates the 25th anniversary of a unique endeavor to open a window for policymakers into the minds and daily professional lives of K12 educators.

The latest MetLife report captures and compares teacher perspectives from 1983 through 2008 as it considers the future of the teaching profession. The findings suggest that teachers are more satisfied today with their careers and their relationships with parents and students, and they are generally supportive of education’s increased focus on academic standards.

The vast majority (67%) believe that their teacher education programs have prepared them for the challenges they face, up from 46% in 1984. Principals agree. The majority of school leaders report that the quality of new teachers entering the profession is “stronger” than before. Today’s teachers are far more likely to advise their students to pursue teaching as a career than their counterparts of yesterday. This is very good news.

These findings by the respected Harris Interactive organization challenge the conventional wisdom that teachers are ill-prepared and cynical about their jobs. But the surveys also surface a number of problems that beset today’s teachers -- greater concerns about the misuse of standardized tests, lack of support in teaching students with special needs and English Language Learners, and the paucity of opportunities to access the deep and continuing support needed to use technology to advance 21st century learning.

A close look also reveals that urban teachers are far less positive about their teaching experience. As the Executive Summary highlights: “Teachers and principals tend to rate urban schools significantly lower on school quality, and teachers and principals in schools with a high proportion of minority students give significantly lower ratings on academic standards, curriculum, and student preparation.”  

This valuable annual survey is only one example of the many efforts that MetLife is making to bring the insights of teachers to light. CTQ is proud to be working with MetLife Foundation as the sponsor of our TeacherSolutions 2030 initiative, which is engaging 12 expert teachers in a study of the evolution of their profession, with an eye toward what must happen to make teaching an important and vibrant career in the next decades to come.

Over the next year, MetLife’s support will allow us to publish these successful teachers' insights into how to build new assessments for 21st century teaching, learning, and accountability – and how to create new leadership opportunities that will attract and retain well-prepared and talented teachers for all schools, urban, suburban, and rural alike.

I have no doubt that teaching has a bright future -- if policymakers listen to teachers. Thanks to MetLife for asking.

More on Mathematica and the Merits of Teacher Education: Another Study Bites the Dust

Okay – here is another must read for those who are willing to raise questions about the research that's out there on the effectiveness of teacher education.

Check out the illuminating post by Aaron Pallas, who takes apart, piece-by-piece, the relevancy of the recent Mathematica study on the merits of traditional (university-based) versus alternative (short-cut) teacher preparation. If my own posts did not convince you of Mathematica’s methodological flaws and the overstated conclusions, Aaron’s will. 

With eloquence, Aaron relegates the $9 million investigation as "precise, but irrelevant."  Among a number of salient issues, he points out that because “the alternatively-certified teachers and traditionally-certified teachers in the study were not necessarily representative of graduates of the programs they attended,” the study is much ado about nothing. Another empirical--and expensive--effort to settle the teacher preparation debate bites the dust.

Pay for Performance: Old Thinking Thinks Anew

Am I dreaming? Does Jay Greene now believe that standardized test scores (and value-added analyses) alone cannot be used to judge teachers? Maybe so. Reading his blog, I am struck that Mr. Greene -- a long-time proponent of most-everything-rests-on-test-scores in educational accountability, including how to identify and reward effective classroom teaching -- may be doing a “180.” (Even the folks at Education Sector appear to be moving their thinking.)

Mr. Greene picks up on writer Michael Lewis's description of basketball player Shane Battier. In his New York Times Magazine piece, Mr. Lewis notes that Battier, one of my Duke basketball-crazed wife’s all-time favorites, may not have NBA all-star stats, but when he plays, “his teammates get better, often a lot better, and his opponents get worse — often a lot worse.” Battier “may not grab huge numbers of rebounds, but he has an uncanny ability to improve his teammates’ rebounding….(and while) he doesn’t shoot much, when he does, he takes only the most efficient shots.” Lewis's analysis seems to have hit the bottom of the net for the policy wonks of education. At least the sports-minded ones.
 
Mr. Greene notes that “as we move into the era of value-added analysis for teacher merit pay,” the Lewis piece “provides much food for thought,” and teacher rewards “should not just be based on individual learning gains.” Schools, according to Greene, are “more complex social organizations than basketball teams, so education sabrematicians have a great (deal) of work ahead of them.”  To find out more about how to pay teacher leaders for highly valued, but not necessarily statistically defined performances, Mr. Greene could return to the framework defined by our TeacherSolutions team, who, collectively, have designed a strategy to reward both the Kobe Bryants and Shane Battiers of the teaching profession  -- and find ways to pay more for those teachers who help others get better.

More Evaluation of Mathematica's AC/TC Evaluation

So I have been digging deeper into the recent Mathematica study, "An evaluation of teachers trained through different routes to certification.” In a February 11th post, I pointed out several problems with the study -- which looks at how students of alternative (AC) and traditionally certified (TC) teachers fare academically -- based on their standardized test scores. By assembling findings on the pre- and post-tests that are found in different tables in the report, it appears that the students of AC teachers actually lost ground in most cases while those of TC teachers generally gained -- but only slightly. Frankly, these results would indicate that neither preparation path is very good. Ok. But if you look even more carefully into the study details, you find that the researchers did not calculate measured gain scores for the AC and TC teachers. Instead they looked at whether or not there were statistically significant differences in adjusted post-test scores -- not such a kosher approach if you are looking for meaningful effects.

In addition, the study examined 87 AC teachers, who were in programs that require “low” or “high” amounts of coursework, and compared their effects with the TC teachers. I wonder what the researchers may have found if they actually looked at the content of the coursework the AC and TC teachers took -- not just what was listed in the syllabus. Unfortunately, the researchers drew on the formal description of the programs and the amount of coursework required for certification, not the quality or approach to content the teachers ACTUALLY experienced through the coursework. It seems, for the study's hefty $9 million price tag, the Mathematica team could have addressed these issues, and in doing so, improve our understanding of the effects of teacher education. I wonder why they did not.

