Advancing the Teaching Profession

When Teachers Speak Up—And Policymakers Listen

By Jessica Keigan 

Jessica Keigan is a teacherpreneur who spends part of her week teaching English at Horizon High School in Denver and part of her time working to improve public schools through her work with the Denver New Millennium Initiative. This post was orginially published on the Impatient Optimists blog.

Last year, Colorado passed a landmark piece of legislation (SB 10-191, the EQUITEE Act) that created a new system of evaluation for students, teachers, and schools in the state. This new law promises to shake up the status quo, inspiring innovation in how we teach students and how we prepare and support teachers.

This month, the Colorado State Board of Education adopted regulations to implement the legislation—with some key revisions.

The revisions reflect the informed voices of classroom teachers and represent a unique breakthrough in my career. I have had many successes in my nine years of teaching, but this was the first time I’ve ever seen my efforts have such a long-reaching and concrete impact on the policies that shape my job.

I hope that it will prove to be a strong foundation for continued work of this kind, both personally and for my state.

The basic premise of the law is that all teachers will be evaluated yearly on a variety of measures to determine whether their non-probationary status will be maintained.

As a member of the New Millennium Initiative, a team of teachers working to transform our schools and the teaching profession, I have spent the past year working with a team of Denver-area teachers to research the implications of the EQUITEE Act on classroom practice.

In May, our team of teachers released a formal brief ("Making Teacher Evaluation Work for Students: Voices From the Classroom") sharing our ideas about how this law should be implemented.

I consider myself to be a teacher leader and, unfortunately, have sat on numerous committees that seemed to have little influence. But my work with the Denver New Millennium Initiative this summer and fall was an incredibly empowering experience.

During my public testimony, I spoke about how my unique expertise as a teacher helps me to determine how and when my students are growing. I recommend that the voices of classroom teachers should be heard and honored when creating standards that evaluate teacher effectivenes. 

No one is more qualified to comment on a student’s achievement than the person who works with that student every day.

Standardized tests have their purpose as norm setters, but a teacher who knows her students’ unique back stories and learning styles can provide a wealth of information about each student. This information should be included among the data used to measure the success of both teachers and students.

Specifically, we advocated for three important things:

• A clearer definition of the multiple measures that comprise 50 percent of teachers’ evaluation
• A strong representation of teachers in the process of implementation
• An ongoing evaluation process rather than an “event” that happens once or twice a year

The State Board of Education adopted the implementation rules this month. Upon reviewing the final draft of the evaluation standards, I was overwhelmed by how much of the language reflected the recommendations that my team made, in some cases almost verbatim.

I am genuinely excited about the potential for positive change that SB 191 brings to Colorado. In an often sluggish system that balks at overhaul and reform, this is a true game changer.

I am also grateful that policymakers were open to hearing my voice as a teacher. They honored and incorporated the experience and expertise that our Denver New Millennium Initiative teachers brought to the conversation.

I now have new hope that my profession can change—that I (and my colleagues) can be valued professionals.

Using Teacher Expertise to Improve Policy

By Bill Farmer

The Illinois New Millennium Initiative has been doing some terrific work in response to the state’s recent efforts to reform its teacher evaluation systems. I’ve asked Bill Farmer, an Illinois NMI member and high school science teacher in Evanston, Illinois, to share his thoughts about the team’s recent report and interactions with state policymakers.
–-Barnett Berry

Like many other financially strained states, Illinois is engaged in significant educational policy reform propelled by the carrot of Race to the Top federal funds. One of the primary products of this reform is Senate Bill 315, passed in January 2010. SB 315, more commonly known as the Performance Evaluation Reform Act (PERA), provides the framework for a major overhaul of teacher and principal evaluation systems, using student growth as a significant component of evaluations. 

