Advancing the Teaching Profession

Withering "Rhee-form"

Over the last week or so, there has been an unusual spate of news reports, research studies, and op-eds published suggesting that the current teaching quality reform—or perhaps better titled “Rhee-form”—agenda may be beginning to wither.

The narrow focus on judging teachers by student test-score gains is losing ground. No longer can we use value-added measures (VAM) on once-a-year, bubble-in, multiple-choice assessments, and then pay teachers with higher VAM ratings more and fire those with lower ratings. Perhaps the withering reform agenda, owned by both Republican and Democratic presidents, has something to do with the indictment of Beverly Hall, former superintendent in the Atlanta Public Schools, and the claims of the enormous pressure she put on principals and teachers to immediately raise test scores.

Or it could be the news broken by John Merrow about Michelle Rhee, the “poster child” for promoting high stakes accountability and blaming teachers for poor student test scores. A memo John uncovered reveals that Michelle is likely culpable for rampant cheating on standardized tests in the beleaguered inner-city schools of  Washington, DC.

 

We must evaluate teachers on more than just their students' high-stakes standardize tests.

Even well-meaning politicos and policy wonks struggle to admit that their favored teaching quality strategies are flawed. However, I am beginning to see a chink in their armor. For example, more than five years ago, the Aspen Institute, in efforts to overhaul teaching evaluation, recommended that states  be “required to put in place systems for measuring the learning gains of a teacher’s students through value-added methodology.” Moreover, “student achievement [could] count for no less than 50 percent” of the formula for identifying those who are effective or not.

 

Now, as reported in a New York Times op-ed piece, the Aspen Institute is claiming that “an obsessive focus on holding teachers accountable for test scores without an equal emphasis on actually improving classroom teaching—could fatally undermine the effort to create meaningful evaluation systems.” The Aspen Institute now is taking a page out of the teacher unions’ hymnal.  

Focusing on the right types of reforms 

At the same time, the New York Times, in a dramatic reversal of its typical opinion page promotions, suggests that charter school reforms and Teach for America-type shortcuts into teaching are distractions at best. Jal Mehta, following in the footsteps of Linda Darling-Hammond’s 1996 NCTAF report, reminds readers that “teaching is a complex activity that is hard to direct and improve from afar.” Jal asserts, much like Linda did, that it is time to professionalize teaching—which will no doubt require “money, political will and the audacity to imagine that teaching could be a profession on a par with fields like law and medicine.”

In the vacuum created by indicted reformers, and amid growing evidence of the limitations of their policy prescriptions (and the harm created by them), I suspect there will be another effort to professionalize teaching in America. 

Unlike in the past, when attempts to invest in the profession have routinely dissipated, this time America’s teachers will be more clearly heard and embraced by a public who has deep trust in those individuals who teach our nation's students. The Internet and online networks will help the public understand the complexity of teaching, the potential of professionalism to transform public education, and the wrong-headedness of narrow, top-down Rhee-forms that do not come close to serving students first.

Linda Darling-Hammond, a mentor and friend for 30 years, often reminds me (and so many others) that the “process of creating better schools is hard work” and is never “without struggle.” In light of all the efforts to de-professionalize teaching of late, from those on both sides of the political aisle, I can hear Linda echo one of my favorite poets, Langston Hughes (and the many who inspired him): “Keep your hand on the plow! Hold on!"

Curious Teacher Ratings? Or Curious Reporting?

The New York Times continues to not tell the full story when it comes to teachers and teaching.

In a recent article, "Curious Grade for Teachers: Nearly All Pass,"Jenny Anderson raises questions about the high marks teachers continue to receive, despite big policy changes across the nation to make sure teaching evaluations are based primarily on student test scores.

In the epicenters of such reforms, e.g., Tennessee and Florida as well as New York City and Washington DC, almost all teachers meet expectations—and beyond. Anderson points out that in Washington DC, the education-policy home of Michelle Rhee, 95 percent of the district’s teachers met the standard, and only 0.4 percent (that's right, 4 in 1,000 teachers) received the lowest rating. The New York Times, once again showing its ideological stripes, titles Anderson’s article “Curious Grade for Teachers,” suggesting that there is no way that so many teachers could be rated effective.

So is the problem faulty systems, where teachers are graded on the test scores of students they did not teach (as in Florida), or that the value-added measures used to judge teachers’ effectiveness in raising test scores are unstable barometers of measuring educators' performance?  Or is it, as suggested in Anderson’s article by promoters of “get tough” evaluation systems, the fact that principals do not have the guts to give teachers bad marks? These are questions that we need to be talking about—and answering.

However, Anderson misses the mark by not asking the questions that should be surfaced in such a journalistic foray. Would the system be better served if teachers themselves were leading evaluation reform (as SRI research strongly suggests)? Have teacher-evaluation reformers ignored the need to build a teaching development system first and foremost (as concluded at the recent International Summit on the Teaching Profession)?

I wonder if Anderson and her editors have read Thomas Friedman’s latest column in their own newspaper. Drawing on the wisdom of Tony Wagner, Friedman calls for Accountability 2.0, where teachers are judged, like their counterparts in Finland, on the degree to which their students innovate and their classroom teaching focuses on “play, passion, and purpose”—not 20th-century standardized tests built on 19th-century principles of teaching and learning. What will it take for real journalism to reemerge and for reporters to ask the important questions instead of kowtowing to school reform bromides?

3 Lessons for Education Schools and Policymakers

This is the second of two posts on AACTE's recent report, "The Changing Teacher Preparation Profession." Go here to read part one.

Debates continue to rage among analysts and researchers over whether university-based education schools should prepare teachers—and how much training is needed before a new recruit teaches independently. Much of the rhetoric, especially of the kind embellished by pseudo-scientific studies, is driven more by ideology than sound methodology and suggests that universities writ large do not prepare teachers adequately.

As I pointed out yesterday, AACTE’s new report, "The Changing Teacher Preparation Profession," filled with compelling evidence and exemplars, offers an authoritative antidote to many of the current myths about teacher education.

The report reveals that more talent is entering our nation's teacher preparation programs. It also shows that more is being done to make sure teacher candidates are learning how to teach—not in the ivory tower, but in the schools where they will actually be teaching.

But there's still more to do. We need to ensure that new recruits can work in teams to teach to the Common Core State Standards. This will allow teachers to develop and teach their own assessments that can inform their practice, spread expertise to colleagues, and revolutionize how we hold both universities and school districts (not to mention the policymakers who make the rules) accountable for teacher preparation. Even teacher education standards promoted of late have the look and feel of teaching in the late 1980s, not the second decade of the 21st century.

Let me be clear: It is time for education schools to recruit and prepare more teachers for our high-needs schools, but it is also time for policymakers to create the conditions for them to do so. I wonder what the likes of 21st-century-oriented education schools at Alverno College, CSU-Fresno, Morgan State University, the University of Central Florida, and the University of Cincinnati could do if they had the right policies behind them.

At the report's release event on Wednesday, I suggested three actions that need to be pursued:

1. The teaching profession must recognize and market its top-performing education schools—and expect all its members to meet high standards.
The new CAEP accreditation standards must pave the way, using multiple and valid indicators, to grade all institutions that prepare teachers. These include not just university programs, but school districts and nonprofits as well.

2. Policymakers must create incentives to promote collaboration among education schools.
To be more responsive to supply and demand, education schools must look beyond institutional and state lines. Universities will never be responsive to the field until policymakers ensure that school districts provide accurate and timely data about which teachers they need. And to counteract the longstanding role of education schools serving as the university cash cow, policymakers will also need to create additional financial incentives for education programs.

3. The teacher education community needs to promote fewer preparation programs.
Instead, it must invest more in deep clinical training and scholarships to prepare recruits for 21st-century public education. It is time for the education-school community to do what their counterparts in medicine did almost 90 years ago: eliminate weak programs and use the savings to deepen clinical training at the stronger schools.

Too much of today’s criticism of teacher education is driven by politics, not substance, and focuses on outdated issues instead of ones unique to the demands of 21st-century teaching and learning. In the coming weeks, 17 teacher leaders from the CTQ Collaboratory will release their own report on the kind of teacher preparation needed to equip new recruits to teach highly mobile students, develop their own assessments, improve data systems, engage parents and policymakers, and lead the transition of many of our high-needs schools into 24/7 community hubs. I encourage you to dive into their report as well, written by educators who work with students each and every day.

#ISTP2013 Travel Log: Transcending Teacher Evaluation

Delegates from 20 countries met to discuss teaching quality in Amsterdam.

 

The third annual International Summit on the Teaching Profession concluded yesterday on an interesting note. The parties in attendance still had conflicting thoughts on the purpose of evaluation: control or "liberation" of teachers. And the tensions between OECD, with its emphasis on measurement, and Education International, and its focus on support, remained.

But as the Dutch minister concluded, “evaluation must be much less about teacher quality and much more about teaching quality.” While the theme of the summit was teacher appraisal, the final session revealed that the vast majority of action steps, proposed by the 20 delegations, had little to do with evaluating teachers. Most of the focus was on supporting those who teach, and making sure they have the tools and resources they need to be effective.

Tony Mackay, the venerable emcee of the two-day teaching-policy fest, facilitated the crisp, 90-second presentations from each nation:
 
1.     Hong Kong commits to different school-based supports and a focus on teacher professionalism;
2.     Switzerland will focus first on improving the national dialogue between education and economy sectors and then evaluate without "naming and shaming";
3.     Belgium commits to "muster all new technology" to support teachers;
4.     Sweden also calls for more teacher networking developed by and for teachers;
5.     Poland will enhance teacher networks and make sure any teacher evaluation system is transparent to all;
6.     Norway calls for more coherent teacher policy and wants to implement different forms of teacher appraisal systems;
7.     New Zealand wants to raise status of teaching as the key strategy of teacher appraisal;
8.     Japan seeks to use its teaching evaluation system to enhance, not undermine, teacher motivation;
9.     Indonesia commits to deeper and continuous professional development as its primary driver of teaching quality;
10.  Iceland commits to no “one size fits all” teacher evaluation, and will make sure their system respects each school context and uses diverse methods to increase reliability;
11.  China calls for quality, "regular registration" for teachers;
12.  Canada will identify needs of teachers and increase collaboration and trust;
13.  Germany will invest more (not less) in teacher education at the university level before focusing on teacher evaluation;
14.  The Netherlands commits to more support for young teachers and a focus on teacher quality in the context of professional communities;
15.  Estonia will foster teacher leadership in schools and teaching communities (it sounds like this fine country is ready for teacherpreneurs); and
16.  The United States commits to multiple indicators of student learning as well as time for more collaboration on teacher evaluation and implementing Common Core standards.
 
Fernando Reimers of Harvard University gave the closing remarks and made sure the delegates remembered an old-school reform lesson: bad implementation can undermine good ideas. Now is the time for teachers—who are the “street-level experts”—to make it much more clear how to turn these broad policy proclamations into action for their results-oriented profession.

Unlike what some U.S. reformers suggest, the summit deliberations confirm that teacher appraisal can have consequences and consider context. But it will take those who actually teach—like Margit Timakov (Estonia), Paul Anderson (Montana, U.S.), Rebecca Mieliwocki (California, U.S.), as well as Rogier Hilbrandie and Mathijs ter Bork (Netherlands)—to figure out how to make it work.

#ISTP2013 Travel Log: Teaching at a Crossroads

As today’s International Summit on the Teaching Profession begins, this week's Education Week commentary, "The Political Future of the Teaching Profession" (March 12, 2013), is a relevant and timely must-read. The piece, written by Michael Usdan and Art Wise—the chairman of CTQ's board of directors—poses ask a hard but fundamental question: Does our country want a teaching profession?

Or, to put it another way: Do we want a deregulated occupation of teaching, its ranks filled with haphazardly trained itinerant teachers expected to teach to a standardized curriculum (designed in the 20th century)? Or do we want one filled with legions of expert practitioners who have the preparation and autonomy to teach “mathematics for analyzing and problem-solving, history for interpreting and citizenship, science for knowledge and experimentation?”

You would think, given the global economy and the complexities of teaching, as well as new demands on public education in the U.S., that the Obama Administration would be advancing the latter. But it is not.

Messieurs Wise and Usdan do not address the politics of the choices being made by today’s leading U.S. policymakers, but they do make the poignant case that the teaching unions could readily take matters into their own hands by coming together and embracing professional accountability. To this point, policymakers have taken, at best, half-measures.

Wise and Usdan point out that policymakers have “created the mechanisms for professional accountability and quality control, but have failed to advocate for and secure their universal application.” The unions, and their national leaders, say the right things, but in the maelstrom of local politics, much is sacrificed in order to hold the line on traditional bread and butter issues. This is complicated stuff of history, sociology, and politics.

What do we want teaching to be—a profession or an occupation?

Wise and Usdan make it clear that a merged union could turn the corner—if they could uniformly focus on investing in teaching and learing and take seriously the need for more rigorous preparation and credentialing. These increased standards would then "engender public confidence in the capacity and quality” of teachers as as a collective. Other top-performing nations—from Finland to Singapore—have figured it out, and their unions have been instrumental in teacher quality control.

Let’s see if these lessons make their way back across the pond—I sure hope so.

#ISTP2013 Travel Log: Pre-Summit Notes

OECD's background report
for the 2013 International Summit
on the Teaching Profession.

I’ve just landed in Amsterdam and am making my way downtown for the third annual International Summit on the Teaching Profession. This year’s summit will focus on who sets standards for the profession—as well as how teachers are evaluated and the extent to which the process leads to educators’ self-efficacy.

I don’t want to miss a beat at this small invitation-only conference, where I’m certain the ministers and union chiefs of many of the 20 nations represented will put some U.S. policymakers on edge. Marc Tucker noted of late that when it comes to teacher quality, nations (and school systems) generally take one of three approaches:

1. Fire bad teachers;
2. Recruit better ones; or
3. Invest in the teachers already in place.

For the most part, our nation’s recent teaching quality policies have focused on numbers one and two at the expense of number three.

Granted, there are some powerful examples of how to do evaluation right in the United States. Hillsborough County (Florida), for example, has seen progress under terrific leadership from Superintendent MaryEllen Elia and union leader Jean Clements.

But even in locales where thoughtful leaders transcend the typical politics of teacher accountability, our evaluation systems are light years behind other nations. As I read through the background report, prepared by OECD for the summit, several powerful teacher evaluation strategies stood out:

• Denmark teachers are evaluated in teams;
• The Dutch expect practitioners, as part of their evaluation process, to visit other schools;
• The Finnish system requires teachers to assess themselves and develop individual development plans based on national standards and local goals; and
• Singapore focuses on “current estimated potential” of teachers.

The bottom line is that top-performing nations use their evaluation systems to help all teachers get better. I’m looking forward to learning and sharing more in the week ahead. In the meantime, you can keep up with the summit in real time by following the hashtag #ISTP2013 on Twitter.

This Year's MetLife Survey: Good News for Teacherpreneurs

Several years ago, with support from MetLife Foundation, CTQ helped make the case for teacherpreneurs—classroom experts who teach students regularly but also have time, space, and reward to incubate and execute bold pedagogical and policy ideas.

Since then, and with generous funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rose Community Foundation, we have begun to cultivate and pay for teacherpreneurs in Colorado (Jessica Keigan and Jessica Cuthbertson) and Florida (Megan Allen and Ryan Kinser) as they lead Common Core and teacher evaluation reforms, create virtual learning communities, and organize National Board Certified Teachers as online mentors. And with continued funding from MetLife Foundation, Seattle-based teacherpreneur Noah Zeichner is leading work at CTQ to launch an international network of teacher leaders to fuel a 21st-century teaching profession.

We have been embraced by forward-thinking administrators (and program officers) who want to transcend the 20th-century debates over teaching and learning. They want to ensure that all students are college- and career-ready and help blur the lines of distinction between those who teach in schools and those who lead them. But we have faced resistance from a number of reformers who do not believe teachers can or should lead.

Now MetLife, with its 29th annual survey, continues to shed light on teachers and the future of their profession. This survey speaks volumes to our concept of teacherpreneurism.

The latest poll has found that 23 percent of America’s teachers—or about 700,000 of them—are “extremely” or “very interested” in serving in a hybrid role as a teacher and leader. (And about half are at least “somewhat interested” in such an assignment.)

These findings are compelling, especially when set in the following context: The vast majority of the same teachers (84 percent) are “not very” or “not at all” interested in becoming a principal, and with good reason. The same MetLife survey revealed that 75 percent of our nation’s principals believe their job has become “too complex,” and almost half (48 percent) report they are “under great stress several days a week.”

It is time to get over fallacious boundaries between teachers and administrators and rebuild the profession that makes all others possible. It is time to create more time for teachers to incubate and execute their own ideas—making the job of “principal-ing” more manageable and encouraging more of our best teachers to lead without leaving. Thanks to MetLife for teaching us that 700,000 teachers are ready to do so—and continuing to support us and our new book, TEACHERPRENEURS, which documents how innovative teachers lead without leaving.

Teacher Prep for the Digital Age

There is a lot of talk about improving teacher education in America. But much of the policy talk of late, especially in Washington, DC, would—at best—advance changes reflective of the late 20th century, not 2013.

Granted, there is more that can, and must, be done to evaluate teacher preparation, including the efforts of the National Science Foundation to devise a new system to ensure new teaching recruits are ready to teach in high-needs schools. But teachers must be able do far more than manage a classroom of diverse learners, implement research-based literacy and numeracy tools, and teach to standardized tests designed decades ago.

Reading reform reports, like the ones produced of late by the National Council for Teacher Quality (no relation to our CTQ), one might think that all teachers must only master 20th-century imperatives, but if we are going to create the profession that students deserve, then teacher preparation needs to transcend the debates of today.

I am proud that a team of 17 classroom experts, all part of the growing CTQ virtual community, has developed a framework for thinking and acting on Teacher Prep 2.0, with a hard look toward 3.0 (that will be fueled by the Semantic Web). I have incorporated a number of their ideas my presentation on Perspectives on the Future of Teacher Preparation in the Digital Age today at the Alliance for Excellent Education. (The webinar will be archived as a video—check the Alliance’s website later this week.)

These classroom experts believe it is time to get serious about fusing higher education and school district resources, coupled with serious federal incentive for recruiting, preparing, and retain teachers.  If targeted recruits were trained for hybrid teaching and leadership roles, with responsibility to work with colleagues in redesigned schools, then a variety of pathways into the profession could be embraced.

The vast majority of future teachers would be trained in cohort-based residencies, skilled in interdisciplinary teaching (think Common Core), and would know how to teach students and learn from colleagues in virtual networks. Performance assessments, not higher education seat time nor unstable valued-added test score results, would determine who was ready to teach what, when, and to whom.

But the team also believes it is time, especially for our most prestigious universities and research centers, to begin preparing a bold brand of teacher—the learning architect who focuses on personalized curricular experiences for students. Teachers become information integrators and surgical learning brokers—and teacherpreneurs who incubate and execute innovations. Specific teacherpreneur roles could include virtual PLC organizer, edugame developer, and boundary spanner for policy and pedagogical transformations.

These 17 pedagogical powerhouses recognize that excellent teacher education can be found today, even though it might not be recognized by the policy punditry of Washington, DC.  For example:

• Abilene Christian University in Texas focuses on performance assessments and peer-to-peer observations as teacher education professors get deeply involved in providing serious feedback on lesson design and instruction.
• West Virginia University prepared students in cohorts, where they learn to work collaboratively as they experience rural, urban, international, and virtual settings. 
• Stanford University ensures its graduates develop deep knowledge of research on teaching diverse students, including second language learners, as well as 21^st-century student assessments, much in the same way all new teachers are prepared in top-performing nations like Singapore and Finland.
• The American Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE) is partnering with Stanford in creating the Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA), designed to measure the readiness of teacher candidates. The edTPA looks like an assessment from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, but is meant for novices as they engage in supervised clinical settings or internships. (And six states are already planning to adopt edTPA as part of its licensure requirements: Illinois, Minnesota, New York, Tennessee, Washington, and Wisconsin.)

These schools are harbingers of the future—and hope for transforming the teacher education system into one students deserve.

So it is time to think about cultivating teacher leaders who build and score new assessment tools tied to internationally benchmarked standards, integrating digital media into a more relevant curriculum for constantly wired students, and partnering with community organizations. It is time to think about preparing teacherpreneurs who blur the lines of distinction between those who teach in schools and those lead them.

Stay tuned for the upcoming release of the teacher team’s project, TEACHING 2030: Leveraging Teacher Preparation 2.0. We look forward to sharing it with you.

Finnish Education in 5 Election Memes

By Kristoffer Kohl

Kristoffer Kohl is a former classroom teacher and current CTQ staff member. This week, he's traveling in Finland, along with CTQ teacher leader Dave Orphal, who's been reflecting on the trip on his own transformED blog.

While touring a series of schools in Finland with a group of education professionals from the U.S., I can't help but recognize the severe divide between the countries’ respective approaches to teaching and learning. In the truest sense of the word, education is valued as an investment in Finland’s future, which, after talking with several groups of students, I can say looks brighter than ever.

As Americans prepare to vote on two different visions for the future, it seemed appropriate to capture some initial insight on the Finnish education system through the lens of five popular U.S. presidential election memes*.

Big Bird

• While the U.S. debates less-than-a-rounding-error of funding that provides high-quality educational programming nationwide, the Finns equip every student with high-quality meals, books, technology, transportation, early-childhood education, and a range of additional supports designed to ensure equal opportunity and excellence (not an either/or scenario).
• Finland’s social safety net guarantees all children the right to free health care and government-subsidized day care until they begin primary school at age seven. Seventy-five percent of three- to five-year-olds are in daycare, with more than 96 percent of children attending tuition-free preschool at the age of six. For the same age group in the U.S., preschool enrollment hovers consistently around 55 percent.
• Backed by a similar decree from the U.N., access to the Internet is considered a human right in Finland.

You Didn't Build That

• The U.S. may not have built an education system that's as comprehensive and equitable as Finland's, but we have certainly designed the core elements of their system via expensive R&D efforts in the States—which we have also carried out in small pockets across the country. Case in point: The wraparound social services that garner attention for Harlem Children’s Zone are the norm here in Finland.
• The Finns are content to let us do the messy work of experimenting, but they are masters of identifying the practices and structures that enable students and teachers to be successful. Most important, they trust teachers with implementation expertise, which we’ll get to later (“I think we all love teachers”).
• Baseball may have originated in America, but Finland was smart enough to co-opt it as their national pastime and update the rules to create a quicker, more efficient game than the snooze-fest we only watch during October. Rather than four bad pitches resulting in a walk, Finnish baseball allows just one pitch outside of the strike zone before a hitter is granted first base. They didn’t build it, but they did improve it.

Binders Full of Women

• 86 percent of women in Finland (ages 25-64) work outside the home, compared to about 60 percent in the U.S (PDF). The high rate of working households leads to latchkey generations of children who are trusted by parents and schools alike to take care of themselves independently.
  This deep trust among Finns strengthens their social fabric and encourages intrinsic accountability and integrity.
• Each gender must have at least 40 percent representation on all public boards, committees, and municipalities. In both the U.S. Senate and House of Representative, just 17 percent of representatives are women, meaning that men have six times the political power as women.
• Finland was the first country to grant women both the vote and the opportunity to run for office.

Horses and Bayonets

• Finnish students may have fewer years of formal education at a young age, but only because the country has realized how children "learn to learn" through organized play and socialization. Perhaps as important, seven-year-olds are so eager to enter school and receive books, backpacks, and other supplies, that they enter formal education as eager, engaged, and mature learners.
• Finland suffers from a severe shortage of abacuses (abaci?), but there are SmartBoards everywhere.
• I have not seen nearly enough convertibles and surfboards for a nation with beautiful coastlines. However, Finland boasts 2.2 million saunas, shared by a population of 5.5 million (seriously).

(Do) We All Love Teachers (?)

The only thing the Twittersphere loved nearly as much as "horses and bayonet" was Bob Schieffer’s “I think we all love teachers” comment before closing arguments on Monday evening. Nothing says "we love teachers" more than a lukewarm endorsement as the final (and only) word on the profession in the last of three presidential debates.

I’m no Rico Suave, but I’m fairly certain that we have more affectionate ways of demonstrating our love. Who needs Cupid when unreliable test score data is published on the front page of newspapers?

In Finland, admiration for the profession is expressed by making teaching one of the most difficult fields to enter. Just under 7 percent of those who apply to teacher education programs are accepted. Teaching is recognized as complex, rewarding, and noble work that attracts the country’s best and brightest. But then they insist on really good teacher education for everyone before they enter the profession. I am a Teach for America alum—and there is no Teach for Finland. I don't think they would consider it.

When Finns are asked what profession they want their life partner to be a member of, teaching is number one on the list. The Finns love teachers—and its policymakers do, too.

Want to demonstrate your deep commitment to teachers here in the U.S.? Become a fairy godparent. I can’t think of a better way to show how much you appreciate the challenging and important work they do to build a more promising future.

#Binders #horses/bayonets #BigBird

*Mentioning these memes in no way signals an endorsement of either candidate. We just enjoy the memes for their own sake.

Talking About Global Education in Bangkok

Today, I'm slated to be speaking at EDUCA 2012: The Annual Congress for Teacher Professional Development, which is taking place in Bangkok, Thailand. I'm representing the United States in a global forum on "teachers as learners."  My presentation will be under way in a few hours, and I've just learned that it will be available to watch live.

If you're interested in watching the presentation, visit CTQ's USTREAM channel to watch live (at midnight EST or 9 p.m. PST), or to view the recording afterward.

In the meantime, below is the precis of my presentation:

Teaching—The Global Profession: Lessons Learned from the USA

The teaching profession is poised for a transformation—worldwide. Globalization is changing many industries and the professions that fuel them. And the right kind of teaching profession will be instrumental in helping young people meet the citizenship and economic challenges of the mid-21st century. The tools for transforming the teaching profession are at our disposal—and what needs to be done is already being done right now somewhere in the world.

I'm looking forward to learning from education leaders from around the world, and sharing their perspectives with our education communities back in the United States.

Teacherpreneurs: The Direction Forward

Click the graphic to enlarge.

In our book TEACHING 2030, I proposed, along with 12 of my teacher colleagues, that our nation would need 600,000 teacherpreneurs to advance the public school system that students deserve. I hold a relentless belief that a high quality, 21st-century system of public education, designed for all students to achieve at high levels, must be driven by the bold ideas and expert practices of teachers.
 
Consider the exploding knowledge bases and personalized learning systems required to make sure our diverse group of 55 million (and growing) students is prepared for a global economy. Individual school principals, even with a small band of assistants, do not have the know-how and bandwidth to build and score new assessment tools tied to internationally benchmarked standards, integrate digital media into a more relevant curriculum for constantly wired students, and serve as partners with community organizations. (We strongly believe that schools must morph into 24/7 “hubs” for integrated academic, social, and health services.)

And while technology can allow students to engage in personalized learning experiences like never before, it will take well-prepared expert teachers, soon to be known as learning architects, to broker potent opportunities for them.
 
Dramatically improving public education for all will take both collective action and discretionary judgments of many expert teachers, not just a few, because teaching and learning in the 21st century is as complicated as a federal judge issuing a decree on immigration law in the contentious communities in Arizona and South Carolina, or doctors interpreting an array of blood tests, MRI results, and family medical histories to determine how to treat a brain tumor. We will need far different approaches to organizing our schools, and the 7.2 million educators in K-12 and higher education, to best serve children and their families.
 
