Advancing the Teaching Profession

Teachers Call for Better Evaluation Systems

“We want an evaluation system that helps us define our strengths so we can share those strengths with other teachers. We want an evaluation that defines areas where we need to grow, so we can be the best we can be…”

That’s what Julianna Dauble, an accomplished fifth-grade teacher from Renton in Washington State, thinks a teacher evaluation system should do. Julianna was one of ten expert teachers in the Washington New Millennium Initiative (NMI) who co-authored a new report entitled “How Better Teacher & Student Assessment Can Power Up Learning.”

Unlike other professionals, teachers aren’t routinely consulted when changes in their profession’s policy are being made. Yet teachers have unique and important insights based on their expertise with students, content, and teaching methods. Key policy decisions—and the details of implementation—should be informed by teachers’ perspectives. With this in mind, NMI brings together groups of accomplished and effective teachers in targeted locations to discuss education policy, with the goal of cultivating and elevating teachers’ voices in discussions about policy reform.

The Washington NMI team’s report comes in the wake of the passage of SB 6696, legislation that has the potential to move the state closer to establishing a set of fair and accurate teaching evaluation standards. Moving the state from a system in which teachers were deemed simply “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory,” the bill requires ratings to occur on a more nuanced four-level scale. It also calls for implementing additional methods for measuring teaching effectiveness that include but also go beyond value-added scores.

The law is currently in a two-year pilot phase, with statewide implementation due in the 2013-14 school year. That means districts have a unique opportunity to garner perspectives of expert teachers—like those of the Washington NMI team—about whether the new changes meet the needs of their districts and schools and how they can be implemented well at the school level.

The Washington NMI teachers have responded to the law with a set of guidelines based on a year-long study of best practices in evaluation policy, integrated with their own experience of what works to promote effective teaching and learning.

We are working with NMI teams in Colorado and Illinois—two states that passed similar laws.  The Washington teacher evaluation law is more like the one in Illinois: local educators have some leeway in figuring out how to implement it.

The Washington NMI team makes the case that:

1.     Teacher evaluation systems should be based on valid, accurate, and reliable measures of student learning. While standardized test scores provide some information, other measures should be used, too, such as teacher self-evaluations, self-chosen artifacts of lessons and student work, peer evaluations, and videotaped observations. These other data points can give educators, parents, policymakers, and community leaders a better idea of what students have learned, and can provide additional context for understanding standardized test scores.

2.     An improved evaluation system should equip teachers to design and use a variety of assessment tools that capture information about students' progress. School-based, curriculum-embedded assessments throughout the school year can give teachers more information about student learning, and  technology can support these methods). States should also invite teachers to take part in creating state standardized tests as well. Writes Katie Davis, one of the report’s teacher-authors, “I’m envisioning state testing to not be an end-of-year big event, but a regular set of smaller assessments that relate to pacing guides set by districts and aligned to state standards.”

3.     Teacher evaluation systems should also provide opportunities for classroom practitioners to spread their teaching expertise—and consider such leadership in individuals’ evaluations. Smart school systems must identify the “best” teachers—and place a premium on the spread of effective practices from one classroom to the next, as well as across schools, and districts. Technology—including online tools and smartphones—already offers many useful ways to spread teachers’ expertise.

4.     Teacher evaluation systems should include results-oriented professional learning communities (PLCs) in every school. These PLCs can provide space for teachers to collaborate (in and out of cyberspace) on formative assessments, share expertise, and be guided by master teachers, who could take on increased roles in areas such as peer evaluations. Jessica Conte, a first-grade teacher from Monroe, writes about her own PLC, “We have become a team of experts available to support and guide one another to best meet the needs of our entire group of students.”

Teacher and report co-author Ryan Niman from Edmonds emphasized the most important thing for policymakers to keep in mind: “Regardless of how teacher evaluation systems change, the most critical part of the entire process is that the system must be developed by those who really know teaching and learning.”

My hope is that other teachers around the country will hear this clarion call from their colleagues and advocate for changes they believe in. In Washington, the NMI team will begin to go “deep” in one of the state’s school districts — helping both district administrators and union leaders get above the usual fray and implement the new law. Meanwhile, CTQ’s New Millennium Initiative will continue to expand our virtual network of classroom experts who can identify TeacherSolutions to complex problems facing our public schools today — and tomorrow.

