Advancing the Teaching Profession

Reform Rhetoric Needs to Match Teaching Realities

A recent report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Center for American Progress identifies what it describes as “leaders and laggards” in efforts to reinvent our nation’s public schools. As a backdrop to the federal government’s $4 billion-plus Race to the Top competition for innovative state actions, the report calls for path-breaking approaches to school reform and teacher quality. However, the report seems to promote more status quo thinking than not — and ignores a number of key factors central to improving student learning and advancing teaching as a results-oriented profession.
 
For example, the report calls for more of the same short-cut alternative certification programs that do not prepare teachers for high-need schools or the demands of 21st century teaching. It also fails to consider the critical role of working conditions in ensuring teachers can teach effectively.
 
The report promotes much needed entrepreneurship in public education — and heaps much-deserved praise on school districts like Long Beach Unified in California. However, the report’s authors pay no heed to the fact that LBUSD neither relies on charter schools nor alternative certification programs like Teach for America or the New Teacher Project. In fact, the district works very closely with the education school at California State University–Long Beach to grow their own teaching talent and prepare a new generation of teachers who are well versed in innovative pedagogical approaches, including those needed to work effectively with second language learners and the district’s standards-based curriculum. In a district serving so many high-needs students, LBUSD leaders can’t afford to take chances with teacher effectiveness.
 
The report also disregards the role that teaching and learning conditions play in teacher effectiveness and retention — and therefore in student achievement. 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. Many teachers in high-needs schools, especially those without extensive preparation, also struggle to find resources they can use to differentiate instruction for students with varying academic needs, including the growing number of students who are learning English as a second language.
 
The human price, all too often, is professional burn-out — well described by a former Teach For America recruit, Sarah Fine, who resigned from teaching because administrators “steadily expand(ed) 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.”
 
At CTQ, our current studies of working conditions are revealing how poor school administrators mismanage the hiring of new teachers and how devastated school budgets force well-intended principals to hire cheap and less prepared novices and not the expert veterans they seek. We have also found how school mis-management can create unnecessary out-of-field teaching (e.g., biology teacher teaching math, early childhood teachers forced to teach 5th grade without any support in the transition) that keeps teachers from doing their jobs effectively.
 
Reform reports like Leaders and Laggards can play an important role in educating the public about aspects of school reform. But our students will be better served if the reform rhetoric more closely matches the realities that teachers face every day.

Effective Teaching: It's about Teams, Not Lonely Heroes

A few months ago I posted an entry about an important new study demonstrating the powerful effect of teacher collaboration in producing greater student achievement gains.

Using 11 years of student data in North Carolina, researchers from Harvard and Cornell have found that most value-added achievement gains are attributable to the make-up of teacher teams, not the traits and characteristics of individual teachers. Put another way, the collaboration model—not the lone-teacher-hero model loved by Hollywood and a surprising number of ed-policy wonks—produces the most student growth.

Despite the conventional wisdom posed by some inside-the-Beltway policy analysts, researchers Jackson and Bruegmann found that teaching experience (and qualifications) matter for student learning. Despite the barrage of criticism they have endured in recent years, it turns out that teaching veterans and those who meet standard certification requirements actually promote more academic growth—especially if they are organized for student success.

Now Education Sector, in a terrific new report by Elena Silva, explains why schools can no longer risk isolating teachers. Silva's work also raises serious questions about individualistic merit pay plans.

“The strategic positioning of teachers, where the best ones work among and with the rest, may be as important as formal training or professional development,” she writes.

However, Silva also points out that collaboration doesn’t mean less personal responsibility—that the “team approach doesn’t come at the expense of individualized growth or accountability” and the need continues to identify and reward “the specific contributions and areas of needed improvement of each individual teacher.“

To have the desired impact, new forms of performance pay must be more nuanced and sophisticated than the blunt instruments of the past. They will need, for example, to recognize, encourage and reward teamwork that impacts student learning and teachers who spread their expertise to others.

I’ll admit to some bias, but I think the 2007 TeacherSolutions performance-pay report, penned by 18 expert  teachers from our Teacher Leaders Network, describes a powerful framework for paying teachers in ways that matter most for real student learning.

As I read through the new Economic Policy Institute report Redesigning Teacher Pay: A System for the Next Generation of Teachers, I was struck by the many areas of agreement between the work of the 2007 team of classroom teachers and the ideas presented by Susan Moore Johnson and John Papay. That bodes well for the EPI work, I think. The one thing missing in most of the performance-pay schemes to date has been teacher buy-in and support. And without that, no new plan for professional compensation is going to survive for long.

We Need to Dispel the Myths about Effective Teachers

If you want to reflect for a moment on education half-truths and the imprecise diagnosis of teaching quality problems, take a look at two articles published in the October 18th edition of the Los Angeles Times — one on value-added teacher evaluations and the other on challenging education myths.

Both pieces raise important issues related to the role of teacher education as well as student test scores in developing and identifying effective teachers. But in addressing those issues, the journalist-authors actually embellish current myths rather than dispel them — and may send us down the wrong policy road.

