Advancing the Teaching Profession

Can We Combine Teaching and 'Senior Leadership'?

This past weekend Bob Herbert of the New York Times offered a glimpse into how new generations of education leaders for America’s public schools might be developed. In his op-ed piece, Herbert offers a refreshing description of the Harvard Graduate School of Education's new doctoral program (the first in 74 years):

The three-year course will be tuition-free and conducted in collaboration with faculty members from the Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. The idea is to develop dynamic new leaders who will offer the creativity, intellectual rigor and professionalism that is needed to help transform public education in the U.S.

What's refreshing is the new program's perspective that 21st century schools will require administrators who know how to manage like a MBA while still having knowledge of teaching and telling. That's just common sense, some might say. However, for the last decade the conventional wisdom has been those who run school systems do not need to know much about pedagogy.  Kudos to the Wallace Foundation for investing in Harvard’s more balanced approach to preparing senior leaders for school systems, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and the private sector.

As the leader of an organization committed to making accomplished teachers full partners in school reform, my next thought is: Where is the high-profile approach to developing senior education leaders who still teach students? My New York City colleague Ariel Sacks, a young teacher in our Teacher Leaders Network, explores this same question in her blog On the Shoulders of Giants, drawing on the example of her father, a doctor who combines health research and consulting with a small patient practice "to keep it real." As is so often the case, Ariel's post has attracted thoughtful comments from her blog readers and from within our TLN Forum discussion group.

Ariel, by the way, is one of 12 talented teachers working on a book about the future of teaching to be published by Teachers College Press next year. Read Ariel’s blog and consider the possibilities of developing a cadre of "teaching leaders" who work in hybrid roles (in less hierarchical school systems) and are able to lead from within and without the classroom.

Merrow Loose with the Facts

John Merrow’s latest blog post on charter schools and teacher education is worth a read — especially if you are interested in how journalists can get real loose with the facts. I have always been a fan of the Merrow Report, where John has spent the time to dig deep into complex issues of teacher quality and school reform. But his latest blog entry ignores the research that shows charters, on average, are less effective in advancing student achievement than their more traditional school relatives. He goes on to opine — with no evidentiary basis whatsoever — that there are only 50 decent education schools (out of about 1200) across the nation. (He doesn’t name them but that would be an interesting list to see him publish.)
 
Yes, we should promote charter schools as incubators of new approaches in education and poor education schools should be closed down. But John’s sloppy analysis obscures the facts and fuels the kind of dysfunctional dualism that defines most of the school reform debate (charters staffed with non-unionized teachers vs. publics staffed with teachers who are protected by union work rules; teacher education the way its always been done vs. short-cut alternative certification that allows teachers to bypass pedagogical training, etc.) It's "war" journalism and it's not the kind of thing we expect from the nation's best broadcast education reporter.
 
I’m certain John knows which nation produces the highest student achievement worldwide — Finland. Guess what? Finland’s teachers are among the most highly unionized anywhere worldwide.
 
Teachers in charters are now unionizing because they are seeking the working conditions that will allow them to be successful with students (Read Claus von Zastrow’s comments on Merrow’s blog). Growing numbers of university-based teacher education programs are working with school districts to jointly prepare teachers for high needs schools (see Secretary Duncan’s recent Title II grantees). These programs are very much focused on the knowledge and skills teachers need to be effective AND on the working conditions that are critical to a teacher's success, however effective she or he may be.
 
PS: Will charters go to scale and save our public schools? Ask Tom Toch.
 

Some RttT Rules Ignore Research

Last week, the NY Times published an editorial, “The ‘Highly Qualified Teacher’ Dodge,” chastising Education Secretary Duncan for not pushing states harder to address the fact that inexperienced and unqualified teachers are disproportionately hired by high needs schools. The Times editors noted that Duncan’s Race to the Top (RttT) grant guidelines may allow states to “paper” over the problem, much like the Bush administration did.

The NYT editorial also criticized “the sometimes excessive influence of boutique alternative certification programs” which, while attracting bright college students to teaching, do not prepare them deeply for teaching in high needs schools (e.g., working with second language learners, special needs students, students living in poverty) and actually encourage them to exit after only a few years in the classroom, leaving their students to a revolving door of underprepared teachers.
 
The USDOE’s RttT guidelines for alternative certification include recruiting candidates selectively (good) and providing supervised, school-based experiences for them (good). However, the RttT rules do not specify whether alternative certification candidates need to pass muster in a full-year supervised internship before becoming a teacher of record (bad), and they actually call for “significantly limit(ing) the amount of coursework required” (real bad – one more iteration of the “teachers don’t need much help learning how to teach” line of poor reasoning).

