Advancing the Teaching Profession

What's Next: Evaluation As Narrative

Stephen Sawchuk’s recent Ed Week article on the new wave of teacher evaluation systems—and the high ratings they're generating—has likely left many reformers scratching their heads.

Stephen points out that in states like Tennessee and Florida, which are hotbeds for Michelle Rhee–type teaching policies, the vast majority of teachers are quite effective. Even in Florida, where teachers are judged by standardized test score gains, 97 percent received top ratings. In Tennessee’s new system, more than 16 percent of the teachers were rated with the lowest score on test score measures. Only 0.2 percent of those observed by principals were categorized as ineffective.

While there are many policymakers—and virtually all of our nation’s 3.2 million teachers themselves—who want to see more rigorous and valid evaluation systems that strengthen teaching practices, there are also reformers who want nothing more than to identify ineffective teachers and dismiss them. But overall, we need to shift our focus from what's not working for the ineffective minority to how we can ensure continued growth for the effective majority.

Although scholars have long pointed out the problems of current teacher evaluation systems (see Art Wise and Linda Darling-Hammond’s 1984 research (PDF) and its seminal findings), there is still much to learn about the validity of the programs that are being put into place today.

Even when pains are taken to create a fair and reliable ratings system, such as the Measures of Effective Teaching project, flaws still abound. Jesse Rothstein and colleagues found that in each of the multiple measures (standardized test score gains, classroom observations, and student engagement ratings) used in the carefully designed project reflects a distinct dimension of teaching. They also noted that “none of the three types of performance measures captures much of the variation in teachers’ impacts on alternative, conceptually demanding tests.”

What none of these analyses suggest is how teaching conditions must change before we can design and implement a valid and reliable evaluation system.

Both principals and teachers must have more time to look carefully at the data and make sense of it. In top-performing nations like Singapore, teachers only teach students 18 to 20 hours a week. Here in the U.S., we devote little organizational space to assembling sound evidence, analyzing it, and applying professional judgment to determine who is effective and why—and how to help them get better.

Singapore's core competencies for teachers, via the National Institute of Education, Singapore. (Click to enlarge.)

In Singapore there is no obsession with standardized test scores. Teachers are evaluated on how they nurture the child, work with parents, and care for both the heart and mind. In Singapore, evaluation is not a number (or three of them); it is a narrative that encourages teachers to expand their teaching repertoire, select a career track, and take those developmental actions that lead to greater competence and higher levels on a career lattice. Teachers’ evaluations are based on the experience level of the teacher, since the level of competence expected of a new teacher is much lower than expectations for senior teachers. But most importantly, the evaluations don't just assess current performance. They also consider a teacher’s potential.

Will policymakers start viewing evaluation differently? I suspect they will, if only they listened more carefully to the millions of teachers nationwide who want an evaluation system that will genuinely improve their practice and their students’ learning. 

Governor Walker Does a 180 on Unions

I couldn't help but smile when I read this morning about the support that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is giving to union workers. Governor Walker, through his politics and policies, has sought to dismantle teachers' unions (as well as those that represent nurses) in his home state. Now, he's doing a 180 of sorts in his call for the return of unionized—and currently locked out—NFL referees. 

I guess for Governor Walker what's good for professional football—well prepared and compensated referees who have pensions that encourage them to remain in the profession—isn't good for public schools and teachers. Team owners have decided to sacrifice valuable experience and expertise instead of spending more money. In the meantime, 1,500 years of collective experience on the field are being lost as substitute referees man NFL games. Team owners have decided to sacrifice
 
Walker's words are timely, considering much of the nation is still attuned to the teachers' strike in Chicago, and the factors at play there. Matt Miller, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, has noted of late that there is a lot “lost in the clash” between school reformers (e.g., Mayor Rahm Emanuel) and teachers' union leaders (e.g., Karen Lewis).

I suspect the same can be said for what ails NFL management and the referees' union.

According to Miller, at the “heart” of the Chicago public schools kerfuffle is money—because that's what it takes “to boost teacher salaries to attract and retain decent talent.” That in turn, he says, ensures that all students—no matter where they live—have access to high-quality teaching and learning opportunities. Miller’s take is that simply making students go to school for more days or evaluating teachers primarily on the basis of test scores will not solve the underlying problem: gross inequity of funding in public education.
 
Don’t get me wrong: there is much more to school reform than additional dollars. And the unions should not expect more pay and benefits for its members without a teacher evaluation system that draws on student learning results. But reformers miss the mark when they insist on evaluation systems that rely on statistical tools that can easily misidentify teachers as "good" or "bad."

They also miss the mark when they press for a longer school year for students by hiring ill-trained (and cheaper) novices instead of laid-off (and more experienced) veterans. And they surely miss the mark when they want to extend the school year without supplying the resources students need—including textbooks, computers, and classrooms that do not freeze in the winter and swelter in the summer. What's also missing is high-quality professional development for all teachers in the school system.

Similarly, NFL team owners have clearly prioritized saving money over valuing professional experience and expertise. One of the many consequences of the replacement referees is the loss of more than 1,500 years of experience on the field.

It seems that Governor Walker, now that these inept substitute referees robbed his beloved Green Bay Packers of a sure victory, has learned something about the importance of investing in people as a key lever for quality control. He has made quite a turn—though I suspect his views on the NFL referees' union won't affect his views on teaching and learning.

It's time that we extend the same benefits and open thinking we give our sports teams to our public schools and teachers.

At the Core of the Chicago Strike, Mistrust

The big news during the start of the 2012-13 school year has been the Chicago teachers’ strike. By now, we're familiar with the key players—and how they're portrayed: The district officials, led by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the “famously foul-mouthed mayor,” are pressing for a longer school day. Then there's the union, run by the “pushy, witty, unwavering” Karen Lewis, calling for better salary, benefits, and working conditions.

The media and the think tank analysts love a kerfuffle of this brand, often portraying district officials as doing what is best for children, while the union works for its own self-interest. Granted, on the surface, this does seem to be the case—with the average teacher in Chicago earning more than $70,000 a year.

But what is not often revealed is that, under the mayor’s leadership, class sizes have soared. Schools continue to operate without air conditioning and heat, and social work positions are not funded. All the while, the district continues to find ways to divert funds into non-unionized charter schools. Monica Davey of The New York Times has done a good job of providing a more balanced view of Emanuel and Lewis, as well as the politics behind the strike—the first in 25 years.

What's Missing? Context.

Few of today’s pundits point to the ways that yesterday’s conditions have led to the mistrust that abounds today. The historical dynamics among politicians, district administrators, and union leaders frame today's debate, and the actions and words that have led up to them.

Since the 1960s (when teachers began to get collective bargaining rights), unions have often been characterized as focusing on their adult issues, and—led prominently by Al Shanker of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT)—sought to change the conditions that undermined their ability to teach effectively.

