Advancing the Teaching Profession

To Improve Teaching, Improve Key School Conditions, Says Team of Expert Teachers

States seem to be “racing” to ensure great teachers for every student, all of a sudden.

But our in-house review of a number of Race to the Top state applications suggests that policymakers are ignoring one of the most critical factors related to finding and rewarding effective teachers: the conditions under which they work.

I am not talking about some of the conditions found in local collective bargaining agreements. I'm talking about what we know from research and from classroom experts about conditions that matter for student learning.
 
In a few weeks, CTQ will be releasing a new report prepared in partnership with the TeacherSolutions Teacher Working Conditions team — a group of 14 accomplished teachers who work in mostly high-needs schools and districts, both urban and rural. They draw on current research and CTQ case studies to identify essential, research-based principles that must undergird sustainable and effective teaching reforms. Among them are:

• Schools must promote aligned, out-of-school learning experiences for students beyond the school walls, as well as growing online opportunities to connect schools with local and global communities;

• Teachers must have the opportunity to make decisions about instruction in their classrooms and schools in order to reach students with diverse and unique needs; and

• Administrators must be accountable for ensuring teachers are in teaching assignments for which they are prepared and have opportunities to develop skills they need to meet new pedagogical challenges.

The team also calls for much more prominent teacher leadership roles in schools, shared accountability with higher-ups for student performance results, and the development of more "hub" schools in high needs neighborhoods that offer community services while also protecting academic priorities.

Contrary to the current reform rhetoric — which seems to depend upon heroic educators posing as caped crusaders to swoop in and save children with magical teaching — the upcoming TeacherSolutions report provides ideas backed by solid research that can make the schools and teachers we already have more successful.

The team includes: Eldred “Jay” Bagley (Philadelphia); Glenda Blaisdell-Buck (Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC); Mitzi Durham (Clark County, NV); Larry Ferlazzo (Sacramento, CA); Brian K. Freeland, Jr. (Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC); Lori Fulton (Clark County, NV); Leona Bost Ingram (Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC); Kristoffer Kohl (Clark County, NV); Mona Madan (Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC); Kathie Marshall (Los Angeles); Delores Maxen (Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC); Susan “Ernie” Rambo (Clark County, NV); Taylor Ross (Jefferson County, AL); and Gamal Sherif (Philadelphia).
 
Funded by the Ford Foundation, their year of TeacherSolutions work will identify both the policies and practices needed to ensure great teaching for all students.

Stay tuned!

Fixing Our Schools Requires More Than Hiring Smarter Teachers and Firing Incompetent Ones

A new, well-documented essay by Richard Rothstein unpacks many of the myths about improving public education, including the role that teachers play in closing the student achievement gap.

The media frenzy over Davis Guggenheim’s Waiting for Superman documentary has reinforced the conventional wisdom offered up by many self-labeled reformers that we can have better schools by simply  recruiting smarter teachers and firing incompetent ones.

But Rothstein points to “decades of social science research” revealing that two-thirds of the difference in the quality of one school compared to another is attributable to non-school factors. He writes:

…(O)n average, disadvantaged children who have high-quality teachers will do better than similar children whose teachers are less adequate. But good teachers alone, for most children, cannot fully compensate for the disadvantages many children bring to school. As we noted, differences in the quality of in-school experiences can explain about one-third of the differences in achievement.

And some of the key in-school factors that do make a difference have to do with the conditions under which teachers work — including access to quality curriculum materials and whether or not they have opportunities to learn from each other. Smart teachers, in other words, must have consistent opportunities to use their smarts to advance learning.

Our own CTQ research shows that other conditions also matter a great deal, including: teachers’ level of preparation for the students they teach; whether or not they are assigned to grades and subjects for which they have been trained; and whether school programs are connected and well-aligned with after-school learning opportunities.
 
Rothstein’s demystification of the often hyperbolic claims about how to accomplish school reform sheds new light on the complex relationship between teaching quality and student achievement. If we are willing to pay attention to the facts and solid research he brings to bear on the issue, we can get serious about creating a unified vision for how all students can have the public education they need and deserve.

What Is Teacherpreneurship?

The first excerpt from Teaching 2030, a new book written by myself and 12 expert teachers who are members of the Teacher Leaders Network, appears in the Fall issue of Education Week's Professional Development Sourcebook. The excerpt highlights our concept of a key role that we believe accomplished teachers can play in improving schools and growing the profession: Teacherpreneurship. We write:

Most importantly, teacherpreneurship is not about promoting a free-market vision for the profit of a few—but rather how our society can invest substantially in teachers who can expertly serve millions of children and families who are not in the position to choose a better school somewhere else or find the most erudite online teacher anytime, anywhere. Teacherpreneurship is all about the public good, not private gain.

via www.edweek.org

If you're intrigued, we urge you to read the 2000-wd excerpt and leave your comments about what we believe is a bold vision of the future of teacher leadership.

The book, subtitled What We Must Do for Our Students and Our Public Schools – Now and in the Future, is being published by Teachers College Press and will be available in bookstores and online by early December.

We believe Teaching 2030 will have broad appeal, and we're pleased to have pre-publication endorsements from former Secretary of Education Richard Riley, teaching scholar Linda Darling Hammond, American Enterprise Institute education policy director Rick Hess, and NEA president Dennis Van Roekel (among others).

Preparing Teachers, Singapore-Style

Ok, so you want to make math as “easy as 1, 2, 3” for students and have them learn at the high levels of international performance. What do you do? Do you recruit teachers who have math degrees (but little or no pedagogical training) and then expect those teachers to teach for only a few years? Do you focus on creating charter schools or revoking teacher tenure laws? Do you call on a Caped Crusader to swoop in and get rid of so-called incompetent teachers to close the achievement gap?
 
Nope. Not if your kid goes to school in Singapore (or a few well-heeled school districts in America).
 
Winnie Hu’s informative piece in the New York Times (9/30/10) tells the story of the investments some American school districts are making in SingaporeMath — a program where teachers are well-prepared in specific math pedagogy and are expected to teach a few concepts deeply. These investments to increase teacher know-how appear to be paying off in better student performance.  
 
My recent post on the latest McKinsey & Associates teaching quality research highlights Singapore not just because it recruits top talent to teaching, but because the southeast Asian nation takes teacher education seriously by paying for in-depth pedagogical preparation — and then gives teachers 10-20 hours each week to refine their lessons. They pay teachers well, but they do not reward them just for raising test scores. They draw on comprehensive evaluation systems that focus on teachers spreading their expertise to others.
 
As Ms. Hu notes, “school officials caution that SingaporeMath is not easy or cheap to successfully adopt.” It requires substantive investments in helping teachers gain the new skills and knowledge associated with teaching math concepts at a deep level. But is it not time to invest more in developing the profession that makes all others possible?