Advancing the Teaching Profession

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.

---------
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?