Now is the time to cultivate teacherpreneurs—practicing teachers who have the time and space as well as reward—to lead reforms beyond the boundaries of their schools and districts. This year, CTQ is doing its part to meet this goal by sponsoring four teacherpreneurs and two teachers in residence.
 
Sarah Henchey is spending this year working out of our offices here in Carrboro, and her energy and insight are already bringing tremendous value to efforts to support teacher leaders implementing the Common Core.

Lori Nazareno is taking a year away from the teacher-led school she launched to drive teaching and learning and school-design policies in Colorado and the nation.

Megan Allen and Ryan Kinser are spending half their time in their classrooms and half their time building a network of teacher leaders in Florida to lead teacher evaluation and the Common Core in their state. 

Jessica Cuthbertson spends part of her day teaching in Aurora, Colorado, and the other half working with Colorado teachers on the Common Core. 

Noah Zeichner has started his second year as a teacherpreneur with CTQ and will be leading efforts, in partnership with the Asia Society, to support teacher leadership for the Global Cities Education Network.

To learn more about these educators, click on the graphic above—and help us reach our goal of 600,000 teacherpreneurs by sharing it with your friends and colleagues.

Finland Travel Log: Preparing Teachers for the Classroom

Below is the fifth in a series of posts I'm writing from Finland, as part of a trip with a delegation of U.S. education leaders. For a week, we're immersing ourselves in Finland's top-performing education system. (Read parts one, two, and three, and four for more reflections.)

Students at the Viikki Teacher Training School

Today’s focus has been on teacher education, and I have learned a lot--and have much to think about. With the U.S. delegation, I visited the Viikki Teacher Training School of the University of Helsinki. The training school serves almost 1,000 elementary, secondary, and upper secondary students and has 102 teachers who have been specially credentialed to prepare new teachers.

 

Jyrki Loima, administrative principal and professor at the university, explained the what, why, and how of the preparation of new recruits in his school. In his one-hour talk, he used the words “judgment” and “trust” a total of 38 times—such qualities are the basis of how teacher candidates are selected (in addition to a 100-item test that measures the ability to analyze research articles). Judgment and trust are also the foundation of how preservice teachers are trained and evaluated in tightly sequenced basic, applied, and advanced training programs.  

The Teacher Training School prepares 200 “student teachers” a year, which means that, combined with the 102 full teachers, there are 300 adults in a school building that works with only 1,000 children and teenagers—providing rich opportunities for both students and new recruits to the profession. The student teachers take pedagogical courses at Viikki, and record and analyze videos of lessons. A team of school and university faculty assesses the student teachers.

Perhaps most important, the teaching faculty at Viikki engage in a variety of research projects in collaboration with their university colleagues. Together, they study topics such as the effects of multi-language acquisition and the impact of various approaches to teacher education. And the 200 student teachers learn how to conduct research themselves, preparing to assemble evidence, develop and analyze formative assessments, and collaborate with colleagues. “Teachers have to make lots of decisions, and what they decide to do needs to be based on evidence of what works,” Professor Leena Krokfors told us.  

And we heard clearly from Pertti Kansanen, Emeritus Professor of Teacher Education, that “all of our graduates can justify their decisions.”

As we dug deeper at our University of Helsinki debrief, we explored the role that teacher education has on Finland’s extraordinary performance on PISA (Program for International Student Assessment). Here is what we talked about:

1. Finland selects teachers carefully, based on motivation, personality, and educability (related to the pedagogical skill they will have to master);
2. Research methods are part of every course future teachers take (“We research what we teach, and teach what we research”);
3. The university faculty conducts research on the effects of their efforts to prepare new teachers (identifying various learning patterns, resources, and challenges of learning and teaching);
4. Prospective teachers have more time to learn more deeply about how to teach their subjects differently; and
5. Faculty are developing new tools that allow teacher candidates to use new technologies to manage student learning.

And while the teacher education curriculum may look traditional “on paper,” there is a lot to be said for how it’s executed—and for the plans the university and school faculty have for the future. To prepare teachers for tomorrow’s schools, they’re developing modules that will include:

The University of Helsinki's HUB Magazine

 

1. Koulou 3.0: social media and “exploitation of blogs and wikis”
2. Second Life Viikki: virtual worlds and modeling
3. Kodu: game programming project
4. Sormet, Molla: projects involving tablet computers
5. Antivirus: a sick child’s right to education
6. Pietari ICE: collaborative project between Finland and St. Petersburg

And the university is proud of its decision to invest heavily in teacher education and future teachers—made visible by recently publishing three articles in its glossy magazine, HUB, focused on “Designing the Future.” As a city, Helsinki is all about design—and the university’s education school is right in the middle of it.

What the PDK/Gallup Poll Says About U.S. Education (And How It Compares to Finland)

I can’t help but consider my Finnish Lessons as I examine the latest PDK/Gallup poll about Americans’ attitudes toward education. Below I take on a few themes.

The Role of Curriculum in Teaching and Learning

There’s much to be encouraged about in the recent poll. The vast majority of Americans (75%), for example, think that the Common Core will provide more consistency in the quality of education.

The Common Core promises to frame more integrated and deeper learning opportunities for students. But I wonder if, in our implementation (or execution) of the Common Core, we will take a page out of the Finnish playbook. Finnish administrators and teachers embrace their national curriculum because it represents the nation’s educational values, rather than narrow prescriptions for learning. 

And, importantly, in Finland, teachers and principals are the ones who determine whether their students have met the standards.

Standardization vs. Professionalism

Most Americans say that a third of a teacher’s evaluation should be based on standardized tests. But when asked to list words that describe the teachers who had the most positive influence on them, Americans responded with words like “caring,” “encouraging,” and “attentive.” Those adjectives hardly coincide with the impersonal and stressful multiple-choice standardized tests students must take, regardless of background or ability level.

The Finns, primarily because they screen and prepare (not one or the other) each teacher so well, do not seem to care about teacher evaluation. They avoid the twisted contortions and gnashing of teeth over how to precisely use a value-added measure—based on one 20th-century standardized test—to determine 50 percent of a teacher’s effectiveness ratings.

After a couple of visits to Finnish schools, I can imagine how the Finns could leave every country behind in international measures of student achievement if they took professional development and evaluation more seriously—building on their trust of educators to make professional decisions about who is doing well and why.

But one thing is certain: Any teacher evaluation reforms in Finland would have to take into account that no one teacher is rarely, if ever, solely responsible for the education of a group (or even a class of students). It would be wise for U.S. policy to do the same.

Rating the Schools

Once again, the American public rates public schools very favorably—if they know them.

• 77% give an A or B grade to the school their eldest child attends
• 48% give an A or B grade to the schools in their communities
• 19% give an A or B  grade to the nation’s public schools as a whole

Less than half of Americans without kids in public schools have visited one in the past year. So you have to wonder—where are they getting their information?

Perhaps it was from a Newsweek cover story of late titled “Why We Must Fire Bad Teachers,” or from reformers like Joel Klein who claim that our schools, uniformly, are failing. In Finland, there are teachers who are not teaching effectively, and there are schools that are not great. But no one—including the Finnish media reporting on student matriculation exams—classifies teachers or schools as “bad” or “failures.”

In the United States, policymakers and business leaders often point to standardized tests as the metric for judging school success and teacher effectiveness. Not in Finland. As Risto E.J. Penttila, Secretary General of the Chamber of Commerce, told us today: “The purpose of our education system is to make good citizens.”  I suspect those Americans who know the public schools can see the work they’re doing in making good citizens.  They are the same Americans who characterize effective teachers as “caring.”

The Role of the Media

Looking at the PDK/Gallup poll results, there seems to be a discrepancy between Americans’ local, individual experiences with education, and broader perceptions of the system as a whole. When it comes to thinking about education on a national scale, we rely less on our own experiences and more on what the media reports.

And when the media focuses on what’s wrong with education rather than what’s right with education, it can be easy to make assumptions that skew negative. Our media doesn’t portray educators as a group as being a “caring,” “attentive,” or “encouraging” group.

Which makes it incredibly easy to fall into the trap of thinking that our positive experiences at our schools and our children’s schools are the exception, not the rule.

Along the same lines, the PDK/Gallup shows an uptick in support for using public dollars to send kids to private schools (44 percent were in favor in 2012, compared to 34 percent in 2011). However, how much media coverage shows side-by-side comparisons of student achievement in public vs. private and charter schools? In many cases, public schools still do a better job educating students, while at the same time educating all students.

Just as educators have a responsibility to their students, the media has a responsibility to cover not just hot-button issues that attract readers by causing alarm. We need to celebrate our teachers' and students' successes—not failures—so they can serve as a model in our profession and in our communities.

Finland Travel Log: Child-Centered Preschool Programs

Below is the third in a series of posts I'm writing from Finland, as part of a trip with a delegation of U.S. education leaders. For a week, we're immersing ourselves in Finland's top-performing education system. Read Part One here and Part Two here.

Tuomarilan Paivakoti, a publicly funded Finnish day care

My first full day in Helsinki confirmed so much of what I have read about Finland's child-centered approach to teaching and learning. Let me also offer up a few words from Linda Darling-Hammond (Stanford University), Pasi Sahlberg (Director of Finland's Center for International Mobility), Barbro Hogstrom (Director of Child Care in Education for Finland's Ministry of Education), and Dan Leeds (National Public Education Support Fund). Their words set up the context for a few of my own observations.
 
Pasi: We have learned so much about child development and the science of teaching and learning from American education researchers.
 
Linda: Teacher education is deep and intense here. It all begins with child development. It is the first class that prospective teachers take.
 
Linda: School does not start until age seven for children here. This is when they are ready to learn. It is not like in America, where we are now trying to force kids to learn at age three, four, and five—and when they don’t, we label them as failures.  All preschool programs [in Finland] are based on what we know about play and socialization in child development.
 
Barbro: Playing is the way to learning.
 
The Finnish education system's student-teacher ratios reflect the nation's values. For children under three years old, there is a 1:4 adult-child ratio. For students between three and six years old, the ratio is 1:7.  So for every 21 children there are 3 teachers—who are each fully prepared with a university degree in early childhood instruction. Soon Finland will require two-thirds of its early-childhood teachers to also have a bachelor’s or master’s in early childhood education.
 
Barbro was asked about quality control in early childhood education. "This is why we have teachers," she responded.
 
Finland is serious about being consistent research on early childhood development and learning to read. Educators here are flexible—and patient. The day care center I visited—Tuomarilan Paivakoti, funded publicly—would make Maria Montessori and advocates of the Reggio Emilia approach proud.

Finland values small student-teacher ratios, especially in early childhood.

The school supports 90 young children for 190 days a year with 20 adults in the building. The teachers work different schedules, so that the school can open at 6:30 a.m. and close at 6:00 p.m. The teachers I observed deliberately taught colors and sorting and how to make educated guesses. They were careful to make sure the students were included and valued, despite any disability. They made a fun-filled game in their small gym an opportunity to coordinate and collaborate.

I loved watching three-year-olds, carefully supervised, serve themselves lunch (and seconds) and clear their plates. I was thrilled to see teachers not rushing them. These precious young humans were barely 36 months old. Each teacher, you could see, was so proud of their knowledge of young children and the independent and autonomous learners they are helping them to be.
 
Dan: You cannot translate every Finnish lesson for improving America’s public education system. But you can, like the world’s great cuisines, adapt from others and meld it with your own recipes.
 
I overheard many people from our U.S. delegation comment that what they saw in these high-quality day care programs in Helsinki and Espoo was similar to what they experienced with their own young children.

Is it not time to do for all children what we want for our own?

Below is the second in a series of posts I'm writing from Finland, as part of a trip with a delegation of U.S. education leaders. For a week, we're immersing ourselves in Finland's top-performing education system. Read Part One here.

As I begin my weeklong dive into the Finnish education system, and the theory of change that guides it, I was struck by two New York Times pieces I read today—one on getting tough on teachers from Frank Bruni, and one from Paul Tough on hard questions about President Obama and his commitment to addressing the “deep poverty” in which one in ten school children live. 

I will learn a great deal over the next five days about Finland and its comprehensive approach to early learning, transitions to public school, and social safety nets (Monday); primary school and the role of afterschool and summer programs (Tuesday); secondary education and preparation for career and college (Wednesday); the teaching profession (Thursday); and building and sustaining public will for investments in children and public education (Friday). 

But what I do know now is that in Finland policymakers do not build false divisions between improving the teaching profession and addressing the human condition.  Granted, there are parts of what Frank Bruni writes in his piece, “Teachers on the Defensive,” that resonate with me — for instance, teachers’ unions being out of step with much-needed reforms (cases in point: seniority and quality-blind hiring and placements). But Mr. Bruni’s call to get tough on unions suggests that by getting better teachers, we don’t have many good ones now. And his analysis, centered on the release of the new film Won’t Back Down, suggests that if only tenure and seniority rules were jettisoned, and policymakers could hire smarter teachers who worked harder, our public schools could overcome the ravages of deep poverty.  

On the other hand, Paul Tough challenges this assertion ever so poignantly in his piece “What Does Obama Really Believe In?”  Mr. Tough’s 6,000-word essay paints a rich portrait of our nation’s failed social and economic policies that have yet to address the deep poverty that affects so many like Jasmine and Damien who live in the South Side of Chicago, where President Obama worked as a community organizer. Tough questions Secretary Duncan’s well-meaning belief that the “only way to end poverty is through education”—a belief that has put educators on the defensive.  

Tough points out that Jasmine and Damien attended Christian Fenger High School—the target of many reforms under both Duncan and his predecessor, but never improved. Tough reminds us how “early stress” in children’s lives—including a “paralyzing mix of unforgiving economic conditions” and “destructive social influences”—make it “almost impossible” for young people like Jasmine and Damien to “escape.” He points to the neuroscience that shows how those early stresses on children “disrupt the healthy growth of the prefrontal cortex” and how the “absence of strong and supportive relationships with stable adults inhibits a child’s development of a crucial set of cognitive skills called executive functions.”

Tough has written extensively on the power and potential of the Harlem’s Children Zone and its comprehensive approach that, in addition to high-quality education, encompasses parenting programs, preschools, a medical clinic, a farmers’ market, and family counseling.  He questions why President Obama promised to invest in a billion dollars in the HCZ model, but has only come up with a mere $40 million over the last three years.

Mr. Tough reminds us that President Obama once said that to overcome poverty, of which failing schools is only a symptom, we must “heal the entire community.” It is time for us to think about teacher quality reforms in light of a teaching- and learning-development system.

As Dan Leeds, president of the National Public Education Support Fund and a very successful international businessman, told us this evening, "I learned a long time ago that you learn more from other companies sometimes than your own."

It's time to learn from Finland.

Pete Wailes’ short story on the future of education (“The Life and Times of James Roebuck, Part 1”) raises some provocative issues about the teaching profession. 

It’s a worthwhile read, but make sure you read all 1,286 words. At first blush, it might seem like Wailes is another school reformer who thinks technology will replace 55 million teachers who currently teach in classrooms worldwide. In future-speak, Wailes writes:

Shortly after the invention of the quantum computer chip, and the laying of fibre optic broadband to almost every house in the UK, it had been clear that the days of teaching as a profession were numbered. Teaching had been relegated to a minority profession in a matter of years.

But then it gets a bit more interesting. Just as he was convincing readers that the teaching profession “couldn’t withstand the onslaught of technology”—to the delight of many self-proclaimed school reformers—Wailes pivots.

He raises questions about who would curate resources, moderate virtual learning, and oversee the interaction of children and adolescents. He raises questions about who would make sure that children have safe places to learn, and that all children have access to the knowledge and resources needed to be successful.

Wailes’ essay promises a “Part 2.” I’m hopeful that the sequel will suggest that though technology can democratize knowledge, without teachers—especially expert ones—there will be no opportunity for students to use that knowledge to promote and sustain democracy. 

Renee Moore, NBCT, Milken winner, and erudite teacher-author, pictured with one her students from her years teaching in Shelby, Mississippi. Knowledge of children, culture, and community, along with deep subject matter expertise make for excellent teachers. And Renee is one of the best.

Regardless of what the profession looks like in the future, we will undoubtedly need more teacher leaders—teacher leaders like Renee Moore, a longstanding member of our Teacher Leaders Network and profiled in our forthcoming Jossey-Bass book, Teacherpreneurs. Below, Renee reflects on her teaching practice:

When I sit down next to each of my students or with a small group of them (physically or virtually) to share their most recent work; to reflect on how they have grown as writers since their last piece or since the start of the course; to give sincere, critical feedback on what would help make it better—I am doing what no technology or software program can provide. It is through these very human interactions that I also show them that they have worth far beyond a number on a scale.  This is at the core of teaching.

I’m eager to read more of what Wailes has to say about technology and the teaching profession. Teacher leaders like Renee—and the millions like her around the world—will be the ones leading the technology revolution by implementing the technology and balancing it with real-life, personalized interaction.

Wailes’ story shows us that there’s more to look forward to in the coming years than just robot-powered cars. A future with a true teacher-led education system—now that’s something to get excited about.

By Melissa Rasberry

Barnett Berry will be joining school chiefs, union officials, school board leaders, and teachers from 41 states and more than 100 school districts this week in Cincinnati as the Department of Education and various partner organizations convene the second Labor Management Conference. In this post, CTQ staff member Melissa Rasberry reflects on her experiences with successful district-union relations and their efforts of "Collaborating to Transform the Teaching Profession" (the theme of this year's conference).

“I want you to leave here dissatisfied today.”

Teachers, parents, administrators, and community leaders looked on with anxious faces, uncertain how to respond. This was the first keynote I’d seen that wished for participants’ unhappiness by conference end.

“… I want you to leave here dissatisfied with the status quo,” the speaker continued, “and angry about what we are doing to our children.”

Where might you predict this conversation transpired?

I overheard the dialogue at a National Education Association (NEA) convening for its Priority Schools Campaign. If you listen much to reports in the media, you probably wouldn’t guess that the keynote speaker was NEA President Dennis Van Roekel. In fact, some journalists and policy pundits would have you believe that the NEA is a strident defender of the status quo. They purport that many ills of our educational system can be blamed on teachers’ unions. Stories of late proclaim:

•    American schools have declined, while the “teachers' unions have become more and more powerful.”

•    Unions “prevent teachers from being dismissed for incompetence” and don’t want to be held accountable.

•    Getting rid of the teachers’ unions is the “only fight worth having.”

But yet, here I sat in a room full of educators and community members—convened by the NEA and ready to improve our nation’s most deserving schools. The conference participants did not back down from acknowledging that we have failed some of our children, but they also were not embroiled in the false dichotomies that pit unions against reformers.

Blowing Away the Myth: Success in Action

Most reformers today think that unions, which hold on to seniority hiring rights and quality-blind teacher evaluation systems, prevent schools from improving. Though unions need to change their ways in some respects, so do districts and school boards that diminish teacher leadership and exepertise. Unions can't be the only problem if the same ineffective teacher-hiring and -evaluation practices are found in both unionized and non-unionized districts.

Indeed, we find many examples of teachers’ unions across the country leading reform efforts. I’ve witnessed several of these trailblazing efforts firsthand, as part of my work here at CTQ.

•    The Hillsborough County Teachers Association and Hillsborough County Public Schools gather at the table with one mission in mind: to improve the educational experiences of their students. Through the Empowering Effective Teachers initiative, district and union leaders created a system in which excellent teachers are identified, rewarded, and encouraged to spread their knowledge and skills to their colleagues.
•    The district and union joined forces in Denver, Colorado, to create the first teacher-led school. The Math and Science Leadership Academy operates solely through the leadership of teachers. The district strongly encouraged the union to develop the initial plans for the school, and both organizations continue to support its success.
•    CTQ is partnering to support schools involved with the NEA’s Priority Schools Campaign. CTQ prepared National Board Certified Teachers and other accomplished teachers to serve as virtual coaches for teachers in these high-needs schools. The trained coaches will facilitate virtual learning communities (VLCs), so that educators across the country can share ideas and resources for student success in an online environment.
•    In December 2011, the Commission on Effective Teachers and Teaching released Transformed Teaching: Connecting Professional Responsibility with Student Learning (PDF). This blue-ribbon panel of teachers and other educational leaders (including many from our own Teacher Leaders Network) outlines key imperatives for transforming the teaching profession, characterized by “collective accountability for student learning balanced with collaborative autonomy that allows educators to do what is best for students.”

These initiatives, as well as those highlighted at this week’s 2012 Labor Management Conference sponsored by the Department of Education, present excellent examples of how districts and unions can avoid letting “the perfect be the enemy of the good.” If we want our students to achieve in our highly competitive global economy, labor-management relationships must improve. Unions and districts alike must set aside their bickering and work on finding common ground. As Dennis Van Roekel instructed the crowd at the NEA convening, our students deserve nothing less.

The Good Laugh

Did you catch Matthew Di Carlo’s perfect April Fools’ Day piece on “Measuring Journalist Quality”? Observing that journalists have been leading the way in “outing” teachers based on unreliable value-added measures (VAMs), Di Carlo flips the picture. What if journalists were measured by similarly unstable “reader-added models” (RAMs)?

The Sigh

Like all fine satire, Di Carlo’s piece carries serious heft.  

Many VAM systems determine teaching quality on the basis of a one-time estimate of a gain score based on students’ performance on a single multiple-choice, standardized test. And researchers have pointed out that even the most sophisticated value-added calculations produce substantial errors: as many as one in four teachers is misidentified as effective or ineffective.

In a recent study of VAM, Heather Hill, Laura Kapitula, and Kristin Umland warned: “Although we do recommend the use of value-added scores in combination with discriminating observation systems, evidence presented here suggests that value-added scores alone are not sufficient to identify teachers for reward, remediation, or removal.”

Sobering—especially when VAM systems are being used to make or break teachers’ reputations.

I’m cheered by the fact that the Measures of Effective Teaching project, sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is assembling an array of measures that reflect the complexity of teaching. And Bill Gates, of late, has written his own eloquent plea for journalists to cease their “shameful” approach of using VAM rankings to identify which teachers are effective or not, irrespective of the rating’s accuracy.

Meanwhile, it’s important to note that teachers aren’t opposed to being held accountable. In fact, many teacher leaders we work with are eager for their profession to be more results-oriented.

Teachers are even open to VAM as an element of a comprehensive teacher development and evaluation system. What disturbs them is the idea of VAM as a predominant, automatic marker of their effectiveness—especially if today’s inadequate assessments are its basis.

The Revolutionary Suggestion

Our nation’s schools could cling to the limitations of VAMs, passing swift judgments based on questionable data. Or—prepare yourself for the revolutionary—we could invest in teacher leadership to develop a comprehensive teacher development and evaluation system. (A recent paper, commissioned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, makes this argument.)

We could draw on the expertise of accomplished teachers to craft better student assessments, additional evaluation measures (like peer observation), and systems that support the professional growth of all teachers (whether in their first year or their twentieth).  

Teachers are well-suited to inform teacher development and evaluation. They understand the nuances of the work they do each day—and can help create equally nuanced systems for gauging and supporting teaching effectiveness. They grasp the complexity of their profession.

Do we get a Day-After-April-Fools’-Day wish? If so, here’s mine: that more journalists grasp the complexity of teaching (and the potential of teacher leadership, too).

By Megan Allen

Megan Allen is a National Board Certified Teacher, 2010 Department of Education/Macy’s Teacher of the Year, and finalist for 2010 National Teacher of the Year. She is a member of the Hillsborough County New Millennium Initiative.

Last week, the best-of-the-best countries from around the world gathered in the Big Apple to discuss education at the Second International Summit on the Teaching Profession. One of the most intriguing topics of discussion there was teacher leadership.

In a thoughtful Education Week essay published in January, Marc Tucker pointed out that top-performing nations do “everything necessary” to recruit, prepare, and develop their teachers, while here in the U.S. we put all our policy emphasis on “accountability systems.” Top-performing nations take teacher leaders seriously—as leaders of assessment reform, partners in research, and teacher education faculty who prepare the next generation of recruits.

I attended the summit virtually, following along with streaming videos and Twitter. One of my favorite tweets came from the USDOE and speaks to the power of teacher leaders:

So let’s dive right in: What are some of those pathways and roles for teacher leadership?

More Than Administrators

Teacher leadership encompasses far more than moving into administration. There is nothing wrong with that, but it’s too narrow a definition. There is an enormous spectrum of teacher leadership, some roles defined, some forming, and some yet unknown. But we must have open minds to these new ideas and be solutions-focused in developing ways to make them happen. We must change the culture and climate of teaching as the definition of what a teacher is evolves.

Many teacher leaders—myself included—want to be involved outside the classroom walls in areas that affect students. But at the same time, we want to keep one foot in the door with the people we love most: students. This calls for out-of-the-box thinking and the development of new hybrid roles. In the book TEACHING 2030, a group of amazing educators dreamed about what these roles could look like. And it’s slowly happening.

Teacher Leaders in Action

I am going to take a moment to brag about some of my favorite teacher leaders who are blazing the path as we speak:

• Sarah B. Wessling is a National Board Certified Teacher (NBCT) who works with the Teaching Channel to record her classroom daily in Iowa, allowing a deep look at highly effective teaching.
• Jessica Keigan spends half her day poring over literature with her high school students in Colorado, and the other half as a CTQ teacherpreneur, advocating for positive change in education policy.
• Two of my colleagues currently sit on school boards: Michael Flynn, an amazing Massachusetts elementary school teacher, sits on his local school board, speaking for children in his district. And Holly Boffy, an NBCT from Louisiana, sits on her state’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. 

International Role Models

We can also look to the lessons learned from other countries. They see teacher leadership roles as ways to effectively recruit candidates and build respect in the profession. In the Netherlands, the prime minister still teachers a half day a week.  Denmark offers a “taster course” for aspiring leaders to see the range of available leadership pathways. Singapore prides itself in never leaving its teaching talent to chance, continually assessing its teachers for leadership potential and providing opportunities for teachers to develop and use it.

So here is my charge: We must reshape the way we think about teacher leadership. Teachers must be at the helm of effective reform if we are to get it right. Teachers are the experts. We must realize that new roles may not fit neatly into the little cubbies that we’ve had for decades, but we must be flexible with finding ways to make them work. And we must recruit and cultivate leadership, finding that hidden talent that may be hiding behind each and every classroom door. It’s time to start knocking...

At last year’s International Summit on the Teaching Profession, I watched and listened to a serious dialogue among the ministers of education and union chiefs from many of the world’s top-performing nations. I was enthralled with the nuances of the convening, who sat where, who talked, and who delivered what messages. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was there. So was Henna Virkkunen, his Finnish counterpart.

The differences in how these two nations approach child development and student assessment as well as the teaching profession are legion. Let’s begin with student results. On the 2009 PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), Finland’s students consistently outperformed ours in reading, math, and science. In reading, Finnish students were ranked third; we were fourteenth. In math, they were third; we were thirty-first. And in science, they were first; we were thirty-seventh.

Here are a few more stark clashes in teaching and learning policies, which Pasi Sahlberg has helped bring attention to lately through his book Finnish Lessons:

Policy Clash #1: Finnish Teachers Are Very Well Prepared. The Finns not only recruit top students into teaching, but they also insist that every teacher have a master’s degree in education, fully paid for by the government, before they enter the profession. There is no such thing as Teach for Finland.

Policy Clash #2: Finnish Teachers Teach Less and Learn More from One Another. In 2007, Finland's teachers taught just under 600 hours, while their American counterparts taught more than 1,000 hours. Finnish teachers spend approximately 10 to 20 hours a week on joint professional development focused on understanding why students are learning or not.