In fact, Shanker argued that school conditions—like the ones the Chicago teachers describe today—were demoralizing teachers. Fifty years ago, Shanker pointed to non-teaching duties, inadequate textbook supplies, and rote lesson plans as extra burdens that got in the way of teaching. He advocated on behalf of teachers who sought professionalism—not to pad their pockets, but to allow them the preparation, support, and autonomy required for them to teach effectively.

It's About Working Conditions

Today, Chicago teachers point to their current working conditions that have appeared to have substantially deteriorated—conditions that hurt students and their ability to learn. As Chicago teacher Xian Barrett writes:

"When you make me cram 30-50 kids in my classroom with no air conditioning so that temperatures hit 96 degrees, that hurts our kids.
 
When you lock down our schools with metal detectors and arrest brothers for play fighting in the halls, that hurts our kids.
 
When you take 18-25 days out of the school year for high stakes testing that is not even scientifically applicable for many of our students, that hurts our kids.
 
When you spend millions on your pet programs, but there’s no money for school level repairs, so the roof leaks on my students at their desks when it rains, that hurts our kids."
 
But the fact of the matter is that, since the 1960s, union leaders and administrators have engaged in industrial-style, adversarial, collective bargaining. This bargaining has resulted in periodic labor-management tensions, but also standardized work rules. Collective bargaining has worked well for union leaders who wanted equal treatment of teachers who have varying degrees of skill and marketability, as well as administrators who sought uniform rules for their growing school bureaucracies.

For a host of economic and political reasons, district officials and unions have focused their bargaining efforts on teachers as industrial or craft workers, not professionals who enforce standards among their own ranks.* While teachers during the Shanker era did not trust administrators to evaluate them fairly, they also wanted “no part of judging their fellow union members.”** They still do not in Chicago — primarily because they do not the trust the politicians and administrators. 

And the lack of trust is what is really behind the Chicago strike and current impasse on how schools should be funded, who is hired and paid what, and how teachers are supported in the best interest of students.

For those interested in digging into the various positions on the strike, I recommend starting with the New York Times' current Room for Debate discussion—reasonably titled "Must Teachers and School Officials Be Foes?"

*Kerchner, C.T., & Koppich, J. (2007). Negotiating what matters most: Collective bargaining and student achievement. American Journal of Education, 113, 349-365.
**Angus & Mirel (2001).

More Time for Teachers Means Better Time for Students

As students across the country are enjoying summer breaks, many educators and education reformers are using their time to, well, think about time. Some schools are transitioning to year-round schooling. Others are extending the school day into the late afternoon.

While most of the recent focus has been on student time, a critical piece of the discussion should be teacher time. “Time can and must allow for us to engage with other professionals in order to hone our craft and, ultimately, to serve our students better,” writes Dedy Fauntleroy on this month’s Teaching Ahead: A Roundtable.

For most teachers in the Unites States, collaboration time isn’t built into the school day—it’s stolen in tiny intervals: in the hallways, after school, in the copy room. Teachers spend most of their days in front of students, leaving their lesson planning and professional development to before and after school.

Current school schedules are keeping teachers away from our nation’s best educational resource—their fellow teachers.

“I never thought I’d say it, but less time teaching might make me a better teacher,” wrote CTQ blogger Kate Mulcahy in a recent post.

An International Perspective

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to moderate a panel of extremely accomplished teachers at the International Symposium on Educational Reform (ISER) in Lexington, Kentucky. The group got to talking about how much time they have each week to collaborate with their colleagues and watch them teach.

The American teachers estimated their collaboration time to be, on average, about five hours a week, and their observation time at an average of about two hours a week. And these numbers are likely higher than the national average, since several teachers on the panel are involved in mentoring and other leadership positions that require them to observe and meet with peers.

Kimberly Shearer shared her schedule—one that’s fairly representative of other teachers in the U.S. She spends 30 to 35 hours a week in front of students, and though she gets planning periods and lunch each day, she often uses that time to meet with students.

In contrast, in Finland, a typical teacher might spend 15 hours a week—or a maximum of 24 hours—in front of students, said Mika Risku, a teacher-education researcher on the panel from Finland. The other part of the day is spent in professional development, planning lessons, and engaging with colleagues and parents. “If you want teacher leaders,” Mika asked the group, “when do you analyze the data and processes?”

Lauren Hill, an English teacher from Kentucky, shared that in her ten years of teaching in the same school as Stephanie Wooldridge—her colleague who was also at the conference—the closest she’d ever been to actually observing Stephanie teach was when she had to deliver a piece of tech equipment to her classroom. “And it was like being in a different country,” Lauren said. Both Lauren and Stephanie are members of Teacher Leaders Network and are actively engaged in our Implementing Common Core Standards initiative—which requires a great more time to build interdisciplinary lessons with colleagues, capitalize on new tools and resources, and unpack the data from new forms of student assessment.

We need to give teachers the opportunity to “travel” to their colleagues’ classrooms during the school day so they can infuse their own teaching with new ideas and strategies. These observations, which can be conducted live or through digital recordings, can propel productive and practical conversations, collaboration, and the much-needed scrutiny of one another’s classroom practice.

It's Time to Start

“What would be the value of five extra minutes in an educator's schedule?” Jessica Keigan asks on Teaching Ahead. “These five minutes might be spent learning about a new professional strategy, catching up on local and national policy or interacting with peers in virtual or real time venues.”

Five minutes is a good place to start—but we must do better. We must build dedicated collaboration time into every teacher’s schedule. Giving teachers time to work together and learn from one another will allow them to reflect on and improve their professional practice.

And it isn’t just Finland, either. Other top-performing nations, like Singapore, build in collaboration time willingly and without question. Mike Thiruman, president of the Singapore Teachers’ Union and former deputy in his nation’s education ministry, told me recently, “We would not think of having our teachers teach more than nineteen to twenty-one hours a week.”  Teachers also receive 100 hours of professional development per year, at government expense.  Is it not time for U.S. policymakers to follow suit and invest in more time for teachers so students learn more?

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

The Good Laugh

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

The Sigh

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Revolutionary Suggestion

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

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

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

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

More Reasons to Expand Teacher Leadership and Transform the Profession

Eighty years ago, American scholar Willard Walter Waller (1899–1945) published his landmark book, The Sociology of Teaching (1932). The book describes a number of underlying conditions affecting teachers and their profession, including the despotic school organizations in which they work.

Waller claimed that "the reformation of the schools must begin with the teachers”—a proclamation still not heeded today by most policymakers and self-proclaimed reformers. As a nation we have not learned much from the erudite insights of sociologists like Waller. 

My teaching colleague Renee Moore describes how the “frazzled teachers” working in underperforming schools are beset by duplicative as well as conflicting reform programs layered on top of one another. Renee writes of today’s “big grant” reform agenda always coming with “its own curriculum materials, pacing guides, seemingly endless reporting requirements, and a troop of expert consultants.” 

Is it not time, as Renee suggests, to elevate teachers, working with parents and students, to lead the transformation (not just the reform) of the education system? Doing so will require a whole new way of organizing schools and developing and supporting teacher leaders (and teacherpreneurs), some of whom will teach students regularly while also having time, space, and reward to analyze evidence, figure out which poorly designed programs to abandon, and create their own TeacherSolutions.

