Advancing the Teaching Profession

Some RttT Rules Ignore Research

Last week, the NY Times published an editorial, “The ‘Highly Qualified Teacher’ Dodge,” chastising Education Secretary Duncan for not pushing states harder to address the fact that inexperienced and unqualified teachers are disproportionately hired by high needs schools. The Times editors noted that Duncan’s Race to the Top (RttT) grant guidelines may allow states to “paper” over the problem, much like the Bush administration did.

The NYT editorial also criticized “the sometimes excessive influence of boutique alternative certification programs” which, while attracting bright college students to teaching, do not prepare them deeply for teaching in high needs schools (e.g., working with second language learners, special needs students, students living in poverty) and actually encourage them to exit after only a few years in the classroom, leaving their students to a revolving door of underprepared teachers.
 
The USDOE’s RttT guidelines for alternative certification include recruiting candidates selectively (good) and providing supervised, school-based experiences for them (good). However, the RttT rules do not specify whether alternative certification candidates need to pass muster in a full-year supervised internship before becoming a teacher of record (bad), and they actually call for “significantly limit(ing) the amount of coursework required” (real bad – one more iteration of the “teachers don’t need much help learning how to teach” line of poor reasoning).

Alternative certification coursework shouldn’t be a time-waster — any course of study required of teacher candidates needs to be pertinent and of good quality. Non-traditional recruits (e.g., mid-career switchers) should also be offered a different preparation regime than the more traditional 18-23 year olds. But let’s not ignore the recent studies showing that alternatively trained teachers who had very limited pedagogical coursework before they began to teach actually lowered their students’ achievement scores over the course of the academic year.[i]

And let's not forget the 2008 examination of evidence on the value of teacher education by the National Bureau of Economic Research, which found that teachers with more extensive clinical training (including a full-year internship) before they began to teach actually produced higher student achievement gains.[ii]

In light of all these findings, the RttT guidelines on teacher recruitment and preparation just don’t make sense. The New York Times and the Congressional Black Caucus are right to be raising questions.

[i] Corcoran, S. P., & Jennings, J. L. (2009). Review of “An Evaluation of Teachers Trained Through Different Routes to Certification: Final Report.” Boulder, CO and Tempe, AZ: Education and the Public Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit. Retrieved November 1, 2009 from http://epicpolicy.org/thinktank/review-evaluation-of-teachers

[ii] Boyd, D., Grossman, P., Lankford, H., Loeb, S. & Wyckoff, J. (2008, September). Teacher preparation and student achievement. NBER Working Paper Number W14314. National Bureau of Economic Research. Retrieved September 30, 2008 at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1264576

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.

Listen Closely: Working Conditions Matter in High-Needs Schools

I know I can sound like an iPod in repeat mode. I admit to an obsession about the connections between teacher effectiveness and the conditions under which teachers work. But somebody has to crank up the noise around this issue and play it again and again for the policymakers and pundits who are hard of hearing.

We will be releasing a CTQ paper soon that pinpoints these connections and describes how we can staff high-needs schools by providing dedicated teachers the supports they need to be effective.

Meanwhile a new study from Chicago, just released, adds more volume to what I hope will one day become a crescendo of concern about the relationship between working conditions and teacher turnover and effectiveness. The study, conducted by the Consortium on Chicago School Research, found that:

On average, teacher stability rates in Chicago are not substantially different than the rates seen nationally; about 80 percent of CPS teachers remain teaching in their school from one year to the next. This is only slightly lower than the national average of 84 percent.

However, these one-year stability rates hide a sobering statistic—within five years, the typical CPS school loses over half of its teachers. Many schools turn over half of their teaching staff every three years. A focus on one-year stability rates obscures the enormous challenge that exists for many schools as they implement school improvement initiatives and professional development programs, and as they try to sustain program continuity. (emphasis added)

About 100 schools, the CCSR researchers tell us, “suffer from chronically high rates of teacher turnover,” losing more than 25 percent of their teaching staff yearly.

Collaboration increases retention

We found in our own research that for teachers one of the most potent working conditions for teaching in high-needs schools is the collective experience of a small group of like-trained colleagues who work well together and pool their skills to effectively serve students. The Chicago research uncovered similar findings:

Schools that retain their teachers at high rates are those with a strong sense of collaboration among teachers and the principal. Teachers are likely to stay in schools where they view their colleagues as partners with them in the work of improving the whole school. They are likely to leave schools where colleagues are resistant to school-wide initiatives and where teachers’ efforts stop at their own classroom door. Teachers stay in schools with inclusive leadership, where they feel they have influence over their work environment and they trust their principal as an instructional leader.