Missing the Point on How to Improve Teacher Recruitment and Preparation

Education Week highlighted a just-released study by Mathematica Policy Research, summarizing the report’s findings that student test scores are “unaffected” by whether or not teachers matriculated through university-based traditional (TC) or more short-cut alternative (AC) certification routes. The study’s lead researcher, Jill Constantine, concluded “when students are placed with teachers with alternative routes versus traditional routes [for certification], there’s no harm in terms of student achievement.”  

This is a curious headline: Granted, the study found lots of “no effects” — but the study press release did note that “students of alternatively certified teachers who were taking coursework while teaching scored lower in math than students of their traditionally certified counterparts.”  This may suggest that learning on the job may have its drawbacks. On the other hand, buried in one of the appendices I found that AC candidates, compared to their TC counterparts, were more likely to have a mentor to help them learn to teach on the job — making a mess of trying to compare which approach is better than the other.

In addition, the researchers compare student achievement results from AC and TC teachers who have several years of teaching experience under their belts. However, because AC teachers have much higher attrition in their initial years on the job than TC novices — the researchers may have inadvertently excluded the weakest AC teachers from their sample (more complications).

Also, the researchers compare AC and TC teachers from the same schools. However, AC teachers tend to teach in schools with lesser prepared and qualified colleagues — even ones those who are more traditionally certified. The "same school" design can create a "no effects" finding.

I wonder what the researchers would have discovered if they studied high quality TC programs like those at Stanford, UCLA, Bank Street, and University of Virginia or high quality AC programs like those at the Boston Teacher Residency or the Academy for Urban School Leadership — and compared them to the typical TC and AC programs in their samples.

I wonder what the researchers would have discovered if they had used more than one-year’s worth of student achievement results as measured by one standardized test.

The question should not be whether AC or TC is better — but what do teachers need to learn before they begin to teach — and how they can continue to learn as they develop as expert teachers. No Child Left Behind, flawed as it is, did raise the expectations for students’ preparation to enter the world of work. It’s time for us to raise the expectations for teachers’ preparation to enter the work of teaching. We need to do more than conclude that one teacher recruitment and preparation approach or another will do “no harm” to students. Our students expect better from us, as they should.

And BTW, the study cost $9 million. We could recruit and support a large number of well-prepared teachers with that kind of cash.   

How and Why Teacher Preparation Makes a Difference

At the annual meeting of the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE) this weekend, researchers Jim Wyckoff (who specializes in labor economics) and Pam Grossman (who specializes in teacher learning) presented more findings from their “pathways” project. The project combines a wide range of data on who enters teaching and from what route (university, Teach for America, emergency credentialing, etc.) — and where they teach and how good they are.

The research is still in its “infancy,” and the researchers offer a wide number of caveats. However, they presented compelling insights into how and why teacher preparation makes a difference —drawing on data on the characteristics of programs and the value-added student achievement gains of their graduates who now teach in New York City schools.

It appears that effective teacher education programs provide:

• Well-supervised student teaching where there is strong “congruence” between the training experience and the first year teaching assignment;

 • Opportunities “to engage in the actual practices involved in teaching”  (e.g., lesson study);

 • Opportunities to study local school curriculum; and

• A capstone experience where action research or data-based portfolio are used to make summative judgments about the quality of the teacher candidate.

Linda Darling-Hammond delivered the conference's keynote address on Sunday — admonishing teacher educators to begin designing programs with these characteristics or get out of the business. It is time to stop debating whether or not teachers need to be prepared before they begin to teach. It is time to make sure all programs — traditional or alternative — give teacher candidates opportunities to be effective.

Most of all, it's time to truly understand the conditions that allow well-prepared teachers to get better from year to year.

NCTQ Earns a D+ for State Teacher Quality Report

Last week, the advocacy group National Council for Teacher Quality released its report card on state policies that advance toward or retreat from efforts to increase teaching effectiveness. The NCTQ report raises important issues and surfaces relevant facts -- but quickly loses focus in its pursuit of a rather narrow agenda. 

The report’s authors point out that “not a single state encourages local districts to provide significant pay increases to teachers when they are awarded tenure, a milestone in a teacher’s career that should be significant, but is instead automatic.” Good point. And, as noted in Education Week’s summary , there’s no question that “districts need to better align compensation, professional development, and other aspects of the teacher-quality continuum to student-achievement goals.” 

But NCTQ, from its myopic position inside the beltway, also offers up some poorly focused analyses, eyeing state teacher quality policies with a pronounced ideological squint.  For example, NCTQ report:

•  correctly points out that states do little to emphasize student learning in evaluating teachers and granting them tenure — but ignores the lack of capacity of most principals to get the job done right, or the role that accomplished teachers could play in assessing their peers;

•  correctly points out that states have not done enough to create longitudinal data systems that can identify which teachers are more successful in raising student achievement — but ignores the fact that current standardized tests are insufficient measures to gauge effective teaching in the 21st century;

•  correctly points out that states still allow teachers to teach with emergency licenses — but ignores that they also allow a plethora of poorly designed, short-cut approaches to teacher preparation that leave many students in high needs schools taught by a revolving door of underprepared, inexperienced novices;

•  correctly points out that states short-change new teachers when it comes to induction and mentoring — but ignores the fact that our public schools are not funded sufficiently to support novices, and that long-standing bureaucratic structures that keep our best teachers from routinely spreading their expertise to their less experienced colleagues;

•  correctly points out that states do not provide incentives (differential pay or loan forgiveness) for teachers to teach in high-needs schools —  but ignores the role that professional working conditions play in both recruitment and retention; and, finally,

•  correctly points out that states and their pension systems “disadvantage teachers early in their careers” and inordinately value veterans — but ignores that teaching is complex work, that good teachers become better teachers over time, and that high needs schools require highly experienced and expert teachers to mentor and support their novices.