Alternative certification coursework shouldn’t be a time-waster — any course of study required of teacher candidates needs to be pertinent and of good quality. Non-traditional recruits (e.g., mid-career switchers) should also be offered a different preparation regime than the more traditional 18-23 year olds. But let’s not ignore the recent studies showing that alternatively trained teachers who had very limited pedagogical coursework before they began to teach actually lowered their students’ achievement scores over the course of the academic year.[i]

And let's not forget the 2008 examination of evidence on the value of teacher education by the National Bureau of Economic Research, which found that teachers with more extensive clinical training (including a full-year internship) before they began to teach actually produced higher student achievement gains.[ii]

In light of all these findings, the RttT guidelines on teacher recruitment and preparation just don’t make sense. The New York Times and the Congressional Black Caucus are right to be raising questions.

[i] Corcoran, S. P., & Jennings, J. L. (2009). Review of “An Evaluation of Teachers Trained Through Different Routes to Certification: Final Report.” Boulder, CO and Tempe, AZ: Education and the Public Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit. Retrieved November 1, 2009 from http://epicpolicy.org/thinktank/review-evaluation-of-teachers

[ii] Boyd, D., Grossman, P., Lankford, H., Loeb, S. & Wyckoff, J. (2008, September). Teacher preparation and student achievement. NBER Working Paper Number W14314. National Bureau of Economic Research. Retrieved September 30, 2008 at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1264576

Reform Rhetoric Needs to Match Teaching Realities

A recent report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Center for American Progress identifies what it describes as “leaders and laggards” in efforts to reinvent our nation’s public schools. As a backdrop to the federal government’s $4 billion-plus Race to the Top competition for innovative state actions, the report calls for path-breaking approaches to school reform and teacher quality. However, the report seems to promote more status quo thinking than not — and ignores a number of key factors central to improving student learning and advancing teaching as a results-oriented profession.
 
For example, the report calls for more of the same short-cut alternative certification programs that do not prepare teachers for high-need schools or the demands of 21st century teaching. It also fails to consider the critical role of working conditions in ensuring teachers can teach effectively.
 
The report promotes much needed entrepreneurship in public education — and heaps much-deserved praise on school districts like Long Beach Unified in California. However, the report’s authors pay no heed to the fact that LBUSD neither relies on charter schools nor alternative certification programs like Teach for America or the New Teacher Project. In fact, the district works very closely with the education school at California State University–Long Beach to grow their own teaching talent and prepare a new generation of teachers who are well versed in innovative pedagogical approaches, including those needed to work effectively with second language learners and the district’s standards-based curriculum. In a district serving so many high-needs students, LBUSD leaders can’t afford to take chances with teacher effectiveness.
 
The report also disregards the role that teaching and learning conditions play in teacher effectiveness and retention — and therefore in student achievement. Teaching in a high-needs school is often a frenetic experience. Many teachers need to put in well over 60 hours a week to manage multiple interventions, meet the social and emotional needs of their students, mediate conflicts when out-of-school turmoil spills over into the classroom, cope with the complexity of teaching highly mobile students, and deal with the constant pressure to prepare for high-stakes tests. Many teachers in high-needs schools, especially those without extensive preparation, also struggle to find resources they can use to differentiate instruction for students with varying academic needs, including the growing number of students who are learning English as a second language.
 
The human price, all too often, is professional burn-out — well described by a former Teach For America recruit, Sarah Fine, who resigned from teaching because administrators “steadily expand(ed) the workload and workday” while “more and more major decisions were made behind closed doors, and more and more teachers felt micromanaged rather than supported.”
 
At CTQ, our current studies of working conditions are revealing how poor school administrators mismanage the hiring of new teachers and how devastated school budgets force well-intended principals to hire cheap and less prepared novices and not the expert veterans they seek. We have also found how school mis-management can create unnecessary out-of-field teaching (e.g., biology teacher teaching math, early childhood teachers forced to teach 5th grade without any support in the transition) that keeps teachers from doing their jobs effectively.
 
Reform reports like Leaders and Laggards can play an important role in educating the public about aspects of school reform. But our students will be better served if the reform rhetoric more closely matches the realities that teachers face every day.

Effective Teaching: It's about Teams, Not Lonely Heroes

A few months ago I posted an entry about an important new study demonstrating the powerful effect of teacher collaboration in producing greater student achievement gains.

Using 11 years of student data in North Carolina, researchers from Harvard and Cornell have found that most value-added achievement gains are attributable to the make-up of teacher teams, not the traits and characteristics of individual teachers. Put another way, the collaboration model—not the lone-teacher-hero model loved by Hollywood and a surprising number of ed-policy wonks—produces the most student growth.