Lead CCSR researcher Elaine Allensworth lamented the study’s findings in a Sun-Times interview: "I find (this) really disturbing; I just see no way they can improve if they can't maintain a stable work force.'' With high turnover, investments in professional development are wasted and the critical role of teacher leadership in advancing student achievement is undermined.

Could the link between working conditions and teacher success in high-needs schools be any plainer? How loud will the wake-up call need to be for policymakers and reformers to stop pressing the snooze button?

In the current ed policy environment, it seems that all teachers teaching in high-needs schools are assumed to be incompetent, and extrinsic punishments (e.g., demotions and firing) and rewards (merit pay) are needed to improve student achievement. The only way to hang on to this assumption, quite frankly, is to stay out of high-needs schools. Otherwise, you will encounter a significant number of skillful, committed teachers who are (depending on conditions) either making a difference for kids or struggling mightily against the odds until they exhaust themselves and move on. And that might get you to thinking. . . .

Where do the brightest dream of teaching?

In other nations whose students outperform ours on the same international tests often lauded by teacher critics in the U.S., teachers are treated with honor — not bashed by the media for failing to work hard enough. In Finland, one of the top-scoring nations, high-stakes testing and performance pay for teachers take a policy backseat.

As Timo Lankinen, the director general of the Finnish National Board of Education, noted recently, the key to student achievement is "how to maintain good working conditions in schools." In Finland and other nations with whom we compete, optimum working conditions are considered an essential prerequisite to recruiting and retaining talented individuals to teaching.

There are no short-cuts to teacher education either — and no tolerance for poorly run education schools. In Finland, investments are made in deeply preparing teachers who are then given “broad authority to shape lessons and use strategies they believe will help students meet (academic) standards.” Teachers are valued and their growing expertise is the cornerstone of reform. As a result, Lankinen says, in Finland “people dream to be teachers.” Not cannon fodder.

Brooklyn teacher Ariel Sacks, one of the new-millennium educators in our Teacher Leaders Network, has written that in high-needs schools too many teachers are viewed as “expendable.” She poignantly points to the fact that “if policy-makers care about the lives of all students in public schools, then they need to think about the lives of their teachers — and invest aggressively” in them.

In Finland, the best and the brightest seek out teaching as a principled and intellectually satisfying profession. So why not here?

Ending the Battles over Teaching

The Teacher Union vs. Teach for America debates are getting more and more tiresome — and seemingly not very productive. Over at the blogs of Mike Antonucci and Andy Rotherham (EduWonk) the teaching quality turf battles continue.

Maybe if we first clear a few things up, we can get closer to striking agreement.

Several studies have found that some highly selected entrants who receive most of their university training after they begin teaching in high-needs schools do as well or better than other teachers who teach in the same schools -- where those teachers are not highly selected or well-prepared themselves.

Researchers have noted, however, that highly selected new recruits (from routes such as Teach for America) are generally less effective when compared to fully prepared teachers until they themselves gain experience and certification. When they do show up as more effective, the results for students are typically not very significant (in educational, not just statistical terms).

The bottom line is that more than 80 percent of TFA recruits leave the classroom by the end of their third year. In other words, just as they are becoming more effective, they depart through a revolving door and make room for new and typically under-prepared teachers.

Andy Rotherham is on point when he says many administrators “clamor” for TFA recruits. They have few other alternatives. If they did have other promising options, the clamoring would die down.

I just returned from two very high-needs schools in Florida (in different school districts) and found that administrators there would much rather be able to recruit well-prepared teachers who know the kids in their school communities and would stick with their schools for at least 5-8 years (and hopefully longer). Administrators really want those teachers who know how to teach effectively to persist in their jobs.

And there’s more research to consider: Several new studies have found that entrants from strong teacher education programs both stay in teaching significantly longer and achieve greater student achievement gains than those of either alternative route entrants or weak traditional programs.  

One recent study points to the importance of substantive internship or residency experiences to ensuring later teacher effectiveness (as measured by value-added gains). Also check out the teacher education effects data in Louisiana where graduates of NE Louisiana-Monroe outperform other recruits, including those from TFA, the New Teacher Project and traditional graduates from the state's R1 institution – LSU. Like so much other research, this study found that there is more variation within different types of routes into teaching than among them.