NCTQ surfaces important information that policymakers and practitioners should consider. However, its flimsy evidentiary base and narrow-eyed assessments leave us with an incomplete story in the current narrative on teacher quality. I would give NCTQ a grade of D+ — recalling this comment from a long-ago teacher of my own: “We both know you can do better.”

A Better School Reform Story

Marc Fisher’s January 8th Washington Post article on school reform is highlighted with bold exclamation points. Improving teaching and learning does not require the slash and burn reform tactics touted by the so-called school reformers, who focus primarily on vilifying teacher education and the unions and paying teachers for raising standardized test scores. Perhaps Superintendent Jerry Weast of Montgomery County ought to be on the cover of Time Magazine — not Michelle Rhee of DC — showing how he draws on the teacher union and excellent principals to craft serious reforms and points to accomplished teachers like Kim Burnim to lead the way.  As Fisher notes, “whereas Montgomery has had striking success in turning around low-income student performance, the District (of Columbia) is still at the starting gate, locked in a fierce battle over how to purge lousy teachers.”  Despite the fact that Broad Acres students come to school under the most adverse life circumstances, 81 percent met reading proficiency standards this year, up from 47 percent in 2003.

Broad Acres has had tremendous success “without (DC Chancellor) Rhee's reform tactics: no young recruits from Teach for America, no cash for students who come to class, no linkage of teacher pay to test scores.” Instead Weast works closely with Johns Hopkins University to recruit and deeply prepare its new teachers, and draws on experts like Ms. Burnim, 2006 National Teacher of the Year and Teacher Leaders Network member, to prepare, mentor, and assess novices.

Of course Broad Acres teachers have high expectations, but they also are expected to be prepared, like Ms. Burnim, before they take on the toughest teaching assignments. The reformers often vilify those who call for a broader and bolder approach to school improvement, which points to the fact that even well-qualified and effective teachers like Ms. Burnim need assistance, with afterschool programs and health clinics, all a part of the Broad Acres reform recipe, a point made poignantly over at the Learning First Alliance blog. Reform does not have to be an either-or proposition. Union leaders like Mark Simon in Montgomery County (who now leads the Mooney Institute for Teacher Leadership) have helped change not just the nature of the contract, but also the role teachers play in enforcing standards of excellence among themselves. Accountability can be coupled with teacher professionalism and students can achieve at high levels without vilifying unions and teacher education. Broad Acres proves the point with a broad and bold exclamation point.  On the birthday of Martin Luther King — with school equity and excellence on my own mind — I could not think of a better school reform story that points to closing the achievement gap and elevating the teaching profession.

Recruiting the Next Generation of Teachers

Tom Friedman, in Saturday's New York Times, opined that tax cuts for teachers ought to be part of President-elect Obama’s stimulus package to move the economy forward — offering incentives for talented individuals to teach while “doubl(ing) the salaries of all highly qualified math and science teachers.” You know the rap: Competing in the “flat world” requires 21st-century schools that demand more talented teachers.
 
Good points — although I would suspect that Mr. Friedman, whose wife teaches in the Montgomery County (MD) schools, knows that money alone will not attract and keep talent for our nation’s schools. Our Teacher Leaders Network is expanding — with an influx of Gen Y teachers who tell us that the keys to recruiting and retaining talent will require better preparation and tuned-in resources for teaching in high-needs schools, more time to work with colleagues and social workers in solving family and social problems their students face, and new opportunities to serve in major leadership roles to dramatically change the schools in which they teach. Innovative ways to pay teachers more and differently are necessary, but not sufficient. Keep tuned as we raise the voices of the next generation of teachers.

Teaching is a Team Sport

The luminous Eduwonkette has once again served up a shrewd rejoinder -- this time to Malcolm Gladwell’s recent essay in The New Yorker and his off-the-mark analogy relating the spotting of talented pro quarterbacks to the identification of teacher candidates who will be more effective in the classroom.

Great college quarterbacks do not always make it in the pros because the context is so different (e.g., the speed of the defensive linemen and cornerbacks). Teachers with credentials (high test scores, education school training, masters’ degrees, experience, etc.) do not always make it in pro-level school situations because the context is so different (e.g., the diversity of children and the dynamics of peer interaction inside of real classrooms).

For Gladwell, teacher "withitness” cannot be observed until one begins to teach. This leads him to buy -- lock, stock, and barrel – into the conventional wisdom (of labor economists) that teacher education and credentialing do not matter much, thereby throwing a block into the backs of those who see a need to prepare teachers before they begin to practice their profession.

As Eduwonkette points out, Gladwell pretty much ignores school contexts and working conditions – things like having access to effective colleagues and time to work with them, or supportive principals who pave the way for the best teachers to lead. There are few more effective quarterbacks than Brett Favre – but he and his new NY Jet teammates are struggling of late because his talented receivers are not fast enough to race past the corners and take advantage of Favre’s long ball threat. Turns out football is a team sport, too.

Gladwell, in looking for answers, seems to contradict himself. He concludes by calling for residencies and apprenticeships that can serve as training grounds for a new generation of teaching talent. As an example, he draws on the financial advising industry which recruits talent and culls out the best after a four-month training program AND a multi-year apprenticeship, all the while ensuring that novices are not dispensing advice independently until they are safe to practice.