New MetLife Teacher Survey Shows Economy's Effects on the Profession

Once again, MetLife’s Survey of the American Teacher offers deep insights into the status of America’s teaching profession.

Teachers report significant reductions in school budgets, programs, and services. Meanwhile, students and their families report an increase in needs.

And, strikingly, teacher satisfaction is lower than it has been in more than two decades, with a precipitous drop of 15 points since 2009.

The survey reveals factors connected to high job satisfaction: adequate opportunities for professional development, time to collaborate with colleagues, and more preparation to engage parents effectively.

Of course, other research has shown that these same factors benefit students.

Policymakers should take this data seriously—and take action. Why not redesign schools so teachers have the time, opportunities, and supports they need to help students succeed? TEACHING 2030, supported by MetLife Foundation, outlines bold yet practical ways to transform schools to better serve students.   

Each year, the MetLife Survey of the American Teacher promotes a nuanced understanding of challenges faced by teachers and those they serve. I hope policymakers will take note—and help to create the public school system that all students deserve. 

Want to continue the conversation? Twitter's a good place to start: Follow the hashtag #TeacherSurvey to read what teachers, policymakers, and the media are saying about the survey.

How Teachers Will Rock the News in 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Teaching Ahead: The Teacher Evaluation System Students Deserve

The education world is abuzz about teacher evaluation reform. Over the last three years, 32 states and the District of Columbia have enacted policies that have changed how those who teach are assessed.

It seems like every day another inside-the-Beltway think tank offers its advice on which state is doing the most to make sure teachers are held accountable for their classroom practice. Most of these reports, like the recent one offered up by NCTQ (that is not us), provide a cursory overview through a very narrow lens. They provide little insight into the significant technical problems, like those experienced in Tennessee’s rushed “Race to the Top” implementation of its teacher evaluation system. Tennessee is struggling to accurately use value-added ratings and assess teachers on student growth measures in non-tested subjects. At the same time, it’s foisting unnecessary paperwork on classroom practitioners.

Commonly heard in NCTQ-esque circles is that "teacher-effectiveness measures don't have to be perfect to be useful.” I would agree in principle with this well-known reform adage—don’t let perfection get in the way of progress. However, as we’ve learned from teachers in Tennessee, a hastily implemented system can affect teachers’ perceptions of their careers. A job they used to “love” can easily become one they “hate.”

For an alternative view of how to make teacher evaluation work for students and the profession that serves them, policymakers might just want to listen to teachers—the people who must implement these new teaching accountability systems.

In our latest edition of Teaching Ahead: A Roundtable, you have the chance to consider how Teacher Leaders Network (TLN) members—a number of whom are now engaged in teacher evaluation reforms through our New Millennium Initiative—view evaluation reforms, and how to make them work: 

• Jessica Hahn suggests that her evaluators ask themselves how they can “develop her as a better teacher."
• Jessica Keigan is ready for evaluations that draw on the expertise of students (and teachers themselves). 
• Ryan Kinser imagines how his evaluation experience will look in 2021. 
• Patrick Ledesma points out that if standardized tests are to be part of evaluation, they must be better. 
• Renee Moore argues eloquently that as teaching morphs into a true profession, we need transformed, not just reformed, evaluation systems. 
• Michael Moran makes the case for how teaching context must be a factor in teacher evaluation. 
• Ryan Niman meets the education genie. One of his wishes for teacher evaluation is to communicate the complexity of his work (and his colleagues’ work) to policymakers, practitioners, and the public. 

For those who could use a scholarly lesson on policy implementation in education, you might want to return to the 1970s RAND change agent studies. Transforming teacher evaluation, like most complex teaching policies, will require what Milbrey McLaughlin called “mutual adaptation” from those who enact and those who implement.

Is it not time to pay more careful attention to the implementers? Is it not time to consider policies that not just remove constraints to more results-oriented teacher evaluation, but policies that enable teachers to teach more effectively and serve students as they intended to when they entered teaching?

Support, Mastery, Leadership

By Meredith Kohl

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So how do we reach them?

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

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

USDOE Sends Mixed Messages on Teacher Education

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Difference Between a Teacherpreneur and an Education Entrepreneur

By Kristoffer Kohl 

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

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

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

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

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

Enter the teacherpreneur.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

How Teacher Turnover Harms Students

Finally reaching the bottom of one my reading stacks, I found myself fascinated and frustrated by the findings of a new study on the relationship between teacher turnover and student achievement.

The study, led by Matthew Ronfeldt and his education economist colleagues, used sophisticated methods to uncover empirical evidence on how teacher attrition, especially in high-need schools, seriously harms low-income and black students. They point out that previous researchers assumed that turnover rates negatively affected high-need students because high quality teachers were the ones leaving.

But this is not the case.

Teacher attrition has a detrimental effect on student achievement “even after controlling for different indicators of teacher quality” — including value-added ratings for teachers who leave and the ones who replace them. The researchers claim that teacher turnover “negatively affects collegiality or relational trust among faculty” or “results in loss of institutional knowledge among faculty that is critical for supporting all student learning.”

Other research has revealed complementary findings. Tony Bryk’s path-breaking analyses, for example, link trust and collegiality among teachers with higher student achievement. 

It’s time for policymakers to seriously consider who is recruited into teaching, for how long, and how they are placed in schools. Thoughtfulness in these areas will ensure that teachers contribute to, not undermine, faculty cohesiveness and long-term instructional strategies. It’s time to confront policymakers’ embrace of recruiting underprepared teachers to high-need schools without adequate training, supervision, and support.

At the same time, we need to question their dismissiveness of the positive effects working conditions can have on teaching and learning. It's time to build 21st-century school organizations that support teacher teams that have staying power and that are rewarded for working effectively with their students, families, and communities over time.

Reimagining School As We Know It

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

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

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

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

 

  

 

Implementing Common Core Standards

By Susan Graham

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Expertise to Action in Denver

By Jessica Keigan and Dana Nardello

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

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

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

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

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

The Process

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

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

Why Do We Care?

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

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

What We Learned

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

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

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

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

Next Steps

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

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

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

 

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.

Accountability Gone Amok and Pay Policies Gone Awry

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. 

The Only Fight Worth Having

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now, there’s a fight worth winning.

Preparing Teachers for Long-Term Success

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Redefining Teacher Preparation

Is America finally ready to invest in teaching?

The question looms.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. 
 
 

Lessons the U.S. Needs to Learn about the Teaching Profession

Last week I was privileged to attend the International Summit on the Teaching Profession in New York City, co-sponsored by (among others) the Asia Society, WNET New York and USDOE. The Summit, which immediately preceded WNET's wonderful annual Celebration of Teaching & Learning, gathered education ministers, national union leaders and accomplished teachers from the United States and from nations with high performing and rapidly improving educational systems.