One fact is certain: Poorly prepared teachers, from whatever source, who exit the profession quickly leave their students to be taught by the next round of novices who routinely replace them. In high-needs schools (where much of this quick-exiting takes place) those coming in are likely to be as ill-trained as those going out. Any program that produces this kind of result is inadequate to resolve the very real inequities in teaching quality that students in these schools suffer.

This does not mean that high-quality alternative certification should not be part of a long-term strategy to recruit and retain effective teachers for high-needs schools. Not at all. But it is time to cease the either-or debate over TFA versus traditional teacher education. It’s a policy cul-de-sac. It’s also time to stop defending the morass of teacher education and state licensing procedures and requirements that get in the way of recruiting and preparing the right mix of talented individuals to teaching. It’s indefensible.

Let’s move on to some fresh thinking, including rethinking teacher FTEs and how we organize teacher leadership in schools. Let’s consider restructuring so that high-minded but less prepared recruits (who may not stay very long in teaching) can work under the tutelage of experts who will.  At the Center for Teaching Quality we are working with TFA colleagues in North Carolina to see if we can make this happen.

See my recent Education Week commentary for more of my thoughts about how we can end the battles over teaching.

Growing NBCTs in High Needs Schools

While shortages of qualified and effective teachers persist in high-needs schools, there is no shortage of rhetoric about the proper remedy.

It’s a rare week when a think tank or research center does not produce a report on what ails the teaching profession. For example just recently, the Center for American Progress released two reports — one on attracting and retaining effective teachers for high needs schools and the other on pay for performance programs as a primary tool to do so. Both reports from the influential think tank are informative, but like many others before them, they do not address a number of critical issues. One very important missing piece: quality teacher preparation and good working conditions are critical in supplying effective, stick-with-it teachers to high needs schools. Another missing element in the discussion: The important role of growing expertise from within.

Our own research at the Center for Teaching Quality has taught us how powerful the certification process can be as a strategy in developing successful teachers in high-needs schools. We have also learned from National Board Certified Teachers, who describe the huge payoffs that come when teams of teachers sitting for the National Boards use their intensified focus on high standards to consider many teacher effectiveness issues that policy pundits overlook or do not fully understand.

One of the best examples can be found in a crime-riddled, impoverished neighborhood in Phoenix, Arizona, where 20 of Mitchell Elementary School’s 34 teachers are either National Board Certified or in the process of earning the performance-based credential. Mitchell serves a community where less than 25 percent of the adults have a high school education. Over 50 percent of the students are second language learners; 96 percent are on free/reduced lunch, and 96 percent are Latino. The school was once in NCLB corrective action. Now Mitchell meets all its AYP goals each year.

The district did not recruit expert teachers to high needs school; they grew them from within. In addition, most of their home-grown NBCTs have roots in the community. Most are minorities, like the students they teach.

Most importantly, Mitchell teachers claim the process has transformed their teaching and given them newfound opportunities to take more control over their professional development. With support from the Arizona K-12 Center and its director, Kathy Wiebke, teachers are using the National Board process to better understand their teaching and how it directly impacts student achievement — as a collective. In particular, together these teachers are learning more about how to teach students with special needs and work more closely with parents.

As the district’s associate superintendent, Suzanne Zentner, noted, “We believe in the NBC process" as an “alternative approach to improving student performance” and closing the achievement gaps.  Teacher turnover is no problem at Mitchell Elementary School in inner-city Phoenix.

We all agree that we must pursue fresh approaches to recruiting and retaining effective teachers for high needs schools. The strategy of growing NBCTs from within is showing promising results where it has been tried. It's the best of all worlds -- combining rigorous professional standards, teacher collaboration, and bottom-up leadership. We need to give this promising strategy every chance to succeed.

Teaching is a Team Sport

The luminous Eduwonkette has once again served up a shrewd rejoinder -- this time to Malcolm Gladwell’s recent essay in The New Yorker and his off-the-mark analogy relating the spotting of talented pro quarterbacks to the identification of teacher candidates who will be more effective in the classroom.