Ironically, given his romance with the labor economists, Gladwell ends up calling for the kind of (pricey) teacher education and credentialing system that many of us teacher-ed apologists have recommended for a long time — a system that recruits talent, offers context-specific pre-service preparation AND substantial opportunities to see and learn from the masters before going solo.

More Evidence on How Teacher Education Makes a Difference

As reported in Education Week today, “it is no secret” the key to dramatic improvements in closing the achievement gap is teacher education. The Broad Foundation just awarded its $1 million prize to Brownsville Independent School District, “where nearly half of the students are English-language learners, nearly all are from low-income families – and where students in all grades outperform those in similar districts statewide in reading and math.” District officials claim it is teacher preparation and professional development – especially in how to work with second language learners – that is making most of the difference in the marked progress among the school district’s students, many of whom are separated from their parents.

So why do the policy pundits continue to trumpet the need for short-cut alternative pathways to teaching, when the award-winning school district points to its partnership with the University of Texas at Brownsville as the major source of effective teachers? The university, in partnership with the district, recruits and prepares the vast majority of the teachers, who graduate with bilingual certification and are not only steeped in how to teach, but are well-versed in the culture of students whom they are teaching. Brownsville teachers are not recruited from high-brow East coast universities, nor do they carry their own chart-busting test scores into their classrooms. Brownsville teachers are from the community.

So what makes them stand apart? They are well prepared in pedagogical approaches that work and can teach students whom are much more like them than not. They are also prepared to use data and analyze student work. They know how to work with students who are living under very adverse circumstances. Many of the teachers have experienced the lives that their students are now living. And guess what? Locally recruited Brownsville teachers stay in teaching and in their communities long enough to make a difference for student achievement. In fact, the district has only 3 percent turnover a year. Imagine that.

I wonder why it is so hard for many policy pundits to understand that short-cut alternative certification programs that actually promote a revolving door of underprepared novices teaching in high-needs schools are not a very good idea. Maybe cultural competence, not just one’s SAT score, needs to be a primary teacher recruitment criterion. Perhaps the Broad Foundation is on to something – and has a new policy story to tell. It is definitely one that needs to be heeded.

School Reform as And/Both

This past week’s Time Magazine paints a poignant portrait of Michelle Rhee’s efforts as the chancellor of the DC Public Schools to transform her beleaguered school district. In some ways Rhee’s dual-pronged focus on 1) paying teachers based on once-a-year, multiple-choice standardized tests and 2)getting rid of tenure in order to rid the system of “incompetent” educators is understandable. Students' learning (not the needs of adults) is what matters most in school reform and any teacher who does not teach (as implied by an anecdote in the article) has no business being in a classroom. 

The well-written article begins and ends with the story of Allante Rhodes, a student at Anacostia Senior High School, who eloquently describes what has changed and what has remained the same under Ms. Rhee’s two-year rein as the district’s top educator. While out-dated computers now work properly for word processing and students consistently don their uniforms, his school is still poorly managed, the building is in disrepair, and teaching does not seem to be any better. Perhaps there is more to school reform.

But here is what is most striking: Rhee’s efforts to transform teaching are presented in a unidimensional light:

• Great teachers are in “total control” and are willing to “quiz kids on their multiplication tables;”
• Teachers need to be paid more when they raise student test scores; and
• Tenure needs to be eliminated in order to get rid of incompetent teachers.

I understand the urgency of now and Rhee’s impatience. Her focus on students is on point.  However:

• Mastering the basics of math does not preclude learning how to use and create knowledge — and great teachers also know how to help their students take control of their own learning.
• Paying teachers for performance does not mean that student test scores should be the sole measure — especially when helping students master 21st century skills are the coin of the realm and cognitive scientists have proven that focusing on creativity can enhance student acquisition of the 3Rs.
• Eliminating rigid tenure rules might be more acceptable if teachers trusted administrators to be fair or even knowledgeable of good teaching — or better yet if the district’s best teachers were more involved in evaluating their peers.

Talented teachers need more than a few weeks of boot camp training in order to be effective to teach in high need schools. (Check out the Residency model we highlight in a recent report). Talented teachers need the teaching tools, resources, and working conditions that allow them to be great. School reform does not have to be either-or; it can be and/both. In fact, it must be if we are going to improve schools and the teaching profession. I wonder why this lesson is so hard for school leaders and policymakers to learn.

What are other areas where you see education policy choosing either/or approaches, when what our students really need are both/and strategies?

Staffing High Needs Schools and the Need to Listen to Teachers

The Center for American Progress just released a report on the role of financial incentives in staffing high-need schools.  The thoughtful report draws on lessons from the military, the civil service and government to frame how policymakers can attract and retain talented teachers to challenging schools. The authors of the report make very good points — i.e., the need for competitive base pay as a starting point and the need to ensure that incentives offered are meaningful.  

However, if the authors of the CAP report had dug a bit deeper, they could have pointed to the problems the military has had in recruiting new soldiers. With enormous incentives (up to $40K), the military has met its recruitment goals – but they have dramatically lowered standards, with more high school dropouts and criminals now being accepted.

Working conditions also matter when it comes to recruiting good teachers for high-need schools – as articulated by Ariel Sacks of New York City, a Teacher Leaders Network member who, along with Renee Moore of Cleveland, Miss., attended last week's CAP meeting on behalf of Center for Teaching Quality. Indeed, accomplished teachers typically say that working conditions matter more than money — and what matters most are (1) principals who know how to embrace and utilize teacher leaders; (2) access to qualified, experienced colleagues, and (3) freedom to teach students, and not just to a test or a scripted curriculum. Read more on such matters in our reports, which are built upon research evidence and the voices of expert teachers.