The International Summit is described here by guest blogger Liana Heitin at Education Week’s Teacher Beat blog. Heitin does a nice job in laying out the basic facts of who was there and for what purpose — but bypasses some of the most important messages about why U.S. teaching policy is way off the mark in comparison to other (top-ranked) nations represented at the Summit. As Heitin notes, in high performing nations, unions and government work together. But there is a lot more to be learned. Here are the key lessons:

1. High performing nations have not changed their teachers. They have changed their teaching development systems.

2. Ministers of Education in top-ranked nations have no problem talking about the importance of teacher working conditions — most notably time for them to learn from each other.

3. Other nations recruit top talent to teaching but recognize that high flying academics are not always the best teachers.

4. In Shanghai high performing schools have time and resources to help low performing schools. There is no competition between “traditional” schools and “charters.”

5. Top-performing nations pay for rigorous, formal, and extensive pre-service preparation of all new recruits to teaching. There is no need for a Teach for Finland or Teach for Singapore.

For insight take a good look at the OECD report presented at the conference — Lessons from PISA: What the U.S. Can Learn from the World’s Most Successful Reform Efforts — and ask questions about why U.S. policymakers can’t get it right.

[Here’s another blog commentary — by Maureen Downey at the Atlanta Journal Constitution — that includes more highlights from the OECD report. And you can watch a webcast of the Summit's closing session here.]

Bold indicators - for the 20th century

The Center for American Progress and the Education Trust have published a policy brief focusing on the "essential elements" of teacher policy they believe must be present in the reauthorization of ESEA.

Problem is — they left out some of the essentials.

Their policy prescriptions earnestly address the 20th century problems that so many policy wonks seem determined to fix, whether or not they still have much relevance. Here in the second decade of the 21st century, the CAP/Ed Trust proposed ESEA indicators often miss the mark. They ignore important research on the conditions that will allow teachers to teach effectively in the new millennium and thus assure that all students have access to expert teachers every day.

Here are a five examples of inadequate indicators.

CAP and Ed Trust call for mandates requiring states to collect and report on:

1. The percentage of teachers beyond their first year of teaching. But they disregard the fact that high-needs schools require teachers with at least 4-5 years under their belt -- the point at which classroom teachers develop a more finely tuned practice.

2. The percentage of course sections taught by in-field secondary teachers. But they ignore that many administrators mindlessly shift elementary teachers from grade to grade without any consideration of their training and experience.

3. The percentage of teachers prepared by a high-performing teacher preparation program. But they overlook the fact that ineffective teachers can graduate from "effective pathways" without ever having to demonstrate that they are competent.

4. The percentage of teachers with fewer than ten absences. But they fail to account for poor working conditions (e.g., like inept administrators) that may be undermining teachers' capacity to teach effectively.

5. The percentage of teachers in the top quartile of teacher impact on student growth. But without recognizing the instability of the current statistical models, the narrow range of testing data available, and the need to use all data in more measured and non-mechanical ways.

Most important, none of their proposals call for states to collect evidence on the spread of effective teaching by expert practitioners, in and out of cyberspace. This is how schools improve.  If we are going to create the kind of teaching development system students deserve, we must have indicator systems that align with today's school realities — indicators that will actually drive the changes we must have to create a high performing, results-oriented teaching profession across the board.

Teachers and Nanny Cams: Compliance vs. Trust

Guest blogger Jon Eckert is an assistant professor of education at Wheaton College in Wheaton IL. Before joining the Wheaton faculty in 2009, Jon served for a year as a Teaching Ambassador Fellow at the U.S. Department of Education and in the Office of the Secretary. He taught and coached for 12 years in the middle grades in Illinois and Tennesee, where he completed his doctorate at Vanderbilt in 2008.

by Jon Eckert

For some, Mike Petrilli’s recent commentary in Education Next might conjure up some fairly humorous images of a tiny “nanny cam” embedded in a stuffed bear to catch teachers behaving badly, or a principal sitting at his or her office with a bank of monitors similar to a prison cell block to ensure that all is well in the school. But is he taking a potentially valuable tool for educators over “a bridge too far” and instead, continuing to de-professionalize the teaching profession?

In this piece, he begins by advocating for the use of electronic recording of classrooms with benefits similar to those achieved by having cameras in police patrol cars. I am a teacher of nearly 15 years, including four in Tennessee where my middle school science students achieved excellent value-added ratings. As a Teaching Ambassador Fellow at the U.S. Department of Education, I worked in both the Bush and Obama administrations on teacher quality issues and matters related to assessment and accountability. I see the tremendous benefit of digitally recording and analyzing the work of teachers and students. One of the most painful, vulnerable, and productive ways to grow as a teacher or prospective teacher is to analyze and reflect on your teaching or the teaching of others on video.

Currently, I am a professor in the oft-maligned world of teacher education, where this month I am also teaching a physics unit to 44 fifth graders and digitally recording each day’s lesson for analysis by me and my teacher education students. Later this spring, my students will be required to record one lesson a day for a week, view each lesson each night, and analyze what they have seen and how they can grow.

As Petrilli points out in his commentary, the Gates Foundation MET Project is using 360-degree cameras in the classrooms of 3,000 teachers to evaluate and provide feedback to teachers. Again, there is tremendous potential value in this type of practice.

However, midway through the commentary, Petrilli asks, “But why not go further?” This marks the point where we part ways.

He goes on to make the case that video cameras should be used for “monitoring” teachers. In his view, constant video monitoring will reduce child abuse, school violence, ineffective teaching practice both behaviorally and compositionally, and increase access for parents. There are at least three problematic assumptions that undergird Petrilli’s argument:

Assumption #1: We can define teaching effectiveness, or ineffectiveness, via constant electronic vigilance. Gross incompetence, such as teachers reading the newspaper, texting, or losing complete control of the class might be readily evident in Petrilli’s world of electronic vigilance. However, a decent principal can already identify this with the tools at his or her disposal. Effective teaching is not always seen easily, as scholars have found, when it comes to teacher evaluation, there are “limits to looking.” Effective teaching often rests on how teachers think about their students’ academic and socio-emotional progress and what they do about it before and after class.

Assumption #2: Effective teachers “have little to fear” because their effectiveness will be self-evident. There is no guarantee that those who are watching know what they are looking for and how they will determine what good teaching looks like on a video. A plethora of studies, including one by the New Teacher Project, suggests that teacher evaluation is undermined because administrators are not trained to assess teaching adequately. While Jacob and Lefgren found that some principals are quite good at identifying the top and bottom 10-20% of teachers, giving administrators a video monitor will not make them any better at this task. Not all principals are uniformly effective at evaluating teaching. It takes time and training and principals who were effective teachers themselves.

Assumption #3: Teachers cannot be trusted. Tony Bryk eloquently argues for and illustrates the power of trust in schools and its connection to improving schools. If we do not trust teachers to have good intentions toward students, why would we believe that having a camera in a classroom would keep them from simply perpetrating the offense elsewhere out of the view of the camera? What does this say about our respect for teachers and the complicated and challenging work they have to perform?