Despite the conventional wisdom posed by some inside-the-Beltway policy analysts, researchers Jackson and Bruegmann found that teaching experience (and qualifications) matter for student learning. Despite the barrage of criticism they have endured in recent years, it turns out that teaching veterans and those who meet standard certification requirements actually promote more academic growth—especially if they are organized for student success.

Now Education Sector, in a terrific new report by Elena Silva, explains why schools can no longer risk isolating teachers. Silva's work also raises serious questions about individualistic merit pay plans.

“The strategic positioning of teachers, where the best ones work among and with the rest, may be as important as formal training or professional development,” she writes.

However, Silva also points out that collaboration doesn’t mean less personal responsibility—that the “team approach doesn’t come at the expense of individualized growth or accountability” and the need continues to identify and reward “the specific contributions and areas of needed improvement of each individual teacher.“

To have the desired impact, new forms of performance pay must be more nuanced and sophisticated than the blunt instruments of the past. They will need, for example, to recognize, encourage and reward teamwork that impacts student learning and teachers who spread their expertise to others.

I’ll admit to some bias, but I think the 2007 TeacherSolutions performance-pay report, penned by 18 expert  teachers from our Teacher Leaders Network, describes a powerful framework for paying teachers in ways that matter most for real student learning.

As I read through the new Economic Policy Institute report Redesigning Teacher Pay: A System for the Next Generation of Teachers, I was struck by the many areas of agreement between the work of the 2007 team of classroom teachers and the ideas presented by Susan Moore Johnson and John Papay. That bodes well for the EPI work, I think. The one thing missing in most of the performance-pay schemes to date has been teacher buy-in and support. And without that, no new plan for professional compensation is going to survive for long.

Stilled but not lost

Ted Sizer, one of our nation’s most brilliant and accomplished educators, died Wednesday — leaving a legacy of both extraordinary vision and action. Ted’s life will be chronicled by those far more capable than me. But from time to time over last several decades I had the honor to work with him on a research study or to join him in advancing education policies that would focus more on students and less on tests, more on results that matter than proxies for them that don’t. I was always humbled by his resolve as well as his humility.

I am also grateful to him for teaching and influencing so many teachers and administrators across our land — including Bob Shirley, who was the headmaster of one his Essential Schools that educated our son, Joseph. Like in other Essential Schools, Bob as the lead educator, also taught students, including Joseph. Bob and the faculty knew our son well (all students are known well in ES) and helped him turn some very important corners in those turbulent adolescent years. The wise and caring educators in that school focused on the essentials — the mind and the spirit. They shaped Joseph academically, but far more as a man (now 27 years of age with a passion for helping others live a better life). I am thankful for Ted Sizer's inspiration.
 
The New York Times published a thoughtful piece on Ted. But my friend George Wood (another extraordinary principal teacher), who leads the Forum on Education and Democracy, said it much better:

“We will miss Ted Sizer and his tireless voice of reason. The image that will be forever etched in my mind is of Ted, head resting on one hand, the other hand busy taking notes, listening intently to whomever was speaking. And then, in his ever so thoughtful way, cutting to the heart of the matter at hand and insisting that we speak plainly, forcefully, and, yes, lovingly, about what is essential about schooling -- that being the careful cultivation of every child's mind…. While Ted Sizer's voice has been stilled, his ideas and dreams live on through the work of the many educators and students whose hearts he touched.”

Pundit Nick Kristof Gets It Wrong

In a recent column in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof does plenty of collateral damage as he bashes teacher unions for over-protecting incompetent teachers. Kristof's commentary is so over the top that he effectively smears every good and dedicated public school teacher in the nation -- and there are several million of them.

Maybe he's intoxicated by Halloween. The Times columnist substitutes scary teacher stories for any credible data about the actual numbers of incompetent teachers (3-5% by most estimates) and ignores recent research suggesting that the unions are not the biggest problem. All that ails public education, Kristof asserts, is the union goblins who focus on benefits for their members at the expense of children.

Education Notes Online does a terrific job of unpacking Kristof’s diatribe, drawing on commentary by Steve Koss at the NYC Education News Listserve.

Ariel Sacks, who writes the blog On the Shoulders of Giants, is a brilliant young teacher in NYC (and a member of the Teacher Leaders Network). In a recent post, she paints a much more accurate picture of the complexities of the "incompetent teacher" problem. We've got to make it easier to fire incompetent teachers, but we've got to do it fairly, using sound measures of competence and a system that protects teachers from abuse.

