Advancing the Teaching Profession

Sound and Trusted Education Trust Solutions

Recently I pointed to Education Trust and several of their problematic "highly qualified" teacher policy proposals — most notably their overemphasis on value-added assessments in identifying highly accomplished teachers. However, they also recommend “better tools for teachers and administrators” – which are most needed in the No Child Left Behind reauthorization. For example, they call for a “new $750 million curriculum fund for states to develop high-quality, high-level curriculum materials linked to their standards and assessments, and to provide teachers with professional development in using the new materials.” They also call for “$400 million annually in continued federal support for state assessment development so that states can improve the quality of their assessments, with special attention to improving assessments for English-language learners and students with disabilities.” They also call for, like I did several years ago, to invest at least $100 million in state data systems so administrators, teachers, and policymakers can have better information for both policy and practice. I must tip my hat to the Education Trust. Now it is time for us also to invest more in teacher education so all teachers — even before they enter teaching — know how to take advantage of the new curriculum materials, use the innovative assessments, and better serve special needs and second language learners. These proposals also need to be in the reauthorization of NCLB.

Do You Want Good Teachers? Then Listen to the Experts, Not the Policy Wonks

Today the Education Trust offered up a number of problematic "highly qualified" teacher policy proposals with its recommendations for the reauthorization of NCLB. While the organization calls for more diagnostic assessments, it proposes to "evaluate teacher performance based primarily on objective measures of growth in student learning and to use those systems to evaluate professional development activities and to reform policies governing teacher compensation, assignment, and tenure."

With its recommendations, Education Trust refuses to own up to the enormous technical problems (identified by the RAND Corporation and many other scholars) associated with using value added methods (VAM). The proposals also ignore the gross misuse of tests and the errors testing company continue to make. For example, the Chicago Sun Times just reported that state achievement tests being given this week in some public elementary schools contain more than a dozen mistakes – which will invalidate a number of analyses that could be made regarding both student learning and teaching effectiveness. The scholarly community - including the RAND assessment experts - has made it clear that “the research base is currently insufficient to support the use of VAM for high-stakes decisions.”

This most recent round of NCLB proposals fly in the face of expert teachers, like those in our TeacherSolutions team whose report on Performance Pay was also released today. These teachers - who include national, state, and district teachers of the year, National Board Certified Teachers, winners of the Milken National Educator of the Year Award, and Presidential Award recipients - offer more well-grounded recommendations.

The TeacherSolutions team believes that standardized test scores have a place in our educational accountability systems, and can be part of a comprehensive framework for paying teachers more and differently. But they do not, in and of themselves, provide a fully accurate measure of teacher effectiveness. Large-scale standardized tests are designed to give a snapshot of student performance at one moment in time, and testmakers remind us that no one test is broad enough to measure the full extent of student knowledge in any area. The problem is compounded when we consider that most teachers cannot be evaluated using the high-stakes standardized tests required by No Child Left Behind (NCLB) because their subject areas or grade levels are not tested.

The TeacherSolutions members argue that teachers should be paid more not only when they produce student-achievement gains on standardized tests, but when they can demonstrate individual student progress through credible data from their own classroom assessments. Their system also hones in on rewarding small teams of teachers who raise student achievement (measured in multiple ways) together. Unlike many Inside-the-Beltway policy wonks, these experts know schools and what can work well in designing systems to identify and pay effective teaching. 

Highly Qualified Teacher or the Highly Expert Teacher

Researchers continue to surface the fact that teachers are the most important predictor in determining whether or not students will learn in school. However, research also demonstrates that qualified teachers - those who are prepared and experienced - are the most inequitably distributed school resource. Students in our nation’s high-priority schools are far less likely to be to be taught by the most expert teachers. This is why one of the most important aspects of the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is its demand that states ensure a "highly qualified” teacher for every child.

However, a recent federally funded study has found that teachers who meet their states’ definitions of "highly qualified" under the NCLB Act do not necessarily teach in ways that will allow their students to meet rigorous academic standards. This should come as no surprise: NCLB’s "highly qualified" teacher provisions focus primarily on whether or not teachers know their subject matter and/or if they have passed minimal state licensing standards. At best NCLB calls for "minimally” – not “highly” – qualified teachers. Recently, The Commission on No Child Left Behind recommended that “it is time to ensure that all teachers demonstrate their effectiveness in the classroom rather than just their qualifications for entering it.” The Commission, like a number of other reform groups, calls for standardized tests to be the primary measure for identifying effective teachers.

A number of reform groups, like the Education Trust, are calling for teachers to be identified as highly effective when they generate gains on standardized achievement tests – period. Granted, the focus on student outcomes, rather than teacher quality inputs, makes sense. However, solely or primarily using student standardized tests as the arbiter of teaching effectiveness may do more harm than good.

First, these standardized tests only measure a small fraction of what teachers need to do in order to help all students meeting 21st century learning standards. Second, specific standardize tests (usually in math and reading) can only be ascribed to maybe 30 percent of America’s teachers. Third, even using more sophisticated value-added measures, statistical errors limit the use of the data in making high stakes personnel decisions. Finally, teachers of English language learners and special needs students, who have special testing needs, cannot be fairly judged by most standardized tests used today.

Instead a measurement system — consisting of multiple measures of student learning, teacher performance assessments and teaching practices evaluations — must be combined with the “right” incentives and supports to effectively staff high-priority schools with the “right” teachers. Teachers report that they learn more from their colleagues than anyone else. Perhaps, we need to begin thinking about defining highly expert teachers (HET) – those who can demonstrate growth in student learning and who can effectively spread their teaching expertise to others. More to come.