Policy Clash #3: Finnish Teachers Are Responsible; They Are Not Held Accountable. Unlike in the United States, where teachers are held accountable to externally developed, high-stakes tests, well-prepared Finnish teachers use their own assessments to gauge their students' progress. The Finnish public trusts its teachers to assemble evidence and report to them on who is learning or not, and why.

Why are these Finnish lessons so difficult for America’s top-level policymakers to learn? I have some ideas, most of which have more to do with politics and less with substance. No surprise. But perhaps our policymakers have not been taught by some of our nation’s best teachers how to apply these powerful lessons in the American context.

This year, the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) has invited CTQ to work with 16 state teachers of the year, who will attend the summit (March 14-15 in NYC) and weigh in later with their own TeacherSolutions. I hope you join me in looking forward to hearing how our teachers learn from the Finnish lessons and their own pedagogical experiences to help us reshape our teaching policies.

By Anna Martin & Barnett Berry

Education reform typically follows an unfortunate pattern. Politicians and pundits drive the agendas, while students and teachers live out the consequences.

To better address our schools’ needs, reform efforts must be led by those who work with students every day. At an event in Sacramento last month, teachers like Anna Martin offered practical recommendations for improving teaching quality in California.

Anna entered the profession eight years ago as a Teach For America recruit—and she’s still teaching at the same high-needs school. She’s a member of the  New Millennium Initiative (NMI), a national network of forward-thinking teachers supported by the Center for Teaching Quality.

At the event in Sacramento, Anna and her NMI colleagues shared findings from their new report, “Many Ways Up, No Reason to Move Out.”

What follows is a chat between Anna and Barnett Berry.

Barnett:  Anna, you’ve seen many early-career teachers leave the profession. In high-needs schools, 50 percent depart within three years. Why?

Anna: Our NMI team cares deeply about such statistics—we’ve all seen it happen. Some teachers are overwhelmed: they haven’t been prepared or supported adequately for the challenges they face. Others are frustrated by the one-track nature of the profession.

Barnett: What do you mean by “one-track”? 

Anna: In most cases, the only options are to remain a classroom teacher—or leave the classroom for an administrative role. Many teachers, like myself, want to be challenged, show leadership, and have an impact beyond one classroom. But we are also passionate about teaching. We don’t want to leave the classroom entirely.

Barnett: It sounds like you’d advocate for more teacherpreneurs who split their time between teaching students and leading efforts to improve schools.

Anna: Absolutely. Our NMI team’s new report proposes radical changes in how we prepare, promote, and retain teachers. That includes developing more hybrid positions that make the most of teachers’ expertise. We hope talented teachers will stay in the profession longer and become the leaders of our education system.

Barnett:  You mentioned that some early-career teachers leave because they weren’t adequately prepared. What needs to change?

Anna: We ask too much of our newest teachers and too little of our veterans. Our team proposes a three-year apprenticeship model. Novice teachers would be paired with master mentor teachers. Over time, the novice teachers would take on more responsibility—similar to the medical residency model. 

Such a system would help prevent early career burnout. Novice teachers would gain practical experience and develop critical teaching skills before taking charge of their own classroom. And veteran teachers would have opportunities for leadership and influence. Most important, students would benefit from these changes. 

Barnett: In other top-performing nations, most administrators teach something, sharing leadership. And in Singapore, some accomplished teachers’ salaries are higher than their principals’.   

Anna: Right now in California, teachers earn more primarily by staying on the job longer. We’re proposing a model that ties salary increases to increases in demonstrated skill, responsibilities, and impact. This new career ladder will allow teachers to specialize and follow different leadership, mentoring, and specialization tracks. So they’ll continue to teach—but also can take on different kinds of roles that help schools better serve students. 

Barnett: Blurring the distinction between those who teach in schools and those who lead them!

Anna: Yes. And improving what we can provide to students. Better using our schools’ human capital would help us to attract and retain the talented professionals our students need and deserve.

Barnett: I think Californians are ready for these transformative changes. In a recent statewide poll, most Californians (77 percent) rated teachers favorably. And 64 percent said they were willing to pay more in taxes to increase school funding.

Anna: Yes, Californians realize today’s students will be the workers and leaders of our state tomorrow. They also know that teachers—not politicians, administrators, or reformers—are the people most likely to help their children succeed. They should expect and demand that California attract, prepare, support, and retain talented teachers.

Barnett: So, as a teacher, you’re saying it’s time for big, bold changes?

Anna: Absolutely. We can’t be satisfied with isolated reforms. It’s time to transform California’s schools by transforming the teaching profession.   

If you’re interested in serious school reform, ramped-up student learning, a transformed teaching profession—and if you have time to read only 1,190 words in 2012, go to Education Week and read Art Wise’s incisive commentary, “End the Tyranny of the Self-Contained Classroom.” Art hired me at RAND some 27 years ago and now is CTQ’s board chair. I still learn a great deal from him.

As Art notes in the piece, even the most ambitious, well-designed, and carefully implemented reforms to improve teaching effectiveness will only go so far if policymakers don’t jettison the “one teacher to 25 students” school model. Tougher evaluation systems will never be implemented if few administrators have to assess many teachers. Expanded learning opportunities for students won’t happen if every teacher has to know everything about the Common Core, working in isolation from one another.

Performance pay won’t mean anything for student achievement until teachers have much more time to team-teach and spread their expertise to colleagues. And according to Art, the “tyranny” of the egg-crate classroom undermines teachers’ capacity to draw on one another’s strengths and solve problems collectively. We are well into the second decade of the twenty-first century, and our teaching profession is still organized as if it were the 1920s.

So what to do?

Let’s begin with a new Race to the Top framework that awards states and districts for breaking down classroom walls, places a premium on teacher teams (and assesses them as a collective), and, looking toward the vision of TEACHING 2030, “blurs the line of distinction between those who teach in schools and those who lead them.”

Then let's focus on using a new organizational structure to capitalize on the skills of 100,000 National Board Certified Teachers—teachers whom Art duly notes are “all dressed up with no place to go.” (Keep your eyes peeled for the development of CTQ's small band of innovative NBCTs from several states who have a lot to offer in implementing the Common Core.)

Isn’t it time to read this piece and think differently about serious school reform, ramped-up student learning, and a transformed teaching profession? I say it is. 

This post originally appeared on the Silicon Valley Education Foundation's blog, Thoughts on Public Education.

Recently, I visited innovative charter schools in the Bay Area. At one school, physical spaces and teachers’ schedules are designed to encourage collaboration. Another school involves community organizations and parents in student learning during and after the school day. One is well stocked with technology. At another, teachers take on leadership roles.

And yet, everywhere I looked I noticed elements that didn’t quite connect. I saw missed opportunities to boost student learning. One of the schools gestured toward important ideas, but because of the lack of experienced teacher leaders, missed the mark when it came to implementing them. The other one greatly valued teacher leaders, but still had a long way to go in spreading teaching expertise from one classroom to another.

This points to a truth that is tough for reformers to swallow: America’s schools will be transformed only when we tackle the complexities of teaching and learning. We can’t rely on isolated policies or initiatives to sustain a highly functioning school. Few, if any, innovations can be implemented successfully over time unless other interlocking set of elements are in place—connected by  collaboration (not competition) among universities, school districts, charter networks, and nonprofits.

What I saw

So where do we start? Here are two situations I observed during my investigation:

• School A is known for “blended learning.” Yet there was little pedagogical coherence between how teachers taught in a regular classroom and how students were expected to learn in a high-tech lab staffed by low-cost tutors. School A teachers, who tended to have only a few years of experience and little clinical preparation, had limited interaction with the lab tutors. It was unclear whether many teachers were familiar with the technological tools so central to their school’s identity.

• School B is known for hiring new recruits who have extensive clinical preparation. Teachers know how to differentiate instruction and work with second language learners. But School B’s teachers did not always know how to effectively analyze student learning data and needed more training in how to use the collaborative planning time wisely provided to them (approximately two hours a day).

What would help connect the dots in these schools – and all schools? Teacher preparation programs could lead the way by readying pre-service teachers for a transformed public school system.

Accountability for teacher preparation programs

Recently, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan noted that too many education schools are “not up to the job.” He highlighted recruitment and accountability as key areas for improvement, and noted that few of today’s programs offer “rigorous, clinical experience that prepares future teachers for the realities of today’s diverse classrooms.”

And then there are the emergent realities of tomorrow’s classrooms—which few teacher preparation programs are adequately addressing. For example, tomorrow’s teachers will likely need to teach students who are “digital natives,” spread their expertise to colleagues through collaboration and leadership, connect families with community resources, and develop and use sophisticated assessments to measure student progress.

The federal government should hold teacher preparation programs accountable – but should look at more than the twentieth-century standardized tests currently in place. For example, what if teacher preparation programs (whether university-based or “alternative”) were judged on how long their graduates remained in the classroom, working effectively as leaders in schools and communities? What if programs were assessed on how well their graduates used student data to improve instruction? What if the accountability system considered graduates’ abilities to provide effective blended learning opportunities?

My organization, the Center for Teaching Quality, works with thousands of teachers nationwide to improve the teaching profession and our nation’s schools. Later this month, talented teachers who are part of our Bay Area New Millennium Initiative team will release a report with specific recommendations about how to ensure new teachers are ready for their roles. Watch for it!

I may not always agree with Rick Hess—but there’s no doubt that his blog posts are worthy of attention. In “Ten Edu-Stories We’ll Be Reading in 2012,” Rick predicts headlines for the coming year. He foresees increased skepticism of Race To The Top reforms and Khan Academy’s video-based model of education. He anticipates GOP presidential nominees abandoning attacks on public education in a “push for moderates.”

While Rick claims to be a lousy prognosticator, his list is intriguing.

But what’s absent in his list is any mention of teachers. None. Zero. Nada.

This is surprising because teachers have been the coin of the education policy realm for fifteen years or so. Few researchers (or reformers, for that matter) dispute the impact that improved teaching can have on student outcomes. Home and family factors are powerful influences on student achievement, but teachers matter.

So I’m offering my own version of Rick’s list. Sure, it may be optimistic—but we can hope, right?

5] Presidential Candidates Talk Up Teachers. President Obama and GOP presidential hopefuls realize that one in 100 Americans are teachers. Candidates focus less on “getting rid of bad teachers” and more on the positive: preparing and supporting teachers to do their best work.

4] USDOE Spreads Teaching Expertise. Acknowledging the uneven implementation of Race To The Top efforts, the USDOE adjusts its strategies. Rather than merely identifying effective teachers, officials promote strategies to elevate those teachers as leaders and spread their expertise to peers.

3] Policymakers Ask Accomplished Teachers for ESEA Help. Policymakers realize ESEA reauthorization is not in the cards for 2012. They turn to accomplished teachers, including former state and national teachers of the year, to help build public demand for improving the law. The teachers emphasize that the law must build capacity in high-need schools and districts—not just punish them.

2] Reformers Improve Bricks-and-Clicks Model. The Khan Academy’s “flipped” classroom model fails to yield the results reformers have been expecting—especially for at-risk students. In response, reformers invest more in innovative roles for teachers as community organizers, virtual mentors, and connectors to social services.

1] Obama Elevates National Board Certified Teachers. While GOP nominee Mitt Romney highlights TFA recruits who teach for two-year stints, President Obama points to National Board Certified Teachers as committed, accomplished standard bearers for school reform.

Now, I'd rather bet on my favorite college football team (Go Gamecocks!) than wager for the accuracy of this list.

But if we want to get serious about college and career readiness for all kids, the education conversation must shift. We must talk about what it takes to recruit, prepare, and support effective teachers. And I fervently hope that the “we” who are talking are not just the same old chatterers: policymakers, reformers, pundits. I hope that “we” also includes our nation’s most accomplished teachers—whose untapped expertise could transform our public schools.  

By Alaina Adams

Alaina Adams is a National Board Certified teacher in Phoenix, Arizona. In addition to teaching high school English, she serves as a cognitive coach and professional development coordinator at the Phoenix Union High School District and the Arizona K12 Center. You can read her blog at Stories from School AZ.

In my endeavors to elevate the teaching profession, I am fortunate enough to be part of the work that the Arizona K12 Center crafts around vision, leadership, learning, and technology in education. Recently, I was chosen as one of 20 teachers across the state to work as part of a TeacherSolutions team designed to improve teaching and learning in Arizona. This work will be based on the framework outlined in TEACHING 2030. On November 16th and 17th, I spent some time with Barnett Berry and CTQ staff to dream, play, and plan.

As my group explored teacherpreneurism and a future of innovation, phrases like "a league of extraordinary educators" and "teacher whisperers" playfully came up in conversations. At the end of my last day with the team, I found myself returning to an Outlook mailbox full of the current realities of teaching that I "have to" deal with. I'm frustrated that I don't have more cognitive coaches available to help advance my practice. I'm also frustrated that TV shows and movies (like Jersey Shore and The Horse Whisperer) will earn more money in one shot than I'll ever make in my entire career as an educator. To clarify my thoughts, I ended my day by posting this comparison between "horse whisperers" and "teacher whisperers."

***

Horse Whisperer: Horses that have suffered abuse from people or been traumatized through an accident may develop changed behavior that their owners find difficult to deal with, or may even result in the horse being labeled dangerous.

Teacher Whisperer: Teachers that have been traumatized by things like excessive testing, narrow teacher evaluation, misuse of national curriculum, data-driven instruction, stifling teacher accountability, elimination of tenure, competition for funding, punitive school labels, "education reform," and misguided philanthropists may develop changed behavior that some may find difficult to deal with, or may even result in the teacher being labeled dangerous.

***

Horse Whisperers spend years studying the horse and its behavior in natural surroundings. They learn to read the silent but incredibly powerful communication we call body language.

Teacher whisperers, given appropriate release time, can study the behavior of teachers in their classrooms. There, they can study body language like the elevation of voice, eye-rolling, head flopping on the desk, and sporadic tears to understand a teacher’s entire language of communication to best gauge their needs.

***

Horse Whisperer: Young horses that had received little handling but were destined to be riding horses, for example, were once trained to work using quiet, brutal methods of coercion. This system was called ‘breaking.’ ‘Making’ a horse is preferable to breaking one.

Teacher Whisperer: Probationary teachers that received little mentoring but were destined to be classroom teachers, for example, might have been ones hustled through subpar certification programs. This system is called ‘fast tracking.’ ‘Making’ a quality teacher is preferable to rushing one.

***

In some public demonstrations, a horse whisperer will stand in an enclosure, which a young untrained horse is released into. The horse’s natural instinct is to fight or flight. The whisperer becomes the herd, the safe place to be, by his use of body language. First, he sends the horse away; he has not yet invited it to join his herd! He drives the horse forward and keeps him away.

In some school districts, only one teacher whisperer stands per campus, of unreasonable sizes, in which un-mentored teachers are released into. The teacher’s natural instinct is to sink or swim. Though the teacher whisperer becomes the safe place to be, he or she is often busy corralling other un-mentored teachers, and the un-mentored teacher-in-immediate-need is often driven away.

***

Horse Whisperer: During this training period, the horse's body language is clearly visible to people watching. The horse whisperer approaches as if he or she has all day to stand there. The result is a clear understanding that can be successfully built on. No shouting, no fear, no pain. A calm and positive mutual understanding provides a sound basis for true partnership between man and horse.

Teacher Whisperer: Given ample exposure to teacher whispering methods, teachers can change their body language and perform better on evaluations. This process can take several weeks or years. It is always approached as if the teacher whisperer has all the time in the world to stand there. No shouting, no fear, no pain. A calm and positive mutual understanding provides a sound basis for true partnership between teacher and whisperer.

Summary:

The horse whisperer does not perform tricks. He, or she, uses the oldest language in the world in order to read the horse and communicate with the horse, combined with equine psychology, to achieve partnership.

The teacher whisperer does not perform tricks. He, or she, uses the oldest language in the world in order to read the teacher and communicate with the teacher, combined with human psychology and compassion, to achieve partnership.

Last week, CTQ blogger and teacher John Holland wrote an open letter to Ron Thorpe, who was recently named president and CEO of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS). In his letter, John expressed his hope for what the NBPTS could accomplish under its new leadership. “I hope you are a special kind of leader,” John writes, “a ‘boundary spanner’ who is future-oriented and ready to collaborate with a wide range of stakeholders, including NBCTs [National Board Certified Teachers].” In a comment on John’s blog post, Ron Thorpe responded with a letter of his own. Below is the full text of his response.

John,

Since you have sent your thoughts in an open letter to me, I hope you don’t mind if I respond similarly. First of all, THANK YOU for writing what you did. The mere fact that you value such communication and took the time to fashion such a thoughtful set of observations is exactly what I’m hoping to find many times over—maybe 91,000 times over!—among National Board Certified Teachers.

Let me start by addressing the word “vision,” which gives me more than a little pause. I realize that successful leaders do possess vision and, just as importantly, the ability to get others to embrace that vision. From that perspective, I’m in no position right now to speculate whether I have those qualities, at least not within the context of the National Board. Decisions about that will emerge over time.

I can reflect, however, on my last 8+ years leading the education department at the public television station, WNET. I arrived at that job on July 14, 2003—Bastille Day!—after 16 years as a teacher and dean of faculty and another dozen working in foundations, almost always around grantmaking for teachers and education writ large. I brought lots of experiences to the job shaped by some wonderful former bosses and mentors like Ted Sizer, but the truth was I had no vision for what I’d do in public television because I didn’t yet know enough about public television. With the help of a really strong staff and some wonderful external partners, things have come together, and today I’d put WNET’s education department up against any in public television. Not only that, but WNET is very much at the education table locally in New York City and our area, in New York State, at the national level, and even internationally because of our work last March with Secretary Duncan, OECD, and Education International around the historic International Summit on the Teaching Profession, which was the pre-meeting to WNET’s Celebration of Teaching & Learning. I can only hope that I’ll be as fortunate with coalitions of partners as I move to the National Board.

I completely agree with your other points especially around partnerships. In fact, you’ll be especially pleased to know that I’m meeting with Barnett Berry and his colleague Ann Byrd on November 21st in Raleigh, two weeks before I even start my new job.

Let me end with what I think is your most compelling observation: the need for the National Board to fully exercise its commitment to that third goal of advancing “other education reforms for the purpose of improving student learning in American schools.” That is the area that most interests me at the National Board. I am not an “assessment” guy, nor am I very well versed in the technical side of what it requires to establish strong and meaningful standards. What I care about most is using that foundation—which is so well established by the NBPTS over the last 25 years—to forge the profession teaching truly deserves to be. Much of that knowledge—and almost all of the muscle—will come from those teachers who have pursued Board Certification and who continue to set the bar not only around what teachers should know and be able to do, but around how teachers behave as professionals.

The culture of K-12 education is inextricably linked to the culture of the individuals who lead classrooms and who create the environment in which learning takes place. Among U.S. teachers today, fewer than 3% are National Board Certified. They have a powerful voice that needs to be heard, and they are making a profound difference in the profession, but their numbers are still too small. 3 to 100 are pretty long odds, even when the 3 are the best of the best. We need to change that balance, and we need to find ways to support teachers who want to take up the challenge.

I realize that National Board Certified Teachers are not the only great teachers in the country. Board Certification is evidence—well tested over time and trial—that those who attain it are true professionals who make a difference in the lives of young people. In a world that can be fairly subjective and vertiginously arbitrary—where everyone has an opinion—that objectivity means something.

I thank you, John, for your open letter and your dedication to teaching and learning. I also thank you for your disenchantment. As I lead the National Board into its second quarter-century, I need to know what we must do better, where the new opportunities are, and who the people are who care enough to expect NBPTS to stand for more than a credential. In that regard, I realize that I have much in common with the teachers the National Board was created to serve. And I am honored to be share in the work.

Ron Thorpe
Not yet, but soon to be the new President and CEO of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards

By Ali Kliegman

Ali Kliegman, a policy associate at CTQ, has been working with teacher leaders on a new website called Teacher Leader Model Standards. The site, which launched last week, is a collaborative resource for teacher leaders to share and learn about teacher leadership in the 21st century.

Infographic designed by sunnibrown.com for the Teacher Leader Model Standards site.

“Within every school there is a sleeping giant of teacher leadership, which can be a strong catalyst for making change.” (Katzenmeyer and Moller, 2001)

Teacher leadership is not a new concept. Yet until we begin to cultivate, support, and spread the knowledge and expertise of those who have mastered this craft, we will continue to miss the mark on achieving great gains with students.

So while the newly released Teacher Leader Model Standards may surprise some as an innovative tool for improving the profession, teacher leaders themselves have been living them for years. These standards describe the skills, knowledge, and competencies that teachers need to perform well in leadership roles, including:

Domain I: Fostering a Collaborative Culture to Support Educator Development and Student Learning

Domain II: Accessing and Using Research to Improve Practice and Student Learning

Domain III: Promoting Professional Learning for Continuous Improvement

Domain IV: Facilitating Improvements in Instruction and Student Learning

Domain V: Promoting the Use of Assessments and Data for School and District Improvement

Domain VI: Improving Outreach and Collaboration with Families and Community

Domain VII: Advocating for Student Learning and the Profession

What might be the most useful aspect of these standards are actual exemplars of what teacher leaders have been doing for decades. These exemplars, along with additional information about the development and research behind the standards themselves, will all be made available via their new virtual home: www.teacherleaderstandards.org. The first featured exemplar is the Math and Science Leadership Academy, a teacher-led school in Denver, Colorado, that embodies all seven of these domains.

Thanks to generous funding from the University of Phoenix, ETS, NEA, and ECS, CTQ has been working closely with an outstanding group of five teacher leaders who are researching and posting best practices for each of the seven domains of teacher leadership.

Suggestions for more? Send them our way. In fact, we’ll be convening a virtual community of teacher leaders for this very purpose, and we hope you’ll join the conversation!

By Meredith Kohl

In this guest post, Meredith Kohl, a former teacher and current CTQ policy assistant, reflects on the new education documentary Mitchell 20, as well as her own teaching experience.

Capturing a profession in transition and highlighting the untapped collective power of teachers committed to their craft, the powerful Mitchell 20 documentary, and the leadership of Daniela Robles, reveals that teachers are a primary solution to the complex challenges that our schools and students face.

In the film, National Board Certified Teacher Daniela Robles encourages 20 of her colleagues to undergo the National Board certification process together, sparking a spirit of collaboration and improvement. Mitchell 20 resonated deeply with me because in five years of teaching, I never felt like I was part of the solution. I was a Teach For America recruit, and I had high aspirations for teaching as a career once I entered the classroom and saw the possibilities. But in my short tenure in an urban district, I felt isolated, unsupported, and confined to the bottom of a bureaucratic power pyramid.  

The top-down education system had something to do with it, sure. And a school climate characterized by frequent (but irrelevant and inadequate) professional development and the careless manipulation of teacher expertise definitely contributed to my feelings of helplessness. 

But it was more than these factors. As a teacher new to the profession, I did not see myself as part of the solution because my attempt to master my craft went largely unsupported. Once I was deemed “effective” by my administration, the resources and individualized support needed to further improve my practice were simply not there.

Over time, experience made many aspects of teaching easier, but I came to realize that weaknesses in my practice—for example, working with second-language learners and using effective techniques for teaching reading—were going unchecked and unaddressed by my school leadership. My concerns as a classroom instructor were unresolved, and time for meaningful inquiry and collaboration with my colleagues was not provided.

Without mastery, how could I articulate the learning occurring in my classroom or the complexities of my craft? How could I leverage expertise I did not possess to transform my school? How could I change the conversation? How could I change my teaching, and the teaching of my counterparts? How could I change outcomes for my students?

As TEACHING 2030 co-author Shannon C’de Baca recently pointed out, “Teacher voice should be secondary to craft. First, teachers must master their craft, then we need them to reform policy.”

The best teachers are continually improving, but what happens when they want to but can’t find meaningful and long-term avenues to do so? I regret that in my high-need school I never heard about the National Board process, that I was unaware of communities like the Teacher Leaders Network, that a colleague like Daniela never came and knocked on my classroom door to present a collaborative challenge for improvement. 

There are thousands of unsupported, early-career teachers in our highest-need schools unsure of where to turn in order to take their practice to the next level. Until they are able to do so, their voices will not be heard.

So how do we reach them?

We must spread stories like Mitchell. Not only to change the conversation, but also to change the behavior of thousands of dormant teachers who have yet to realize their leadership potential. Collectively, teachers must understand how they can take control of their practice when support is not available at their school. They must create cohorts like the Mitchell 20, dedicated to professional growth and learning. Teachers, especially newer ones, must have time and support for self-examination, reflection, and collaboration so that they can improve their practice. All of this is necessary for teachers to lead the transformation of learning communities across the country.

So license a screening, share the trailer, tell early-career teachers about the National Board process, and challenge them to be part of the solution by mastering their craft, finding their voice, spreading their expertise, and stepping forward to lead.

By John Holland

John Holland, a preschool teacher and co-author of TEACHING 2030, represented CTQ at the New York Times Schools for Tomorrow Conference last month. Below is his take on the experience.

I walked into the New York Times Schools for Tomorrow conference with some trepidation. The conference had been organized to energize stakeholders about integrating technology in our schools. I knew that many of the attendees would be from the private sector, including entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and online learning providers. I was surprised to find approximately 75 educators in the crowd of more than 300. Some, like Brian Crosby, were educational technology specialists. Brian is an elementary teacher in Reno who stepped onto the larger educational stage after Skype learned he’d used their services to teach a homebound student with leukemia. 

Brian secured his invite to the conference by emailing the New York Times to explain how wack it was the panels included no teachers. I got my invite easily enough, by filling out an online form.

But I was skeptical. I attended the conference so I could live by the advice I give my daughter about soccer. She often plays defense and has gotten quite good at the skill I call “being there.” To “be there” is to see the total field, the offensive positions, and your place in anticipating an attack. You can then get to where you need to be to stop the ball and turn the tide of the drive on the goal.

I went to the Schools for Tomorrow conference to “be there” as a teacher leader and passionate advocate for a hopeful vision for education. I wanted to meet the players, especially those who might consider technology a replacement for teachers.

The Spark

David Brooks, one of the most popular opinion columnists in America, opened with a surprising remark: “I want to start by expressing a note of skepticism about technology in education.” He continued:

My skepticism about the role of technology in the classroom is based on three arguments. The first is that people learn from people they love, they don’t learn from computers they love, and anything that gets in the way between the relationship between the teacher and the student is something I’m likely to be skeptical of. The second thing is that electronic communication is far inferior to personal communication…. And finally information processing. The tendency of technology is to make information processing easy. But the way you learn and remember is through processing information that is hard and challenging. You want to introduce trouble, not introduce ease.

Wow, I thought, David Brooks sounds like a teacher. Even though I consider myself a passionate advocate for the use of technology in schools, I still struggle with those same points. But if we can balance our enthusiasm about technology with our recognition of Brooks’s points, we can be the adaptive professionals that students deserve. 

From Defense to Offense

The first panel included a group of international experts on technology in schools. None of them were teachers. I decided to move from defense to offense—by asking a question: “What concrete action steps, from your various perspectives, can be taken to help teachers use technology to teach?” 

Here’s how Harri Skog, the permanent secretary of Finland's Ministry of Education, responded:

I think it helps a lot if a teacher has an autonomous way of having his own discretion at the level of the classroom....I think it is very important for teachers to be able to plan how they want to teach, but that needs to have this kind of trust situation. If I would be asked one thing to have, it would be more autonomy in schools.

I was sitting next to Diana Laufenberg, a powerful and visionary teacher from the Philadelphia Science Leadership Academy—we both started clapping.

Meeting the Players

Between attending panels and informally networking, I met many passionate advocates for 21st-century learning.