Great college quarterbacks do not always make it in the pros because the context is so different (e.g., the speed of the defensive linemen and cornerbacks). Teachers with credentials (high test scores, education school training, masters’ degrees, experience, etc.) do not always make it in pro-level school situations because the context is so different (e.g., the diversity of children and the dynamics of peer interaction inside of real classrooms).

For Gladwell, teacher "withitness” cannot be observed until one begins to teach. This leads him to buy -- lock, stock, and barrel – into the conventional wisdom (of labor economists) that teacher education and credentialing do not matter much, thereby throwing a block into the backs of those who see a need to prepare teachers before they begin to practice their profession.

As Eduwonkette points out, Gladwell pretty much ignores school contexts and working conditions – things like having access to effective colleagues and time to work with them, or supportive principals who pave the way for the best teachers to lead. There are few more effective quarterbacks than Brett Favre – but he and his new NY Jet teammates are struggling of late because his talented receivers are not fast enough to race past the corners and take advantage of Favre’s long ball threat. Turns out football is a team sport, too.

Gladwell, in looking for answers, seems to contradict himself. He concludes by calling for residencies and apprenticeships that can serve as training grounds for a new generation of teaching talent. As an example, he draws on the financial advising industry which recruits talent and culls out the best after a four-month training program AND a multi-year apprenticeship, all the while ensuring that novices are not dispensing advice independently until they are safe to practice.

Ironically, given his romance with the labor economists, Gladwell ends up calling for the kind of (pricey) teacher education and credentialing system that many of us teacher-ed apologists have recommended for a long time — a system that recruits talent, offers context-specific pre-service preparation AND substantial opportunities to see and learn from the masters before going solo.

Paying Teachers Differently: A Good Idea, But More Data Needed

In one of the few empirical investigations on the topic, Charlie Clotfelter and colleagues have found that North Carolina’s high need school bonus pay program was beginning to make a difference for teacher retention.  View study here.  The program, which began in 2001, paid $1800 to certified math, science and special education teachers working in high poverty or academically failing public secondary schools.

Eligible schools either had 80 percent or more of students on free or reduced lunch or had 50 percent or more of students performing below grade level on the state’s end of course tests in Algebra and biology.  Over three years, 2000 teachers from 148 schools in 65 school districts received annual supplements. (The state has 2000 total schools and 117 total school districts).

Using longitudinal data on teachers, the researchers estimated hazard models that identify the impact of this differential pay by comparing turnover patterns before and after the program’s implementation, across eligible and ineligible categories of teachers, and across eligible and barely-ineligible schools.  Results suggest that this bonus payment was sufficient to reduce mean turnover rates of the targeted teachers by 12%.  This is good news for districts that often have 30 percent or more annual turnover rates.

However, the data suggest there is much more that needs to be explored to pay teachers differently in order to retain them in high need schools.  Middle school math teachers were more likely to be positively affected, but not their high school counterparts, nor those who taught science or special education.  Teachers with less than 10 years of experience were more likely NOT to be influenced by the bonus pay to stay in teaching.

However, the researchers discovered that the effect of the program may have been at least partly undermined by the state’s failure to fully educate teachers regarding the eligibility criteria.  However, the North Carolina database upon which the researchers drew was incomplete, and too little is known about which teachers, with specific qualifications, stayed and which ones left and why (and where they went).  Some teachers may have left for reasons well beyond the control of the school and whatever financial incentive may or may not be in place. The Clotfelter database could not distingusigh between different types of turnover. We also do not know about the extent of the impact of the $1800 bonus vis a vis the school’s working conditions, which we have found to have a huge impact on both student achievement and teacher retention.

I am in Chicago currently, participating in a small working conference sponsored by the Spencer Foundation and the CPRE, on developing new teacher labor market studies.  My colleagues here, mostly economists, are looking to conduct studies like the one conducted by Clotfelter and company.  But there was also a call for more case studies of comprehensive teacher development and distribution reforms like those underway in Charlotte, Chattanooga, and Mobile. My colleagues here at Center for Teaching Quality have already assembled compelling evidence from Mobile showing that bonuses of $4000 were instrumental in encouraging qualified teachers to move to the district’s highest need schools.  But the influence of money for the teachers paled in comparison to the influence of a good principal, a critical mass of like-minded colleagues, and additional professional development and resources needed to teach effectively in high need schools.  Paying teachers differently holds promise in closing the teaching quality gap.  However, pay while necessary, is not sufficient to recruit and retain teachers for schools who need them most.