Ultimately, if we feel we need a “nanny cam” in every classroom in America to ensure compliance and competence, then we have lost our sense of teachers as trusted molders of minds and citizens. We are reduced to thinking of them as technicians transferring information in a prescriptive manner. If this is the role we expect teachers to assume, no amount of monitoring will repair the damage such marginalization will do to our democracy.

Learn more about Jon Eckert here.

Edging toward Professionalism

Last week The Bill & Malinda Gates Foundation released initial findings from its Measures of Effective Teaching investigation — a much needed $45 million effort to determine which teachers are good or not, and why.

As other research has found, the Gates investigators concluded that the value- added calculations of a teacher's performance can fluctuate significantly but not enough to preclude the data from being used as part of a more comprehensive system of evaluation. (A position I've argued here since this blog's inception.) As Education Week summed it up: "So far, the study...appears to support the notion, advocated by teachers’ unions and others, that evaluations should be based on multiple measures."

Perhaps, most importantly, the initial findings revealed much stronger correlations between classroom conditions, teaching practices and student achievement.  Most notable were similarities in the predictive effect of teachers' value-added histories and students’ perceptions of a teacher’s ability to challenge students with rigorous work.
 
As the MET findings suggest, success in accurately identifying effective teachers will require erudite interpretation from those who know teaching and learning and the context in which practitioners teach. The researchers concluded that “reinventing the way we evaluate and develop teachers will eventually require new infrastructure” — using digital video as well as peer observations.

In determining who is an effective teacher, it's time for classroom practitioners (and their unions) to take the lead in establishing and enforcing standards among their ranks and beginning to function more like professional guilds.
 
Dina Strasser, a TLN member from our virtual community, engaged in a lengthy conversation earlier this fall with a doctor-turned-teacher over what it might take for teaching to fully evolve as a profession. It makes for interesting reading.
 
Perhaps Vinnie Basile of Westminster 50 (Colorado) — a participant in the CTQ/TLN New Millennium Initiative — put it most clearly and simply:

Transforming the union into the professional guild is the central, unifying solution to many of the otherwise divided issues in education reform. It empowers teachers to take control of their own career paths, enforcing a set of standards that in many cases would far exceed the expectations of policymakers and the general public.

The MET research edges teaching toward professionalism by helping establish empirical links between what teachers do and how students learn — and why. But only teacher leaders can truly make sense of all of this data. And they are in the best position to ensure that the data are used to drive changes in everyday classroom realities and the improvements in the lives of students and their families and communities.

To Improve Teaching, Improve Key School Conditions, Says Team of Expert Teachers

States seem to be “racing” to ensure great teachers for every student, all of a sudden.

But our in-house review of a number of Race to the Top state applications suggests that policymakers are ignoring one of the most critical factors related to finding and rewarding effective teachers: the conditions under which they work.

I am not talking about some of the conditions found in local collective bargaining agreements. I'm talking about what we know from research and from classroom experts about conditions that matter for student learning.
 
In a few weeks, CTQ will be releasing a new report prepared in partnership with the TeacherSolutions Teacher Working Conditions team — a group of 14 accomplished teachers who work in mostly high-needs schools and districts, both urban and rural. They draw on current research and CTQ case studies to identify essential, research-based principles that must undergird sustainable and effective teaching reforms. Among them are:

• Schools must promote aligned, out-of-school learning experiences for students beyond the school walls, as well as growing online opportunities to connect schools with local and global communities;

• Teachers must have the opportunity to make decisions about instruction in their classrooms and schools in order to reach students with diverse and unique needs; and

• Administrators must be accountable for ensuring teachers are in teaching assignments for which they are prepared and have opportunities to develop skills they need to meet new pedagogical challenges.

The team also calls for much more prominent teacher leadership roles in schools, shared accountability with higher-ups for student performance results, and the development of more "hub" schools in high needs neighborhoods that offer community services while also protecting academic priorities.

Contrary to the current reform rhetoric — which seems to depend upon heroic educators posing as caped crusaders to swoop in and save children with magical teaching — the upcoming TeacherSolutions report provides ideas backed by solid research that can make the schools and teachers we already have more successful.

The team includes: Eldred “Jay” Bagley (Philadelphia); Glenda Blaisdell-Buck (Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC); Mitzi Durham (Clark County, NV); Larry Ferlazzo (Sacramento, CA); Brian K. Freeland, Jr. (Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC); Lori Fulton (Clark County, NV); Leona Bost Ingram (Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC); Kristoffer Kohl (Clark County, NV); Mona Madan (Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC); Kathie Marshall (Los Angeles); Delores Maxen (Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC); Susan “Ernie” Rambo (Clark County, NV); Taylor Ross (Jefferson County, AL); and Gamal Sherif (Philadelphia).
 
Funded by the Ford Foundation, their year of TeacherSolutions work will identify both the policies and practices needed to ensure great teaching for all students.

Stay tuned!

Fixing Our Schools Requires More Than Hiring Smarter Teachers and Firing Incompetent Ones

A new, well-documented essay by Richard Rothstein unpacks many of the myths about improving public education, including the role that teachers play in closing the student achievement gap.

The media frenzy over Davis Guggenheim’s Waiting for Superman documentary has reinforced the conventional wisdom offered up by many self-labeled reformers that we can have better schools by simply  recruiting smarter teachers and firing incompetent ones.

But Rothstein points to “decades of social science research” revealing that two-thirds of the difference in the quality of one school compared to another is attributable to non-school factors. He writes:

…(O)n average, disadvantaged children who have high-quality teachers will do better than similar children whose teachers are less adequate. But good teachers alone, for most children, cannot fully compensate for the disadvantages many children bring to school. As we noted, differences in the quality of in-school experiences can explain about one-third of the differences in achievement.

And some of the key in-school factors that do make a difference have to do with the conditions under which teachers work — including access to quality curriculum materials and whether or not they have opportunities to learn from each other. Smart teachers, in other words, must have consistent opportunities to use their smarts to advance learning.

Our own CTQ research shows that other conditions also matter a great deal, including: teachers’ level of preparation for the students they teach; whether or not they are assigned to grades and subjects for which they have been trained; and whether school programs are connected and well-aligned with after-school learning opportunities.
 
Rothstein’s demystification of the often hyperbolic claims about how to accomplish school reform sheds new light on the complex relationship between teaching quality and student achievement. If we are willing to pay attention to the facts and solid research he brings to bear on the issue, we can get serious about creating a unified vision for how all students can have the public education they need and deserve.

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."

Time for a Cleansing Breath and a Serious Look at Teaching Effectiveness Data

Reading the mass media accounts of the current teaching effectiveness debates leaves me wondering how much of the debate is over substantive policy and how much is plain hard-nosed politics.