Myth: Teacher tenure rules make it impossible to get rid of poor teachers.

Fact: A recent study by the New Teacher Project clearly shows that the difficulty in removing ineffective teachers has much more to do with poorly trained administrators who have few skills and inadequate tools to distinguish between excellent, average, and poor teaching. Another report, from the Center for American Progress also concluded that poor evaluation procedures, not tenure, are most likely to account for a school district’s inability to fire poor performers.

Myth: Teach for America, a rapid-entry alternative certification program designed to recruit bright young people into teaching, produces more effective teachers than traditional university-based programs.

Fact: Nationally, the Teach for America program produced about 4000 new teachers this school year, a very small contribution given that U.S. public schools need to hire about 250,000 new teachers annually. Studies show that TFA recruits tend to produce student achievement gains only slightly better than comparison teachers — and only in math, not in reading. Most importantly, the comparison groups in these studies tend to be teachers in the same or similar schools who have even less formal pedagogical preparation than TFA recruits. Why? Because the high needs schools in which TFA’ers teach often have to rely on substitutes and other poorly qualified individuals. Studies also show that more than 80 percent of Teach for America recruits, much like other recruits who enter with little formal training, leave the classroom by their third year of teaching, becoming part of the revolving door of novices who pass quickly through high-needs classrooms. This does not mean that tradtional teacher education has it right. It doesn’t. But less is not more in preparing teachers for high needs schools.

Myth: Standardized tests now in place are always the most accurate means of assessing student progress and teacher effectiveness. Scores from these tests should be the primary metric for evaluating teachers and increasing accountability.

Fact: Today’s “value-added” systems for measuring teacher effects can provide useful information, but the data are not always reliable for making high-stakes decisions. Assessments based solely on scores from tests currently in use are not designed to help teachers become more effective. Also, recent studies show that most value-added student academic gains are attributed to teacher teams, not individuals. Drawing on very sophisticated analyses, these studies reveal that the most powerful predictor of student achievement over time seems to be whether small groups of teachers are learning from each other as they teach. This suggests that policymakers should not just focus on replacing the “bottom 6-10%” of ineffective teachers, but devise strategies so that “teachers raise their games when the quality of their colleagues improves.”

Policymakers and practitioners do need to think much differently about assessing teachers and transforming teacher education. But that new thinking will not be productive if we cling to the educational equivalent of urban legends about what makes for effective teachers and successful students.

Looking beyond the Big Broom

In many ways DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee has become the iconic leader of the current school reform movement. Who can forget the December 2008 Time Magazine cover depicting Rhee brandishing a broom and a stare — ready to sweep out the incompetent teachers in the beleaguered district and replace them with bright young talent who would raise student achievement test scores in a hurry.

There’s no doubt that a take-charge approach is needed in the DC Public Schools, where a focus on effective teaching and accountability were sorely lacking before Ms. Rhee’s tenure began in 2007.
 
But a bit more than two years into Rhee’s chancellorship, another side of the D.C. reform initiative is beginning to surface, suggesting that the current school reform team may not be enacting the changes that students most need and deserve.

The inexperienced and inexpensive itinerant teachers favored by Ms. Rhee’s human capital approach to school system management are not always the answer.  In fact, by drawing on the voices of several students, today’s Washington Post suggests that many of these recent hires may be doing more harm than good.

Dayna Downs, a middle school student, told this story: "We had a great science teacher who knew how to handle our class and make learning fun. Now he's been replaced with a less-experienced teacher, and the class is acting a lot differently. Some students don't listen anymore." Downs told city officials at a hearing Saturday that "We have a science test coming up, and I'm worried about failing because our new teacher doesn't know where we are in our work."

Ikechukwu Umez-Eronini, a high school senior, complained of the “complete lack of transparency about what’s going on in the school system.” Umez-Eronini, a leader in student protests over teacher firings, continued: "You can't get a straight answer about anything -- not about the firings, the school budget or the test scores.”

This Post article (by metro columnist Courtland Milloy) suggests that the Big Broom is simply too crude an instrument to improve schools in the long run and protect children’s interests in the here and now.

Radical change is required — but solutions need to match the problems. I believe a new narrative is beginning to emerge around how we can more accurately identify effective teachers and teaching practices, and how we can craft nuanced reform policies that don’t reduce the complex issues in our public schools to a single cause.

In the meantime we all need to listen more carefully to thoughtful students like Dayna and Ikechukwu, for whom misguided policy is no abstraction.

New Research Confirms the Importance of Spreading Teacher Expertise

As policymakers focus on identifying and rewarding effective teaching, they should pay close attention to an important new study demonstrating the powerful effect of teacher collaboration in producing greater student achievement gains.

Using 11 years of student data in North Carolina, researchers have found that most value-added achievement gains are attributed to the make-up of teacher teams, not the traits and characteristics of individual teachers. Drawing on sophisticated analyses of this large database, they reported in a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research that peer learning among small groups of teachers seems to be the most powerful predictor of student achievement over time.