Steven Brill Does a 180: Teachers and Unions Can Save Our Schools

This guest post is by Kristoffer Kohl, a former classroom teacher who recently joined the Center for Teaching Quality as a policy associate working toward the vision of TEACHING 2030. He previously worked with a team of accomplished teachers from across the country to produce “Transforming School Conditions: Building Bridges to the Education System that Students and Teachers Deserve.”

The clamor for education reform continues on the pages of the Wall Street Journal, but not in the manner you might think. Rather than calling for vouchers, charter schools, and an end to collective bargaining, guest columnist Steven Brill suggests that the solution for saving our schools will be found in the skill and leadership of so-called ordinary teachers and the unions who represent them.

In an essay that appeared in Saturday’s print edition, Brill, author of Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America's Schools, dispels some of the myths that have informed faulty proposals for fixing public education. With 50 million students in 95,000 public schools, we cannot charter-school our way to meaningful reform, nor can we rely on the unsustainable model of super-teachers working endless hours at a tireless pace. In a profession numbering over three million, it is the “rank and file” that must be mobilized for actual reform to take root. Brill nods to the profound role that organized labor will play in the process by adding, “The unions are the organizational link that will enable school improvement to expand beyond the ability of extraordinary people to work extraordinary hours.”

I could not agree more. Teaching is the nation’s largest college-educated occupation, and we need millions of teachers to work together over time in their communities (and in and out of cyberspace) to serve students and families well. As Gary Sykes and Dick Elmore suggested decades ago, it is time to build a school system in which ordinary people can do the extraordinary work of education.

As a Teach for America alum who taught in Las Vegas for almost five years, I can attest to the need to focus on the working conditions that allow teachers to teach effectively.

As the Center for Teaching Quality continues to evolve, we are working with teachers to rethink what it means to “organize” as a profession. We encourage unions to set aside their past rules and tools (which won them much-needed concessions from reluctant administrators) to become professional guilds. Transformed in this way, unions could enforce teaching standards among the ranks and broker the kind of teacherpreneurial efforts needed for 21^st-century schools.

In the post-industrial age, teachers need professional organizations that defend not only their rights but their profession’s commitment to high standards, the interests of children, and a public education system that protects American democracy and spreads the expertise of its most effective practitioners.

Imagine if teachers were to earn differentiated membership into their unions based on the quality of their teaching. Imagine union leaders selected for their classroom expertise as well as their leadership skills and organizational prowess. How might such a leadership structure dramatically alter the voice that unions have in the reform debate?

As recent survey results from the Gallup/PDK Poll on public education demonstrate, the American public trusts teachers and believes they should have the flexibility to teach in the ways they think best without being tied to a prescribed curriculum. Likewise, we should trust the perspective of teachers and demand a meaningful role for them when big decisions are being made about education in this country. Too often, education policy is crafted by those who have never taught in a classroom. With the nation’s best teachers informing policy decisions, legislative mandates would be driven by the realities and challenges of our schools.

Our New Millennium Initiative teachers in Colorado (part of a larger network that includes communities in Washington, Illinois, Florida, and California) are promoting a series of innovative solutions related to implementation of the state’s teacher evaluation legislation, SB 191, also known as the Ensuring Quality Instruction Through Educator Effectiveness Act.  In his new book, Brill describes the Colorado law as landmark legislation. However, SB 191 and similar laws will fail unless we use new technologies and organizational structures that equip expert teachers to implement high quality teaching evaluation systems.

It is reassuring to hear that Steven Brill has opened up the conversation a bit more for teachers to lead the way.

New Way to Share TEACHING 2030 Ideas

The word is getting out about TEACHING 2030 and our big ideas about the future of teaching and learning. Many of you have likely seen our 4-minute animated video. 

Now there's a new resource to share: a free, printable visual summary of the book's ideas. We hope you will share 2030 Illustrated with those in your life who care about the future of our children and public schools.

Our TEACHING 2030 team has been hitting the lecture halls and conference ballrooms this summer. Last week, I spoke to the National Council of State Legislators, introducing the 2030 ideas to policymakers from across the nation. A couple days later, I spent time talking about the TEACHING 2030 vision with a group of teachers and professors at Oakland University, which is working with local school districts to redesign its teacher education program on the basis of our book. Meanwhile, my coauthor Laurie Wasserman and colleague Melissa Rasberry led a discussion of the book at a meeting of the Massachusetts Teachers Association.