Despite the evidence, the CAP authors seem to ignore these issues in staffing high need schools – primarily because they are not “as easy to modify” as pay. Like expert teachers Ms. Sacks and Ms. Moore, Claus Von Zastrow at the Learning First Alliance expresses some frustrations in his recent blog over the CAP report and its munificent pragmatism about what can and cannot be done to improve the teacher working conditions that impact student achievement. He writes eloquently that policy wonks can, “[in] seek(ing) solutions to grave school staffing challenges … suffer from the soft bigotry of low expectations.”

Debating the Certification Debate

In a Nov. 14th post, the luminous Eduwonkette raises the issue of why there is so much attention paid to teacher certification in the United States.  Drawing on the teacher quality research of Richard Ingersoll – who calls for “upgrading training and certification standards” — the erudite Ms. 'Kette raises questions about the often intense (dare I say vitriolic) calls by Washington DC pundits and media-types to do away with teacher certification standards.

The certification critics often cite Tom Kane’s research that shows little difference in the student achievement scores of the new teachers who enter through traditional (more extended, university-based) and alternative (short-cut training) certification regimes. There are methodological holes in the Kane study – but that is not the point to be taken here. The issue  is not “certification or not” – or “teacher education or Teach for America.”  The issue is what teachers need to know before they begin to teach and how our education system ensures they do know – so kids do not get harmed.

So here is my initial short list for a new kind of teacher certification system. It must be one that ensures  novices know how to: (1) find the right kind of standards-based teaching resources for the diverse students they teach; (2) work well with second language and special needs learners; (3) use and analyze student achievement data for improving teaching, (4) create effective classroom management systems for 21st century learning, and (5) work well with parents and families and draw on community resources to serve their students. 

Our solicitous Eduwonkette makes the point that other professions do not have their certification systems so scrutinized — and in some cases even vilified. What if we halted the vitriolic debate and considered what we want our teachers to know and do– and then supported them in their efforts to serve our nation’s students and their families?

And why don’t we transcend the debate over who should be recruited to teaching and how much preparation they should have--by discarding the idea that one teacher is solely responsible for 25 students? Instead, we can create policies that promote our best teachers to serve as supervisors and coaches of a wide range of novices, adjuncts, and teaching assistants who collectively work with large groups of students. What could dynamic support do for the retention and quality of all new teachers?

Advice to the Next President: Listening to Renee Moore

Recently John Merrow and company put together a terrific and varied array of education advice for (now) President-Elect Obama. One of 76 advisors, Renee Moore — a member of our Teacher Leaders Network and author of TeachMoore — asks the President to remember his ABCs — acknowledge the highly effective educators already in our schools; build educational policy around their expertise; and change the compensation system to reward and spread their excellence. But doing so for 21st century teaching and learning will require going well beyond the standardized assessments currently in vogue. Imagine soon that teachers —using Web 2.0 (and soon 3.0) tools, wireless student handhelds, and digital spaces — supported students’ abilities to find and use knowledge, create novel solutions to relevant problems, and communicate new ideas inside of global communities. And then, what if they were able assemble the evidence as part of a renewed accountability system for public education and the teaching profession?

President-elect Obama has called for “multiple measures” —pushing our education leaders to go beyond the rigid adherence to once-a-year multiple-choice tests that are driving more drivel into our outdated public school curriculum. The current tests, which are the hallmark in most of our nation’s urban schools, are ill-designed to determine whether students have acquired essential 21st century skills. Is our system teaching and assessing the application, evaluation, and synthesis of knowledge? Does passing a standardized test mean that students are prepared for literacy in a digital world? Will students have the skills for smart networking and collaboration? What teaching and assessments will ensure that they do? As we ask these questions, all of us should read more of TeachMoore to keep learning about the realities and the possibilities of schools for tomorrow.

We Still Do Not Know Enough About New Teacher Induction

Recently, with funding from the U.S. Department of Education, the research firm Mathematica released a study of the impact of induction programs on new teacher retention and student achievement. The research team used randomized controls and drew on a wide variety of data from 17 large school districts to determine the effectiveness of two distinctive approaches to supporting novices — one by the New Teacher Center, and the other by the Education Testing Service  At first glance it appears that the news was not good.  While the researchers found new teachers supported by NTC and ETS received more induction support, they found no significant differences in retention and student achievement when contrasting teachers from districts that used the programs with those that did not.  As reported by Education Week, program officials from the New Teacher Center seemed to be caught off guard and a bit defensive, claiming that the researchers need to examine more than one year’s worth of data to determine the effectiveness of their highly-touted, well-supported program.

No doubt these results need to be used to question whether or not programs such as the NTC – the most well-known of the comprehensive induction programs — are “up-to-snuff” and worth the investment. However, the results may tell us more about the research methods of Mathematica than the efficacy of the programs themselves.  The researchers compared teachers who received support from the more comprehensive approaches of ETS and NTC and those who received support from other types of induction and mentoring efforts. Looking a bit deeper at some of the findings may have uncovered why the researchers found no “effects.” 

To be sure, the treatment teachers, compared to those in the control group, were more likely to receive their mentors’ assistance in various topic areas (especially in terms of discussing instructional goals and reflecting on practice). However, teachers served by the ETS and NTC programs reported receiving about 95 minutes a week of mentoring. The control group reported receiving 74 minutes per week, suggesting a miniscule difference of 1.5 days over the course of the year. In addition, very little meaningful differences seems to exist between the treatment and control groups when it came to two key comprehensive induction elements — observing others teach in their own classrooms (47 percent for the treatment group v. 38 percent for the control) and involvement in study groups of new and experienced teachers (47 percent for the treatment group v. 37 percent for the control).  Only 30 percent of the control group reported that they were assisted in assessing student work. But only 55 percent of the treatment group reported the same.