• Larry Berger, founder and president of Wireless Generation, spoke on a panel about technical tools for the classroom. He highlighted how technology could strengthen teachers’ formative assessment efforts.
• Jacqueline Botterill, director of social public good for Skype, shared news of Skype in the classroom, connecting teachers and learners across the globe.
• Scott Kinney, senior vice president at Discovery Education, described how the Discovery Educator Network enables public school teachers to leverage streaming media for student learning and professional development.
• Joel Arquillos is executive director of 826LA, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center that provides free writing programs for Los Angeles students, including after-school and in-school tutoring, field trips, workshops, and publishing resources.
• Erik Michielsen founded Capture Your Flag, a project that is conducting qualitative interviews with aspirational leaders, tracking them over time. Erik will apply tagging and coding techniques to these annual interviews, identifying themes that can drive an innovative approach to curriculum development for college and career readiness. 

What “Being There” Meant to Me

This conference confirmed one of my deepest held beliefs about teaching: there is a spark between human beings that is essential to the learning process. This fundamental spark in the engine of learning can never be replaced by technology. In fact, the best uses of technology in education will continue to involve person-to-person communication.

The human spark is also what will make a difference in important decisions about educational policy and practice. When teachers can “be there,” they can provide a much-needed window into how policies affect the learning of individual students. When teachers can “be there,” they can ask the questions that need to be answered. We will truly know this spark is alive when teachers (along with students and parents) are not just relegated to “being there,” but are sought-after panelists in important discussions about teaching and learning.

Thank you, David Brooks, for calling on my raised hand. Let's hope that next time, my colleagues and I will be answering questions, not just asking them.

Just recently, the U.S. Department of Education released its plan for teacher-education reform, pointing out that too many university-based programs “do not provide teachers with a rigorous, clinical experience that prepares them for the schools in which they will work.”

In an ironic twist, however, the Department’s Race to the Top guidelines have promoted the proliferation of alternative certification programs that shortcut pre-service training for new recruits. These programs give recruits limited or non-existent opportunities for “rigorous, clinical” preparation prior to teaching independently. Not only must university-based teacher education be improved, but we also need to think about what supports teachers are given while they're teaching. There is no reason to believe that school districts are sufficiently suited to prepare teachers for the schools of today — or tomorrow, for that matter.

A recent study has shown that few teachers receive the “intensive, sustained, and content-focused professional development” that matters for student achievement. For example, as reported in the same study, over the course of a year only 9 percent of elementary math teachers had more than 24 hours of content-specific professional development in math. Many school-district officials just don’t value the kind of high-quality professional development that teachers (and their students) deserve. Instead, as seen in this stark display below (from a local news report on how school districts view teacher learning), archaic district-driven professional development prevails.

From the Jackson (MS) Clarion-Ledger, Oct. 17, 2011

I wonder why USDOE officials, in pushing for much-needed changes in teacher education, don’t push school districts to transform their systems of professional development. The plan does indeed call for all teachers — including veteran teachers and recent graduates of preparation programs — to “receive professional development and career advancement opportunities that are aligned with their identified strengths and needs.”

However, USDOE does not call for scrutiny of school districts’ professional development programs. Maybe districts should be held accountable for the quality of support they provide to recently minted teacher-education graduates. Maybe if the USDOE called for such scrutiny, our nation would get a bit closer to creating the kind of comprehensive teacher-development system needed for the schools of today and tomorrow. 

By Mermuda Wilson

Mermuda Wilson, a policy assistant at CTQ, has been using her video-editing expertise to share teacher voices in an online video series. In this guest post, she describes her experience working with these teacher-submitted videos.

Relationships. AP scores. Graduation stoles. “Fast food” learners. Empowerment. Community partnerships. 

These are a few of the topics broached by teacher leaders highlighted in our CTQTube series. The series, which runs until mid-November, features Teacher Wall submissions from teachers in CTQ's Teacher Leaders Network (TLN).

The Teacher Wall Project is a virtual teacher town square where educators can share video clips and comments. It was built by Scholastic, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and DonorsChoose.org as a way to elevate teacher leaders' perspectives on their profession. The CTQTube series is a microcosm of the Teacher Wall, which has received hundreds of video responses.

The breadth of responses has been amazing. One aspect of the CTQTube submissions that has really stood out to me is that not a single teacher has listed a formal award as their “greatest succcess as a teacher” (a question the teachers were asked to respond to in their videos). These are Teachers of the Year, National Board Certified Teachers, Presidential Award recipients, and National Education Association Teachers of Excellence finalists.

Shannon C'de Baca talks about the value of student-teacher relationships.

Instead, they all chose student-centered measures as their shining moments. This reinforces what teacher Shannon C’de Baca says in her video: the relationships teachers have with students are more important than any specific program.

Building relationships is a common theme that arises in some form or another for all the teachers featured in our CTQTube series. A very clear example is Karen Van Duyn’s submission. In a creative twist on the assignment, Karen’s students put together their perspectives on why she teaches. It’s a fun video that sheds some light on her philosophy of student empowerment. The students seem to have really enjoyed the production process and looked critically at how their perspectives on their teachers shape how they learn. 

Putting this series together has reminded me that while every classroom and every educator is different, the top educators do share one commonality: the genuine desire to foster relationships that allow students to tap into their unknown potential.

Karen Van Duyn and her students share reasons why she teaches.

Our nation has so many of these accomplished classroom practitioners who have so much untapped potential to lead school improvement efforts. Now is the time to make these expert teachers more visible to policymakers and the public. They can and must lead the way. There are only 18 years, 2 months, and 12 days until 2030. We have a lot more work to do to "blur the lines of distinction between those who teach in schools and those who lead them." 

By Kristoffer Kohl 

Kristoffer Kohl is a former classroom teacher working currently as a policy associate at CTQ to further the vision of TEACHING 2030. He previously collaborated with a team of accomplished teachers to produce the report “Transforming School Conditions: Building Bridges to the Education System that Students and Teachers Deserve.” 

How do you create space for innovation when a system is already in motion? In education especially, it often feels like we're trying to build the plane as we’re flying.

What would our schools look like if we solicited the expertise of teachers and recognized classroom problems as opportunities for innovation? How might learning outcomes be transformed if teachers were equipped to investigate and design solutions?

Given that most teachers aren’t afforded such opportunities, the education-reform world has been captivated in recent years by other another model of innovation: the incredible efforts of education entrepreneurs. Their accomplishments engage and inspire the public with seemingly endless possibilities for our schools. New Tech Network, Harlem Children's Zone, School of One, and Khan Academy have rocked the foundations of the education establishment by transforming the identities of school and classroom.

Though these schools have been successful, their ideas have proven difficult to scale and sustain in a way that benefits all communities. Fortunately, there is an untapped reservoir of expertise that can generate even more profound change in our nation's schools. 

Enter the teacherpreneur.

As defined by the authors of TEACHING 2030, a teacherpreneur is a teacher leader of proven accomplishment possessing a deep knowledge of how to teach, a clear understanding of what strategies must be in play to keep schools highly successful, and the skills and commitment necessary to spread their expertise to others — all while keeping at least one foot firmly in the classroom. 

Entrepreneurs may have brilliant ideas that often require venture capital and years of planning, but teacherpreneurs’ innovation is grounded in their daily experience in schools and classrooms. While education entrepreneurs experiment with novel theories for student learning, teacherpreneurs serve as action researchers by hypothesizing, implementing, troubleshooting, and learning from their daily interactions in the classroom. 

Prioritizing their responsibilities to students, teacherpreneurs are making a name for themselves by creatively packaging and delivering instruction. Some are 'flipping' their classrooms by allowing students to watch lessons online and using class time to complete work traditionally reserved for home. Others are using social media tools to develop a more modern take on classroom discussion, effective writing, and community action. 

The prevailing form of teacherpreneurship occurring regularly in schools across the nation is teacher leadership. Running everything from their departments and grade levels to professional learning communities, teachers are cropping up as managers, directors, mentors, and guides. Outside their buildings, teacher leaders are transforming unions, community organizations, after-school programs, and online professional-development communities.

CTQ works directly with three teacherpreneurs: Jessica Keigan and Dana Nardello in Denver, and Noah Zeichner in Seattle. In addition to their primary roles as teachers, all three are involved with education policy work for the New Millennium Initiative. Jessica and Dana also work alongside the Colorado Legacy Foundation, and Noah collaborates with Seattle Public Schools and the Seattle Education Association to increase teacher leadership opportunities. These teacherpreneurs will ideally serve as models for other organizations and districts that want to support similar hybrid positions.

Both teacherpreneurs and entrepreneurs play valuable roles in advancing the development of a 21^st-century school system. While entrepreneurs inspire a vision of what schools can become, teacherpreneurs demonstrate the caliber of individuals we need in schools to realize that vision. Teacherpreneurs elevate the entire profession by ensuring that colleagues, policymakers, and the public know what works best for students.  

To participate in a discussion about teacher career paths and hybrid teaching positions, join our Twitter chat on Thursday, October 20, from 8:30-9:30 p.m. ET, hashtag #teaching2030.

Below is a blog post I wrote as part of an online discussion for Learning Matters, a nonprofit media production company that has produced many education-focused reports and documentaries for PBS. Along with several experts in the education field, I was asked to write about teacher quality and teacher training. I encourage you to read the other participants' responses and leave comments on the full Learning Matters discussion — it's absolutely worth the read.

 

Recently, I collaborated with twelve expert teachers to write TEACHING 2030: What We Must Do For Our Students and Our Public Schools … Now and in the Future. We argue that universities’ teacher education programs — and highly-touted alternative certification programs like Teach for America — perpetuate out-of-date models of teaching and learning.

Teacher recruits need a very different kind of preparation to teach the diverse, tech-savvy learners of today and to ready those learners for the 21st-century global marketplace. To make this happen, we must move far beyond reform rhetoric — and we must do so quickly. Here are six big strategies that can help teacher preparation programs break the mold:

1. Ensure that recruits are being prepared for the roles that are most needed in area schools: School districts should develop “labor market” reports, allowing universities to carefully consider how many recruits should be prepared and for what.

2. Jettison traditional three-hour course credits in favor of performance-based pedagogical modules and assessments: This nimble, practical approach will help recruits to develop specific teaching skills and will better identify who is ready to teach, when, and under what conditions.

3. Split the time: Work with school districts to create hybrid roles for the most effective teachers to spend half their time teaching and half their time as lead teacher educators.

4. Understand the community: Require recruits to complete a substantial internship in a community-based organization, developing deep knowledge of how and where students and their families live.

5. Embrace online: Engage recruits in a virtual network of teachers, preparing them to teach effectively online and to collaborate virtually with teaching colleagues.

6. Emergent Tech: Work with school districts to expose recruits to live and digitally recorded “lesson studies,” in which teams of candidates learn to critique teaching and assess student learning using emerging technologies.

Over the past several years, we at CTQ have been documenting how school conditions and designs affect the way teachers teach and students learn. Research has demonstrated that curriculum, instructional resources, preparedness and stability of faculty, and connections to after-school and summer-school programs have strong impacts on student achievement. Teachers say the same.

Furman Brown’s Generation Schools are promising models of re-envisioned school conditions. Nearly 90% of the full-time professional staff teach classes. Students get more instructional time (up to 200 days), and class sizes can be as low as 16. Teachers have many opportunities to plan together and learn from one another. Currently, several districts in Colorado are piloting the Generation Schools model, which has found a “better way to organize and distribute work” for both students and teachers. (See this terrific report from Ed Sector on improving teacher quality through school design.)

Another innovative approach is also taking root in Colorado: the teacher-led school without a principal. With support from the Ford Foundation (which has made significant investments in extended learning opportunities for students and their teachers), we have been able to document the emergence of the Math and Science Leadership Academy (MSLA). There, strong teacher leaders, most National Board Certified, have forged deep connections to the communities they serve and are backed by a reform-minded union.

Watch the video to learn more about MSLA, and take a look at our case study about the school’s creation. MSLA is doing great things, and we need to make sure that the school, its teachers, and its stories become better known to policymakers, practitioners, and the public. We need find ways to take these good ideas to scale. 

 

  

 

This commentary by Barnett Berry originally appeared as a guest post on Getting Smart's blog on September 1, 2011.

Imagine a new teaching profession — the one that students of today and tomorrow deserve. Here’s how “schools” and “teaching” could look:

• In transformed learning environments, digital tools enable students to learn 24/7 and use skills demanded by local and global economies. Meanwhile, similar technologies allow teachers to learn from each other anywhere, at any time.

• Expert teachers create seamless connections in and out of cyberspace. They bridge students’ virtual learning with what goes on in brick-and-mortar schools (including afterschool programs to deepen and extend learning for our most vulnerable students).

• Students learn from collaborative teams of teachers with varied strengths and roles.This is made possible by a career matrix (as opposed to the traditional career ladder) that includes differentiated pathways. The system places a premium on the spreading of teacher expertise—and is structured to encourage our best teachers to remain in the profession.

More than 600,000 “teacherpreneurs” are making a difference in our schools. These are effective teachers who continue to teach students regularly, but also work part-time on results-oriented efforts to improve student learning. They might design new instructional programs, orchestrate community partnerships, develop digital learning tools, and advance new policies and practices. Teacherpreneurs will be the “highest-paid anybodies” in a school district—and their roles will finally blur the lines of distinction between those who teach in schools and those who lead.

These four possibilities, described more fully in TEACHING 2030, a new book I penned with 12 expert teachers, can help us imagine what teaching could look like. Here’s the catch: we have to move past the tired 20th century struggles over how we recruit, train, and pay teachers. Yes, some serious politics are involved, as described vividly, if not always accurately, in Steven Brill’s new book, Class Warfare.

But we must also contend with the 15,000-hour problem. Most Americans have attended schools for 13 years—and have watched teachers teach for more than 15,000 hours, usually in the company of 25 or 30 other students (40 or 50 in hard times). And while most Americans may want improved schools and better teaching, they do not want teaching and learning to look all that different from when they were in school themselves. The public’s familiarity with teaching reifies expectations. It may even breed contempt for the specialized skills that effective teachers and administrators need to develop—after all, an expert teacher can make the job look easy.

But the 15,000-hour problem besets teachers and administrators as well. Almost four decades ago, Dan Lortie, the well-known education sociologist, described the 15,000 problem as the “apprenticeship of observation” — when teachers and administrators come into the profession thinking they already know how to teach and lead. In fact, since many educators have had the experience of “liking school” as K-12 students, they often resist major transformative changes. They may not want to think differently about teachers’ roles, teaching methods, and how and when students are expected to learn.

So what do we do? We shouldn’t simply seek more recruits from alternative routes. Plenty of evidence suggests that even teachers and administrators from “alternative routes” reify the current system of teaching and learning.

Instead, we should consider how teachers’ and administrators’ preparation can set the stage for a new expectations about what schools and learning look like.

And now is the time for public engagement campaign that informs and inspires, helping Americans shift their own beliefs about what schools and teachers can accomplish — and how they should go about it.

Selling a bold new vision of teaching and learning is far from impossible.

The American people have the capacity to let go of old patterns of thinking when the evidence is compelling and well-presented. Consider how our nation’s adult population changed its collective mind about cigarette smoking. In the early 1960s, cigarette smoking was common. In ads, the Marlboro Man (portrayed as a rugged cowboy) gave cigarettes a free-spirited, back-to-basics, all-American image. Then studies began to identify empirical links between smoking and cancer. Early anti-smoking commercials, starring “Johnny Smoke,” showed cowboys keeling over with poisonous fumes in their lungs, parodying the Marlboro Man. Public awareness grew and behavior began to change, as TV ads for cigarettes were banned and the Surgeon General’s warnings on cigarette packages became more stark and visible. Within 40 years, the percentage of American adults smoking cigarettes decreased from 45% to 20%.

An inefficient public education system mired in 20th-century debates may not be blackening our lungs. But the status quo is doing something just as serious: failing our students, our communities, and our democracy. We must help the public understand what is possible. We must get past the 15,000-hour conundrum. We must work together to create the transformed system of teaching and learning that 21st-century students deserve.

By Susan Graham

Susan Graham, a National Board Certified Teacher and Teacher Leaders Network member, retired in spring 2011 after 28 years in the classroom. However, she continues to encourage innovative reforms in teaching and learning, and is currently serving as a Virtual Community Organizer for CTQ’s new Implementing Common Core Standards project. 

Overheard this weekend at the Center for Teaching Quality’s headquarters in Carrboro, NC: “This is such incredibly complicated work…” (one-second pause) “…but I am so exhilarated by the process!”

That’s the sort of energy generated when exemplary teachers combine their expertise to tackle tough issues in teaching and learning—which happens all the time on CTQ’s virtual Teacher Leaders Network. But this energy is powerful face-to-face, too, as I witnessed this weekend when CTQ assembled 21 National Board Certified Teachers from NC and KY to work on the Implementing Common Core Standards (ICCS) project. 

Here’s how the Common Core State Standards website describes the standards:

The Common Core Standards provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them. The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers. With American students fully prepared for the future, our communities will be best positioned to compete successfully in the global economy.

But what does that look like in the classroom? How will students demonstrate mastery of the standards of literacy and mathematical functionality? And how do these efforts square with the pressures of standardized test performance (currently the centerpiece of many states’ assessment and evaluation systems)?

Over the next year, the accomplished teachers I met at CTQ will face down these tough questions. They will design—and test-drive in their own classrooms, with their own students—lessons and assessments linked to the Common Core State Standards.

ICCS teachers will pilot formative assessment templates created by the Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) and Mathematics Design Collaborative (MDC) with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The teachers met with Eleanor Dougherty (LDC) and Ann Shannon (MDC) to get a better sense of how to implement these new tools.

The teachers aren’t just test-driving—they’re documenting every curve of the road. As they fine-tune, deliver, and evaluate LDC and MDC modules, they’ll be compiling video clips of instruction and assembling evidence of student work, and reflecting on how the modules affect student learning and their own practice.  

In spring 2012, the ICCS teachers will begin to share the toolkits they’re creating—influencing student achievement in classrooms across the country. And their field-test critiques of the Design Collaborative concepts will inform the process of integrating Common Core Standards and state course standards.   

How will the pieces fit together? What will the results be? Which questions will be answered—in full or in part—and which will remain? We don’t know yet—but it is exciting to know that 21 highly accomplished teachers are already hard at work on a potentially transformative project for advancing student learning.  

 

By Jessica Keigan and Dana Nardello

One of the most exciting parts about working with expert teacher leaders is seeing their hard work and expertise appreciated. The Denver NMI team’s positive contribution to shaping and implementing teaching policies in Colorado attests to the importance of teacher voice in the policymaking process. I’ve asked two members of the Denver NMI team, Jessica Keigan and Dana Nardello, to share some of their recent involvement with the state legislation process. Jessica also spoke about her involvement during a special Rocky Mountain PBS roundtable held last Friday, where she represented her team with solutions-focused comments and compelling stories. --Barnett Berry

Here in the Mile High City, there has been a lot of buzz about Senate Bill 191, a law that calls for the creation and implementation of a new evaluation system for principals and teachers.

Among other things, the bill requires that half of a teacher’s evaluation be determined by student growth measures and that the other half -- loosely labeled as “multiple measures” -- include classroom observations by peers or administrators, goal attainment processes, or other similar tools.

But the tools used to assess teachers’ effectiveness on the basis of gains on a once-a-year standardized test are still pretty raw. As noted in a recent Congressional briefing, the grade-level standardized tests do not capture “teacher effects” when students are way below or above where they are supposed to be.  Some teachers teach a disproportionate share of second language learners or special needs students. Some teachers are part of teaching teams and it is difficult to determine who is most responsible. Some teachers work with students who get all kinds of help from afterschool and summer programs, but others do not.

As members of the Denver New Millennium Initiative, we knew it was important to be part of the conversation about the bill’s implementation. Since the release of our report “Making Teacher Evaluation Work: Voices from the Classroom,” various stakeholders have solicited our suggestions for specific and concrete suggestions. And last week, we had the fantastic opportunity to share our expertise at a state board public hearing.

The Process

This past May, the State Council on Educator Effectiveness (SCEE) began working to define what makes an educator effective, and since then it has made several recommendations to the Colorado Department of Education (CDE). The council has drafted and revised rules and has encouraged general feedback through public hearings – an opportunity we decided to take advantage of.

After releasing our report, our team spent the summer months researching teacher effectiveness and various topics introduced in the drafted rules (e.g., comparability, assessment tools, state vs. local control). Deciding to focus on what we thought the state’s definition of “multiple measures” should be, we submitted a list of recommendations to the board. At the public hearing, NMI team members supplemented the list by sharing our classroom realities, e.g., how highly mobile students or a large number of second language learners who just entered our classes, could influence the accuracy of the test score evidence. We described how teachers can assemble a wide array of data on their students so we can figure out how to improve our teaching.

Why Do We Care?

As teachers, we want stronger teaching accountability systems. We want to reach beyond our classroom walls and influence the policies that drive the work we do each day. Conversations about education reform need to include perspectives of people who know what happens inside the classroom.  We have solutions, we have ideas, and we want to share them.

Our day-to-day experience allows us to anticipate pitfalls and envision successes in a way that wouldn’t be possible for most lawmakers. Because we believe we have the responsibility to be involved in education policy, we are continually searching for entry points, conversations, meetings, and committees that we can contribute our expertise to.

What We Learned

Classroom teachers often think they don’t know enough about policy, politics, or the legislative process. But the truth is that teachers hold the critical piece of the puzzle. Our stories from the classroom can corroborate expert suggestions or productively challenge them.

The great news is that we aren’t the only ones who think this.

Our team and two other teachers were the only teacher voices heard during the hearing, and we could tell that our input made an impact on the audience. After giving our testimony last week, a member of the SCEE cited our evidence specifically when discussing next steps with the board. We knew we were being listened to, and it was an exhilarating experience.

Each new encounter with policymaking is showing us that people want to hear what teachers have to say. They respect our contributions as experts in our field –especially when they are solutions oriented.

Next Steps

Last week we received tangible indication that our teacher voices are having a positive effect on policy. Witnessing such respect for teacher expertise makes us excited to continue contributing to this process.

The Denver NMI team will continue to review the commentary and drafts that stakeholders are submitting. The next public hearing is scheduled for October 5, and on that day we hope even more Denver NMI teachers will share personal evidence that will support our recommendations.

As always, we will continue to seek out opportunities to share our voices, in hopes that we can improve our profession and best serve our students, inside and outside the classroom. 

 

A few days ago, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan gave a shout-out to the University of Michigan for serving as a national model for “reinventing” education schools. Indeed, the UM education school, led by Dean Deborah Ball, has done much to recalibrate university-based preparation programs by focusing on the practical how-tos of teaching specific curricular content and drawing on new research about how students learn. And though Secretary Duncan has often called for more student teaching, not less, his Race to the Top policies continue to embrace shortcut alternative-certification programs. Such routes, like Teach for America, can’t come close to offering new recruits the kind of preparation provided by UM’s education school (or by the many other university preparation programs that have also overhauled their approaches).

Secretary Duncan’s contradictory stances on teacher training are difficult to reconcile.

I keep thinking back to a terrific conversation captured by Education Next a few years ago. Arthur Wise, a champion for professionalizing teaching, and Julie Mikuta, a TFA alum and partner in the NewSchools Venture Fund, discussed the merits of university-based and alternative-certification approaches to teacher preparation. The three-year-old piece brings to light a number of issues surrounding TFA and whether it’s a “valuable strategy for recruiting the best and brightest into education and energizing school improvement, or a distraction and a device for sending ill-prepared neophytes to serve some of the nation’s neediest students.”

Federal policymakers have much to learn from the Education Next conversation – especially from Dr. Wise, who points to the false dichotomies often promoted in the current policy debates over teacher education. Rather than demonizing TFA or claiming teacher education programs have it all figured out, he calls for a strategy that scaffolds learning for all novices, whether they are TFA members or university-based recruits. He envisions a “teaching team strategy” in which experienced teachers are ultimately responsible for students, “but in multiple classrooms and with the assistance of the novices.”

Both TFA and traditional recruits have much to contribute to the process of improving teaching and learning. No teacher, however, should teach independently until he or she has passed muster on performance metrics, including teaching diverse learners (such as ELL students) and using sophisticated assessment tools to determine student progress toward 21st-century academic standards. It’s time that our nation’s education leaders learn that teacher education and licensing is not about dichotomous choices, but inventive approaches that can support student learning today and tomorrow.

 

Recently, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan pointed out, "Teachers need and deserve more autonomy and respect--and they must become real participants and partners in reform if outcomes for children are to dramatically improve."

We couldn't agree more. 

In a new CTQ report, "Teaching Effectiveness for the New Millennium," 23 expert teachers describe how policymakers can more accurately define student learning and advance teaching effectiveness reforms. They emphasized that policymakers must capitalize on the untapped potential of classroom leaders.

The teachers' insights--informed by research and their classroom experience--were inspired by online conversations with a group of key USDOE staff and with Secretary Duncan. The teachers began by unpacking the Department’s ESEA “blueprint” — but soon honed in on the significance of hybrid teaching roles in implementing new reforms with veracity and fidelity.  

All co-authors are members of CTQ's Teacher Leaders Network, and several participate in our New Millennium Initiative. Drawing upon research and their teaching expertise, they highlight promising steps by the USDOE and also call for specific teaching effectiveness reforms, including:

• Involve teacher leaders in creating and scoring assessments aligned with Common Core standards throughout the school year. These assessments could help teachers fine-tune instruction and could inform results-oriented teaching evaluations.  
• Draw upon and spread the expertise of National Board Certified Teachers, who have met rigorous standards and demonstrated skill in analyzing student evidence to improve instruction.
• Promote and support hybrid roles that allow teacher leaders to continue building upon their classroom skills while also serving as teacher educators, policy researchers, community organizers, and trustees of their profession. Our nation needs more teacherpreneurs if we are to take innovative steps to improve our schools. 
• Develop new forms of shared school leadership to support teaching effectiveness, like tapping expert teachers to serve as peer reviewers in implementing high-quality, rigorous classroom evaluations.

Just yesterday, I was reading a newly released study that examines the effectiveness of high-quality peer review programs, such as California's Poway and San Juan districts. The researchers found that, when compared to principals, teachers are far more thorough and tough-minded in evaluating their colleagues. Expert teachers "get" the job of teaching--and what it takes to do that job well.

Kudos to Secretary Duncan and his staff for engaging in an authentic conversation with some of the nation’s best teachers. Now let’s find ways--including more robust peer review programs--for teacher leaders to become the “real participants and partners” in reform.

“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.

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.

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. 

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.

So it turns out that high-stakes tests—and the accountability systems based on them—aren’t working out so well.

Earlier this week, The New York Times reported on a new study showing that the NYC district’s $56 million merit pay system has had no payoff for student achievement. The investigation, conducted by the RAND Corporation, concluded that “the bonus program had no effect on students’ test scores, on grades on the city’s controversial A to F school report cards, or on the way teachers did their jobs.”

The RAND study lines up with the myth-busting report of the National Research Council which concluded earlier this year that test-based incentive programs “often use assessments too narrow to measure progress….(and) have not increased student achievement enough to bring the United States close to the levels of the highest achieving countries.

Despite the evidence, district officials seem bent on finding a merit pay program that works. If NYC administrators are serious about finding a teacher compensation model that students deserve, then they should take a look at our inaugural TeacherSolutions report or a recent report by Florida teachers on pay-for-performance. A smart approach would value the spread of teaching expertise, not just reward high-performing teachers.

Meanwhile, in other high-stakes testing news, the Atlanta story just keeps getting uglier.

According to The New York Times, district administrators “humiliated principals who didn’t reach their (test score) targets,” who in turn, “demean(ed) teachers with whom they worked.”