If we want to figure out how to begin to solve the real problem, we need to glean the insights of New Millennium teachers like Ariel, who are committed to improving the teaching profession and to making teachers equal partners in school reform.

We Need to Dispel the Myths about Effective Teachers

If you want to reflect for a moment on education half-truths and the imprecise diagnosis of teaching quality problems, take a look at two articles published in the October 18th edition of the Los Angeles Times — one on value-added teacher evaluations and the other on challenging education myths.

Both pieces raise important issues related to the role of teacher education as well as student test scores in developing and identifying effective teachers. But in addressing those issues, the journalist-authors actually embellish current myths rather than dispel them — and may send us down the wrong policy road.

Myth: Teacher tenure rules make it impossible to get rid of poor teachers.

Fact: A recent study by the New Teacher Project clearly shows that the difficulty in removing ineffective teachers has much more to do with poorly trained administrators who have few skills and inadequate tools to distinguish between excellent, average, and poor teaching. Another report, from the Center for American Progress also concluded that poor evaluation procedures, not tenure, are most likely to account for a school district’s inability to fire poor performers.

Myth: Teach for America, a rapid-entry alternative certification program designed to recruit bright young people into teaching, produces more effective teachers than traditional university-based programs.

Fact: Nationally, the Teach for America program produced about 4000 new teachers this school year, a very small contribution given that U.S. public schools need to hire about 250,000 new teachers annually. Studies show that TFA recruits tend to produce student achievement gains only slightly better than comparison teachers — and only in math, not in reading. Most importantly, the comparison groups in these studies tend to be teachers in the same or similar schools who have even less formal pedagogical preparation than TFA recruits. Why? Because the high needs schools in which TFA’ers teach often have to rely on substitutes and other poorly qualified individuals. Studies also show that more than 80 percent of Teach for America recruits, much like other recruits who enter with little formal training, leave the classroom by their third year of teaching, becoming part of the revolving door of novices who pass quickly through high-needs classrooms. This does not mean that tradtional teacher education has it right. It doesn’t. But less is not more in preparing teachers for high needs schools.

Myth: Standardized tests now in place are always the most accurate means of assessing student progress and teacher effectiveness. Scores from these tests should be the primary metric for evaluating teachers and increasing accountability.

Fact: Today’s “value-added” systems for measuring teacher effects can provide useful information, but the data are not always reliable for making high-stakes decisions. Assessments based solely on scores from tests currently in use are not designed to help teachers become more effective. Also, recent studies show that most value-added student academic gains are attributed to teacher teams, not individuals. Drawing on very sophisticated analyses, these studies reveal that the most powerful predictor of student achievement over time seems to be whether small groups of teachers are learning from each other as they teach. This suggests that policymakers should not just focus on replacing the “bottom 6-10%” of ineffective teachers, but devise strategies so that “teachers raise their games when the quality of their colleagues improves.”

Policymakers and practitioners do need to think much differently about assessing teachers and transforming teacher education. But that new thinking will not be productive if we cling to the educational equivalent of urban legends about what makes for effective teachers and successful students.

Looking beyond the Big Broom

In many ways DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee has become the iconic leader of the current school reform movement. Who can forget the December 2008 Time Magazine cover depicting Rhee brandishing a broom and a stare — ready to sweep out the incompetent teachers in the beleaguered district and replace them with bright young talent who would raise student achievement test scores in a hurry.

There’s no doubt that a take-charge approach is needed in the DC Public Schools, where a focus on effective teaching and accountability were sorely lacking before Ms. Rhee’s tenure began in 2007.
 
But a bit more than two years into Rhee’s chancellorship, another side of the D.C. reform initiative is beginning to surface, suggesting that the current school reform team may not be enacting the changes that students most need and deserve.

The inexperienced and inexpensive itinerant teachers favored by Ms. Rhee’s human capital approach to school system management are not always the answer.  In fact, by drawing on the voices of several students, today’s Washington Post suggests that many of these recent hires may be doing more harm than good.

Dayna Downs, a middle school student, told this story: "We had a great science teacher who knew how to handle our class and make learning fun. Now he's been replaced with a less-experienced teacher, and the class is acting a lot differently. Some students don't listen anymore." Downs told city officials at a hearing Saturday that "We have a science test coming up, and I'm worried about failing because our new teacher doesn't know where we are in our work."

Ikechukwu Umez-Eronini, a high school senior, complained of the “complete lack of transparency about what’s going on in the school system.” Umez-Eronini, a leader in student protests over teacher firings, continued: "You can't get a straight answer about anything -- not about the firings, the school budget or the test scores.”

This Post article (by metro columnist Courtland Milloy) suggests that the Big Broom is simply too crude an instrument to improve schools in the long run and protect children’s interests in the here and now.