In some cases neither group of teachers received much meaningful induction. In other cases the differences were slim. Apparently in some districts only some of the treatment teachers actually received the full treatment. Perhaps the researchers should have designed a study that goes beyond simple randomization, and laid out an approach that offers real distinctions between the treatment and control groups. If they had, we might have learned more about new teacher induction than the limitations of educational research.

So We Should All Really Be Interviewing Ariel

Check out the new post over in Ariel Sacks’ phenomenal blog “On the Shoulders of Giants.” Ariel, a dedicated and talented young New York City teacher, represented the Teacher Leaders Network and CTQ’s TeacherSolutions 2030 initiative at a recent Ford Foundation gathering on the Strategic Management of Human Capital.
 
As the single teacher among university professors, foundation officers, education economists, and policymakers, Ariel, alone in this group, experiences daily the most challenging of environments — a classroom of students in a high-needs school who rely on her to provide them with the skills and confidence to succeed. I was thrilled that the other participants recognized this value, and second Lisa Delpit’s suggestion, that all of us in education should “really be interviewing Ariel” and all of the other highly accomplished teachers who tackle the highest hurdles for the sake of their students’ learning. If you need any further proof of the value of teacher experience, simply skim the wisdom Ariel shares throughout the rest of her post.
 
Ford is one of the few foundations focused on not just recruiting talent for high need schools, but also retaining that talent. Watch out for TeacherSolutions: Teacher Working Conditions 2.0 — another new initiative of CTQ. Ford is supporting CTQ to not only deepen our understanding of working conditions — but also to bring the voices of other expert teachers to light around the issues they encounter daily and that impact student learning and teacher retention. 
 
In other words, how do we populate our classrooms with more Ariel Sacks? I know CTQ’s emerging work will not offer any silver bullet solutions, but I also know that all of us who strive for equity in American education, and all of the students whose lives you have touched, stand – humbled and awed – on your shoulders, Ariel.

Strategic Management of Human Capital: Thinking a Bit Deeper in the District of Columbia (Part 5)

For the past several weeks I have been posting — as well as many others — on the merits of Michelle Rhee’s efforts to overhaul the human capital system in the District of Columbia. The October 9th Education Gadfly, in predictable fashion, offers “three cheers” for Rhee in her plans to bypass the current district-union agreement, totally deregulate teacher recruitment and certification, give principals more authority to hire and fire, and pay teachers a great deal more if they raise student test scores. I believe that much needs to be done to shake up the moribund District of Columbia system of public education. However, the recent postings of Eduwonkette (October 6th and 8th) reveal the serious problems of blanket deregulation and gunslinger approaches to transforming the teaching profession.

Just think Wall Street.

With her usual eloquent prose (as opposed to the sardonic type used by the Gadfly), she tells the story of how expert teacher Art Siebens has been dismissed by Rhee and her new system, leaving students and parents frustrated and angry.  Instead of the rancorous rhetoric offered up in the usual Gadfly column, the Edwonkette offers up fundamental facts. She writes that in his 13-year stint in DCPS 72% of Siebens’ students passed the AP Biology exam. Just as stunningly, while Rhee’s administrative team identified Siebens as a failing teacher, he received an Advanced Placement Recognition Award from the College Board.

Our own work in the area of the strategic management of human capital, supported in large part by the Rose Community Foundation, has pushed our thinking and has surfaced a few suggestions thus far. For example, teacher evaluation must change and educators be held more accountable, but many principals, due to their own lack of preparation and support, are not up to the task of effectively assessing teacher performance. I wonder if a human capital system in public education could be built more effectively on identifying excellent teachers and giving them, not top-down administrators, more authority in cultivating collective responsibility among educators, parents, and students. Granted, action needs to be taken — and fast — but I suspect there are many excellent teachers in DC who are ready to take the lead — and would ensure that colleagues like Art Siebens would be rewarded, not fired.

Strategic Management of Human Capital: Thinking a Bit Deeper in the District of Columbia (Part 4)

In the Sunday, September 28th Washington Post, several DC teachers write in an op-ed on how best to bargain for better teaching. Elizabeth Davis, Kerry Sylvia, and Mark Simon thoughtfully call for a new way to rethink teacher accountability in the district’s troubled schools. They call for more strategic thinking, transcending the current debate over Michelle Rhee’s proposals to use standardized test score data to pay teachers. A focus on student outcomes is a must — but solely focusing on once-a-year test scores as a measure of teacher effectiveness would be the equivalent of paying doctors more if your blood pressure goes down from last year’s check up to this one’s.

The metric is not irrelevant, but insufficient for judging doctor effectiveness. The DC teachers point out that the chancellor’s current plan does not focus on how to develop good teachers over time, the kinds of working conditions teachers need in order to be effective, and the role that the district’s best teachers can play in enforcing standards of excellence among their colleagues. Take a look and think a bit deeper. More to come from Center for Teaching Quality on the role teacher working conditions play in the strategic management of human capital.

Making a Poor Case for Teacher Pay Reform

In a stunning display Professor Jacob Vigdor, a Duke University economist, contradicts his own “teacher pay” findings and recommendations in a recent study — and the News and Observer does a poor job in reporting on it. In drawing on a large teacher and student data base in North Carolina, Mr. Vigor calls for “scrap(ping) the sacrosanct salary schedule” because experienced teachers do not raise standardized test scores at a commensurate rate relative to their lock-step pay raises and that teaching experience and teacher preparation do not matter for improving academic achievement.