There is no question that teachers should be assessed on how well their students learn. But a simple use of student achievement data (and value-added or growth models) may lead to capricious conclusions as to who is effective or not. There are three major studies, undertaken by economists over the last six months, concluding that it is VERY difficult, if not impossible, to simply claim an individual teacher is effective or not, even when using so-called sophisticated value-added tools. For example:

• Teachers have greater value-added gains when they are in schools with others who generate high value-added gains. This means there is a large peer effect and some teachers who are deemed ineffective would be effective if they teach in schools with other high value-added teachers. [1]
 
• Teachers have greater value-added gains when they teach the same subjects and grade levels consistently—especially in their first 5 years of teaching. Using 12 years of valued-added data, Ost found that a teacher who teaches the same grade for each of her first five years helps students perform 0.137 standard deviations better than students with a novice teacher.  This means that some novice teachers who are deemed ineffective would be effective if they taught the same stuff year after year.[2]

• Teachers who are effective in one school will not necessarily be effective in another—pointing to the fact that varying school conditions may account for 25 percent of teacher effects on student learning. The researchers used a longitudinal database to estimate teachers’ value-added to student test scores before and after a move between schools and determined there was a “good” match in terms of improved value-added and the different school. Match quality explains about 7% of school effects in math, and 30% in reading. Match strength is also highly predictive of teacher retention, a finding that is also robust to inclusion of teacher and school fixed effects.[3]

Even Rick Hess, a long-time fan of the concept of value-added methodologies, has raised cautions about assuming that VAM, in its current state, is a policy panacea. In a recent Education Week blog post, Hess writes that “advocates who are waging an admirable fight to end or dramatically scale back hyper-rigid, industrial-era state policies governing teacher tenure and compensation display a worrisome tendency to mandate that, henceforth, teachers will be evaluated in large part on (thus far) largely nonexistent, hyper-rigid, value-added metrics.” Current policy initiatives that rely heavily on these statistical metrics, he adds, represent “crudely drawn, sketchily considered, and potentially self-destructive efforts."

So, as the disputes between labor and management as well as between thoughtful scholars and high-pitched policy wonks continue, it might be prudent for policymakers to take a cleansing breath and look carefully at the pros and cons of using standardized student achievement data to assess who is an effective teacher and who is not.
 
The need to explore these issues more deeply is why the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched a $335 million investment in teacher effectiveness, with major grants to three large school districts and two public charter school networks to transform their systems of professional development, tenure, evaluation, and compensation. Working collaboratively with both administrators and unions—not just one or the other—the Gates-fueled approach to teacher effectiveness will rest not only on standardized test score data but other metrics derived from new tools to gauge student engagement and analyze teaching practices in depth.

It is also time, as our work supported by the Ford Foundation underscores, to pay more attention to the right working conditions that make a difference for student achievement. These include conditions such as teaching in-field (the subjects a teacher knows well); opportunities to share and critique lessons with colleagues, and resources to work closely with students and families outside of the traditional school day.

We have found that these conditions can determine who will be effective or not. I wonder when policymakers and the mass media that informs them will begin to grasp this critical point. Examining conditions is not an excuse, it is a reality of teaching. The optimum conditions for student learning must be addressed if effective teachers are to maximize their teaching effectiveness.

[1] Jackson, C. K. & Bruegmann, E. (2009). Teaching students and teaching each other: The importance of peer learning for teachers (NBER Working Paper 15202). Washington, DC: National Bureau of Economic Research.

[2] Ost, B. (2009). How Do Teachers Improve? The Relative Importance of Specific and General Human Capital. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University. Retrieved on February 1, 2010.

[3] Jackson, C. K. (2010). Match quality, worker productivity, and worker mobility: Direct evidence from teachers. (NBER Working Paper 15990). Washington, DC: National Bureau of Economic Research. Download PDF of full report

Bringing Star Teachers to High Needs Schools

So here's the good news. State policymakers in Massachusetts are seeking to entice “amazing” teachers, who have proven to be effective, to pick up and teach in 35 of the state’s lowest performing schools. Hard to argue with putting great teachers with the students who need the most.

Indeed, the “hunt for star teachers” seems to have some of the markings of potent policymaking. For example, according to a recent Boston Globe report, teachers are promised “such things as additional pay or opportunities for leadership roles in overhauling curriculum.” But I have to wonder to what extent the state’s policymakers are creating an incentive plan that will really matter for the long haul.

Mounds of evidence, including our own Ford Foundation-funded research, suggests that expert teachers are willing to move to high needs schools — but ONLY if a number of working conditions are in place. These include:

1. Effective principals who value teacher leaders and discourage teaching to the test;

2. Expert colleagues with whom to work -- because effective teaching, especially in high needs schools, requires collaboration, not individual teachers who teach as if they are the lonely but determined Caped Crusader;

3. Access to high-quality curriculum resources (e.g., classroom libraries for elementary teachers and lab equipment for science teachers);

4. Specialized preparation for teaching in high needs schools, since substantial evidence has proven that effective teachers in one setting are not necessarily effective in another; and

5. Resources and strategies in place that assure what is taught in the “8 a.m. to 3 p.m.” curriculum is connected to critical “outside-of-the-school” support providers.

These working conditions are rarely considered by policy mavens who are promoting incentives to entice effective teachers to high needs schools. It’s not just “show them the money and they will come.”

I wonder if Massachusetts policymakers remember the “heralded rise” and the “neglected fall” of the state’s signing bonus program of a decade ago that earned a big red F as a strategy to entice talented teachers to high needs schools. [They can read a detailed dissection of the effort here for $4.95.]

I hope Bay State leaders have an institutional memory that stretches back that far. If so, perhaps the state’s turnaround school reform efforts will yield amazing results for students.

Latest MetLife Survey Confirms the Power of Teacher Collaboration

Policy pundits and journalists who weigh in on the teaching effectiveness debate should take note of the latest MetLife Survey of the American Teacher — whose theme Collaborating for Student Success  speaks volumes to the issue of how to identify effective teachers.

While researchers continue the search for methods to isolate individual teacher effects, the MetLife survey reveals that over 90% of the nation’s teachers believe their colleagues contribute to their own teaching effectiveness. New teachers, in particular, were more likely to strongly agree that their success in the classroom hinged on the effectiveness of others.  
 
For me, this finding calls to mind the 2009 study by Jackson and Bruegmann highlighting the importance of peer learning for teachers. Using 11 years of matched teacher and student achievement data in North Carolina, these scholars (from Cornell and Harvard, respectively) were able to isolate and quantify the added value brought about by teachers’ collective expertise — finding that most value-added gains are attributable to teachers who are more experienced (and qualified) and stay together as teams.*
 
The results reported in Part 1 (Effective Teaching and Leadership) of MetLife's new survey offer additional insights. Teachers in schools that report more collaboration are more likely to point out that:

• other teachers contribute to their classroom success

• there are higher levels of trust among teachers and principals,

• there are more opportunities to watch each other teach, and

• they are more satisfied with their careers.
 
The MetLife data confirms the powerful effects of deep teacher collaboration. Policymakers who seek to improve student performance should pay attention to the international PISA research, which found that teachers in nations with high-performing schools have somewhere between 10 and 20 hours a week to work with their colleagues — critiquing lessons, examining student work products, and developing and adapting curriculum. Strikingly, the MetLife survey also reveals that the average American teacher spends less than 3 hours a week working with his or her fellow teachers — and almost one in 5 teachers has less than one hour per week of “structured collaboration.”
 