Illinois teachers have long recognized the flaws in current evaluation systems and have been advocating for an improved model that provides useful, timely feedback and professional support that can enhance classroom practice. In fact, in 1984 Art Wise and Linda Darling-Hammond, both then at the RAND Corporation, identified many of the same evaluation problems reformers and teachers are concerned about today.* Almost 30 years ago Wise and Darling-Hammond pointed out that we need clearly defined standards of professional excellence, well-trained and pre-qualified evaluators, and more frequent feedback. And today PERA is calling for similar guidelines for a teacher evaluation system.

The Complex Task of Measuring Student Growth

In the political and public realms, linking evaluations to student growth seems like common sense. Research consistently indicates that teachers are the most important school-based variable in a student’s educational growth. But somehow the school-based segment of that conclusion is frequently omitted. In reality, innumerable factors both inside and outside schools affect student growth.

And although many of us educators are already frequently monitoring student growth in our individual classrooms, systematizing such a complex measurement is an infinitely challenging task. This is particularly the case when trying to quantify an individual teacher’s contribution to student learning. Teachers often teach multiple grade levels and courses, spend varying amounts of time with students, and are aided by specialist teachers. Team teaching, which is much needed, can confound efforts to identify which teacher is responsible for student learning gains.

Involving Teachers in the Implementation Process

Implementing PERA is the responsibility of a joint committee called the Performance Evaluation Advisory Council (PEAC). Of this group of roughly 30 education stakeholders, only one is a current K-12 teacher. 

Around the same time PEAC was organizing, the Illinois New Millennium Initiative was assembling a dynamic group of early-career and veteran teachers to do the exact same thing. With such a huge transformation under way in Illinois, our goal was – and is – to bring teacher voice to the forefront of the conversation around the implementation of PERA.

Our NMI team’s virtual community provided a way for teachers to share research on teacher evaluation systems, helping us better understand the complicated matrix of educational policy in Illinois and around the country.

We then combined this knowledge with our own teaching experiences to write our report, “Measuring Learning, Supporting Teaching: Classroom Experts’ Recommendations for an Effective Educator Evaluation System.” 

Making Our Teacher Voices Heard

Since the report's release, key stakeholders and educators have taken notice.  

The NMI team has hosted webinars with members of PEAC to share our recommendations and provide feedback on PEAC’s work. NMI teachers have also attended monthly PEAC meetings to make connections and share perspectives from the classroom. These experiences have made us feel like our teacher voices are being heard and considered.

This month, we plan to attend regional teacher forums PEAC is sponsoring to present its progress and solicit teacher feedback. We’re eager to engage in (and maybe even help initiate) the next layers of policy reform that will strengthen our professional practice and produce better student outcomes. Evaluation reforms of 30 years ago never bore much fruit because teachers weren’t involved in implementing them. NMI teachers are ready to help lead the way.

*Wise, A. E., Darling-Hammond, L., McLaughlin, M. W. & Bernstein, H. T. (1984). Teacher Evaluation: A study of effective practices. Santa Monica, CA. RAND.

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. 

 

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.

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...

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.

 

Gen Y Teachers and the Future of the Profession

Today the American Federation of Teachers and the American Institutes for Research released a very important report on the future of teaching — revealing what Generation Y teachers believe they need in order to teach effectively. The report, built on a plethora of surveys, focus groups, and case studies, should serve as a wake-up call for those who tend to simplify the problems facing the profession.

Here are key findings:

1.    Gen Y teachers seek “more frequent feedback on their teaching” than their more veteran colleagues — but also want more assistance from their peers (not just from administrators);
2.    Gen Y teachers want more time and opportunities to improve their practice through meaningful collaboration;
3.    Gen Y teachers embrace performance pay plans, but believe that their effectiveness cannot be accurately measured through standardized test scores alone;
4.    Gen Y teachers are enthusiastic about new networking technologies that can improve teaching and learning.

These findings mirror what we are learning from the young teachers involved in our New Millennium Initiative. Generation Y teachers have no problem whatsoever with calls for more accountability among the teaching ranks. However, having studied assessment and accountability issues in depth, they are deeply skeptical of the mechanical tools being used in states like Florida, where the governor was recently called to task  by Rick Hess for “setting one-size-fits-all prescriptions” for teacher evaluation.