Radical change is required — but solutions need to match the problems. I believe a new narrative is beginning to emerge around how we can more accurately identify effective teachers and teaching practices, and how we can craft nuanced reform policies that don’t reduce the complex issues in our public schools to a single cause.

In the meantime we all need to listen more carefully to thoughtful students like Dayna and Ikechukwu, for whom misguided policy is no abstraction.

The Right Push for Merit Pay

No doubt the public has a right to question the role that teacher unions play in school reform. The latest salvo from Richard Whitmore and Andy Rotherham, published in an October 2, 2009, commentary in the Wall Street Journal, will surely raise a few more eyebrows. But as usual, policy analysts, sitting in comfy offices far-removed from the real work of teaching children, often miss the point. Yes, unions have challenged the use of merit pay to reward teachers — and some do so because they themselves are too comfy with the status quo. But many are challenging merit pay because the systems being proposed by such analysts as Whitmore and Rotherham are built on shaky technical ground: pay systems that do not reward the best teachers (e.g., see Houston’s ASPIRE program), or rely on unstable student test scores (e.g., see Tim Sass’ analysis of the instability of value-added measures in Florida), or favor teachers who teach in easy-to-teach in schools (see Stein’s review of the Hillsborough County, Florida program). 

Do not get me wrong: Unions need to do a lot more to promote performance pay systems that students deserve — and we (and our Teacher Leaders Network ) have been pushing them to do so.  Too many union leaders have been recalcitrant or asleep at the wheel. They should be leading teacher pay reforms — and not just saying no to proposals for change. But I wonder why analysts, such as Whitmore and Rotherham, do not report on why unions often object to merit pay — as opposed to uniformly castigating them as purveyors of the status quo. Without even-handed reporting and discourse, it is difficult to advance the conversation and implement much-needed reforms in public education.  Perhaps journalists and policy analysts might turn to teacher leaders themselves in advancing the dialogue on the future of the teaching profession.

To see the work of accomplished teacher leaders around performance pay, be sure to read the TeacherSolutions report Performance Pay for Teachers: Designing a System that Students Deserve. The forward-looking TeacherSolutions 2030 team continues the conversation in a recently published monograph and forthcoming book on the future of their profession.

And You Wonder Why Teachers Raise Questions About Standardized Tests

Yesterday’s New York Times brought us an insightful essay from Todd Farley regarding the deep problems with standardized tests — including the “mad scramble” inside the industry to “score tests, meet deadlines and rake in cash.” Policy pundits and many erstwhile darlings of the media often portray teachers (and their associations) as anti-reform and purveyors of the status quo when they raise questions about the flaws in using standardized tests to assess student progress and teaching effectiveness. Farley’s piece is insightful — a must read for those who want to peel back the layers on the usual superficial criticisms of those who are uncertain that multiple choice tests serve as accurate barometers of student academic progress.

Farley identifies the endemic problems with how these tests are scored as well as the quality of specific items themselves. Others, such as economist Tim Sass, raise questions about the stability of value-added measures to determine who is an effective teacher and who is not. Sass' recent analyses show that in Duval County, Florida almost 20 percent of those who scored in the bottom quintile of teachers in year one scored in the top quintile the next. Such fluctuations cannot tell a meaningful story about good teaching.This is not to mean that standardized tests and value-added measures should not be used -- but they must be used carefully. It is time to question the pundits who vilify those who raise questions about using standardized test to carte blanche judge kids and the teachers who teach them.


Image Source: WoodleyWonderWorks, Flickr Creative Commons

Getting Global Education Wrong in Urban Districts

Last week a New York Times article revealed how many urban districts have given up on recruiting American teachers for high needs schools. Instead, foreign teachers, many of whom are not fluent in English or do not have a cultural understanding of U.S. students, are filling vacancies because of school districts' inability or unwillingness to offer the salary and working conditions needed to staff our nation’s most challenging schools. Drawing on a powerful, data-filled report from the American Federation of Teachers, we learn that about 19,000 teachers are now working in the United States on temporary visas and that for-profit recruiting practices are almost entirely unregulated. Abuses include forcing teachers to pay recruiters 25 percent of their salaries and to take out loans with an annual interest rate of 60 percent, while placing them in overcrowded, unfinished housing.

There is so much wrong with this story.  Granted, not all foreign recruiters are abusive — and clearly American students can benefit from the international experiences their teachers have had. And some can speak English fluently — and have been trained as teachers back in their home countries. But many have not. In addition, these urban school districts are not hiring foreign nationals to bring a global perspective to their curriculum. They are taking short-cuts — letting policymakers off the hook for making the tough decisions needed to transform America’s dysfunctional teacher development system. They are short-changing students by denying them the teachers and teaching they deserve.