However, in a previous study, which he co-authored, Vigdor and colleagues concluded that “students ‘exposed’ to a teacher ‘with very weak credentials….would be expected to achieve close to .30 standard deviations lower that if they had a teacher with the strong set of credentials (p. 29).” The largest negative effects were found to be if teachers were inexperienced and if they entered teaching with an alternative certificate. The N&O, one of North Carolina’s leading daily newspapers, misses the boat by not carefully examining the data and not challenging assumptions that a ivory-tower economist makes about teachers and teaching experience and what standardized tests can and cannot measure.

Perhaps,  T. Keung Hui, the N&O staff writer, should turn to National Board Certified Teachers –who have proven to be more effective practitioners— to learn more about what matters most for student learning. A group of NBCTs -- working with the Center for Teaching Quality -- recently released a major report on how our nation’s current standardized tests do NOT come close to measuring 21st century skills our public school students must develop. They clearly show how well-qualified, experienced teachers — who do not have the same job as other workers who sell widgets for a commission (as Vigdor suggests) — make a meaningful difference for the students and communities they serve. And they point out how our schools need to more carefully develop metrics for teaching effectiveness.

Teachers, especially our most accomplished ones, have been calling for new ways to pay teachers for advancing student learning, developing new and relevant skills, teaching in high needs schools and assignments, and leading reforms. However, just paying teachers more for test score gains won’t work not because of union resistance (as Mr. Vigdor says), but because the scores are too unstable to judge teachers solely on the basis of them. Mr. Vigdor and the N&O should ask the researchers who know the psychometrics* and the teachers who know the students. Then they could make a better case for much-needed teacher pay reforms.

*Braun, H. 2005. “Using Student Progress to Evaluate Teachers: A Primer on Value-Added Models.” Princeton: Educational Testing Service.

More Pay for Good Teachers?

The editors of today’s Washington Post call for more pay for good teachers. I could not agree more  — and so do many teachers across the nation — including those from our Teacher Leaders Network, who designed a pay for performance plan that students deserve. The Post editorial, however, misses the mark in discounting why union leaders in Washington DC may be resisting the current pay proposal that would entice more talented young people into teaching and reward those who raise the standardized test scores of the students they teach.

1.    Good teachers are more likely to teach in high-need schools when they have effective principals who support them, well-prepared colleagues who can help them tackle tough problems together, instructional resources that can engage diverse learners, and opportunities to use their professional judgment in teaching their classes. Money is important, but comes in #5 on the list of working conditions that matter for teacher recruitment and retention.

2.    Principals are not all equal and many are not up to the instructional leadership and teacher evaluation system required by the new performance pay system.

3.    The district’s standardized tests only measure a small fraction of the “taught” curriculum and would leave many important teachers (e.g., art, music, science, social studies, vocational, etc.) out of the performance-based pay system.

4.    Value-added methods (proposed by the district to assess teachers) are not very stable for measuring teacher effects. Most tests are not “scaled” in such a way to account for teacher effects across multiple years in the same subject area – and researchers now are reporting that there are “enormous” problems; and they are not technically ready for high-stakes decisions.

I agree with the editors of the Post that we need action — and teachers need to be paid for advancing student learning, spreading their expertise, teaching in high need schools, subjects, and assignments, and exerting leadership in their communities.  Bold steps must be taken, but they must be built on valid and reliable tools and high levels of trust between administrators and teachers.

Strategic Management of Human Capital: Thinking a Bit Deeper in the District of Columbia (Part 3)

One can see the either/or battle brewing in DC between the district's chancellor, Michelle Rhee, and the union over tenure and pay. Will teachers give up job protection for being able to earn considerably more if they improve student achievement? The recent Education Week article surfaces the usual discord dividing the human capital strategy in stark halves. You would think there are only two options:

Option #1: Teachers will be paid primarily on performance, based on new advancements in value-added methods that identify those who help their students make gains on current standardized achievement tests. Some teachers can make as much as $100,000 before their 7th year of teaching.

Option #2: Teachers will be paid on basis of credentials, accrued coursework, and years of experience - and while teachers are not paid much (and their annual increases are modest at best) they have job protection from principals who in the past have played patronage games in hiring and evaluating them.

However, the Education Week article did not address a number of issues -
here are three:

Issue #1: The district claims to want to reward expertise - which takes years to develop - but seems to focus primarily on recruiting teachers who will stay in teaching for less than 48 months (e.g. the two-year stint of Teach for America recruits). Issue #2: The district wants to pay teachers on the basis of gains in tests scores, but how will they reward teachers who cannot have gain scores ascribed to them - and how will they reward those after one year when psychometricians say you need at least three years of value-added data to accrue a stable score?

Issue #3: The primary reason that poor teachers are not removed from the classroom is not just the archaic tenure system but also poorly prepared principals who are not instructional leaders and do not have the skill or time to evaluate them fairly or accurately.

So let's consider: Option #3: Teachers will be compensated on the basis of their qualifications and experiences as well as on multiple measures of performance – including advancing student learning on standardized tests as well as more authentic forms of assessment, assisting struggling colleagues and spreading teaching expertise, supporting students in coping with life’s exigencies, and building strong school-community relationships. Accomplished teachers, like those who are National Board Certified, will be charged with helping ensure that bright recruits (like those from Teach for America) are successful and remain in teaching for at least five to seven years. Tenure is not given –but earned and re-earned every few years - and the district’s best teachers (like the National Board Certified Teachers), not the principal, is solely in charge of determining who is effective and who is not. The highest paid anybody in a school district (including the Chancellor) would be a practicing teacher.

 

Strategic Management of Human Capital: Thinking a Bit Deeper (Part 2)

Let’s continue unpacking another set of SMHC propositions. #2A below is an assertion commonly claimed.

2A. Teachers do not need substantial preparation before they begin teaching — and districts and non-profits, not universities, are best suited to train the next generation of educators — primarily on the job.