I’m inspired by what this report reveals about Generation Y teachers’ attitudes toward their profession. Compared with young teachers in 1999-2000, Generation Y teachers in 2008 were more likely to say they hoped to “stay in teaching as long as I am able” and less likely to report being “undecided” about their career plans.

How can we help each talented young teacher to “stay in teaching as long as I am able”?  This study offers concrete answers from the teachers themselves. And the very conditions highlighted by Generation Y teachers (collaboration with peers, frequent feedback on their teaching, equitable and reliable assessment, and technology-imbedded learning environments) are right in line with what research tells us works for students.

Through TEACHING 2030, we are developing a vision that considers the needs of 21st-century students and the new generation of teachers who will serve them. We must invest in working conditions and policies that will help students and teachers succeed in meeting 21st-century expectations. We must be willing to rethink ways to structure teachers’ work so we make the most of their talents while benefiting all students. (For example, teacherpreneurs could work with students while also serving as learning architects, web curators, teacher educators, researchers, policy mavens, and other innovative roles… opportunities that will appeal to the Generation Y teachers who are destined to be among the profession’s leaders.)     

As we imagine a brighter future for America’s students and schools, it is time to listen to the hopeful voices of our Generation Y teachers — and to acknowledge the sincere efforts of teacher unions whose leaders are increasingly committed to making sure these voices are heard. 
 
 

Big Ideas from Some of Our Nation’s Most Effective (and potentially most influential) Teachers

This past weekend I had the pleasure of working closely with 19 extraordinary teachers from throughout the United States – a sample of delegates drawn from the hundreds of accomplished educators who participate in the many initiatives of our Teacher Leaders Network.

We worked hard and played hard as we gathered for a three-day retreat at CTQ headquarters in Hillsborough, North Carolina. We dug deeply into what it means to transform teaching into a 21st century profession fully prepared to help every student succeed in the decades to come, both in brick-and-mortar schools and in cyberspace.

I learned so much from Tom Bremer (Illinois), Isabel Campos-Woytek (Colorado), Ben Crosby (California), Julianna Dauble (Washington), Nina Davis (North Carolina), Susan Graham (Virginia), Sarah Henchey (North Carolina), John M. Holland (Virginia), Marguerite Izzo (New York), Kris Kohl (Nevada), Patrick Ledesma (Virginia), Lori Nazareno (Colorado), Ernie Rambo (Nevada), Marsha Ratzel (Kansas), Cindi Rigsbee (North Carolina), Zach Rupp (Colorado), Ariel Sacks (New York City), Bob Williams (Alaska), and Heather Wolpert-Gawron (California). (We really missed Renee Moore from Mississippi who could not attend at the last minute.)

Teachers in this amazing group fully represent the diversity of America’s teaching force – teaching a variety of subjects and fulfilling many leadership roles in urban, suburban and rural schools at every level of the PK-12 spectrum. They are involved in our Teacher Leaders Network Forum; our emerging network of state and national teachers of the year (thanks to CCSSO); our book-writing team which has been designing a powerful pathway toward Teaching 2030;  our TeacherSolutions group studying the kinds of conditions teachers need in order to teach effectively in high needs schools. Five of them are part of our New Millennium Initiatives in four states. Several are Teach for America alums, or other first- and second-career teachers who entered the profession through alternative certifications. Others graduated from traditional schools of education.

They are all committed to improving preparation before anyone teaches anyone’s child. They have strategies for identifying and spreading the expertise of effective teachers. They can show you how to assess students for 21st century knowledge and skills. They came up with big and break-through policy proposals for how to do so. They have passion and knowledge as well as pedagogical expertise that rarely exists inside the D.C. Beltway, where most education policy gets debated and crafted. They transcend traditional union and administrator policy positions as well as those of left-wing and right-wing think tanks. If policymakers want to know how to get to “and/both” teaching and education policy -- and leave “either/or” approaches in the dust — ask these teacher leaders.