Want to improve teaching effectiveness? Listen to teachers — and make it possible for teachers to spend substantive time listening to each other. Kudos to Metlife for providing important new evidence to support this much-needed reform strategy.

* Jackson, C. K. & Bruegmann, E. (2009, August).  Teaching students and teaching each other: The importance of peer learning for teachers.  NBER Working Paper 15202.  Washington, DC: National Bureau of Economic Research.

CAP's tenure report is curiously incomplete

The Center for American Progress just released an interesting paper on teacher tenure reform — suggesting that tying job security to student test scores is the linchpin to improving teaching effectiveness. It’s interesting but oddly incomplete.

No doubt, as the CAP report noted, “Legislated and bargained contractual protections make the process of dismissing an ineffective teacher with tenure prohibitively lengthy and expensive in most states, and teacher tenure evaluation processes remain largely disconnected from teachers’ performance in the classroom or student achievement.”

And there is no question that something is askew when “virtually every single tenured teacher” in a recent study was “rated satisfactory (or higher), and less than 1 percent received a negative evaluation.” This does not make sense.But here is what I believe to be curiously absent in the CAP report.

1. Many ineffective teachers remain in their tenured positions not because of tenure but because of poor evaluation systems managed by either overworked administrators or those who are not very effective at rating teachers.

2. Many tenured teachers are not teaching effectively not because of archaic tenure laws but because administrators have forced them to teach out of field. Almost 50 percent of the nation’s math teachers are teaching out of field.

3. Our own studies of high performing, high poverty schools reveal a number of conditions undermine teachers opportunities to teach effectively. They include:

• principals who do not cultivate and embrace teacher leadership;

• the lack of time and tools for teachers to learn from each other;

• the lack of high quality, specialized teacher education for the highest needs schools, subjects, and students;

• the lack of preparation in working with second language and special needs learners, and

• increasing student mobility as families, due to economic distresses, move in and out of school communities.

The CAP report on tenure reform raises important issues, but by choosing to concentrate only on the behaviors and actions of teachers and not the system as a whole, the CAP analysis is of limited use in shaping better teacher policies. Without a comprehensive assessment, we surely cannot find the best solutions to teacher evaluation, tenure, and effectiveness.

Merrow Loose with the Facts

John Merrow’s latest blog post on charter schools and teacher education is worth a read — especially if you are interested in how journalists can get real loose with the facts. I have always been a fan of the Merrow Report, where John has spent the time to dig deep into complex issues of teacher quality and school reform. But his latest blog entry ignores the research that shows charters, on average, are less effective in advancing student achievement than their more traditional school relatives. He goes on to opine — with no evidentiary basis whatsoever — that there are only 50 decent education schools (out of about 1200) across the nation. (He doesn’t name them but that would be an interesting list to see him publish.)
 
Yes, we should promote charter schools as incubators of new approaches in education and poor education schools should be closed down. But John’s sloppy analysis obscures the facts and fuels the kind of dysfunctional dualism that defines most of the school reform debate (charters staffed with non-unionized teachers vs. publics staffed with teachers who are protected by union work rules; teacher education the way its always been done vs. short-cut alternative certification that allows teachers to bypass pedagogical training, etc.) It's "war" journalism and it's not the kind of thing we expect from the nation's best broadcast education reporter.
 
I’m certain John knows which nation produces the highest student achievement worldwide — Finland. Guess what? Finland’s teachers are among the most highly unionized anywhere worldwide.
 
Teachers in charters are now unionizing because they are seeking the working conditions that will allow them to be successful with students (Read Claus von Zastrow’s comments on Merrow’s blog). Growing numbers of university-based teacher education programs are working with school districts to jointly prepare teachers for high needs schools (see Secretary Duncan’s recent Title II grantees). These programs are very much focused on the knowledge and skills teachers need to be effective AND on the working conditions that are critical to a teacher's success, however effective she or he may be.
 
PS: Will charters go to scale and save our public schools? Ask Tom Toch.
 

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.

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.

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.

I've Said It Before...

Teaching working conditions are student learning conditions...

This past Monday, in his article As More Charter Schools Unionize, Educators Debate the Effect, Sam Dillon of the New York Times upped the ante in the predictable squabble among policy wonks over the role of teacher unions in charter school reform.

Charter schools are supposedly the bastion of all things reform because they are free of “onerous” union rules that get in the way of mandating longer school days/years and firing poor teachers.

But let’s face it – there’s a difference between rules that inhibit better opportunities for kids and having a free license to ignore basic teacher working conditions that influence health, staying power and effectiveness.

As Mr. Dillon’s even-handed reporting indicates: Charter school teachers are unionizing because their voices are not heard on matters of sound instructional practice — like reasonable student loads (not 160) and sensible numbers of different subjects taught a day (not 6). These negative teacher working conditions can quickly become negative student learning conditions.

Researchers have shown that improving instructional quality and student achievement, especially in high-needs schools, requires an intensive focus on working conditions such as making sure that (a) teachers teach in the fields in which they are prepared; (b) have adequate time to work with colleagues improving instructional practice; (c) have access to content-specific information, materials and technology; and (d) receive helpful feedback on teaching.

Without a union looking over their shoulders, charter school administrators often fail to honor this research and these conditions – which are not about teacher convenience but about capacity to help students learn.

Jennifer Gilley, a charter school teacher in Chicago, sought unionization because she became frustrated with all the turnover among staff, the lack of teacher input, “with working longer and harder than teachers at other schools and earning less.”

Here’s something I wonder about. When firefighters and policemen call for better working conditions, they are not immediately condemned for not caring about the community members they are serving. But it seems that when teachers speak out and say “I can’t do my best job under these conditions,” they are castigated for not caring about their students. Why is that, do you think?

The good news is that Mr. Dillon’s piece helps get beyond the usual either-or thinking when it comes to unions and reform. Underneath the current squabbling is a problem looking for a better solution. I’ve written in the past about the potential for a collective of expert teachers and talented newcomers to work together in ways that support optimum working conditions and maximize student achievement.

It’s an idea that could grow legs, I believe, if we can get a group of our nation’s most accomplished teachers to take action together. More soon about that.

---------
On the matter of working conditions research, see: Little, J. W. (1996, April). Organizing schools for teacher learning. New York: Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association.

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?

Altered Perceptions of Evaluation and Tenure

In a recent Newsweek op-ed column, Jonathan Alter, one of our nation’s most respected journalists, blames the poor state of public education on teacher unions that use tenure to prevent administrators from “figuring out who can teach and who can't.”

Dan Brown, a Teacher Leaders Network member, takes Alter to task with a sharp rebuttal at The Huffington Post — calling on the columnist and other policy pundits to “stop scapegoating teachers and their right to have a collective voice, and to start stepping into living classrooms.” Dan, who teaches at a high-needs charter school in the District of Columbia, combines both research evidence and the grounded reality of everyday classroom practice to challenge Alter's tabloid-style opinion piece.