Our audiences are responding eagerly to the bold, practical vision that twelve accomplished teachers helped me develop.  People are attracted to TEACHING 2030's farsightedness, optimism, and specificity about what's needed to create the teaching profession that our students deserve.We must keep spreading the word. We must reach more teachers, more administrators, more policymakers, more community leaders, more of the parents whose children's future is at stake.

To accomplish that, we need your help as ambassadors.

We hope you'll…
…follow @teachingquality on Twitter & like CTQ on Facebook.
…retweet and share content and multimedia tools (like 2030 Illustrated and the four-minute video) with your networks.
…let us know if you'd like to involve a member of the TEACHING 2030 team in an upcoming event.

Most of all, we hope you'll continue to find ways to get above the constant clutter of today's reform talk and work with with your colleagues, friends, and neighbors to ensure every child has qualified, caring, effective, and well-supported teachers who are well-prepared for 21st century teaching and learning.

TEACHING 2030 is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Teachers College Press. 

A Public Education Success Story Silenced

Well, it’s happened again. Shortsighted policymakers have axed a research-based program that has proven effective in preparing high-quality teachers.

Parents and schools in North Carolina should mourn the loss of the North Carolina Teaching Fellows.  The program, in place for almost 25 years, recruits top high school students into teaching, pays for their high quality preparation (with extensive student teaching), and supports them in their initial years so they remain in the classroom for a career, not just for a couple of years.

According to yesterday's News & Observer, the NC Teaching Fellows program costs the state a modest $13.5 million a year. It produces more than 500 top-flight new teachers annually, well-prepared in both content and pedagogy, who commit to teaching in the state for at least four years. Some 17 campuses participate in the program.

Who are these Teaching Fellows? The typical recruit has a SAT score over 1100, a high school GPA of 4.0 or higher on a weighted scale, and is in the top 10% of his or her high school graduating class. Each year approximately 20% of the program's recipients are minority, while 30% are male.  As reported in the news article, Jason Sinquefield, a 26-year-old math teacher, noted that he “never thought of education as a career choice” until he discovered the NC Teaching Fellows. He credited the program with defining “a way of becoming the best teacher you could be.”

The program’s results are impressive. A recent study by a researcher at the University of North Carolina found that Teaching Fellows are more likely to produce gains on student achievement tests, particularly in elementary and middle grades math, and in high school. The Teaching Fellows are far more likely than other teachers (especially those from alternative certification programs) to remain in the classroom for five years.

And these positive results are longstanding. Over 15 years ago I had the opportunity to assess the impact of the NC Teaching Fellows Program. At the time, tools were not available to examine student achievement effects. However, I found that administrators highly valued these well-prepared, university-trained recruits, who quickly became change agents for long-term school improvement. Today, almost 4,000 Teaching Fellows are teaching in 99 of the state’s 100 counties. Nearly one in four have earned National Board Certification.

They are effective teachers — and specialized recruitment and training made a difference. So why’d this program get cut? Times are tight, of course. But some of the North Carolina state legislators who took the budget ax to the program seem to be influenced by rhetoric that devalues investments in teacher education and professional development.

Ironically, the death of the NC Teaching Fellows program comes as many of our nation’s business and community leaders are calling for our nation to invest more in teachers. The North Carolina Teaching Fellows program employs many of the same strategies that help top-ranked nations to ensure the quality of their teaching workforces. As Linda Darling-Hammond described recently, nations like Singapore and Finland have built a high-performing teaching profession by enabling all of their teachers to enter high-quality preparation programs, generally at the masters’ degree level, where they receive a salary while they prepare. There they learn research-based teaching strategies and train with experts in model schools attached to their universities. They enter a well-paid profession – in Singapore earning as much as beginning doctors -- where they are supported by mentor teachers and have 15 or more hours a week to work and learn together, engaging in shared planning, action research, lesson study, and observations in each other’s classrooms. And they work in schools that are equitably funded and well-resourced with the latest technology and materials.

Obviously, all of these elements are not yet in place in American schools. But in North Carolina, a small state program has managed to take some significant steps to ensure a truly qualified cadre of public school teachers. Over the course of more than two decades, the North Carolina Teaching Fellows program has fine-tuned its strategies and demonstrated its effectiveness. Shame on North Carolina policymakers for bringing this all-too-rare success story to an untimely end.