Thanks to several foundations supporting projects these energized educators are engaged in — including Ford, Bill & Melinda Gates, Joyce, MetLife, Rose and Stuart — you will hear more from these extraordinary teachers in resounding and systematic ways. Since fleeing the classroom in 1981 to work on the transformation of teaching into the profession students deserve, I have never been any more inspired than I am by our work this past weekend. I have never been so hopeful for the possibilities that lie ahead. Stay tuned.

A Young Teacher Looks to the Future

Novice teacher Jess Lyons has been an enthusiastic member of our CTQ  New Millennium Initiative in Colorado, where she and other young colleagues have been considering the policies and practices that are most likely to help teaching evolve into the full-realized 21st century profession that all of our students deserve.

When Jess let us know that she's decided to take a break from the classroom and consider her future career options, I asked her to write about her decision. It's clear in what she has to say that Jess is still emotionally attached to teaching and her kids, but as she considers her likely career path in today's profession, she's not finding all the intellectual satisfaction she craves. Would the promise of hybrid roles that allow teachers to blend teaching, leadership and policy work be an answer for Jess? That's the question I'm pondering as I read her words here, written just before the end of the school term in Denver. — Barnett Berry

Teaching With All You Have

By Jess Lyons

I love kids. As each day draws closer to my end of year, there’s usually one moment where my heart stops. Just for a second. Then an intense feeling of dread — “What am I doing?! Why would I leave this?” — washes over me and sets my heart racing.

My fifth graders will be moving on in eight days, and so will I. Michael won’t be there to give me an elbow shake to start my day. In eight days, Miriam won’t pop her hip and tell me “Miss Jess, I’m unique.” Girl, don’t I know it. I won’t get to read with Kristen every day, moving her from a level 6 in September to an 18, and pushing for more.

All of this, of course, leads to the obvious question: Why are you leaving teaching?

I spent all of last summer and most of the fall, while completing my Masters’ in Education, trying to figure out what was the right decision. In January, after I turned in my resignation letter, when my principal asked about my reasons for leaving I told her that I felt as if the four walls were closing in on me. I don’t learn in the environment that I am currently teaching in, so how can I expect my students to do so?

As I try to coherently explain why I feel the need to leave teaching, or why teaching has “lost me,” I have to be honest and say it’s not teaching. Sure, there are a number of things that I don’t like. I love planning, but I hate that really good planning takes so many hours. I usually do it out of guilt that my kids won’t get as good an education without it. I hate learning in four walls. MY best learning never happened there, and honestly, neither will theirs.

I hate the professional development that is useless. I dislike the scripted curriculum that I have to teach with “fidelity” when I know that it might not be best for my students. I don’t like that everyone wants to tell me how to do it better, and that so much is based on numbers and data, when it’s people (my very individual students) that walk into my room.

Let me clarify that I don’t feel like society’s image of an older jaded teacher. I’m leaving at this juncture because I love children. I carry the belief that you can only be around that type of glowing energy, filled with possibility, if you yourself carry those same feelings. So far, I still do, and I don’t want to risk losing them.

Three things that might have made a difference

I believe there are three very important criteria that would have strengthened and lengthened my time in the education field.

First, great leadership in a school setting is absolutely necessary for beginning teachers to be successful. My first year, my principal and vice principal were new at their job, and it was apparent. Not to a first year teacher, of course. For me, I thought it was normal that 15-year veteran teachers cried on a daily basis, just like me, and it just wasn’t going to get better. The staff was not supported and the demands were high without clear expectations of what needed to be done. Those pressures add up, when the staff, the students, and the community are asking challenging questions and left hanging without the answers.

I really didn’t know how I was going to make it through my second year. When it came, the leadership changed. My current principal took the position and she’s incredible. She’s extremely organized. She’s fair and just in her dissemination of consequences and rewards for students and staff. This woman is a do-er, in every sense of the word. I view her as an unbreakable umbrella. She protects the teachers from as many mandates as possible, so that we can do our job effectively, and she trusts our professional ability to do our job right. It feels like a true team, working together for our students. But the experiences of that first year when the leadership was lacking are hard to forget.