One Atlanta principal “had teachers with low test scores crawl under a table.” He may have been following the example of his district’s superintendent, who “gathered the entire district staff at the Georgia Dome,” seating “those from schools with top scores” on the Dome floor while staffers from schools with low scores were sent to the stands.  

How do these shenanigans help children succeed? They don’t. Such actions only intensify the pressure that teachers feel. Should we be surprised that cheating occurred in such a climate?

Decades ago, eminent social scientist Donald Campbell observed, “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”

As noted in a just released report by the U.S. Department of Education, top-performing nations do not draw on the same kinds of high-stakes standardized tests and top-down accountability systems used here in the United States. Instead, these nations (e.g., Finland, Singapore, etc.) invest in teachers, who are deeply prepared to serve as experts in assessing their students. 

We have options. We can stick with high-stakes test scores (and the accountability systems that hang on them). Or we can create the results-oriented profession that students deserve. We can invite teacher leaders to help create robust accountability systems that draw on varied assessments, many of which are designed and scored by classroom experts themselves. We can compensate teachers in ways that encourage them to spread their expertise.

These options are within reach, as described in a paper I wrote with three master teachers. We argue that policymakers should look to expert teachers to develop meaningful assessments and ensure the conditions necessary to implement high standards with fidelity and rigor.

And real-world evidence of teacher leaders’ contributions to better teaching and assessments is in the works. This fall, CTQ will launch, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a virtual network of National Board Certified teachers who will be part of an effort to implement and assess new approaches to teaching and learning. Their work will demonstrate the value of formative, authentic assessments as an integrated part of effective instruction. They will help refine just-in-time ways to determine whether students are meeting the high academic standards represented by the Common Core not just at the end of the year, but every single school day.

Our students deserve assessment and accountability systems that are sophisticated enough to prepare them to meet the demands of a global economy. Accomplished teachers can help make it happen. 

As summer temperatures rise, tough talk about silver-bullet solutions is wilting:

• In Atlanta,revelations of rampant cheating on high-stakes tests have rocked the reputation of the city’s schools and administrators. At the center of the scandal is a superintendent previously championed by reformers who emphasize high-stakes accountability and assessment. As reported in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, top administrators “ignored, buried, destroyed or altered complaints about misconduct, claimed ignorance of wrongdoing and accused naysayers of failing to believe in poor children’s ability to learn.”

• In Washington, D.C.—where concerns about possible widespread cheating during the Michelle Rhee era remain unresolved—standardized test scores for 2011 showed little movement. 

• Then there’s the mounting evidence that highly acclaimed charters are unlikely to serve the most disadvantaged students. In yesterday’s New York Times, Michael Winerip explored ways in which some of the city’s charter schools pressure students to “thrive or transfer,” noting the relative scarcity of students with disabilities at such schools.  

• At the Aspen Ideas Fest, a well-known reformer revealed his relish in attacking teacher unions. Upon being blasted by bloggers, the reformer apologized for the “arrogance in my tone.” However, video footage of his talk (which was not a brief sound bite) presents disturbing evidence of the divisive rhetoric and tactics that get in the way of meeting children’s needs.

Of course, accountability is an important tool for reform. Charter schools can help to incubate good ideas and practices outside the confines of district bureaucracies. Teacher unions do need to change. But none of these silver bullet solutions—high-stakes tests, charter schools, dismantling unions—is enough to meet the challenge of providing 21^st-century students with the schools they deserve.  

Given all the recent evidence of off-kilter priorities, Paul Tough’s recent New York Times piece on the “no excuses” reform crowd is well-timed. Tough notes that the same reformers who insisted high expectations (and high-stakes tests) would cure what ailed low-income urban schools are now pointing to excuses. They’re discovering that high-stakes tests and tenure reform cannot (by themselves) help students overcome the conditions of poverty.  

Significantly, Tough notes that the situation isn’t hopeless—just more complicated than some have been willing to admit. He points out that dichotomous debate (charters versus traditional public schools, teacher unions versus administrators, etc.) simply cannot address the quandary in which America finds itself. Instead, improving our public schools requires nuanced conversation and comprehensive solutions.

Tough argues that if we are to educate all children to achieve high academic standards, we must tackle the challenges of poverty head-on. He highlights tactics that have repeatedly been proven effective on a small scale: “supplementing classroom strategies with targeted, evidence-based interventions outside the classroom; working intensively with the most disadvantaged families to improve home environments for young children; providing high-quality early-childhood education to children from the neediest families; and, once school begins, providing low-income students with a robust system of emotional and psychological support, as well as academic support.”

Clearly, such a shift in strategy will require creativity, investment, and partnerships. But it will also require us to unleash the power of the abundance of teaching talent we have in every school in this nation.

Who better to help ensure educational equity than our most accomplished teachers? Why not structure their work (and workdays) to strategically deploy their expertise? Our best teachers could provide targeted intervention for the children and families who would most benefit from their experience and knowledge. They could help develop, staff, and assess high-quality early childhood programs. They could work with community partners to ensure all children have access to the academic, emotional, and psychological support they need to succeed.

Too often, we shuffle our best teachers into full-time administrative roles, pulling them away from the children who need them most. Too often, we pile “reforms” on teachers without inviting them (and supporting them) to take on meaningful roles in solutions. And too often, America’s schools fail our least advantaged students and families.

Let’s drop the excuses. Let’s not kid ourselves about silver-bullet solutions. Let’s do the difficult work. And let’s welcome teacher leaders as partners in making it happen.    

Below: Graphic facilitator Sunni Brown captured our TEACHING 2030 team's brainstorming session about the potential roles of teacherpreneurs...

Sometimes it seems like America has tried everything. Various flavors of school reform have come and gone, often without securing real or lasting improvements for students. But there’s one thing we haven’t tried (not on a widespread basis, anyway): fully tapping the expertise of our nation’s accomplished teachers.

Our most effective teachers possess a wealth of knowledge and experience could be applied to the pressing problems faced by our schools. And students do not have to “lose” their best teachers (as is so often the case now when teachers are promoted into full-time administrative roles).  Instead, we can design roles that allow teachers to advance their careers by spending part of their time working with students—and part of their time on innovative efforts to improve teaching and learning.     

Our public schools need more of these teacherpreneurs, expert teachers who keep one foot in the classroom while also pursuing results-oriented projects:

1.     Leading peer review processes for their schools to ensure that teaching evaluations are valid and drive improvement;

2.     Developing tools and strategies for teaching the Googled learner who has grown up experiencing virtual reality;

3.     Taking part in assessment reforms such as those linked to the new Common Core standards, and using technology to better capture, analyze, and publicize data about schools’ effectiveness;

4.     Identifying effective strategies for teaching students who are increasingly diverse — by 2030, 40% or more will be second-language learners;

5.     Organizing school-neighborhood partnerships that can support student learning through cradle-to-college solutions; and

6.     Transforming unions so that they become self-policing professional guilds that help ensure the quality of teaching that students deserve.

This list is not comprehensive. It’s just a sneak peek of the important work that “teacherpreneurs” could perform—while continuing to teach students for at least part of their day, week, or year. (For more on the teacherpreneur concept, see chapter 6 of TEACHING 2030, a book I coauthored with twelve talented classroom teachers.)

Investing in Teacherpreneurs

Unfortunately, teachers’ salaries remain too low to attract and retain enough talented, well-prepared professionals to fill our nation’s high-needs classrooms — much less to cultivate the 600,000 teacherpreneurs we call for in TEACHING 2030. Unlike in other top performing nations, teachers in the U.S. are considerably underpaid, compared to other professionals with similar training and responsibility. American teachers are paid, on average, 60 percent less than other comparable college graduates.

But investing in expert teachers isn’t just about salaries—it’s about how the work and the school day are structured. Other top-performing nations invest in teachers by expecting more administrators to teach so teachers can lead. U.S. teachers teach students about 80% of their total working time—while their international counterparts spend about 60% of their time teaching, with the remainder of the time spend planning lessons and fulfilling leadership responsibilities.

America’s top-down model of managing schools has led us to allocate resources less effectively than we otherwise could. Of the 70,000 employees of the Los Angeles Unified School District, only 50% are practicing teachers. Embracing teacher leadership—creating roles that enable teachers to guide and add value to their schools—could help us put our education dollars to better use.

Finally, we must take a good long look at how our investment in expert teachers compares to what we spend on other efforts. Consider the war the United States is waging in Afghanistan, which is expected to cost $113 billion this next fiscal year, according to The Washington Post. As Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, noted, “It is fundamentally unsustainable to continue spending $10 billion a month on a massive military operation with no end in sight.”

Could the costs of war be applied to lowering the federal deficit? Could we apply a small fraction of the savings to funding our public schools in ways that meet children’s needs? Creating and funding roles for expert teachers is a wise investment—and one that is critical to safeguarding America’s future. 

How can we improve teaching effectiveness in America? Policy pundits have given us a list of to-dos: Evaluate teachers on test scores. Jettison teacher tenure. Scrap last-in-first-out policies.

Yes, we need results-oriented teacher evaluation systems that draw on evidence of student learning. Yes, it makes sense to streamline personnel procedures for teachers and administrators. Sure, let’s abandon quality-blind placements.

But if what we want is genuine, sustained improvement of our public schools, we can’t just remove these arcane policies and pretend the job is done. To paraphrase H. L. Mencken, “For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.”

Here's the real to-do list for those who want to improve our public schools:

• Take part in nuanced, solutions-focused conversations with diverse stakeholders.
• Examine empirical evidence of what works for students.
• Tap into the wisdom of thousands of accomplished teachers in our nation’s classrooms.

These to-dos drive all of our work at the Center for Teaching Quality—including our New Millennium Initiative (NMI), which assembles diverse groups of talented, early-career educators who are committed to improving teaching and learning at the local and national level.

Currently at work in Denver, Washington state, Illinois, the Bay Area, and Hillsborough County (FL), our NMI teachers are digging into some of education’s toughest issues. These committed teachers are studying evidence of what works for students, asking tough questions of researchers and policymakers, and examining the policies that govern their profession. They’re identifying specific recommendations for improving teaching and learning. And they’re speaking out. 

Each of our NMI sites will be releasing papers and multimedia products to spread their findings to others who care about teaching and learning.

This month, the Denver NMI teachers released a report pointing out how their state’s new teacher evaluation law can be effectively implemented.  Their report is concise, practical, and well-informed. It offers powerful evidence for why we should encourage teacher leaders to take an increasingly active role in today’s education policy debates. 

On May 18, Denver NMI teachers presented their findings to a diverse audience including state board of education members, superintendents, union leaders, and other key stakeholders. (Thanks to the Colorado Legacy Foundation and Rose Community Foundation for co-sponsoring this gathering with CTQ.) The crowd was impressed by—indeed, hungry for—bold, practical perspectives from classroom teachers.

Since then, team members have been invited to take part in a variety of meaningful activities to advance effective implementation of the new law. Their work, funded by Rose Community Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is only just beginning.

Stay tuned—teachers in our other NMI sites are also tackling the tough to-dos and will be releasing additional reports in the months to come. Rather than being caught up in tired debates over arcane policies, they’re looking back at what has (and hasn’t) worked for students—and looking forward to what is possible. 

(Above) The Denver NMI team presented their findings to a group of education stakeholders at an event co-sponsored by Rose Community Foundation, Colorado Legacy Foundation, & CTQ. 

  
(Above) NMI teacher Katie Micek introduces the New Millennium Initiative's short- and long-term goals.

  (Above) The Denver NMI team at work...

According to Richard Perez-Pena of The New York Times, NJ governor Chris Christie’s take on school reform was met with a welcome reception at a recent Harvard Graduate School of Education event. Christie received his first ovation with this one-liner: “The only reason I’m engaging in this battle with the teachers’ union is because it’s the only fight worth having.”

Christie’s statement is not surprising. What stings is that such simplified logic apparently went unquestioned—and was even encouraged—by this audience of Harvard faculty and students. 

Yes, teachers' unions need to change dramatically, adopting a stronger focus on teaching and learning. And yes, longstanding issues of performance pay, quality-blind transfers, and cumbersome processes for removing incompetent teachers must be resolved —now. Students and families deserve better.

But such issues (often linked in the public mind to unions) do not comprise “the only fight worth having” in public education. In fact, to focus on these problems is to ignore many, many other roadblocks to transforming the teaching profession for the benefit of all students:

1.      Administrators who fail to cultivate the enormous leadership talent of hundreds of thousands of effective teachers. (Why not re-organize school schedules in ways that spread the expertise of our most effective teachers? This is truly one of the great lost opportunities in our schools.)

2.     School board members who base critical decisions about curriculum on their own ideological interests, rather than on empirical evidence about what works for students.

3.      State legislators who refuse to equitably finance high-need schools. (In so doing, they ensure that the most disadvantaged students have the least access to effective teachers and optimal conditions for teaching and learning.)

4.      Policymakers who insist on perpetuating either-or debates at the expense of real change. (A juicy sound bite does little to help a struggling student or a first-year teacher. Real change will demand that we transcend either-or politics and look instead at how to structure schools around what works for students.)

The “only fight worth having” is the fight for better schools for all our children. And that fight cannot be an A versus B match. (“In one corner, The Governor! In the other, The Union!”) It must instead be an ongoing campaign challenging stakeholders at all levels to work together to create the schools (and teaching profession) our students deserve.  

Now, there’s a fight worth winning.

 

“In school time, two years is a blip on the screen."

Anna L. Martin’s recent series of short essays on The Answer Sheet do highlight problems with the Teach For America (TFA) model. But Anna’s pieces also offer an astute perspective on how the teaching profession can better fulfill the hopes of the students and families she serves. 

A TFA alum and bright young teacher working with our New Millennium Initiative, Anna is now in her seventh year of teaching at the school where she was initially placed. While her essays touch on the need for better preparation for TFA recruits, Anna focuses instead on a central point: any model that imagines a two-year life cycle for teachers is problematic.

Anna rightfully acknowledges that she might never have entered the classroom without TFA, while offering several observations about the weaknesses of the two-year cycle. What schools really need, Anna argues, are teachers who have truly mastered their craft—and who are deeply embedded in and committed to their school communities.

She points out, “Building relationships and creating a collaborative environment conducive to the kind of educational outcomes achieved by high-performing districts and countries outside the United States takes time… In a weird way, TFA seems almost to be supporting, rather than dismantling, the idea that excellent teachers are widgets — easily replaceable, easily replicable.”

Rich lessons abound in Anna’s firsthand account of what it’s like to work in a school with high turnaround—about 30% of her school’s employee base is dedicated to TFA placement. We learn about the promising young people—like Anna—who are attracted to teaching by TFA’s recruitment strategies. We learn about missed opportunities—for teachers to learn from their more experienced peers, for students and families to be served by teachers who know their communities well, and for bright, hard-working TFA alumni to develop as teacher leaders within their placement schools.

I am proud to have gotten to know Anna thanks to her involvement in our virtual Teacher Leaders Network as well as our New Millennium Initiative — powerful groups of young teachers in sites nationwide who are developing solutions for some of the most vexing problems of the teaching profession.

Here’s what is impressive to me about Anna’s essays. She provides an informed critique that emphasizes the factors that matter for students’ success. She sees that neither TFA or education schools (at least as they are designed today) has adequately addressed the needs of all students. Moving past this false dichotomy (teacher education schools vs. alternative routes) is essential to improving teaching effectiveness.

Anna and other Bay Area New Millennium Initiative team members will soon release a potent policy paper on the future of teaching. Their concrete suggestions (generated after extensive research and debate and grounded in classroom experience) address many of the key issues Anna highlights in her short essays: preparing teachers for long-term success, providing high-quality professional development on the job, and reshaping the career paths available to talented teachers. 

Wise policymakers—those who recognize the importance of developing and keeping extraordinary teachers—should listen carefully to the ideas of teacher leaders like Anna. She is not alone. We are in touch with thousands of teachers across the United States who are deeply committed to their profession but recognize that bold changes will be necessary to meet the needs of 21^st-century learners.

 

Is America finally ready to invest in teaching?

The question looms.

Last month, I sat in on the International Summit on the Teaching Profession in New York. Participants included education ministers and union leaders from high-performing nations as well as American education leaders (Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, NEA president Dennis Van Roekel, and AFT president Randi Weingarten).

Andreas Schliecher, a researcher at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), offered a compelling analysis of countries with high-performing students (and narrowing achievement gaps).  What do these countries have in common? They invest in teaching as a knowledge-based profession. Teacher preparation is serious business: top-notch recruits are paid to prepare for a teaching career. 

American teacher education policy is very different—and yields poorer results for students. Our policies promote short-cut, low-quality preparation for entry into the teaching profession. There is often little connection between pre-service preparation and on-the-job support. New recruits have few incentives to receive serious training before they teach, and they are not rewarded for remaining in the classroom.

TEACHING 2030, which I co-authored with twelve accomplished teachers, presses American policymakers to invest in better teacher education for tomorrow’s students. (The image at left is taken from graphic facilitator Sunni Brown's depiction of a recent 2030 team conversation.) Relying on classroom expertise as well as research on best practices, we developed a vision of a great teacher preparation system: 

1.    Universities, school districts, and non-profits will fuse their resources to prepare future teachers;

2.   Teacher preparation will be built on a sound liberal arts education — then candidates can choose from various tracks of professional preparation, each one focusing on different roles and responsibilities;

3.   Teacher education will be cohort-based, preparing new recruits to teach as teams in high-need schools;

4.   All new teachers will complete a substantial internship in a community-based organization in order to develop deep knowledge of the context of how and where students and their families live;

5.   All new recruits for a teaching career will be expected to serve in an extensive internsh ip in a virtual teacher network, where they also learn specific skills in using multi-user virtual environments to educate students anytime, anywhere, as well as how to spread expertise among teaching colleagues;

6.   Pedagogical preparation will be built on a mixed use of live and digitally recorded “lesson studies” in which teams of candidates learn to critique teaching and assess student learning using emerging technologies;

 7.   Each teacher education candidate will have a program of learning with common tasks to accomplish and performance assessments to measure when (and what) they are ready to teach;

8.   Passing performance assessments, not completing “seat time” in college courses, will determine when teachers are ready to teach independently – and in what schools and under what conditions;

9.   Teaching responsibilities (and differential compensation) will be determined on the basis of what one knows and can do as an independently practicing teacher (identified through performance assessments) and one’s proven knowledge and skills; and

10.   Schools will be red esigned for teacher learning (as in other high-performing nations) so new recruits can develop under the supervision of expert vete rans who have been specially prepared as mentors. 

This is the future of teacher education we envision — one that will ensure equity and excellence for all students. American students and schools will only be able to catch up to (and surpass) other nations’ educational systems through dramatic transformation of its teacher preparation policies. To learn more, order a copy of TEACHING 2030.

Finland Travel Log: Teachers, Poverty, and Policy

Below is the second in a series of posts I'm writing from Finland, as part of a trip with a delegation of U.S. education leaders. For a week, we're immersing ourselves in Finland's top-performing education system. Read Part One here.

As I begin my weeklong dive into the Finnish education system, and the theory of change that guides it, I was struck by two New York Times pieces I read today—one on getting tough on teachers from Frank Bruni, and one from Paul Tough on hard questions about President Obama and his commitment to addressing the “deep poverty” in which one in ten school children live. 

I will learn a great deal over the next five days about Finland and its comprehensive approach to early learning, transitions to public school, and social safety nets (Monday); primary school and the role of afterschool and summer programs (Tuesday); secondary education and preparation for career and college (Wednesday); the teaching profession (Thursday); and building and sustaining public will for investments in children and public education (Friday). 

But what I do know now is that in Finland policymakers do not build false divisions between improving the teaching profession and addressing the human condition.  Granted, there are parts of what Frank Bruni writes in his piece, “Teachers on the Defensive,” that resonate with me — for instance, teachers’ unions being out of step with much-needed reforms (cases in point: seniority and quality-blind hiring and placements). But Mr. Bruni’s call to get tough on unions suggests that by getting better teachers, we don’t have many good ones now. And his analysis, centered on the release of the new film Won’t Back Down, suggests that if only tenure and seniority rules were jettisoned, and policymakers could hire smarter teachers who worked harder, our public schools could overcome the ravages of deep poverty.  

On the other hand, Paul Tough challenges this assertion ever so poignantly in his piece “What Does Obama Really Believe In?”  Mr. Tough’s 6,000-word essay paints a rich portrait of our nation’s failed social and economic policies that have yet to address the deep poverty that affects so many like Jasmine and Damien who live in the South Side of Chicago, where President Obama worked as a community organizer. Tough questions Secretary Duncan’s well-meaning belief that the “only way to end poverty is through education”—a belief that has put educators on the defensive.  

Tough points out that Jasmine and Damien attended Christian Fenger High School—the target of many reforms under both Duncan and his predecessor, but never improved. Tough reminds us how “early stress” in children’s lives—including a “paralyzing mix of unforgiving economic conditions” and “destructive social influences”—make it “almost impossible” for young people like Jasmine and Damien to “escape.” He points to the neuroscience that shows how those early stresses on children “disrupt the healthy growth of the prefrontal cortex” and how the “absence of strong and supportive relationships with stable adults inhibits a child’s development of a crucial set of cognitive skills called executive functions.”

Tough has written extensively on the power and potential of the Harlem’s Children Zone and its comprehensive approach that, in addition to high-quality education, encompasses parenting programs, preschools, a medical clinic, a farmers’ market, and family counseling.  He questions why President Obama promised to invest in a billion dollars in the HCZ model, but has only come up with a mere $40 million over the last three years.

Mr. Tough reminds us that President Obama once said that to overcome poverty, of which failing schools is only a symptom, we must “heal the entire community.” It is time for us to think about teacher quality reforms in light of a teaching- and learning-development system.

As Dan Leeds, president of the National Public Education Support Fund and a very successful international businessman, told us this evening, "I learned a long time ago that you learn more from other companies sometimes than your own."

It's time to learn from Finland.

There’s Room for Teacher Leaders in a Sci-Fi Future

Pete Wailes’ short story on the future of education (“The Life and Times of James Roebuck, Part 1”) raises some provocative issues about the teaching profession. 

It’s a worthwhile read, but make sure you read all 1,286 words. At first blush, it might seem like Wailes is another school reformer who thinks technology will replace 55 million teachers who currently teach in classrooms worldwide. In future-speak, Wailes writes:

Shortly after the invention of the quantum computer chip, and the laying of fibre optic broadband to almost every house in the UK, it had been clear that the days of teaching as a profession were numbered. Teaching had been relegated to a minority profession in a matter of years.

But then it gets a bit more interesting. Just as he was convincing readers that the teaching profession “couldn’t withstand the onslaught of technology”—to the delight of many self-proclaimed school reformers—Wailes pivots.

He raises questions about who would curate resources, moderate virtual learning, and oversee the interaction of children and adolescents. He raises questions about who would make sure that children have safe places to learn, and that all children have access to the knowledge and resources needed to be successful.

Wailes’ essay promises a “Part 2.” I’m hopeful that the sequel will suggest that though technology can democratize knowledge, without teachers—especially expert ones—there will be no opportunity for students to use that knowledge to promote and sustain democracy. 

Renee Moore, NBCT, Milken winner, and erudite teacher-author, pictured with one her students from her years teaching in Shelby, Mississippi. Knowledge of children, culture, and community, along with deep subject matter expertise make for excellent teachers. And Renee is one of the best.

Regardless of what the profession looks like in the future, we will undoubtedly need more teacher leaders—teacher leaders like Renee Moore, a longstanding member of our Teacher Leaders Network and profiled in our forthcoming Jossey-Bass book, Teacherpreneurs. Below, Renee reflects on her teaching practice:

When I sit down next to each of my students or with a small group of them (physically or virtually) to share their most recent work; to reflect on how they have grown as writers since their last piece or since the start of the course; to give sincere, critical feedback on what would help make it better—I am doing what no technology or software program can provide. It is through these very human interactions that I also show them that they have worth far beyond a number on a scale.  This is at the core of teaching.

I’m eager to read more of what Wailes has to say about technology and the teaching profession. Teacher leaders like Renee—and the millions like her around the world—will be the ones leading the technology revolution by implementing the technology and balancing it with real-life, personalized interaction.

Wailes’ story shows us that there’s more to look forward to in the coming years than just robot-powered cars. A future with a true teacher-led education system—now that’s something to get excited about.

What You’re Not Supposed to Know about Teachers’ Unions

By Melissa Rasberry

Barnett Berry will be joining school chiefs, union officials, school board leaders, and teachers from 41 states and more than 100 school districts this week in Cincinnati as the Department of Education and various partner organizations convene the second Labor Management Conference. In this post, CTQ staff member Melissa Rasberry reflects on her experiences with successful district-union relations and their efforts of "Collaborating to Transform the Teaching Profession" (the theme of this year's conference).

“I want you to leave here dissatisfied today.”

Teachers, parents, administrators, and community leaders looked on with anxious faces, uncertain how to respond. This was the first keynote I’d seen that wished for participants’ unhappiness by conference end.

“… I want you to leave here dissatisfied with the status quo,” the speaker continued, “and angry about what we are doing to our children.”

Where might you predict this conversation transpired?

I overheard the dialogue at a National Education Association (NEA) convening for its Priority Schools Campaign. If you listen much to reports in the media, you probably wouldn’t guess that the keynote speaker was NEA President Dennis Van Roekel. In fact, some journalists and policy pundits would have you believe that the NEA is a strident defender of the status quo. They purport that many ills of our educational system can be blamed on teachers’ unions. Stories of late proclaim:

•    American schools have declined, while the “teachers' unions have become more and more powerful.”

•    Unions “prevent teachers from being dismissed for incompetence” and don’t want to be held accountable.

•    Getting rid of the teachers’ unions is the “only fight worth having.”

But yet, here I sat in a room full of educators and community members—convened by the NEA and ready to improve our nation’s most deserving schools. The conference participants did not back down from acknowledging that we have failed some of our children, but they also were not embroiled in the false dichotomies that pit unions against reformers.

Blowing Away the Myth: Success in Action

Most reformers today think that unions, which hold on to seniority hiring rights and quality-blind teacher evaluation systems, prevent schools from improving. Though unions need to change their ways in some respects, so do districts and school boards that diminish teacher leadership and exepertise. Unions can't be the only problem if the same ineffective teacher-hiring and -evaluation practices are found in both unionized and non-unionized districts.

Indeed, we find many examples of teachers’ unions across the country leading reform efforts. I’ve witnessed several of these trailblazing efforts firsthand, as part of my work here at CTQ.

•    The Hillsborough County Teachers Association and Hillsborough County Public Schools gather at the table with one mission in mind: to improve the educational experiences of their students. Through the Empowering Effective Teachers initiative, district and union leaders created a system in which excellent teachers are identified, rewarded, and encouraged to spread their knowledge and skills to their colleagues.
•    The district and union joined forces in Denver, Colorado, to create the first teacher-led school. The Math and Science Leadership Academy operates solely through the leadership of teachers. The district strongly encouraged the union to develop the initial plans for the school, and both organizations continue to support its success.
•    CTQ is partnering to support schools involved with the NEA’s Priority Schools Campaign. CTQ prepared National Board Certified Teachers and other accomplished teachers to serve as virtual coaches for teachers in these high-needs schools. The trained coaches will facilitate virtual learning communities (VLCs), so that educators across the country can share ideas and resources for student success in an online environment.
•    In December 2011, the Commission on Effective Teachers and Teaching released Transformed Teaching: Connecting Professional Responsibility with Student Learning (PDF). This blue-ribbon panel of teachers and other educational leaders (including many from our own Teacher Leaders Network) outlines key imperatives for transforming the teaching profession, characterized by “collective accountability for student learning balanced with collaborative autonomy that allows educators to do what is best for students.”