But we could look at the SMHC with an alternative frame.

2B. Teachers — because of advancements in cognitive science, the new science of teaching reading and math, and the growing demands of working with second-language learners — need more preparation than ever before. While university-based teacher education has been too far removed from the realities of today’s schools, solely relying on districts to train teachers will most likely yield those who are not prepared to teach in multiple contexts and for tomorrow’s schools. School districts – which have not been very good at helping teachers learn — should not be the only purveyor of teacher education and professional development.  Currently, the pace of our nation’s public schools and their egg-crate organizational structure do not allow for the time and space needed to learn how to teach.

We at the Center for Teaching Quality are proud to be working with the Rose Community Foundation to help the Denver-based philanthropic organization figure out its SMHC strategy for the future. Lots to discover and consider – and surely new lessons will be learned. Taking a page from the Stanford Social Innovation playbook, several issues come to mind: tackling the transformation of the teaching profession will require reframing of the issues and mediating conflict among stakeholders. Reformers of the SMHC system must begin seeing the approaches in more and/both as opposed to either/or terms. Challenges can be opportunities and historical antagonists can find a “third way” to address past conflicts and bridge ideological divides.

Strategic Management of Human Capital: Thinking a Bit Deeper

I am fascinated by the recent interest in and focus on the strategic management of human capital (SMHC)  — which Allan Odden and Jim Kelly have defined as “the acquisition, development, performance management and retention of top talent in the nation’s schools.” To be sure, it is one thing to identify talented educators; it is another to utilize them strategically. However, as I read the emerging research as well as rhetoric on the topic, several questions come to mind. Will the SMHC efforts of tomorrow take into account the lessons of failed efforts to professionalize teaching in the past? Can SMHC thinking get us beyond the false dichotomies of the current struggle of either deregulating teaching or professionalizing it? Consider the differences in the following two propositions:

Proposition 1A: School districts will abandon their efforts to recruit traditional college-prepared teachers who will teach for a career, and focus on finding talented, young, less expensive, candidates who enter with limited pre-service education, receive more on-the-job training, and are expected to stay in the classroom for just a few years.

Proposition 1B: School districts will be more strategic in recruiting and utilizing talented individuals as “master” and “assistant” teachers, but recognize that their high-needs schools demand that students are taught and supported by a well-prepared, stable faculty who know them and their families well.  Many high-needs schools will require as much or more attention to growing talent from within their communities (e.g., local teaching assistants groomed as teacher leaders) as opposed to just recruiting from afar (e.g., newly minted college graduates from prestigious universities).

Can we get beyond either/or and move on to and/both?

The Center for Teaching Quality is helping the Rose Community Foundation figure out their future SMHC approaches for Denver-area public schools. We look forward to learning a great deal and applying lessons to our on-going efforts to transform the profession that makes all others possible. Stay tuned for more propositions and more possibilities.

Teacher Leadership – Watch out in Fairfax, VA

Today’s Washington Post reports some interesting developments in Fairfax, Va., where Superintendent Jack Dale has launched an effort to expand teacher leader roles to data analysts, curriculum developers, workshop leaders, or researchers who investigate the best “instructional techniques.” As Michael Chandler, the Post reporter noted, “Many teachers do some or all of these things on the fringes of their traditional jobs. By paying them for their time, Dale is trying to cement these roles in their careers.”

Despite nearing the end of the first decade of the New Millennium, teaching remains a semi-profession where expertise is isolated and the most accomplished teachers have little time or space to establish and enforce best practices. Fairfax is on to something — although, as Chandler reports, it is unclear how many teacher leaders are needed and how the district will pay for these new teacher leader roles.  More than 600 teacher leaders have been identified, and they can earn up to 12 percent over their base salary. Other questions might include how teacher leaders are chosen and how they define their own leadership roles, as well as how less wealthy school districts (like several rural ones CTQ is working in now) can afford to implement similar teacher leadership reforms. Professionalism demands teacher experts to lead the way — in all of our nation’s schools.

Trading Tenure for Test-Based Performance Pay: Revolution or Just More Confusion?

The Washington Post reported last week that D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee has proposed what some are calling a 'revolutionary' contract where mid-level teachers (who currently earn approximately $62,000 annually) could earn more than $100,000 if they 'boost' student test scores while giving up seniority and tenure rights. No doubt schools need to pay more for valued student outcomes. But will this effort to link teacher pay directly to student test scores lead to even more confusion?

Ms. Rhee claims the increased pay will be funded by philanthropy, but should a pay system be based on the idiosyncratic and often ever-shifting priorities of education foundations?  How will student test scores be used? Will they use one year of data or more? Will teachers who teach non-tested grades and subjects be eligible? Will the chancellor make sure the tests that are used are properly scaled so more true gains can be determined? (Or better yet can the tests be scaled at all?) Even proponents of student test-based accountability for teachers claim that the current psychometric properties of value-added methods render Rhee’s pay proposals unfeasible and perhaps even invalid.

More importantly, while paying teachers more and differently is critical for our 21st century schools, is placing more emphasis on current standardized tests in the best interest of students? Should the pay plan focus on more robust  outcome measures  — reflecting the demands of our global economy and new Millennium citizenry? No doubt we need professional compensation systems that reward teachers for improving student learning, developing and using new skills, spreading their expertise, and teaching in high needs schools and subjects — as well as working hard to make a difference in the lives (not just test scores) of students. These issues were buzzed about this weekend as members of our Teacher Leaders Network Forum discussed Ms. Rhee’s proposal. They have some better ideas that embrace much needed changes in tenure and seniority — moving well beyond the focus on test scores that has beset more meaningful learning for all students — and truly revolutionizes the profession that makes all others possible.