Second, professional development is USELESS unless a teacher can make what he or she has learned applicable to their classroom and students. This takes time. During my first and second year, I was required to take a number of classes — provided by the district, by Teach for America, or for my Masters degree — that did not improve my day-to-day teaching. In some cases, it was because the PD was lackluster and I could have read the manual myself. In other cases, it was because I was forced to take particular sessions that were either irrelevant (and so I couldn’t infuse the content into my teaching), or there wasn’t time to absorb what I was learning and infiltrate it into my planning. Imagining a situation where I could have selected professional development that I thought would best suit me and expand my teaching practice excites and motivates me even now.

In the end, it was the restrictions of the setting where I worked that metaphorically choked me out of teaching. Working in a school district as large as Denver Public Schools means that there are more mandates than you can count on your fingers and toes. Following a scripted curriculum leaves little room for expansion and creativity. Having to have a scripted curriculum for every subject meant that I couldn’t be as creative as I wanted or needed to be around units of study.

Trying to prepare for standardized testing in a bilingual school is frustrating and scary. Spending too much time showing students how to properly fill out the tests takes away from what I should be teaching. Learning how to learn, what you like to learn, and how to show others what you have learned does not happen during bubble-test prep.

Imagining hybrid roles

Outside of the restrictions around my profession responsibilities, I felt stifled intellectually. I need intellectual discourse throughout the day. This might be found in teaching another grade level or another subject area. This could also happen if hybrid teaching roles were to be effectively established. My skin tingles when I imagine what my day MIGHT have looked like in a hybrid role where I was able to both teach students and spend time impacting education beyond the four walls of the classroom through collaboration, research and policy work.

I’m not sure yet that I am done with teaching. I only know that right now, I don’t have the same passion as others. When I walk into a room of members of the Denver New Millennium Think Tank, the air crackles. It’s alive with spirit, enthusiasm, ideas that are tangible and pushback that is building new structures on top of solid foundations. There is some life force being exuded by these individuals, and when they come together, I can almost physically see the changes happening, as we speak.

When I’m there, I feed off of that energy. It livens me, drives me, pushes my thinking and my questions. I want to solve the problems and push out the solutions. When I leave, I can’t figure out where my energy has gone. That’s when I know I’m not doing the right thing at the right time. Teaching, as I’m doing it now, is not my passion. It doesn’t make me tick. It doesn’t excite me in the way that — for example — creating American Policy around stopping Joseph Kony from abducting child soldiers in Uganda and Congo has the power to do.

Still some searching to do

There’s no simple answer for why I am leaving, at this juncture. I still have some searching to do as I consider the next step in my life and career. This summer, I will be volunteering with the international group Mercy Corps in Portland, OR. I have applied for a teaching fellowship with Orbis Institute in India for the coming Spring, but that will not be determined until late summer. Ideally, I am looking to go back to school for NGO management and policy study around international conflict and peace negotiations.

Maybe I’ll take this year off and discover just how much I miss the students, the lifestyle, and the discussions. Maybe I just need to try teaching in a different context; a different district, a different school, a different population. The beauty of teaching is that it happens all over, in so many environments.

For now, I’m comforted by the fact that if and when I do come back to teaching, I know that it will be with all my heart.
 
___

Jessica Lyons graduated from the University of Delaware with Bachelor of Arts in International Relations, specializations in Development and Africa, and minors in History, Economics and French Studies. She was accepted into Teacher for America’s Denver 2007 Corps. She taught fifth grade for three years at a DPS elementary school.

In a recent note to us, she wrote: "I do think I am looking for another field that brings out my passion.  However, being away for just a few weeks, I'm still incredibly drawn to teaching."

Is the quality teacher-prep message finally getting through?