New Research Confirms the Importance of Spreading Teacher Expertise

As policymakers focus on identifying and rewarding effective teaching, they should pay close attention to an important new study demonstrating the powerful effect of teacher collaboration in producing greater student achievement gains.

Using 11 years of student data in North Carolina, researchers have found that most value-added achievement gains are attributed to the make-up of teacher teams, not the traits and characteristics of individual teachers. Drawing on sophisticated analyses of this large database, they reported in a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research that peer learning among small groups of teachers seems to be the most powerful predictor of student achievement over time.

Researchers C. Kirabo Jackson and Elias Bruegmann found that "students have larger test score gains when their teachers experience improvements in the observable characteristics of their colleagues." Less experienced teachers who are still acquiring “on-the-job” skills are most sensitive to changes in peer quality; teachers with greater labor-market attachment are more sensitive to peer quality; and both current and historical peer quality changes affect current student achievement.

The researchers warn that using value-added methods to identify individual teachers for merit pay and other high stakes decisions may very well be confounded by how teachers learn from each other. As one of the study’s authors noted, “If you give the reward at the individual level, all of a sudden my peers are no longer my colleagues—they’re my competitors. If you give it at the school level, then you’re going to foster feelings of team membership, and that increases the incentive to work together and help each other out.”

It is time to figure out 21st century teaching effectiveness systems that both identify expert teachers and reward them for spreading their expertise to others. I've been harping on the importance of this "spread effect" for some time. It's exciting to see research from a disinterested source that substantiates this key component of effective teaching.

Public Attitudes about Teaching: The Details Matter

 Yesterday, Phi Delta Kappa released its annual PDK/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools. The 2009 survey surfaced some surprising sentiments held by the American people about teachers and teaching.

The must-read findings reveal, for example, that almost three-quarters (73%) of those polled believe teachers should be paid on the basis of their students’ test score improvements. But even more (81%) believe that teachers should be paid on the basis of advanced degrees.

The dilemma for policymakers, of course, is to determine how to use test scores to assess teachers in reliable and valid ways, as I’ve written about recently. In the matter of paying for advanced degrees — that practice has long been a part of the “steps and rows” salary schedules of most school systems. What hasn’t been addressed in any large-scale or meaningful way is how we ensure that the advanced degrees teachers earn have a measurable impact on student learning and achievement.

The public’s opinion about teacher tenure — often a contentious issue between school reformers and union leaders  — is intriguing. If the pollsters asked the American people about tenure by defining it as a “lifetime contract” then very few (26%) approved. But if the pollsters defined tenure as “a formal legal review before a teacher could be terminated,” a sizeable majority (66%) approved.

The details matter when we set out to accurately gauge public opinion on teacher and teaching issues. They also matter in devising new ways to assess and reward teachers.  Watch for the launch of our New Millennium Teacher Leaders Network next month — where some of our nation’s most outstanding young teachers will focus on the future of teaching, how they should be judged and paid, and how they will take policy actions in their local communities.

Bushaw, William J. & McNee, John A. (2009, August 26). Americans Speak Out. Are Educators Listening? Phi Delta Kappan. Vol. 91, No. 01, September 2009, pp. 8-23.

There's Got to Be a Better Way to Reward Great Teachers Than This. . .

In Monday’s Washington Post, education reporter Jay Mathews makes an excellent case for transforming teacher pay, dispensing with the antiquated single-salary schedule that only rewards years of experience, graduate degrees, and continuing education programs defined by bureaucracies. 

Drawing on the experience of Jonathan Keiler, a social studies teacher at Bowie High School in Prince George's County MD, Mathews describes the byzantine system that district administrators have created in order for modest pay increases to be earned.

In my mind, Mathews’ compelling piece underscores the reason why efforts to pay teachers for performance have to go beyond rewarding individuals who generate gains on once-a-year administered student achievement tests.

Jonathan Keiler, who has earned National Board Certification, teaches courses such as Practical Law, Advanced Placement World History, and AP Art History. The effectiveness of educators who teach these courses cannot be measured by the value-added methods being promoted in many performance-pay scenarios, because these subjects are not included in the state standardized testing regimes from which value-added methodologies draw their data.

The same situation exists in many large schools with sizeable faculties. Big high schools like Bowie offer so many subjects and teaching assignments that only about 10 percent of the faculty teach subjects that are tested by the state. In large elementaries, about 30% of teachers can have state test scores ascribed to them. How do we pay all the other teachers in these schools for performance?