Researchers C. Kirabo Jackson and Elias Bruegmann found that "students have larger test score gains when their teachers experience improvements in the observable characteristics of their colleagues." Less experienced teachers who are still acquiring “on-the-job” skills are most sensitive to changes in peer quality; teachers with greater labor-market attachment are more sensitive to peer quality; and both current and historical peer quality changes affect current student achievement.

The researchers warn that using value-added methods to identify individual teachers for merit pay and other high stakes decisions may very well be confounded by how teachers learn from each other. As one of the study’s authors noted, “If you give the reward at the individual level, all of a sudden my peers are no longer my colleagues—they’re my competitors. If you give it at the school level, then you’re going to foster feelings of team membership, and that increases the incentive to work together and help each other out.”

It is time to figure out 21st century teaching effectiveness systems that both identify expert teachers and reward them for spreading their expertise to others. I've been harping on the importance of this "spread effect" for some time. It's exciting to see research from a disinterested source that substantiates this key component of effective teaching.

Reaping the Whirlwind

John Merrow’s recent PBS NewsHour broadcast on staffing our nation’s most challenging schools with Teach for America (TFA) recruits is a must see. Listening to Mr. Merrow’s interview with Paul Vallas, you would think the superintendent of the New Orleans Recovery School District has only one of two choices: fill classrooms with young, energetic, “top talent” from competitive colleges — or with old, tired, academically and pedagogically inept teachers from wherever.

The facts revealed in Merrow’s report show how important it is for teachers to get the “right” training and support in order to teach effectively in high needs schools -- much less in an urban community like New Orleans, with a long history of school problems capped by the most devastating natural disaster in modern American history.

The issue is not the intense, five-week lockstep pedagogical training regime of TFA. Nor is it the typical, disconnected university-based teacher education program, where teaching-methods courses have little to do with preparation for high needs schools. The answer is something else, and a big piece of it can be seen in emerging urban teacher residency initiatives in Chicago and elsewhere — and the cutting-edge preparation programs at top-flight education schools like those at Stanford and UCLA.

In these pacesetter programs, education researchers work with expert K-12 teachers who develop and support new recruits over time. With high-quality residency and internship programs, we can help new teachers build the resiliency they must have to survive and prosper in schools that need them most. The smart, idealistic people who enter these programs are able to work side by side — for many weeks and months — with seasoned veterans who are able to share their successful strategies and their deep knowledge of high-needs school culture.

Pop sociologist Malcolm Gladwell, in his best-selling book, Outliers, has made a compelling case that training and effort are more important than talent. Gladwell points out that the most effective individuals (including teachers, we can assume) put in at least 10,000 hours of practice on the road to proficiency and success. Compare that to the average amount of practice we give to new teachers — traditional or alternative — before we hurl them into one of the most challenging jobs in our society.

During her interview with Merrow, TFA recruit Jeylan Erman lamented that “I thought I'd come into teaching being naturally good at it, because I care so much about students. I automatically thought that, because I care so much, I [would necessarily] be really great. It's not like that.”

The New Orleans recruits needed more pedagogical tools and more seasoned veterans to help them teach effectively. They also needed to work in a redefined teaching profession, where youth is not pitted against experience, and teachers and administrators work closely with health and social service agencies (like the Harlem’s Children Zone) to connect schools and communities in serving students and their families.

Although many teachers who viewed the NewsHour report were understandably upset by any suggestion that multiple years of professional service is somehow a negative, the Merrow piece actually makes a compelling case that all new teachers, no matter their academic pedigree, need serious training and support in order to teach in high needs schools.

Watch it carefully and probe beyond the surface debate about 5-week TFA training versus the 12-week student teaching experience offered  by most education schools. Let’s quit wasting all this youthful talent, energy and idealism and get serious about what it truly takes to recruit, prepare and retain teachers for the kids we all say we care about. Until we do, we’ll continue to reap the whirlwind.

To Ensure That Democracy is No More At Risk

Last week the Forum for Education and Democracy released a hard-hitting provocative report on the current status of American education — which continues to leave many children behind. The report makes a strong case for policymakers to support our nation’s public schools similar to other countries with whom we compete economically by investing in the teaching profession, testing students for critical thinking and problem-solving, and ensuring that schools are financed equitably.

The report’s recommendations for overhauling the federal role in American education are substantial with costs estimated at an additional $29 billion a year, approximately 75 percent more than the U.S. Department of Education currently spends on K-12 education. The extra investments will (1) prepare teachers fully for high needs schools and offer incentives to keep them there, (2) create community schools that are "hubs of educational services" for children and families, (3) redesign testing and accountability systems so that they support “intellectually ambitious learning,” and (4) offer disadvantaged school communities additional resources for safe housing and health care.

Almost doubling the education budget may sound ambitious, but as Linda Darling-Hammond, one of the conveners and editors of the report noted, “What we’re talking about is an asterisk” in the federal budget. Indeed, the new dollars called for by the Forum’s recommendations amount to nothing more than 10 weeks of waging war in Iraq. The proposals are transformative – but also feasible. It is time for revolutionary change in public education. Without it our democracy will remain “at risk.”