These initiatives, as well as those highlighted at this week’s 2012 Labor Management Conference sponsored by the Department of Education, present excellent examples of how districts and unions can avoid letting “the perfect be the enemy of the good.” If we want our students to achieve in our highly competitive global economy, labor-management relationships must improve. Unions and districts alike must set aside their bickering and work on finding common ground. As Dennis Van Roekel instructed the crowd at the NEA convening, our students deserve nothing less.

A Good Laugh--A Sigh--And a Revolutionary Suggestion

The Good Laugh

Did you catch Matthew Di Carlo’s perfect April Fools’ Day piece on “Measuring Journalist Quality”? Observing that journalists have been leading the way in “outing” teachers based on unreliable value-added measures (VAMs), Di Carlo flips the picture. What if journalists were measured by similarly unstable “reader-added models” (RAMs)?

The Sigh

Like all fine satire, Di Carlo’s piece carries serious heft.  

Many VAM systems determine teaching quality on the basis of a one-time estimate of a gain score based on students’ performance on a single multiple-choice, standardized test. And researchers have pointed out that even the most sophisticated value-added calculations produce substantial errors: as many as one in four teachers is misidentified as effective or ineffective.

In a recent study of VAM, Heather Hill, Laura Kapitula, and Kristin Umland warned: “Although we do recommend the use of value-added scores in combination with discriminating observation systems, evidence presented here suggests that value-added scores alone are not sufficient to identify teachers for reward, remediation, or removal.”

Sobering—especially when VAM systems are being used to make or break teachers’ reputations.

I’m cheered by the fact that the Measures of Effective Teaching project, sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is assembling an array of measures that reflect the complexity of teaching. And Bill Gates, of late, has written his own eloquent plea for journalists to cease their “shameful” approach of using VAM rankings to identify which teachers are effective or not, irrespective of the rating’s accuracy.

Meanwhile, it’s important to note that teachers aren’t opposed to being held accountable. In fact, many teacher leaders we work with are eager for their profession to be more results-oriented.

Teachers are even open to VAM as an element of a comprehensive teacher development and evaluation system. What disturbs them is the idea of VAM as a predominant, automatic marker of their effectiveness—especially if today’s inadequate assessments are its basis.

The Revolutionary Suggestion

Our nation’s schools could cling to the limitations of VAMs, passing swift judgments based on questionable data. Or—prepare yourself for the revolutionary—we could invest in teacher leadership to develop a comprehensive teacher development and evaluation system. (A recent paper, commissioned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, makes this argument.)

We could draw on the expertise of accomplished teachers to craft better student assessments, additional evaluation measures (like peer observation), and systems that support the professional growth of all teachers (whether in their first year or their twentieth).  

Teachers are well-suited to inform teacher development and evaluation. They understand the nuances of the work they do each day—and can help create equally nuanced systems for gauging and supporting teaching effectiveness. They grasp the complexity of their profession.

Do we get a Day-After-April-Fools’-Day wish? If so, here’s mine: that more journalists grasp the complexity of teaching (and the potential of teacher leadership, too).

International Inspiration for Building Teacher Leadership

By Megan Allen

Megan Allen is a National Board Certified Teacher, 2010 Department of Education/Macy’s Teacher of the Year, and finalist for 2010 National Teacher of the Year. She is a member of the Hillsborough County New Millennium Initiative.

Last week, the best-of-the-best countries from around the world gathered in the Big Apple to discuss education at the Second International Summit on the Teaching Profession. One of the most intriguing topics of discussion there was teacher leadership.

In a thoughtful Education Week essay published in January, Marc Tucker pointed out that top-performing nations do “everything necessary” to recruit, prepare, and develop their teachers, while here in the U.S. we put all our policy emphasis on “accountability systems.” Top-performing nations take teacher leaders seriously—as leaders of assessment reform, partners in research, and teacher education faculty who prepare the next generation of recruits.

I attended the summit virtually, following along with streaming videos and Twitter. One of my favorite tweets came from the USDOE and speaks to the power of teacher leaders:

So let’s dive right in: What are some of those pathways and roles for teacher leadership?

More Than Administrators

Teacher leadership encompasses far more than moving into administration. There is nothing wrong with that, but it’s too narrow a definition. There is an enormous spectrum of teacher leadership, some roles defined, some forming, and some yet unknown. But we must have open minds to these new ideas and be solutions-focused in developing ways to make them happen. We must change the culture and climate of teaching as the definition of what a teacher is evolves.

Many teacher leaders—myself included—want to be involved outside the classroom walls in areas that affect students. But at the same time, we want to keep one foot in the door with the people we love most: students. This calls for out-of-the-box thinking and the development of new hybrid roles. In the book TEACHING 2030, a group of amazing educators dreamed about what these roles could look like. And it’s slowly happening.

Teacher Leaders in Action

I am going to take a moment to brag about some of my favorite teacher leaders who are blazing the path as we speak:

• Sarah B. Wessling is a National Board Certified Teacher (NBCT) who works with the Teaching Channel to record her classroom daily in Iowa, allowing a deep look at highly effective teaching.
• Jessica Keigan spends half her day poring over literature with her high school students in Colorado, and the other half as a CTQ teacherpreneur, advocating for positive change in education policy.
• Two of my colleagues currently sit on school boards: Michael Flynn, an amazing Massachusetts elementary school teacher, sits on his local school board, speaking for children in his district. And Holly Boffy, an NBCT from Louisiana, sits on her state’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. 

International Role Models

We can also look to the lessons learned from other countries. They see teacher leadership roles as ways to effectively recruit candidates and build respect in the profession. In the Netherlands, the prime minister still teachers a half day a week.  Denmark offers a “taster course” for aspiring leaders to see the range of available leadership pathways. Singapore prides itself in never leaving its teaching talent to chance, continually assessing its teachers for leadership potential and providing opportunities for teachers to develop and use it.

So here is my charge: We must reshape the way we think about teacher leadership. Teachers must be at the helm of effective reform if we are to get it right. Teachers are the experts. We must realize that new roles may not fit neatly into the little cubbies that we’ve had for decades, but we must be flexible with finding ways to make them work. And we must recruit and cultivate leadership, finding that hidden talent that may be hiding behind each and every classroom door. It’s time to start knocking...

What American Policymakers Can Learn From Finland

At last year’s International Summit on the Teaching Profession, I watched and listened to a serious dialogue among the ministers of education and union chiefs from many of the world’s top-performing nations. I was enthralled with the nuances of the convening, who sat where, who talked, and who delivered what messages. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was there. So was Henna Virkkunen, his Finnish counterpart.

The differences in how these two nations approach child development and student assessment as well as the teaching profession are legion. Let’s begin with student results. On the 2009 PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), Finland’s students consistently outperformed ours in reading, math, and science. In reading, Finnish students were ranked third; we were fourteenth. In math, they were third; we were thirty-first. And in science, they were first; we were thirty-seventh.

Here are a few more stark clashes in teaching and learning policies, which Pasi Sahlberg has helped bring attention to lately through his book Finnish Lessons:

Policy Clash #1: Finnish Teachers Are Very Well Prepared. The Finns not only recruit top students into teaching, but they also insist that every teacher have a master’s degree in education, fully paid for by the government, before they enter the profession. There is no such thing as Teach for Finland.

Policy Clash #2: Finnish Teachers Teach Less and Learn More from One Another. In 2007, Finland's teachers taught just under 600 hours, while their American counterparts taught more than 1,000 hours. Finnish teachers spend approximately 10 to 20 hours a week on joint professional development focused on understanding why students are learning or not.

Policy Clash #3: Finnish Teachers Are Responsible; They Are Not Held Accountable. Unlike in the United States, where teachers are held accountable to externally developed, high-stakes tests, well-prepared Finnish teachers use their own assessments to gauge their students' progress. The Finnish public trusts its teachers to assemble evidence and report to them on who is learning or not, and why.

Why are these Finnish lessons so difficult for America’s top-level policymakers to learn? I have some ideas, most of which have more to do with politics and less with substance. No surprise. But perhaps our policymakers have not been taught by some of our nation’s best teachers how to apply these powerful lessons in the American context.

This year, the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) has invited CTQ to work with 16 state teachers of the year, who will attend the summit (March 14-15 in NYC) and weigh in later with their own TeacherSolutions. I hope you join me in looking forward to hearing how our teachers learn from the Finnish lessons and their own pedagogical experiences to help us reshape our teaching policies.

Transforming Teaching in California

By Anna Martin & Barnett Berry

Education reform typically follows an unfortunate pattern. Politicians and pundits drive the agendas, while students and teachers live out the consequences.

To better address our schools’ needs, reform efforts must be led by those who work with students every day. At an event in Sacramento last month, teachers like Anna Martin offered practical recommendations for improving teaching quality in California.

Anna entered the profession eight years ago as a Teach For America recruit—and she’s still teaching at the same high-needs school. She’s a member of the  New Millennium Initiative (NMI), a national network of forward-thinking teachers supported by the Center for Teaching Quality.

At the event in Sacramento, Anna and her NMI colleagues shared findings from their new report, “Many Ways Up, No Reason to Move Out.”

What follows is a chat between Anna and Barnett Berry.

Barnett:  Anna, you’ve seen many early-career teachers leave the profession. In high-needs schools, 50 percent depart within three years. Why?

Anna: Our NMI team cares deeply about such statistics—we’ve all seen it happen. Some teachers are overwhelmed: they haven’t been prepared or supported adequately for the challenges they face. Others are frustrated by the one-track nature of the profession.

Barnett: What do you mean by “one-track”? 

Anna: In most cases, the only options are to remain a classroom teacher—or leave the classroom for an administrative role. Many teachers, like myself, want to be challenged, show leadership, and have an impact beyond one classroom. But we are also passionate about teaching. We don’t want to leave the classroom entirely.

Barnett: It sounds like you’d advocate for more teacherpreneurs who split their time between teaching students and leading efforts to improve schools.

Anna: Absolutely. Our NMI team’s new report proposes radical changes in how we prepare, promote, and retain teachers. That includes developing more hybrid positions that make the most of teachers’ expertise. We hope talented teachers will stay in the profession longer and become the leaders of our education system.

Barnett:  You mentioned that some early-career teachers leave because they weren’t adequately prepared. What needs to change?

Anna: We ask too much of our newest teachers and too little of our veterans. Our team proposes a three-year apprenticeship model. Novice teachers would be paired with master mentor teachers. Over time, the novice teachers would take on more responsibility—similar to the medical residency model. 

Such a system would help prevent early career burnout. Novice teachers would gain practical experience and develop critical teaching skills before taking charge of their own classroom. And veteran teachers would have opportunities for leadership and influence. Most important, students would benefit from these changes. 

Barnett: In other top-performing nations, most administrators teach something, sharing leadership. And in Singapore, some accomplished teachers’ salaries are higher than their principals’.   

Anna: Right now in California, teachers earn more primarily by staying on the job longer. We’re proposing a model that ties salary increases to increases in demonstrated skill, responsibilities, and impact. This new career ladder will allow teachers to specialize and follow different leadership, mentoring, and specialization tracks. So they’ll continue to teach—but also can take on different kinds of roles that help schools better serve students. 

Barnett: Blurring the distinction between those who teach in schools and those who lead them!

Anna: Yes. And improving what we can provide to students. Better using our schools’ human capital would help us to attract and retain the talented professionals our students need and deserve.

Barnett: I think Californians are ready for these transformative changes. In a recent statewide poll, most Californians (77 percent) rated teachers favorably. And 64 percent said they were willing to pay more in taxes to increase school funding.

Anna: Yes, Californians realize today’s students will be the workers and leaders of our state tomorrow. They also know that teachers—not politicians, administrators, or reformers—are the people most likely to help their children succeed. They should expect and demand that California attract, prepare, support, and retain talented teachers.

Barnett: So, as a teacher, you’re saying it’s time for big, bold changes?

Anna: Absolutely. We can’t be satisfied with isolated reforms. It’s time to transform California’s schools by transforming the teaching profession.   

Want to Improve Teaching and Learning? Read This Now

If you’re interested in serious school reform, ramped-up student learning, a transformed teaching profession—and if you have time to read only 1,190 words in 2012, go to Education Week and read Art Wise’s incisive commentary, “End the Tyranny of the Self-Contained Classroom.” Art hired me at RAND some 27 years ago and now is CTQ’s board chair. I still learn a great deal from him.

As Art notes in the piece, even the most ambitious, well-designed, and carefully implemented reforms to improve teaching effectiveness will only go so far if policymakers don’t jettison the “one teacher to 25 students” school model. Tougher evaluation systems will never be implemented if few administrators have to assess many teachers. Expanded learning opportunities for students won’t happen if every teacher has to know everything about the Common Core, working in isolation from one another.

Performance pay won’t mean anything for student achievement until teachers have much more time to team-teach and spread their expertise to colleagues. And according to Art, the “tyranny” of the egg-crate classroom undermines teachers’ capacity to draw on one another’s strengths and solve problems collectively. We are well into the second decade of the twenty-first century, and our teaching profession is still organized as if it were the 1920s.

So what to do?

Let’s begin with a new Race to the Top framework that awards states and districts for breaking down classroom walls, places a premium on teacher teams (and assesses them as a collective), and, looking toward the vision of TEACHING 2030, “blurs the line of distinction between those who teach in schools and those who lead them.”

Then let's focus on using a new organizational structure to capitalize on the skills of 100,000 National Board Certified Teachers—teachers whom Art duly notes are “all dressed up with no place to go.” (Keep your eyes peeled for the development of CTQ's small band of innovative NBCTs from several states who have a lot to offer in implementing the Common Core.)

Isn’t it time to read this piece and think differently about serious school reform, ramped-up student learning, and a transformed teaching profession? I say it is. 

Why Improvement Efforts Often Fall Short (Despite Good Intentions)

This post originally appeared on the Silicon Valley Education Foundation's blog, Thoughts on Public Education.

Recently, I visited innovative charter schools in the Bay Area. At one school, physical spaces and teachers’ schedules are designed to encourage collaboration. Another school involves community organizations and parents in student learning during and after the school day. One is well stocked with technology. At another, teachers take on leadership roles.

And yet, everywhere I looked I noticed elements that didn’t quite connect. I saw missed opportunities to boost student learning. One of the schools gestured toward important ideas, but because of the lack of experienced teacher leaders, missed the mark when it came to implementing them. The other one greatly valued teacher leaders, but still had a long way to go in spreading teaching expertise from one classroom to another.

This points to a truth that is tough for reformers to swallow: America’s schools will be transformed only when we tackle the complexities of teaching and learning. We can’t rely on isolated policies or initiatives to sustain a highly functioning school. Few, if any, innovations can be implemented successfully over time unless other interlocking set of elements are in place—connected by  collaboration (not competition) among universities, school districts, charter networks, and nonprofits.

What I saw

So where do we start? Here are two situations I observed during my investigation:

• School A is known for “blended learning.” Yet there was little pedagogical coherence between how teachers taught in a regular classroom and how students were expected to learn in a high-tech lab staffed by low-cost tutors. School A teachers, who tended to have only a few years of experience and little clinical preparation, had limited interaction with the lab tutors. It was unclear whether many teachers were familiar with the technological tools so central to their school’s identity.

• School B is known for hiring new recruits who have extensive clinical preparation. Teachers know how to differentiate instruction and work with second language learners. But School B’s teachers did not always know how to effectively analyze student learning data and needed more training in how to use the collaborative planning time wisely provided to them (approximately two hours a day).

What would help connect the dots in these schools – and all schools? Teacher preparation programs could lead the way by readying pre-service teachers for a transformed public school system.

Accountability for teacher preparation programs

Recently, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan noted that too many education schools are “not up to the job.” He highlighted recruitment and accountability as key areas for improvement, and noted that few of today’s programs offer “rigorous, clinical experience that prepares future teachers for the realities of today’s diverse classrooms.”

And then there are the emergent realities of tomorrow’s classrooms—which few teacher preparation programs are adequately addressing. For example, tomorrow’s teachers will likely need to teach students who are “digital natives,” spread their expertise to colleagues through collaboration and leadership, connect families with community resources, and develop and use sophisticated assessments to measure student progress.

The federal government should hold teacher preparation programs accountable – but should look at more than the twentieth-century standardized tests currently in place. For example, what if teacher preparation programs (whether university-based or “alternative”) were judged on how long their graduates remained in the classroom, working effectively as leaders in schools and communities? What if programs were assessed on how well their graduates used student data to improve instruction? What if the accountability system considered graduates’ abilities to provide effective blended learning opportunities?

My organization, the Center for Teaching Quality, works with thousands of teachers nationwide to improve the teaching profession and our nation’s schools. Later this month, talented teachers who are part of our Bay Area New Millennium Initiative team will release a report with specific recommendations about how to ensure new teachers are ready for their roles. Watch for it!

How Teachers Will Rock the News in 2012

I may not always agree with Rick Hess—but there’s no doubt that his blog posts are worthy of attention. In “Ten Edu-Stories We’ll Be Reading in 2012,” Rick predicts headlines for the coming year. He foresees increased skepticism of Race To The Top reforms and Khan Academy’s video-based model of education. He anticipates GOP presidential nominees abandoning attacks on public education in a “push for moderates.”

While Rick claims to be a lousy prognosticator, his list is intriguing.

But what’s absent in his list is any mention of teachers. None. Zero. Nada.

This is surprising because teachers have been the coin of the education policy realm for fifteen years or so. Few researchers (or reformers, for that matter) dispute the impact that improved teaching can have on student outcomes. Home and family factors are powerful influences on student achievement, but teachers matter.

So I’m offering my own version of Rick’s list. Sure, it may be optimistic—but we can hope, right?

5] Presidential Candidates Talk Up Teachers. President Obama and GOP presidential hopefuls realize that one in 100 Americans are teachers. Candidates focus less on “getting rid of bad teachers” and more on the positive: preparing and supporting teachers to do their best work.

4] USDOE Spreads Teaching Expertise. Acknowledging the uneven implementation of Race To The Top efforts, the USDOE adjusts its strategies. Rather than merely identifying effective teachers, officials promote strategies to elevate those teachers as leaders and spread their expertise to peers.

3] Policymakers Ask Accomplished Teachers for ESEA Help. Policymakers realize ESEA reauthorization is not in the cards for 2012. They turn to accomplished teachers, including former state and national teachers of the year, to help build public demand for improving the law. The teachers emphasize that the law must build capacity in high-need schools and districts—not just punish them.

2] Reformers Improve Bricks-and-Clicks Model. The Khan Academy’s “flipped” classroom model fails to yield the results reformers have been expecting—especially for at-risk students. In response, reformers invest more in innovative roles for teachers as community organizers, virtual mentors, and connectors to social services.

1] Obama Elevates National Board Certified Teachers. While GOP nominee Mitt Romney highlights TFA recruits who teach for two-year stints, President Obama points to National Board Certified Teachers as committed, accomplished standard bearers for school reform.

Now, I'd rather bet on my favorite college football team (Go Gamecocks!) than wager for the accuracy of this list.

But if we want to get serious about college and career readiness for all kids, the education conversation must shift. We must talk about what it takes to recruit, prepare, and support effective teachers. And I fervently hope that the “we” who are talking are not just the same old chatterers: policymakers, reformers, pundits. I hope that “we” also includes our nation’s most accomplished teachers—whose untapped expertise could transform our public schools.  

Teacher Whisperers Wanted

By Alaina Adams

Alaina Adams is a National Board Certified teacher in Phoenix, Arizona. In addition to teaching high school English, she serves as a cognitive coach and professional development coordinator at the Phoenix Union High School District and the Arizona K12 Center. You can read her blog at Stories from School AZ.

In my endeavors to elevate the teaching profession, I am fortunate enough to be part of the work that the Arizona K12 Center crafts around vision, leadership, learning, and technology in education. Recently, I was chosen as one of 20 teachers across the state to work as part of a TeacherSolutions team designed to improve teaching and learning in Arizona. This work will be based on the framework outlined in TEACHING 2030. On November 16th and 17th, I spent some time with Barnett Berry and CTQ staff to dream, play, and plan.

As my group explored teacherpreneurism and a future of innovation, phrases like "a league of extraordinary educators" and "teacher whisperers" playfully came up in conversations. At the end of my last day with the team, I found myself returning to an Outlook mailbox full of the current realities of teaching that I "have to" deal with. I'm frustrated that I don't have more cognitive coaches available to help advance my practice. I'm also frustrated that TV shows and movies (like Jersey Shore and The Horse Whisperer) will earn more money in one shot than I'll ever make in my entire career as an educator. To clarify my thoughts, I ended my day by posting this comparison between "horse whisperers" and "teacher whisperers."

***

Horse Whisperer: Horses that have suffered abuse from people or been traumatized through an accident may develop changed behavior that their owners find difficult to deal with, or may even result in the horse being labeled dangerous.

Teacher Whisperer: Teachers that have been traumatized by things like excessive testing, narrow teacher evaluation, misuse of national curriculum, data-driven instruction, stifling teacher accountability, elimination of tenure, competition for funding, punitive school labels, "education reform," and misguided philanthropists may develop changed behavior that some may find difficult to deal with, or may even result in the teacher being labeled dangerous.

***

Horse Whisperers spend years studying the horse and its behavior in natural surroundings. They learn to read the silent but incredibly powerful communication we call body language.

Teacher whisperers, given appropriate release time, can study the behavior of teachers in their classrooms. There, they can study body language like the elevation of voice, eye-rolling, head flopping on the desk, and sporadic tears to understand a teacher’s entire language of communication to best gauge their needs.

***

Horse Whisperer: Young horses that had received little handling but were destined to be riding horses, for example, were once trained to work using quiet, brutal methods of coercion. This system was called ‘breaking.’ ‘Making’ a horse is preferable to breaking one.

Teacher Whisperer: Probationary teachers that received little mentoring but were destined to be classroom teachers, for example, might have been ones hustled through subpar certification programs. This system is called ‘fast tracking.’ ‘Making’ a quality teacher is preferable to rushing one.

***

In some public demonstrations, a horse whisperer will stand in an enclosure, which a young untrained horse is released into. The horse’s natural instinct is to fight or flight. The whisperer becomes the herd, the safe place to be, by his use of body language. First, he sends the horse away; he has not yet invited it to join his herd! He drives the horse forward and keeps him away.

In some school districts, only one teacher whisperer stands per campus, of unreasonable sizes, in which un-mentored teachers are released into. The teacher’s natural instinct is to sink or swim. Though the teacher whisperer becomes the safe place to be, he or she is often busy corralling other un-mentored teachers, and the un-mentored teacher-in-immediate-need is often driven away.

***

Horse Whisperer: During this training period, the horse's body language is clearly visible to people watching. The horse whisperer approaches as if he or she has all day to stand there. The result is a clear understanding that can be successfully built on. No shouting, no fear, no pain. A calm and positive mutual understanding provides a sound basis for true partnership between man and horse.

Teacher Whisperer: Given ample exposure to teacher whispering methods, teachers can change their body language and perform better on evaluations. This process can take several weeks or years. It is always approached as if the teacher whisperer has all the time in the world to stand there. No shouting, no fear, no pain. A calm and positive mutual understanding provides a sound basis for true partnership between teacher and whisperer.

Summary:

The horse whisperer does not perform tricks. He, or she, uses the oldest language in the world in order to read the horse and communicate with the horse, combined with equine psychology, to achieve partnership.

The teacher whisperer does not perform tricks. He, or she, uses the oldest language in the world in order to read the teacher and communicate with the teacher, combined with human psychology and compassion, to achieve partnership.

Ron Thorpe and the Future of NBPTS

Last week, CTQ blogger and teacher John Holland wrote an open letter to Ron Thorpe, who was recently named president and CEO of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS). In his letter, John expressed his hope for what the NBPTS could accomplish under its new leadership. “I hope you are a special kind of leader,” John writes, “a ‘boundary spanner’ who is future-oriented and ready to collaborate with a wide range of stakeholders, including NBCTs [National Board Certified Teachers].” In a comment on John’s blog post, Ron Thorpe responded with a letter of his own. Below is the full text of his response.

John,

Since you have sent your thoughts in an open letter to me, I hope you don’t mind if I respond similarly. First of all, THANK YOU for writing what you did. The mere fact that you value such communication and took the time to fashion such a thoughtful set of observations is exactly what I’m hoping to find many times over—maybe 91,000 times over!—among National Board Certified Teachers.

Let me start by addressing the word “vision,” which gives me more than a little pause. I realize that successful leaders do possess vision and, just as importantly, the ability to get others to embrace that vision. From that perspective, I’m in no position right now to speculate whether I have those qualities, at least not within the context of the National Board. Decisions about that will emerge over time.

I can reflect, however, on my last 8+ years leading the education department at the public television station, WNET. I arrived at that job on July 14, 2003—Bastille Day!—after 16 years as a teacher and dean of faculty and another dozen working in foundations, almost always around grantmaking for teachers and education writ large. I brought lots of experiences to the job shaped by some wonderful former bosses and mentors like Ted Sizer, but the truth was I had no vision for what I’d do in public television because I didn’t yet know enough about public television. With the help of a really strong staff and some wonderful external partners, things have come together, and today I’d put WNET’s education department up against any in public television. Not only that, but WNET is very much at the education table locally in New York City and our area, in New York State, at the national level, and even internationally because of our work last March with Secretary Duncan, OECD, and Education International around the historic International Summit on the Teaching Profession, which was the pre-meeting to WNET’s Celebration of Teaching & Learning. I can only hope that I’ll be as fortunate with coalitions of partners as I move to the National Board.

I completely agree with your other points especially around partnerships. In fact, you’ll be especially pleased to know that I’m meeting with Barnett Berry and his colleague Ann Byrd on November 21st in Raleigh, two weeks before I even start my new job.

Let me end with what I think is your most compelling observation: the need for the National Board to fully exercise its commitment to that third goal of advancing “other education reforms for the purpose of improving student learning in American schools.” That is the area that most interests me at the National Board. I am not an “assessment” guy, nor am I very well versed in the technical side of what it requires to establish strong and meaningful standards. What I care about most is using that foundation—which is so well established by the NBPTS over the last 25 years—to forge the profession teaching truly deserves to be. Much of that knowledge—and almost all of the muscle—will come from those teachers who have pursued Board Certification and who continue to set the bar not only around what teachers should know and be able to do, but around how teachers behave as professionals.

The culture of K-12 education is inextricably linked to the culture of the individuals who lead classrooms and who create the environment in which learning takes place. Among U.S. teachers today, fewer than 3% are National Board Certified. They have a powerful voice that needs to be heard, and they are making a profound difference in the profession, but their numbers are still too small. 3 to 100 are pretty long odds, even when the 3 are the best of the best. We need to change that balance, and we need to find ways to support teachers who want to take up the challenge.

I realize that National Board Certified Teachers are not the only great teachers in the country. Board Certification is evidence—well tested over time and trial—that those who attain it are true professionals who make a difference in the lives of young people. In a world that can be fairly subjective and vertiginously arbitrary—where everyone has an opinion—that objectivity means something.

I thank you, John, for your open letter and your dedication to teaching and learning. I also thank you for your disenchantment. As I lead the National Board into its second quarter-century, I need to know what we must do better, where the new opportunities are, and who the people are who care enough to expect NBPTS to stand for more than a credential. In that regard, I realize that I have much in common with the teachers the National Board was created to serve. And I am honored to be share in the work.