Keiler’s most noteworthy performance may be the results he gets with students in his mock trial program, which consistently wins national awards. No VAM formula for that.

Accomplished teachers like Keiler have proposed performance pay strategies that make sense — ones that include standardized tests, where appropriate, but also place more value on teachers who advance 21st century learning outcomes for students (outcomes, coincidentally, that are highly valued by universities, business and industry and students themselves). Smart school leaders, we would think, would also value incentives that reward teachers who collaborate with colleagues and spread their teaching expertise.

What is very sad about Keiler's story? A hundred thousand teachers at work today could tell a similar story of bureaucratic bungling and inept leadership. Jay Mathews is right: It's time to overcome administrative inertia and change the way teachers like Jonathan Keiler are rewarded for being the great teachers every student deserves.

What Sarah Fine Is Trying to Tell Us

In her widely read Washington Post article of August 9, fourth-year teacher Sarah Fine makes a compelling case for researchers and reformers to include working conditions in estimating the effects of teachers on student achievement.

As Sarah relates in an essay titled "Schools Need Teachers Like Me; I Just Can't Stay," she recently resigned from her teaching post at Cesar Chavez Public Charter School in Washington DC — citing burnout as the primary factor. Why? She paints a poignant portrait of administrators “steadily expand(ing) the workload and workday” while “more and more major decisions were made behind closed doors, and more and more teachers felt micromanaged rather than supported.”

Teaching in a high-needs school is often a frenetic experience. Many teachers need to put in well over 60 hours a week to manage multiple interventions, meet the social and emotional needs of their students, mediate conflicts when out-of-school turmoil spills over into the classroom, cope with the complexity of teaching highly mobile students, and deal with the constant pressure to prepare for high-stakes tests.

In the large-scale reform experiments of the past decade, the potential power of policies that promote effective teaching as a major driver of school improvement has been mostly ignored. The focus instead has been on marginalizing teachers and/or “teacher-proofing” curriculum and instruction — rather than recognizing that teachers, with the right policy supports, are the ideal agents of meaningful and sustainable change.

At the federal level, teacher policy is now shifting rapidly toward well-funded initiatives that will link student achievement test scores to teachers in an effort to determine who is effective or not. Investing in research and pilot projects so that we can do a better job of identifying effective teachers makes sense — using rigorous measures and tools that keep a tight focus on the critical dimensions of student learning.

But judging teacher performance  without paying attention to the conditions under which qualified teachers can teach effectively will not give America the answers we need to create a New Millennium teaching force that will move all children ahead.

Peering into the Future of Teaching

I spent the three days recently working with our TeacherSolutions 2030 team at the North Carolina home of CTQ. With support from the MetLife Foundation, 12 expert teacher leaders from across the nation are defining how their profession must look in 20 years to serve students well in the 21st century.

Over the last nine months we’ve been involved in a lot of study and conversation -- mostly online in our 24/7 virtual community. We’ve  explored teaching’s historical roots, assessed the ongoing debate over how to recruit and retain new talent to the profession, and considered how emerging realities can transform teaching for 21st century learning.

We’ve discussed how web-based tools and newly designed statistical techniques will generate once-unthinkable ways for teachers to collect and analyze formative assessment data on student learning — and in doing so, inform policymakers and the public about a new brand of accountability. We’ve also talked about the role that teacher-preneurs (or pedagogical entrepreneurs) can play in spreading teaching expertise in a 24/7 environment and committed ourselves to ensure a future profession where students are known well by teachers – and teach much more than algebra to struggling 9th graders.

No doubt advances in cognitive science and the Kurzweilian vision of nanomachines will give teachers new tools to improve academic achievement. But we cannot ignore the continuing role of teachers like Keith Yow – who teaches woodworking in my hometown of Hillsborough — in assuring a meaningful future for our children. Policymakers, who are trying to figure out the whole strategic management of human capital thing, must not forget the lessons taught by shop teachers and the successful students that Keith and so many other teachers nurture. They understand that “highly effective” teaching has many dimensions, and some of the most important are not captured – yet – on the annual state assessment.

I've Said It Before...

Teaching working conditions are student learning conditions...

This past Monday, in his article As More Charter Schools Unionize, Educators Debate the Effect, Sam Dillon of the New York Times upped the ante in the predictable squabble among policy wonks over the role of teacher unions in charter school reform.

Charter schools are supposedly the bastion of all things reform because they are free of “onerous” union rules that get in the way of mandating longer school days/years and firing poor teachers.

But let’s face it – there’s a difference between rules that inhibit better opportunities for kids and having a free license to ignore basic teacher working conditions that influence health, staying power and effectiveness.