In the recent round of federal Teacher Quality Partnership (TQP) grants, several urban teacher residencies won major awards. Awardees included the Boston Teacher Residency, the Denver Teacher Residency, and University of Chicago's Urban Teacher Education Program.

The Boston residency program, with $15 million TQP dollars, will now recruit and prepare more than 540 teachers, who will train for more than a year and emerge with expertise in either working with second language learners or special needs students.

The Denver Teacher Residency, in partnership with the University of Denver (DU), also won a substantial award to focus on “growing” teachers from its own community – individuals who have the cultural competence to teach the district’s diverse students and are willing to teach more than a couple of years (unlike many other alternative certification recruits that have been hired recently). While policy pundits dismiss the need for teachers to earn advanced degrees (and higher pay), DTR promotes an 18-month Master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction, coupled with a two-year induction program.

In the last round of TQP funding, UCLA and its highly touted Center X, in partnership with LAUSD Local District 4 and the Los Angeles Small Schools Center, are developing a powerful model for teacher education for high needs schools. The UCLA effort will pay very close attention to preparing teachers to work with second language learners (with a focus on theories of language structure, acquisition, and development) and on the resources necessary to provide low-cost housing to teacher recruits within the communities they serve. UCLA-trained residents are expected to conduct research into their practice to inform their own development and to assist the program in evaluating its effectiveness.

Could residencies — urban and rural — serve as harbingers of the teacher leaders needed for 21st century schools? Is it possible there may be a movement afoot to take teacher education seriously? Will our nation get over its dysfunctional infatuation with short-cut training? Stay tuned.

No doubt too many traditional education schools are not getting the job done, but neither are alternatives that offer miniscule training for teachers who teach for a short time, while lulling many policymakers into a sense of false security about the quality of the teacher supply lines.

Many Teachers Eager for Hybrid Roles

The MetLife Foundation has released its third and final set of important results from its 2009 annual survey of our nation’s teachers — those dedicated individuals who represent the profession that makes all others possible.

The most recent MetLife installment, Teaching as a Career, captures teachers' thinking about their profession at a critical moment in the history of public education in America, as hundreds of thousands of Baby Boomers approach retirement and a new, very different generation of teachers and potential teachers enters the New Millennium workforce.

One intriguing finding – among many – is that hybrid teaching roles are particularly appealing to new teachers and those who are less than “very satisfied” with their teaching careers today. This concept of hybrid teaching roles is discussed in the recent CTQ monograph The Teachers of 2030 and in even more depth in an upcoming book from Teachers College Press by a team of teachers in the Teacher Leaders Network. 

This TeacherSolutions 2030 book project, supported by the MetLife Foundation, involves a dozen of the nation’s most accomplished teachers – young and not-so-young – who agree on the critical importance of creating hybrid roles that allow classroom experts to both teach students and lead outside their schools, in and out of cyberspace.

The timeliness of their perspective is apparent when we look at this finding from the MetLife survey: Hybrid teaching roles are particularly appealing to new teachers (46%) and those who are less than ‘very satisfied’ with their current teaching career (42%).

The survey report offers several quotes from teachers about the potential of hybrid roles:

“Provides a career trajectory for folks that enables them to keep one foot in the classroom while also stretching themselves or sharing their expertise as a professional.”

“Gives teachers more flexibility; greater opportunity to exercise or explore leadership roles or other roles outside the classroom without having to leave the classroom.”

“Allows schools to take maximum advantage of teacher expertise without weakening the classroom presence of quality teachers.”

The expansive vision of hybrid teaching put forth by my TeacherSolutions 2030 co-authors reaches beyond the thinking of most public school educators today. For example, Ariel Sacks, a 30-year old Brooklyn middle grades teacher, imagines growing numbers of teacherpreneurs who teach part of the day or week and spend the other half of their worklife in diverse roles that support student success. Those roles might include teaching future teachers, working as community organizers with local education funds, serving as peer reviewers to maintain high professional standards, collaborating with researchers to investigate the effects of teaching policies on student achievement, and/or selling their skills and knowledge virtually in the global education marketplace.