Ron Thorpe
Not yet, but soon to be the new President and CEO of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards

Modeling Teacher Leadership

By Ali Kliegman

Ali Kliegman, a policy associate at CTQ, has been working with teacher leaders on a new website called Teacher Leader Model Standards. The site, which launched last week, is a collaborative resource for teacher leaders to share and learn about teacher leadership in the 21st century.

Infographic designed by sunnibrown.com for the Teacher Leader Model Standards site.

“Within every school there is a sleeping giant of teacher leadership, which can be a strong catalyst for making change.” (Katzenmeyer and Moller, 2001)

Teacher leadership is not a new concept. Yet until we begin to cultivate, support, and spread the knowledge and expertise of those who have mastered this craft, we will continue to miss the mark on achieving great gains with students.

So while the newly released Teacher Leader Model Standards may surprise some as an innovative tool for improving the profession, teacher leaders themselves have been living them for years. These standards describe the skills, knowledge, and competencies that teachers need to perform well in leadership roles, including:

Domain I: Fostering a Collaborative Culture to Support Educator Development and Student Learning

Domain II: Accessing and Using Research to Improve Practice and Student Learning

Domain III: Promoting Professional Learning for Continuous Improvement

Domain IV: Facilitating Improvements in Instruction and Student Learning

Domain V: Promoting the Use of Assessments and Data for School and District Improvement

Domain VI: Improving Outreach and Collaboration with Families and Community

Domain VII: Advocating for Student Learning and the Profession

What might be the most useful aspect of these standards are actual exemplars of what teacher leaders have been doing for decades. These exemplars, along with additional information about the development and research behind the standards themselves, will all be made available via their new virtual home: www.teacherleaderstandards.org. The first featured exemplar is the Math and Science Leadership Academy, a teacher-led school in Denver, Colorado, that embodies all seven of these domains.

Thanks to generous funding from the University of Phoenix, ETS, NEA, and ECS, CTQ has been working closely with an outstanding group of five teacher leaders who are researching and posting best practices for each of the seven domains of teacher leadership.

Suggestions for more? Send them our way. In fact, we’ll be convening a virtual community of teacher leaders for this very purpose, and we hope you’ll join the conversation!

Support, Mastery, Leadership

By Meredith Kohl

In this guest post, Meredith Kohl, a former teacher and current CTQ policy assistant, reflects on the new education documentary Mitchell 20, as well as her own teaching experience.

Capturing a profession in transition and highlighting the untapped collective power of teachers committed to their craft, the powerful Mitchell 20 documentary, and the leadership of Daniela Robles, reveals that teachers are a primary solution to the complex challenges that our schools and students face.

In the film, National Board Certified Teacher Daniela Robles encourages 20 of her colleagues to undergo the National Board certification process together, sparking a spirit of collaboration and improvement. Mitchell 20 resonated deeply with me because in five years of teaching, I never felt like I was part of the solution. I was a Teach For America recruit, and I had high aspirations for teaching as a career once I entered the classroom and saw the possibilities. But in my short tenure in an urban district, I felt isolated, unsupported, and confined to the bottom of a bureaucratic power pyramid.  

The top-down education system had something to do with it, sure. And a school climate characterized by frequent (but irrelevant and inadequate) professional development and the careless manipulation of teacher expertise definitely contributed to my feelings of helplessness. 

But it was more than these factors. As a teacher new to the profession, I did not see myself as part of the solution because my attempt to master my craft went largely unsupported. Once I was deemed “effective” by my administration, the resources and individualized support needed to further improve my practice were simply not there.

Over time, experience made many aspects of teaching easier, but I came to realize that weaknesses in my practice—for example, working with second-language learners and using effective techniques for teaching reading—were going unchecked and unaddressed by my school leadership. My concerns as a classroom instructor were unresolved, and time for meaningful inquiry and collaboration with my colleagues was not provided.

Without mastery, how could I articulate the learning occurring in my classroom or the complexities of my craft? How could I leverage expertise I did not possess to transform my school? How could I change the conversation? How could I change my teaching, and the teaching of my counterparts? How could I change outcomes for my students?

As TEACHING 2030 co-author Shannon C’de Baca recently pointed out, “Teacher voice should be secondary to craft. First, teachers must master their craft, then we need them to reform policy.”

The best teachers are continually improving, but what happens when they want to but can’t find meaningful and long-term avenues to do so? I regret that in my high-need school I never heard about the National Board process, that I was unaware of communities like the Teacher Leaders Network, that a colleague like Daniela never came and knocked on my classroom door to present a collaborative challenge for improvement. 

There are thousands of unsupported, early-career teachers in our highest-need schools unsure of where to turn in order to take their practice to the next level. Until they are able to do so, their voices will not be heard.

So how do we reach them?

We must spread stories like Mitchell. Not only to change the conversation, but also to change the behavior of thousands of dormant teachers who have yet to realize their leadership potential. Collectively, teachers must understand how they can take control of their practice when support is not available at their school. They must create cohorts like the Mitchell 20, dedicated to professional growth and learning. Teachers, especially newer ones, must have time and support for self-examination, reflection, and collaboration so that they can improve their practice. All of this is necessary for teachers to lead the transformation of learning communities across the country.

So license a screening, share the trailer, tell early-career teachers about the National Board process, and challenge them to be part of the solution by mastering their craft, finding their voice, spreading their expertise, and stepping forward to lead.

New York Times Schools for Tomorrow Conference: A Teacher's Take

By John Holland

John Holland, a preschool teacher and co-author of TEACHING 2030, represented CTQ at the New York Times Schools for Tomorrow Conference last month. Below is his take on the experience.

I walked into the New York Times Schools for Tomorrow conference with some trepidation. The conference had been organized to energize stakeholders about integrating technology in our schools. I knew that many of the attendees would be from the private sector, including entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and online learning providers. I was surprised to find approximately 75 educators in the crowd of more than 300. Some, like Brian Crosby, were educational technology specialists. Brian is an elementary teacher in Reno who stepped onto the larger educational stage after Skype learned he’d used their services to teach a homebound student with leukemia. 

Brian secured his invite to the conference by emailing the New York Times to explain how wack it was the panels included no teachers. I got my invite easily enough, by filling out an online form.

But I was skeptical. I attended the conference so I could live by the advice I give my daughter about soccer. She often plays defense and has gotten quite good at the skill I call “being there.” To “be there” is to see the total field, the offensive positions, and your place in anticipating an attack. You can then get to where you need to be to stop the ball and turn the tide of the drive on the goal.

I went to the Schools for Tomorrow conference to “be there” as a teacher leader and passionate advocate for a hopeful vision for education. I wanted to meet the players, especially those who might consider technology a replacement for teachers.

The Spark

David Brooks, one of the most popular opinion columnists in America, opened with a surprising remark: “I want to start by expressing a note of skepticism about technology in education.” He continued:

My skepticism about the role of technology in the classroom is based on three arguments. The first is that people learn from people they love, they don’t learn from computers they love, and anything that gets in the way between the relationship between the teacher and the student is something I’m likely to be skeptical of. The second thing is that electronic communication is far inferior to personal communication…. And finally information processing. The tendency of technology is to make information processing easy. But the way you learn and remember is through processing information that is hard and challenging. You want to introduce trouble, not introduce ease.

Wow, I thought, David Brooks sounds like a teacher. Even though I consider myself a passionate advocate for the use of technology in schools, I still struggle with those same points. But if we can balance our enthusiasm about technology with our recognition of Brooks’s points, we can be the adaptive professionals that students deserve. 

From Defense to Offense

The first panel included a group of international experts on technology in schools. None of them were teachers. I decided to move from defense to offense—by asking a question: “What concrete action steps, from your various perspectives, can be taken to help teachers use technology to teach?” 

Here’s how Harri Skog, the permanent secretary of Finland's Ministry of Education, responded:

I think it helps a lot if a teacher has an autonomous way of having his own discretion at the level of the classroom....I think it is very important for teachers to be able to plan how they want to teach, but that needs to have this kind of trust situation. If I would be asked one thing to have, it would be more autonomy in schools.

I was sitting next to Diana Laufenberg, a powerful and visionary teacher from the Philadelphia Science Leadership Academy—we both started clapping.

Meeting the Players

Between attending panels and informally networking, I met many passionate advocates for 21st-century learning.

• Larry Berger, founder and president of Wireless Generation, spoke on a panel about technical tools for the classroom. He highlighted how technology could strengthen teachers’ formative assessment efforts.
• Jacqueline Botterill, director of social public good for Skype, shared news of Skype in the classroom, connecting teachers and learners across the globe.
• Scott Kinney, senior vice president at Discovery Education, described how the Discovery Educator Network enables public school teachers to leverage streaming media for student learning and professional development.
• Joel Arquillos is executive director of 826LA, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center that provides free writing programs for Los Angeles students, including after-school and in-school tutoring, field trips, workshops, and publishing resources.
• Erik Michielsen founded Capture Your Flag, a project that is conducting qualitative interviews with aspirational leaders, tracking them over time. Erik will apply tagging and coding techniques to these annual interviews, identifying themes that can drive an innovative approach to curriculum development for college and career readiness. 

What “Being There” Meant to Me

This conference confirmed one of my deepest held beliefs about teaching: there is a spark between human beings that is essential to the learning process. This fundamental spark in the engine of learning can never be replaced by technology. In fact, the best uses of technology in education will continue to involve person-to-person communication.

The human spark is also what will make a difference in important decisions about educational policy and practice. When teachers can “be there,” they can provide a much-needed window into how policies affect the learning of individual students. When teachers can “be there,” they can ask the questions that need to be answered. We will truly know this spark is alive when teachers (along with students and parents) are not just relegated to “being there,” but are sought-after panelists in important discussions about teaching and learning.

Thank you, David Brooks, for calling on my raised hand. Let's hope that next time, my colleagues and I will be answering questions, not just asking them.

USDOE Sends Mixed Messages on Teacher Education

Just recently, the U.S. Department of Education released its plan for teacher-education reform, pointing out that too many university-based programs “do not provide teachers with a rigorous, clinical experience that prepares them for the schools in which they will work.”

In an ironic twist, however, the Department’s Race to the Top guidelines have promoted the proliferation of alternative certification programs that shortcut pre-service training for new recruits. These programs give recruits limited or non-existent opportunities for “rigorous, clinical” preparation prior to teaching independently. Not only must university-based teacher education be improved, but we also need to think about what supports teachers are given while they're teaching. There is no reason to believe that school districts are sufficiently suited to prepare teachers for the schools of today — or tomorrow, for that matter.

A recent study has shown that few teachers receive the “intensive, sustained, and content-focused professional development” that matters for student achievement. For example, as reported in the same study, over the course of a year only 9 percent of elementary math teachers had more than 24 hours of content-specific professional development in math. Many school-district officials just don’t value the kind of high-quality professional development that teachers (and their students) deserve. Instead, as seen in this stark display below (from a local news report on how school districts view teacher learning), archaic district-driven professional development prevails.

From the Jackson (MS) Clarion-Ledger, Oct. 17, 2011

I wonder why USDOE officials, in pushing for much-needed changes in teacher education, don’t push school districts to transform their systems of professional development. The plan does indeed call for all teachers — including veteran teachers and recent graduates of preparation programs — to “receive professional development and career advancement opportunities that are aligned with their identified strengths and needs.”

However, USDOE does not call for scrutiny of school districts’ professional development programs. Maybe districts should be held accountable for the quality of support they provide to recently minted teacher-education graduates. Maybe if the USDOE called for such scrutiny, our nation would get a bit closer to creating the kind of comprehensive teacher-development system needed for the schools of today and tomorrow. 

Building a Wall of Teacher Voices

By Mermuda Wilson

Mermuda Wilson, a policy assistant at CTQ, has been using her video-editing expertise to share teacher voices in an online video series. In this guest post, she describes her experience working with these teacher-submitted videos.

Relationships. AP scores. Graduation stoles. “Fast food” learners. Empowerment. Community partnerships. 

These are a few of the topics broached by teacher leaders highlighted in our CTQTube series. The series, which runs until mid-November, features Teacher Wall submissions from teachers in CTQ's Teacher Leaders Network (TLN).

The Teacher Wall Project is a virtual teacher town square where educators can share video clips and comments. It was built by Scholastic, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and DonorsChoose.org as a way to elevate teacher leaders' perspectives on their profession. The CTQTube series is a microcosm of the Teacher Wall, which has received hundreds of video responses.

The breadth of responses has been amazing. One aspect of the CTQTube submissions that has really stood out to me is that not a single teacher has listed a formal award as their “greatest succcess as a teacher” (a question the teachers were asked to respond to in their videos). These are Teachers of the Year, National Board Certified Teachers, Presidential Award recipients, and National Education Association Teachers of Excellence finalists.

Shannon C'de Baca talks about the value of student-teacher relationships.

Instead, they all chose student-centered measures as their shining moments. This reinforces what teacher Shannon C’de Baca says in her video: the relationships teachers have with students are more important than any specific program.

Building relationships is a common theme that arises in some form or another for all the teachers featured in our CTQTube series. A very clear example is Karen Van Duyn’s submission. In a creative twist on the assignment, Karen’s students put together their perspectives on why she teaches. It’s a fun video that sheds some light on her philosophy of student empowerment. The students seem to have really enjoyed the production process and looked critically at how their perspectives on their teachers shape how they learn. 

Putting this series together has reminded me that while every classroom and every educator is different, the top educators do share one commonality: the genuine desire to foster relationships that allow students to tap into their unknown potential.

Karen Van Duyn and her students share reasons why she teaches.

Our nation has so many of these accomplished classroom practitioners who have so much untapped potential to lead school improvement efforts. Now is the time to make these expert teachers more visible to policymakers and the public. They can and must lead the way. There are only 18 years, 2 months, and 12 days until 2030. We have a lot more work to do to "blur the lines of distinction between those who teach in schools and those who lead them." 

The Difference Between a Teacherpreneur and an Education Entrepreneur

By Kristoffer Kohl 

Kristoffer Kohl is a former classroom teacher working currently as a policy associate at CTQ to further the vision of TEACHING 2030. He previously collaborated with a team of accomplished teachers to produce the report “Transforming School Conditions: Building Bridges to the Education System that Students and Teachers Deserve.” 

How do you create space for innovation when a system is already in motion? In education especially, it often feels like we're trying to build the plane as we’re flying.

What would our schools look like if we solicited the expertise of teachers and recognized classroom problems as opportunities for innovation? How might learning outcomes be transformed if teachers were equipped to investigate and design solutions?

Given that most teachers aren’t afforded such opportunities, the education-reform world has been captivated in recent years by other another model of innovation: the incredible efforts of education entrepreneurs. Their accomplishments engage and inspire the public with seemingly endless possibilities for our schools. New Tech Network, Harlem Children's Zone, School of One, and Khan Academy have rocked the foundations of the education establishment by transforming the identities of school and classroom.

Though these schools have been successful, their ideas have proven difficult to scale and sustain in a way that benefits all communities. Fortunately, there is an untapped reservoir of expertise that can generate even more profound change in our nation's schools. 

Enter the teacherpreneur.

As defined by the authors of TEACHING 2030, a teacherpreneur is a teacher leader of proven accomplishment possessing a deep knowledge of how to teach, a clear understanding of what strategies must be in play to keep schools highly successful, and the skills and commitment necessary to spread their expertise to others — all while keeping at least one foot firmly in the classroom. 

Entrepreneurs may have brilliant ideas that often require venture capital and years of planning, but teacherpreneurs’ innovation is grounded in their daily experience in schools and classrooms. While education entrepreneurs experiment with novel theories for student learning, teacherpreneurs serve as action researchers by hypothesizing, implementing, troubleshooting, and learning from their daily interactions in the classroom. 

Prioritizing their responsibilities to students, teacherpreneurs are making a name for themselves by creatively packaging and delivering instruction. Some are 'flipping' their classrooms by allowing students to watch lessons online and using class time to complete work traditionally reserved for home. Others are using social media tools to develop a more modern take on classroom discussion, effective writing, and community action. 

The prevailing form of teacherpreneurship occurring regularly in schools across the nation is teacher leadership. Running everything from their departments and grade levels to professional learning communities, teachers are cropping up as managers, directors, mentors, and guides. Outside their buildings, teacher leaders are transforming unions, community organizations, after-school programs, and online professional-development communities.

CTQ works directly with three teacherpreneurs: Jessica Keigan and Dana Nardello in Denver, and Noah Zeichner in Seattle. In addition to their primary roles as teachers, all three are involved with education policy work for the New Millennium Initiative. Jessica and Dana also work alongside the Colorado Legacy Foundation, and Noah collaborates with Seattle Public Schools and the Seattle Education Association to increase teacher leadership opportunities. These teacherpreneurs will ideally serve as models for other organizations and districts that want to support similar hybrid positions.

Both teacherpreneurs and entrepreneurs play valuable roles in advancing the development of a 21^st-century school system. While entrepreneurs inspire a vision of what schools can become, teacherpreneurs demonstrate the caliber of individuals we need in schools to realize that vision. Teacherpreneurs elevate the entire profession by ensuring that colleagues, policymakers, and the public know what works best for students.  

To participate in a discussion about teacher career paths and hybrid teaching positions, join our Twitter chat on Thursday, October 20, from 8:30-9:30 p.m. ET, hashtag #teaching2030.

Six Ways to Improve Teacher Prep Programs

Below is a blog post I wrote as part of an online discussion for Learning Matters, a nonprofit media production company that has produced many education-focused reports and documentaries for PBS. Along with several experts in the education field, I was asked to write about teacher quality and teacher training. I encourage you to read the other participants' responses and leave comments on the full Learning Matters discussion — it's absolutely worth the read.

 

Recently, I collaborated with twelve expert teachers to write TEACHING 2030: What We Must Do For Our Students and Our Public Schools … Now and in the Future. We argue that universities’ teacher education programs — and highly-touted alternative certification programs like Teach for America — perpetuate out-of-date models of teaching and learning.

Teacher recruits need a very different kind of preparation to teach the diverse, tech-savvy learners of today and to ready those learners for the 21st-century global marketplace. To make this happen, we must move far beyond reform rhetoric — and we must do so quickly. Here are six big strategies that can help teacher preparation programs break the mold:

1. Ensure that recruits are being prepared for the roles that are most needed in area schools: School districts should develop “labor market” reports, allowing universities to carefully consider how many recruits should be prepared and for what.

2. Jettison traditional three-hour course credits in favor of performance-based pedagogical modules and assessments: This nimble, practical approach will help recruits to develop specific teaching skills and will better identify who is ready to teach, when, and under what conditions.

3. Split the time: Work with school districts to create hybrid roles for the most effective teachers to spend half their time teaching and half their time as lead teacher educators.

4. Understand the community: Require recruits to complete a substantial internship in a community-based organization, developing deep knowledge of how and where students and their families live.

5. Embrace online: Engage recruits in a virtual network of teachers, preparing them to teach effectively online and to collaborate virtually with teaching colleagues.

6. Emergent Tech: Work with school districts to expose recruits to live and digitally recorded “lesson studies,” in which teams of candidates learn to critique teaching and assess student learning using emerging technologies.

Reimagining School As We Know It

Over the past several years, we at CTQ have been documenting how school conditions and designs affect the way teachers teach and students learn. Research has demonstrated that curriculum, instructional resources, preparedness and stability of faculty, and connections to after-school and summer-school programs have strong impacts on student achievement. Teachers say the same.

Furman Brown’s Generation Schools are promising models of re-envisioned school conditions. Nearly 90% of the full-time professional staff teach classes. Students get more instructional time (up to 200 days), and class sizes can be as low as 16. Teachers have many opportunities to plan together and learn from one another. Currently, several districts in Colorado are piloting the Generation Schools model, which has found a “better way to organize and distribute work” for both students and teachers. (See this terrific report from Ed Sector on improving teacher quality through school design.)

Another innovative approach is also taking root in Colorado: the teacher-led school without a principal. With support from the Ford Foundation (which has made significant investments in extended learning opportunities for students and their teachers), we have been able to document the emergence of the Math and Science Leadership Academy (MSLA). There, strong teacher leaders, most National Board Certified, have forged deep connections to the communities they serve and are backed by a reform-minded union.

Watch the video to learn more about MSLA, and take a look at our case study about the school’s creation. MSLA is doing great things, and we need to make sure that the school, its teachers, and its stories become better known to policymakers, practitioners, and the public. We need find ways to take these good ideas to scale. 

 

  

 

Confronting the 15,000-Hour Problem

This commentary by Barnett Berry originally appeared as a guest post on Getting Smart's blog on September 1, 2011.

Imagine a new teaching profession — the one that students of today and tomorrow deserve. Here’s how “schools” and “teaching” could look:

• In transformed learning environments, digital tools enable students to learn 24/7 and use skills demanded by local and global economies. Meanwhile, similar technologies allow teachers to learn from each other anywhere, at any time.

• Expert teachers create seamless connections in and out of cyberspace. They bridge students’ virtual learning with what goes on in brick-and-mortar schools (including afterschool programs to deepen and extend learning for our most vulnerable students).

• Students learn from collaborative teams of teachers with varied strengths and roles.This is made possible by a career matrix (as opposed to the traditional career ladder) that includes differentiated pathways. The system places a premium on the spreading of teacher expertise—and is structured to encourage our best teachers to remain in the profession.

More than 600,000 “teacherpreneurs” are making a difference in our schools. These are effective teachers who continue to teach students regularly, but also work part-time on results-oriented efforts to improve student learning. They might design new instructional programs, orchestrate community partnerships, develop digital learning tools, and advance new policies and practices. Teacherpreneurs will be the “highest-paid anybodies” in a school district—and their roles will finally blur the lines of distinction between those who teach in schools and those who lead.

These four possibilities, described more fully in TEACHING 2030, a new book I penned with 12 expert teachers, can help us imagine what teaching could look like. Here’s the catch: we have to move past the tired 20th century struggles over how we recruit, train, and pay teachers. Yes, some serious politics are involved, as described vividly, if not always accurately, in Steven Brill’s new book, Class Warfare.

But we must also contend with the 15,000-hour problem. Most Americans have attended schools for 13 years—and have watched teachers teach for more than 15,000 hours, usually in the company of 25 or 30 other students (40 or 50 in hard times). And while most Americans may want improved schools and better teaching, they do not want teaching and learning to look all that different from when they were in school themselves. The public’s familiarity with teaching reifies expectations. It may even breed contempt for the specialized skills that effective teachers and administrators need to develop—after all, an expert teacher can make the job look easy.

But the 15,000-hour problem besets teachers and administrators as well. Almost four decades ago, Dan Lortie, the well-known education sociologist, described the 15,000 problem as the “apprenticeship of observation” — when teachers and administrators come into the profession thinking they already know how to teach and lead. In fact, since many educators have had the experience of “liking school” as K-12 students, they often resist major transformative changes. They may not want to think differently about teachers’ roles, teaching methods, and how and when students are expected to learn.

So what do we do? We shouldn’t simply seek more recruits from alternative routes. Plenty of evidence suggests that even teachers and administrators from “alternative routes” reify the current system of teaching and learning.

Instead, we should consider how teachers’ and administrators’ preparation can set the stage for a new expectations about what schools and learning look like.

And now is the time for public engagement campaign that informs and inspires, helping Americans shift their own beliefs about what schools and teachers can accomplish — and how they should go about it.

Selling a bold new vision of teaching and learning is far from impossible.

The American people have the capacity to let go of old patterns of thinking when the evidence is compelling and well-presented. Consider how our nation’s adult population changed its collective mind about cigarette smoking. In the early 1960s, cigarette smoking was common. In ads, the Marlboro Man (portrayed as a rugged cowboy) gave cigarettes a free-spirited, back-to-basics, all-American image. Then studies began to identify empirical links between smoking and cancer. Early anti-smoking commercials, starring “Johnny Smoke,” showed cowboys keeling over with poisonous fumes in their lungs, parodying the Marlboro Man. Public awareness grew and behavior began to change, as TV ads for cigarettes were banned and the Surgeon General’s warnings on cigarette packages became more stark and visible. Within 40 years, the percentage of American adults smoking cigarettes decreased from 45% to 20%.

An inefficient public education system mired in 20th-century debates may not be blackening our lungs. But the status quo is doing something just as serious: failing our students, our communities, and our democracy. We must help the public understand what is possible. We must get past the 15,000-hour conundrum. We must work together to create the transformed system of teaching and learning that 21st-century students deserve.

Implementing Common Core Standards

By Susan Graham

Susan Graham, a National Board Certified Teacher and Teacher Leaders Network member, retired in spring 2011 after 28 years in the classroom. However, she continues to encourage innovative reforms in teaching and learning, and is currently serving as a Virtual Community Organizer for CTQ’s new Implementing Common Core Standards project. 

Overheard this weekend at the Center for Teaching Quality’s headquarters in Carrboro, NC: “This is such incredibly complicated work…” (one-second pause) “…but I am so exhilarated by the process!”

That’s the sort of energy generated when exemplary teachers combine their expertise to tackle tough issues in teaching and learning—which happens all the time on CTQ’s virtual Teacher Leaders Network. But this energy is powerful face-to-face, too, as I witnessed this weekend when CTQ assembled 21 National Board Certified Teachers from NC and KY to work on the Implementing Common Core Standards (ICCS) project. 

Here’s how the Common Core State Standards website describes the standards:

The Common Core Standards provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them. The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers. With American students fully prepared for the future, our communities will be best positioned to compete successfully in the global economy.

But what does that look like in the classroom? How will students demonstrate mastery of the standards of literacy and mathematical functionality? And how do these efforts square with the pressures of standardized test performance (currently the centerpiece of many states’ assessment and evaluation systems)?

Over the next year, the accomplished teachers I met at CTQ will face down these tough questions. They will design—and test-drive in their own classrooms, with their own students—lessons and assessments linked to the Common Core State Standards.

ICCS teachers will pilot formative assessment templates created by the Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) and Mathematics Design Collaborative (MDC) with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The teachers met with Eleanor Dougherty (LDC) and Ann Shannon (MDC) to get a better sense of how to implement these new tools.

The teachers aren’t just test-driving—they’re documenting every curve of the road. As they fine-tune, deliver, and evaluate LDC and MDC modules, they’ll be compiling video clips of instruction and assembling evidence of student work, and reflecting on how the modules affect student learning and their own practice.  

In spring 2012, the ICCS teachers will begin to share the toolkits they’re creating—influencing student achievement in classrooms across the country. And their field-test critiques of the Design Collaborative concepts will inform the process of integrating Common Core Standards and state course standards.   

How will the pieces fit together? What will the results be? Which questions will be answered—in full or in part—and which will remain? We don’t know yet—but it is exciting to know that 21 highly accomplished teachers are already hard at work on a potentially transformative project for advancing student learning.  

 

Expertise to Action in Denver

By Jessica Keigan and Dana Nardello

One of the most exciting parts about working with expert teacher leaders is seeing their hard work and expertise appreciated. The Denver NMI team’s positive contribution to shaping and implementing teaching policies in Colorado attests to the importance of teacher voice in the policymaking process. I’ve asked two members of the Denver NMI team, Jessica Keigan and Dana Nardello, to share some of their recent involvement with the state legislation process. Jessica also spoke about her involvement during a special Rocky Mountain PBS roundtable held last Friday, where she represented her team with solutions-focused comments and compelling stories. --Barnett Berry

Here in the Mile High City, there has been a lot of buzz about Senate Bill 191, a law that calls for the creation and implementation of a new evaluation system for principals and teachers.

Among other things, the bill requires that half of a teacher’s evaluation be determined by student growth measures and that the other half -- loosely labeled as “multiple measures” -- include classroom observations by peers or administrators, goal attainment processes, or other similar tools.