As Mr. Dillon’s even-handed reporting indicates: Charter school teachers are unionizing because their voices are not heard on matters of sound instructional practice — like reasonable student loads (not 160) and sensible numbers of different subjects taught a day (not 6). These negative teacher working conditions can quickly become negative student learning conditions.

Researchers have shown that improving instructional quality and student achievement, especially in high-needs schools, requires an intensive focus on working conditions such as making sure that (a) teachers teach in the fields in which they are prepared; (b) have adequate time to work with colleagues improving instructional practice; (c) have access to content-specific information, materials and technology; and (d) receive helpful feedback on teaching.

Without a union looking over their shoulders, charter school administrators often fail to honor this research and these conditions – which are not about teacher convenience but about capacity to help students learn.

Jennifer Gilley, a charter school teacher in Chicago, sought unionization because she became frustrated with all the turnover among staff, the lack of teacher input, “with working longer and harder than teachers at other schools and earning less.”

Here’s something I wonder about. When firefighters and policemen call for better working conditions, they are not immediately condemned for not caring about the community members they are serving. But it seems that when teachers speak out and say “I can’t do my best job under these conditions,” they are castigated for not caring about their students. Why is that, do you think?

The good news is that Mr. Dillon’s piece helps get beyond the usual either-or thinking when it comes to unions and reform. Underneath the current squabbling is a problem looking for a better solution. I’ve written in the past about the potential for a collective of expert teachers and talented newcomers to work together in ways that support optimum working conditions and maximize student achievement.

It’s an idea that could grow legs, I believe, if we can get a group of our nation’s most accomplished teachers to take action together. More soon about that.

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On the matter of working conditions research, see: Little, J. W. (1996, April). Organizing schools for teacher learning. New York: Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association.

Reaping the Whirlwind

John Merrow’s recent PBS NewsHour broadcast on staffing our nation’s most challenging schools with Teach for America (TFA) recruits is a must see. Listening to Mr. Merrow’s interview with Paul Vallas, you would think the superintendent of the New Orleans Recovery School District has only one of two choices: fill classrooms with young, energetic, “top talent” from competitive colleges — or with old, tired, academically and pedagogically inept teachers from wherever.

The facts revealed in Merrow’s report show how important it is for teachers to get the “right” training and support in order to teach effectively in high needs schools -- much less in an urban community like New Orleans, with a long history of school problems capped by the most devastating natural disaster in modern American history.

The issue is not the intense, five-week lockstep pedagogical training regime of TFA. Nor is it the typical, disconnected university-based teacher education program, where teaching-methods courses have little to do with preparation for high needs schools. The answer is something else, and a big piece of it can be seen in emerging urban teacher residency initiatives in Chicago and elsewhere — and the cutting-edge preparation programs at top-flight education schools like those at Stanford and UCLA.

In these pacesetter programs, education researchers work with expert K-12 teachers who develop and support new recruits over time. With high-quality residency and internship programs, we can help new teachers build the resiliency they must have to survive and prosper in schools that need them most. The smart, idealistic people who enter these programs are able to work side by side — for many weeks and months — with seasoned veterans who are able to share their successful strategies and their deep knowledge of high-needs school culture.

Pop sociologist Malcolm Gladwell, in his best-selling book, Outliers, has made a compelling case that training and effort are more important than talent. Gladwell points out that the most effective individuals (including teachers, we can assume) put in at least 10,000 hours of practice on the road to proficiency and success. Compare that to the average amount of practice we give to new teachers — traditional or alternative — before we hurl them into one of the most challenging jobs in our society.

During her interview with Merrow, TFA recruit Jeylan Erman lamented that “I thought I'd come into teaching being naturally good at it, because I care so much about students. I automatically thought that, because I care so much, I [would necessarily] be really great. It's not like that.”

The New Orleans recruits needed more pedagogical tools and more seasoned veterans to help them teach effectively. They also needed to work in a redefined teaching profession, where youth is not pitted against experience, and teachers and administrators work closely with health and social service agencies (like the Harlem’s Children Zone) to connect schools and communities in serving students and their families.

Although many teachers who viewed the NewsHour report were understandably upset by any suggestion that multiple years of professional service is somehow a negative, the Merrow piece actually makes a compelling case that all new teachers, no matter their academic pedigree, need serious training and support in order to teach in high needs schools.

Watch it carefully and probe beyond the surface debate about 5-week TFA training versus the 12-week student teaching experience offered  by most education schools. Let’s quit wasting all this youthful talent, energy and idealism and get serious about what it truly takes to recruit, prepare and retain teachers for the kids we all say we care about. Until we do, we’ll continue to reap the whirlwind.

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.