More on teacherpreneurism in our forthcoming book. In the meantime, check out the third and final report from this year’s MetLife survey — certainly the nation’s most comprehensive source of facts and opinions about teaching gathered directly from classroom teachers themselves.

In closing, let me share what I believe is the most disturbing finding across the entire survey: Over 70 percent of America’s teachers do NOT believe they are heard when it comes to the current debates on education. Do our policymakers and pundits really believe change is possible without teacher ownership?

Public Attitudes about Teaching: The Details Matter

 Yesterday, Phi Delta Kappa released its annual PDK/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools. The 2009 survey surfaced some surprising sentiments held by the American people about teachers and teaching.

The must-read findings reveal, for example, that almost three-quarters (73%) of those polled believe teachers should be paid on the basis of their students’ test score improvements. But even more (81%) believe that teachers should be paid on the basis of advanced degrees.

The dilemma for policymakers, of course, is to determine how to use test scores to assess teachers in reliable and valid ways, as I’ve written about recently. In the matter of paying for advanced degrees — that practice has long been a part of the “steps and rows” salary schedules of most school systems. What hasn’t been addressed in any large-scale or meaningful way is how we ensure that the advanced degrees teachers earn have a measurable impact on student learning and achievement.

The public’s opinion about teacher tenure — often a contentious issue between school reformers and union leaders  — is intriguing. If the pollsters asked the American people about tenure by defining it as a “lifetime contract” then very few (26%) approved. But if the pollsters defined tenure as “a formal legal review before a teacher could be terminated,” a sizeable majority (66%) approved.

The details matter when we set out to accurately gauge public opinion on teacher and teaching issues. They also matter in devising new ways to assess and reward teachers.  Watch for the launch of our New Millennium Teacher Leaders Network next month — where some of our nation’s most outstanding young teachers will focus on the future of teaching, how they should be judged and paid, and how they will take policy actions in their local communities.

Bushaw, William J. & McNee, John A. (2009, August 26). Americans Speak Out. Are Educators Listening? Phi Delta Kappan. Vol. 91, No. 01, September 2009, pp. 8-23.

What Sarah Fine Is Trying to Tell Us

In her widely read Washington Post article of August 9, fourth-year teacher Sarah Fine makes a compelling case for researchers and reformers to include working conditions in estimating the effects of teachers on student achievement.

As Sarah relates in an essay titled "Schools Need Teachers Like Me; I Just Can't Stay," she recently resigned from her teaching post at Cesar Chavez Public Charter School in Washington DC — citing burnout as the primary factor. Why? She paints a poignant portrait of administrators “steadily expand(ing) the workload and workday” while “more and more major decisions were made behind closed doors, and more and more teachers felt micromanaged rather than supported.”

Teaching in a high-needs school is often a frenetic experience. Many teachers need to put in well over 60 hours a week to manage multiple interventions, meet the social and emotional needs of their students, mediate conflicts when out-of-school turmoil spills over into the classroom, cope with the complexity of teaching highly mobile students, and deal with the constant pressure to prepare for high-stakes tests.

In the large-scale reform experiments of the past decade, the potential power of policies that promote effective teaching as a major driver of school improvement has been mostly ignored. The focus instead has been on marginalizing teachers and/or “teacher-proofing” curriculum and instruction — rather than recognizing that teachers, with the right policy supports, are the ideal agents of meaningful and sustainable change.

At the federal level, teacher policy is now shifting rapidly toward well-funded initiatives that will link student achievement test scores to teachers in an effort to determine who is effective or not. Investing in research and pilot projects so that we can do a better job of identifying effective teachers makes sense — using rigorous measures and tools that keep a tight focus on the critical dimensions of student learning.

But judging teacher performance  without paying attention to the conditions under which qualified teachers can teach effectively will not give America the answers we need to create a New Millennium teaching force that will move all children ahead.