But the tools used to assess teachers’ effectiveness on the basis of gains on a once-a-year standardized test are still pretty raw. As noted in a recent Congressional briefing, the grade-level standardized tests do not capture “teacher effects” when students are way below or above where they are supposed to be.  Some teachers teach a disproportionate share of second language learners or special needs students. Some teachers are part of teaching teams and it is difficult to determine who is most responsible. Some teachers work with students who get all kinds of help from afterschool and summer programs, but others do not.

As members of the Denver New Millennium Initiative, we knew it was important to be part of the conversation about the bill’s implementation. Since the release of our report “Making Teacher Evaluation Work: Voices from the Classroom,” various stakeholders have solicited our suggestions for specific and concrete suggestions. And last week, we had the fantastic opportunity to share our expertise at a state board public hearing.

The Process

This past May, the State Council on Educator Effectiveness (SCEE) began working to define what makes an educator effective, and since then it has made several recommendations to the Colorado Department of Education (CDE). The council has drafted and revised rules and has encouraged general feedback through public hearings – an opportunity we decided to take advantage of.

After releasing our report, our team spent the summer months researching teacher effectiveness and various topics introduced in the drafted rules (e.g., comparability, assessment tools, state vs. local control). Deciding to focus on what we thought the state’s definition of “multiple measures” should be, we submitted a list of recommendations to the board. At the public hearing, NMI team members supplemented the list by sharing our classroom realities, e.g., how highly mobile students or a large number of second language learners who just entered our classes, could influence the accuracy of the test score evidence. We described how teachers can assemble a wide array of data on their students so we can figure out how to improve our teaching.

Why Do We Care?

As teachers, we want stronger teaching accountability systems. We want to reach beyond our classroom walls and influence the policies that drive the work we do each day. Conversations about education reform need to include perspectives of people who know what happens inside the classroom.  We have solutions, we have ideas, and we want to share them.

Our day-to-day experience allows us to anticipate pitfalls and envision successes in a way that wouldn’t be possible for most lawmakers. Because we believe we have the responsibility to be involved in education policy, we are continually searching for entry points, conversations, meetings, and committees that we can contribute our expertise to.

What We Learned

Classroom teachers often think they don’t know enough about policy, politics, or the legislative process. But the truth is that teachers hold the critical piece of the puzzle. Our stories from the classroom can corroborate expert suggestions or productively challenge them.

The great news is that we aren’t the only ones who think this.

Our team and two other teachers were the only teacher voices heard during the hearing, and we could tell that our input made an impact on the audience. After giving our testimony last week, a member of the SCEE cited our evidence specifically when discussing next steps with the board. We knew we were being listened to, and it was an exhilarating experience.

Each new encounter with policymaking is showing us that people want to hear what teachers have to say. They respect our contributions as experts in our field –especially when they are solutions oriented.

Next Steps

Last week we received tangible indication that our teacher voices are having a positive effect on policy. Witnessing such respect for teacher expertise makes us excited to continue contributing to this process.

The Denver NMI team will continue to review the commentary and drafts that stakeholders are submitting. The next public hearing is scheduled for October 5, and on that day we hope even more Denver NMI teachers will share personal evidence that will support our recommendations.

As always, we will continue to seek out opportunities to share our voices, in hopes that we can improve our profession and best serve our students, inside and outside the classroom. 

 

Reshaping the Teacher Preparation Debate

A few days ago, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan gave a shout-out to the University of Michigan for serving as a national model for “reinventing” education schools. Indeed, the UM education school, led by Dean Deborah Ball, has done much to recalibrate university-based preparation programs by focusing on the practical how-tos of teaching specific curricular content and drawing on new research about how students learn. And though Secretary Duncan has often called for more student teaching, not less, his Race to the Top policies continue to embrace shortcut alternative-certification programs. Such routes, like Teach for America, can’t come close to offering new recruits the kind of preparation provided by UM’s education school (or by the many other university preparation programs that have also overhauled their approaches).

Secretary Duncan’s contradictory stances on teacher training are difficult to reconcile.

I keep thinking back to a terrific conversation captured by Education Next a few years ago. Arthur Wise, a champion for professionalizing teaching, and Julie Mikuta, a TFA alum and partner in the NewSchools Venture Fund, discussed the merits of university-based and alternative-certification approaches to teacher preparation. The three-year-old piece brings to light a number of issues surrounding TFA and whether it’s a “valuable strategy for recruiting the best and brightest into education and energizing school improvement, or a distraction and a device for sending ill-prepared neophytes to serve some of the nation’s neediest students.”

Federal policymakers have much to learn from the Education Next conversation – especially from Dr. Wise, who points to the false dichotomies often promoted in the current policy debates over teacher education. Rather than demonizing TFA or claiming teacher education programs have it all figured out, he calls for a strategy that scaffolds learning for all novices, whether they are TFA members or university-based recruits. He envisions a “teaching team strategy” in which experienced teachers are ultimately responsible for students, “but in multiple classrooms and with the assistance of the novices.”

Both TFA and traditional recruits have much to contribute to the process of improving teaching and learning. No teacher, however, should teach independently until he or she has passed muster on performance metrics, including teaching diverse learners (such as ELL students) and using sophisticated assessment tools to determine student progress toward 21st-century academic standards. It’s time that our nation’s education leaders learn that teacher education and licensing is not about dichotomous choices, but inventive approaches that can support student learning today and tomorrow.

 

Ensuring Teachers are Real Participants and Partners in Reform

Recently, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan pointed out, "Teachers need and deserve more autonomy and respect--and they must become real participants and partners in reform if outcomes for children are to dramatically improve."

We couldn't agree more. 

In a new CTQ report, "Teaching Effectiveness for the New Millennium," 23 expert teachers describe how policymakers can more accurately define student learning and advance teaching effectiveness reforms. They emphasized that policymakers must capitalize on the untapped potential of classroom leaders.

The teachers' insights--informed by research and their classroom experience--were inspired by online conversations with a group of key USDOE staff and with Secretary Duncan. The teachers began by unpacking the Department’s ESEA “blueprint” — but soon honed in on the significance of hybrid teaching roles in implementing new reforms with veracity and fidelity.  

All co-authors are members of CTQ's Teacher Leaders Network, and several participate in our New Millennium Initiative. Drawing upon research and their teaching expertise, they highlight promising steps by the USDOE and also call for specific teaching effectiveness reforms, including:

• Involve teacher leaders in creating and scoring assessments aligned with Common Core standards throughout the school year. These assessments could help teachers fine-tune instruction and could inform results-oriented teaching evaluations.  
• Draw upon and spread the expertise of National Board Certified Teachers, who have met rigorous standards and demonstrated skill in analyzing student evidence to improve instruction.
• Promote and support hybrid roles that allow teacher leaders to continue building upon their classroom skills while also serving as teacher educators, policy researchers, community organizers, and trustees of their profession. Our nation needs more teacherpreneurs if we are to take innovative steps to improve our schools. 
• Develop new forms of shared school leadership to support teaching effectiveness, like tapping expert teachers to serve as peer reviewers in implementing high-quality, rigorous classroom evaluations.

Just yesterday, I was reading a newly released study that examines the effectiveness of high-quality peer review programs, such as California's Poway and San Juan districts. The researchers found that, when compared to principals, teachers are far more thorough and tough-minded in evaluating their colleagues. Expert teachers "get" the job of teaching--and what it takes to do that job well.

Kudos to Secretary Duncan and his staff for engaging in an authentic conversation with some of the nation’s best teachers. Now let’s find ways--including more robust peer review programs--for teacher leaders to become the “real participants and partners” in reform.

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.

Accountability Gone Amok and Pay Policies Gone Awry

So it turns out that high-stakes tests—and the accountability systems based on them—aren’t working out so well.

Earlier this week, The New York Times reported on a new study showing that the NYC district’s $56 million merit pay system has had no payoff for student achievement. The investigation, conducted by the RAND Corporation, concluded that “the bonus program had no effect on students’ test scores, on grades on the city’s controversial A to F school report cards, or on the way teachers did their jobs.”

The RAND study lines up with the myth-busting report of the National Research Council which concluded earlier this year that test-based incentive programs “often use assessments too narrow to measure progress….(and) have not increased student achievement enough to bring the United States close to the levels of the highest achieving countries.

Despite the evidence, district officials seem bent on finding a merit pay program that works. If NYC administrators are serious about finding a teacher compensation model that students deserve, then they should take a look at our inaugural TeacherSolutions report or a recent report by Florida teachers on pay-for-performance. A smart approach would value the spread of teaching expertise, not just reward high-performing teachers.

Meanwhile, in other high-stakes testing news, the Atlanta story just keeps getting uglier.

According to The New York Times, district administrators “humiliated principals who didn’t reach their (test score) targets,” who in turn, “demean(ed) teachers with whom they worked.”

One Atlanta principal “had teachers with low test scores crawl under a table.” He may have been following the example of his district’s superintendent, who “gathered the entire district staff at the Georgia Dome,” seating “those from schools with top scores” on the Dome floor while staffers from schools with low scores were sent to the stands.  

How do these shenanigans help children succeed? They don’t. Such actions only intensify the pressure that teachers feel. Should we be surprised that cheating occurred in such a climate?

Decades ago, eminent social scientist Donald Campbell observed, “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”

As noted in a just released report by the U.S. Department of Education, top-performing nations do not draw on the same kinds of high-stakes standardized tests and top-down accountability systems used here in the United States. Instead, these nations (e.g., Finland, Singapore, etc.) invest in teachers, who are deeply prepared to serve as experts in assessing their students. 

We have options. We can stick with high-stakes test scores (and the accountability systems that hang on them). Or we can create the results-oriented profession that students deserve. We can invite teacher leaders to help create robust accountability systems that draw on varied assessments, many of which are designed and scored by classroom experts themselves. We can compensate teachers in ways that encourage them to spread their expertise.

These options are within reach, as described in a paper I wrote with three master teachers. We argue that policymakers should look to expert teachers to develop meaningful assessments and ensure the conditions necessary to implement high standards with fidelity and rigor.

And real-world evidence of teacher leaders’ contributions to better teaching and assessments is in the works. This fall, CTQ will launch, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a virtual network of National Board Certified teachers who will be part of an effort to implement and assess new approaches to teaching and learning. Their work will demonstrate the value of formative, authentic assessments as an integrated part of effective instruction. They will help refine just-in-time ways to determine whether students are meeting the high academic standards represented by the Common Core not just at the end of the year, but every single school day.

Our students deserve assessment and accountability systems that are sophisticated enough to prepare them to meet the demands of a global economy. Accomplished teachers can help make it happen. 

Moving Past Excuses: What Excellence & Equity Require

As summer temperatures rise, tough talk about silver-bullet solutions is wilting:

• In Atlanta,revelations of rampant cheating on high-stakes tests have rocked the reputation of the city’s schools and administrators. At the center of the scandal is a superintendent previously championed by reformers who emphasize high-stakes accountability and assessment. As reported in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, top administrators “ignored, buried, destroyed or altered complaints about misconduct, claimed ignorance of wrongdoing and accused naysayers of failing to believe in poor children’s ability to learn.”

• In Washington, D.C.—where concerns about possible widespread cheating during the Michelle Rhee era remain unresolved—standardized test scores for 2011 showed little movement. 

• Then there’s the mounting evidence that highly acclaimed charters are unlikely to serve the most disadvantaged students. In yesterday’s New York Times, Michael Winerip explored ways in which some of the city’s charter schools pressure students to “thrive or transfer,” noting the relative scarcity of students with disabilities at such schools.  

• At the Aspen Ideas Fest, a well-known reformer revealed his relish in attacking teacher unions. Upon being blasted by bloggers, the reformer apologized for the “arrogance in my tone.” However, video footage of his talk (which was not a brief sound bite) presents disturbing evidence of the divisive rhetoric and tactics that get in the way of meeting children’s needs.

Of course, accountability is an important tool for reform. Charter schools can help to incubate good ideas and practices outside the confines of district bureaucracies. Teacher unions do need to change. But none of these silver bullet solutions—high-stakes tests, charter schools, dismantling unions—is enough to meet the challenge of providing 21^st-century students with the schools they deserve.  

Given all the recent evidence of off-kilter priorities, Paul Tough’s recent New York Times piece on the “no excuses” reform crowd is well-timed. Tough notes that the same reformers who insisted high expectations (and high-stakes tests) would cure what ailed low-income urban schools are now pointing to excuses. They’re discovering that high-stakes tests and tenure reform cannot (by themselves) help students overcome the conditions of poverty.  

Significantly, Tough notes that the situation isn’t hopeless—just more complicated than some have been willing to admit. He points out that dichotomous debate (charters versus traditional public schools, teacher unions versus administrators, etc.) simply cannot address the quandary in which America finds itself. Instead, improving our public schools requires nuanced conversation and comprehensive solutions.

Tough argues that if we are to educate all children to achieve high academic standards, we must tackle the challenges of poverty head-on. He highlights tactics that have repeatedly been proven effective on a small scale: “supplementing classroom strategies with targeted, evidence-based interventions outside the classroom; working intensively with the most disadvantaged families to improve home environments for young children; providing high-quality early-childhood education to children from the neediest families; and, once school begins, providing low-income students with a robust system of emotional and psychological support, as well as academic support.”

Clearly, such a shift in strategy will require creativity, investment, and partnerships. But it will also require us to unleash the power of the abundance of teaching talent we have in every school in this nation.

Who better to help ensure educational equity than our most accomplished teachers? Why not structure their work (and workdays) to strategically deploy their expertise? Our best teachers could provide targeted intervention for the children and families who would most benefit from their experience and knowledge. They could help develop, staff, and assess high-quality early childhood programs. They could work with community partners to ensure all children have access to the academic, emotional, and psychological support they need to succeed.

Too often, we shuffle our best teachers into full-time administrative roles, pulling them away from the children who need them most. Too often, we pile “reforms” on teachers without inviting them (and supporting them) to take on meaningful roles in solutions. And too often, America’s schools fail our least advantaged students and families.

Let’s drop the excuses. Let’s not kid ourselves about silver-bullet solutions. Let’s do the difficult work. And let’s welcome teacher leaders as partners in making it happen.    

Tapping Teacher Expertise (What We Haven’t Tried)

Below: Graphic facilitator Sunni Brown captured our TEACHING 2030 team's brainstorming session about the potential roles of teacherpreneurs...

Sometimes it seems like America has tried everything. Various flavors of school reform have come and gone, often without securing real or lasting improvements for students. But there’s one thing we haven’t tried (not on a widespread basis, anyway): fully tapping the expertise of our nation’s accomplished teachers.

Our most effective teachers possess a wealth of knowledge and experience could be applied to the pressing problems faced by our schools. And students do not have to “lose” their best teachers (as is so often the case now when teachers are promoted into full-time administrative roles).  Instead, we can design roles that allow teachers to advance their careers by spending part of their time working with students—and part of their time on innovative efforts to improve teaching and learning.     

Our public schools need more of these teacherpreneurs, expert teachers who keep one foot in the classroom while also pursuing results-oriented projects:

1.     Leading peer review processes for their schools to ensure that teaching evaluations are valid and drive improvement;

2.     Developing tools and strategies for teaching the Googled learner who has grown up experiencing virtual reality;

3.     Taking part in assessment reforms such as those linked to the new Common Core standards, and using technology to better capture, analyze, and publicize data about schools’ effectiveness;

4.     Identifying effective strategies for teaching students who are increasingly diverse — by 2030, 40% or more will be second-language learners;

5.     Organizing school-neighborhood partnerships that can support student learning through cradle-to-college solutions; and

6.     Transforming unions so that they become self-policing professional guilds that help ensure the quality of teaching that students deserve.

This list is not comprehensive. It’s just a sneak peek of the important work that “teacherpreneurs” could perform—while continuing to teach students for at least part of their day, week, or year. (For more on the teacherpreneur concept, see chapter 6 of TEACHING 2030, a book I coauthored with twelve talented classroom teachers.)

Investing in Teacherpreneurs

Unfortunately, teachers’ salaries remain too low to attract and retain enough talented, well-prepared professionals to fill our nation’s high-needs classrooms — much less to cultivate the 600,000 teacherpreneurs we call for in TEACHING 2030. Unlike in other top performing nations, teachers in the U.S. are considerably underpaid, compared to other professionals with similar training and responsibility. American teachers are paid, on average, 60 percent less than other comparable college graduates.

But investing in expert teachers isn’t just about salaries—it’s about how the work and the school day are structured. Other top-performing nations invest in teachers by expecting more administrators to teach so teachers can lead. U.S. teachers teach students about 80% of their total working time—while their international counterparts spend about 60% of their time teaching, with the remainder of the time spend planning lessons and fulfilling leadership responsibilities.

America’s top-down model of managing schools has led us to allocate resources less effectively than we otherwise could. Of the 70,000 employees of the Los Angeles Unified School District, only 50% are practicing teachers. Embracing teacher leadership—creating roles that enable teachers to guide and add value to their schools—could help us put our education dollars to better use.

Finally, we must take a good long look at how our investment in expert teachers compares to what we spend on other efforts. Consider the war the United States is waging in Afghanistan, which is expected to cost $113 billion this next fiscal year, according to The Washington Post. As Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, noted, “It is fundamentally unsustainable to continue spending $10 billion a month on a massive military operation with no end in sight.”

Could the costs of war be applied to lowering the federal deficit? Could we apply a small fraction of the savings to funding our public schools in ways that meet children’s needs? Creating and funding roles for expert teachers is a wise investment—and one that is critical to safeguarding America’s future. 

Tackling the Tough To-Dos

How can we improve teaching effectiveness in America? Policy pundits have given us a list of to-dos: Evaluate teachers on test scores. Jettison teacher tenure. Scrap last-in-first-out policies.

Yes, we need results-oriented teacher evaluation systems that draw on evidence of student learning. Yes, it makes sense to streamline personnel procedures for teachers and administrators. Sure, let’s abandon quality-blind placements.

But if what we want is genuine, sustained improvement of our public schools, we can’t just remove these arcane policies and pretend the job is done. To paraphrase H. L. Mencken, “For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.”

Here's the real to-do list for those who want to improve our public schools:

• Take part in nuanced, solutions-focused conversations with diverse stakeholders.
• Examine empirical evidence of what works for students.
• Tap into the wisdom of thousands of accomplished teachers in our nation’s classrooms.

These to-dos drive all of our work at the Center for Teaching Quality—including our New Millennium Initiative (NMI), which assembles diverse groups of talented, early-career educators who are committed to improving teaching and learning at the local and national level.

Currently at work in Denver, Washington state, Illinois, the Bay Area, and Hillsborough County (FL), our NMI teachers are digging into some of education’s toughest issues. These committed teachers are studying evidence of what works for students, asking tough questions of researchers and policymakers, and examining the policies that govern their profession. They’re identifying specific recommendations for improving teaching and learning. And they’re speaking out. 

Each of our NMI sites will be releasing papers and multimedia products to spread their findings to others who care about teaching and learning.

This month, the Denver NMI teachers released a report pointing out how their state’s new teacher evaluation law can be effectively implemented.  Their report is concise, practical, and well-informed. It offers powerful evidence for why we should encourage teacher leaders to take an increasingly active role in today’s education policy debates. 

On May 18, Denver NMI teachers presented their findings to a diverse audience including state board of education members, superintendents, union leaders, and other key stakeholders. (Thanks to the Colorado Legacy Foundation and Rose Community Foundation for co-sponsoring this gathering with CTQ.) The crowd was impressed by—indeed, hungry for—bold, practical perspectives from classroom teachers.

Since then, team members have been invited to take part in a variety of meaningful activities to advance effective implementation of the new law. Their work, funded by Rose Community Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is only just beginning.

Stay tuned—teachers in our other NMI sites are also tackling the tough to-dos and will be releasing additional reports in the months to come. Rather than being caught up in tired debates over arcane policies, they’re looking back at what has (and hasn’t) worked for students—and looking forward to what is possible. 

(Above) The Denver NMI team presented their findings to a group of education stakeholders at an event co-sponsored by Rose Community Foundation, Colorado Legacy Foundation, & CTQ. 

  
(Above) NMI teacher Katie Micek introduces the New Millennium Initiative's short- and long-term goals.

  (Above) The Denver NMI team at work...

The Only Fight Worth Having

According to Richard Perez-Pena of The New York Times, NJ governor Chris Christie’s take on school reform was met with a welcome reception at a recent Harvard Graduate School of Education event. Christie received his first ovation with this one-liner: “The only reason I’m engaging in this battle with the teachers’ union is because it’s the only fight worth having.”

Christie’s statement is not surprising. What stings is that such simplified logic apparently went unquestioned—and was even encouraged—by this audience of Harvard faculty and students. 

Yes, teachers' unions need to change dramatically, adopting a stronger focus on teaching and learning. And yes, longstanding issues of performance pay, quality-blind transfers, and cumbersome processes for removing incompetent teachers must be resolved —now. Students and families deserve better.

But such issues (often linked in the public mind to unions) do not comprise “the only fight worth having” in public education. In fact, to focus on these problems is to ignore many, many other roadblocks to transforming the teaching profession for the benefit of all students:

1.      Administrators who fail to cultivate the enormous leadership talent of hundreds of thousands of effective teachers. (Why not re-organize school schedules in ways that spread the expertise of our most effective teachers? This is truly one of the great lost opportunities in our schools.)

2.     School board members who base critical decisions about curriculum on their own ideological interests, rather than on empirical evidence about what works for students.

3.      State legislators who refuse to equitably finance high-need schools. (In so doing, they ensure that the most disadvantaged students have the least access to effective teachers and optimal conditions for teaching and learning.)

4.      Policymakers who insist on perpetuating either-or debates at the expense of real change. (A juicy sound bite does little to help a struggling student or a first-year teacher. Real change will demand that we transcend either-or politics and look instead at how to structure schools around what works for students.)

The “only fight worth having” is the fight for better schools for all our children. And that fight cannot be an A versus B match. (“In one corner, The Governor! In the other, The Union!”) It must instead be an ongoing campaign challenging stakeholders at all levels to work together to create the schools (and teaching profession) our students deserve.  

Now, there’s a fight worth winning.

Preparing Teachers for Long-Term Success

 

“In school time, two years is a blip on the screen."

Anna L. Martin’s recent series of short essays on The Answer Sheet do highlight problems with the Teach For America (TFA) model. But Anna’s pieces also offer an astute perspective on how the teaching profession can better fulfill the hopes of the students and families she serves. 

A TFA alum and bright young teacher working with our New Millennium Initiative, Anna is now in her seventh year of teaching at the school where she was initially placed. While her essays touch on the need for better preparation for TFA recruits, Anna focuses instead on a central point: any model that imagines a two-year life cycle for teachers is problematic.

Anna rightfully acknowledges that she might never have entered the classroom without TFA, while offering several observations about the weaknesses of the two-year cycle. What schools really need, Anna argues, are teachers who have truly mastered their craft—and who are deeply embedded in and committed to their school communities.

She points out, “Building relationships and creating a collaborative environment conducive to the kind of educational outcomes achieved by high-performing districts and countries outside the United States takes time… In a weird way, TFA seems almost to be supporting, rather than dismantling, the idea that excellent teachers are widgets — easily replaceable, easily replicable.”

Rich lessons abound in Anna’s firsthand account of what it’s like to work in a school with high turnaround—about 30% of her school’s employee base is dedicated to TFA placement. We learn about the promising young people—like Anna—who are attracted to teaching by TFA’s recruitment strategies. We learn about missed opportunities—for teachers to learn from their more experienced peers, for students and families to be served by teachers who know their communities well, and for bright, hard-working TFA alumni to develop as teacher leaders within their placement schools.

I am proud to have gotten to know Anna thanks to her involvement in our virtual Teacher Leaders Network as well as our New Millennium Initiative — powerful groups of young teachers in sites nationwide who are developing solutions for some of the most vexing problems of the teaching profession.

Here’s what is impressive to me about Anna’s essays. She provides an informed critique that emphasizes the factors that matter for students’ success. She sees that neither TFA or education schools (at least as they are designed today) has adequately addressed the needs of all students. Moving past this false dichotomy (teacher education schools vs. alternative routes) is essential to improving teaching effectiveness.

Anna and other Bay Area New Millennium Initiative team members will soon release a potent policy paper on the future of teaching. Their concrete suggestions (generated after extensive research and debate and grounded in classroom experience) address many of the key issues Anna highlights in her short essays: preparing teachers for long-term success, providing high-quality professional development on the job, and reshaping the career paths available to talented teachers. 

Wise policymakers—those who recognize the importance of developing and keeping extraordinary teachers—should listen carefully to the ideas of teacher leaders like Anna. She is not alone. We are in touch with thousands of teachers across the United States who are deeply committed to their profession but recognize that bold changes will be necessary to meet the needs of 21^st-century learners.

 

Redefining Teacher Preparation

Is America finally ready to invest in teaching?

The question looms.

Last month, I sat in on the International Summit on the Teaching Profession in New York. Participants included education ministers and union leaders from high-performing nations as well as American education leaders (Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, NEA president Dennis Van Roekel, and AFT president Randi Weingarten).

Andreas Schliecher, a researcher at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), offered a compelling analysis of countries with high-performing students (and narrowing achievement gaps).  What do these countries have in common? They invest in teaching as a knowledge-based profession. Teacher preparation is serious business: top-notch recruits are paid to prepare for a teaching career. 

American teacher education policy is very different—and yields poorer results for students. Our policies promote short-cut, low-quality preparation for entry into the teaching profession. There is often little connection between pre-service preparation and on-the-job support. New recruits have few incentives to receive serious training before they teach, and they are not rewarded for remaining in the classroom.

TEACHING 2030, which I co-authored with twelve accomplished teachers, presses American policymakers to invest in better teacher education for tomorrow’s students. (The image at left is taken from graphic facilitator Sunni Brown's depiction of a recent 2030 team conversation.) Relying on classroom expertise as well as research on best practices, we developed a vision of a great teacher preparation system: 

1.    Universities, school districts, and non-profits will fuse their resources to prepare future teachers;

2.   Teacher preparation will be built on a sound liberal arts education — then candidates can choose from various tracks of professional preparation, each one focusing on different roles and responsibilities;

3.   Teacher education will be cohort-based, preparing new recruits to teach as teams in high-need schools;

4.   All new teachers will complete a substantial internship in a community-based organization in order to develop deep knowledge of the context of how and where students and their families live;

5.   All new recruits for a teaching career will be expected to serve in an extensive internsh ip in a virtual teacher network, where they also learn specific skills in using multi-user virtual environments to educate students anytime, anywhere, as well as how to spread expertise among teaching colleagues;

6.   Pedagogical preparation will be built on a mixed use of live and digitally recorded “lesson studies” in which teams of candidates learn to critique teaching and assess student learning using emerging technologies;

 7.   Each teacher education candidate will have a program of learning with common tasks to accomplish and performance assessments to measure when (and what) they are ready to teach;

8.   Passing performance assessments, not completing “seat time” in college courses, will determine when teachers are ready to teach independently – and in what schools and under what conditions;

9.   Teaching responsibilities (and differential compensation) will be determined on the basis of what one knows and can do as an independently practicing teacher (identified through performance assessments) and one’s proven knowledge and skills; and

10.   Schools will be red esigned for teacher learning (as in other high-performing nations) so new recruits can develop under the supervision of expert vete rans who have been specially prepared as mentors. 

This is the future of teacher education we envision — one that will ensure equity and excellence for all students. American students and schools will only be able to catch up to (and surpass) other nations’ educational systems through dramatic transformation of its teacher preparation policies. To learn more, order a copy of TEACHING 2030.