If Alter would like to begin preparing for a front-lines journalism adventure, he might add to his summer reading list the recent report on teacher evaluation and tenure from the Center for American Progress (CAP), an organization not known for treading lightly on ineffective teaching.

Writing for CAP, Joan Baratz-Snowden’s analysis points out the ills of the archaic tenure system. She also explains that under the protocols current in most school districts, teacher evaluation is the responsibility of administrators who are often not competent to assess teacher performance or to provide advice and support when teachers need to improve. In such circumstances, why should we be surprised when even our best teachers are reluctant to abandon tenure rights?

Snowden goes on to challenge the either-or thinking about teacher effectiveness (you’re great or you’re terrible) that so dominates education politics. This thumbs-up/thumbs-down outlook is ludicrous, of course, but it continues to be perpetuated by ill-informed observers of America’s teaching profession, including — I’m a bit surprised to learn — Jonathan Alter.

 Joan Snowden’s analysis is refreshing, and it’s encouraging to see the Center for American Progress beginning to take teacher professionalism seriously by calling for progressive evaluation and tenure systems that “reflect the complexity of teaching and learning.” The well-positioned DC think tank proposes assessments that draw on multiple data sources, not just standardized test scores. CAP and several other influential policy shops are also drawing overdue attention to research from the nation’s most respected measurement experts, explaining how and when standardized tests can be valid and reliable in assessing student learning and teacher effectiveness — and when they cannot.

Instead of pitting teachers against principals — or unions against school districts — the CAP report points out that “too often systems of evaluation and dismissal are imposed on teachers rather than developed with them.” That's a quote worthy of celebration by teacher leaders everywhere. Fireworks and flag-waving — and not just for the Fourth of July.

Paying attention to teacher working conditions

Fueled by our own research and the insights of educators in the CTQ-sponsored Teacher Leaders Network, we've been calling for any and all education enterprises that measure teacher and teaching effectiveness to pay attention to working conditions as well as student outcomes. There's a close relationship between the two. The new CAP report raises this same issue, stating that while it is “absolutely essential that teachers present evidence of student learning” to be tenured, any credible system of evaluation must also take into account evidence of the teaching and learning environment.

Snowden points out the accountability mechanism involved:

Effective teaching and learning is a product not only of individual behavior, effort, knowledge and skill, but also of the learning conditions where teaching and learning takes place. Requiring such information when considering promotion and dismissal provides incentives for school administrators to assure that necessary tools and conditions support teachers’ efforts to educate children.

This recent report from the Center for American Progress is a must read. Jonathan Alter should peruse it this summer, as he prepares to take Dan Brown’s advice and spend some actual reporting time in the institutions of which he writes. He might even visit Dan himself. Or some of the thousands of other quality-minded teachers in the greater DC metro area. We’d be happy to provide a contact list to get him started.

I’m guessing that if Alter does opt for a substantive school outing, his future writing on the teaching profession will pass muster. A little evidence can go a long way.

Three Bullets for EduWonk

Over at EduWonk, teacher-tenure and teacher-union bashing continues. Much needs to be changed about teacher tenure, but many policy pundits ignore (for whatever reason) that union leaders do not solely construct nor are they in charge of a school district’s employment contract. Every contract is  negotiated between administrators and unions.

With this in mind, the folks at EduWonk might want to ask some additional questions:

• Are ineffective teachers in DC (and elsewhere) not fired because of archaic tenure rules, or because of incompetent or ill-trained or overloaded administrators who do not have the skill or time to evaluate teachers effectively? And if it's some of both, how much of each?

• How many ineffective teachers teach poorly because they were ill-prepared in the first place (think lousy teacher education or short-cut alternative certification programs) or forced to teach out of field?

• How often do we give our best teachers the opportunity to assess their colleagues? Evidence suggests that in school districts with peer review programs, far more teachers are removed than in locales where only administrators are in charge of teacher evaluation.

Considering these questions and issues can get us out of the either-or thinking and impulsive action that so beset education politics and reform.

Getting Real About Teacher Experience and Its Effects on Student Achievement

The debates continue to rage over the merits of school districts recruiting younger, less experienced (and cheaper and potentially more compliant) teachers, versus those who are older, more experienced (and more expensive and empowered).

Policy pundits and journalists have few qualms about calling for any seasoned teaching veteran to be put out to pasture. They aren't really interested in whether the teacher is effective, ineffective or "we don't know." These pontificators, single-minded as donkeys, tend to rely on research showing that teacher experience beyond three years does not matter much for standardized test scores. However, their interpretation of the teacher-experience data sets is rather limited, perhaps reflecting more about their ideology than any substantive understanding about teaching and learning in complex school environments.

NYC blogger Aaron Pallas recently noted how researchers miss the mark on the experience issue by ignoring the difference between a teacher’s total years of experience versus how much time she has taught a particular grade or subject. Aaron shows how NYC’s teacher workforce is not as seasoned as one might think.

Our case study research into teacher working conditions (funded by the Ford Foundation) is helping surface even more nuanced issues around teaching experience and student achievement. For example, in the more high-achieving schools we are finding what matters most is the collective experience of relatively small teacher teams who have learned how to work together and embrace doing so.

As we consider and design research, we need to pay attention not only to an individual teacher’s aggregate years of experience but how groups of teachers have used their combined knowledge over time to change the working culture of their team (or department or grade level), share teaching expertise among themselves and with others, and connect more closely with their students and their families.

Meredith, my wife and a seasoned special education teacher with over 25 years of experience, has taught me a lot about this issue. For the past nine years she has learned a great deal from a close-knit group of teachers on her EC (exceptional children) team. After so many years of close collaboration, their individual expertise has been magnified in powerful ways. Don’t take my word for it. Look at the data. For the last several years, over 80 percent of their EC students have routinely met state standards on North Carolina’s End-of-Grade tests — compared to about 33 percent of EC students in their district and 21 percent statewide.

Other scholars are discovering how teachers' professional interactions within learning communities over time can best explain whether school reforms take hold. Policy pundits might have a different take on the role of teacher experience in improving student achievement if they:

(1) examined more than a simple R-squared from a simple-minded study;

(2) stepped out of their quiet, climate-controlled offices inside the Beltway; and

(3) looked carefully inside of America’s public schools where a wide range of teachers are working together to make a difference in the lives of students.

And I challenge any of the DC pundits to convince Meredith (or any other highly successful teacher) that teaching experience beyond three years does not matter for student achievement. They would receive a higher-order lesson in “get real.”

Photo: Teacher Meredith Berry with Walter and Henry, who have not yet attained pundit status.

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.

How Teacher Education (and Master’s Degrees) Make a Difference for Student Achievement

 I must say I am little weary of policy pundits who say that schools of education and master’s degree programs make no difference in the lives of teachers and the students they serve. Certainly there are some that do not. As Linda Darling-Hammond said in a recent interview, “probably a quarter of the teacher-education enterprise” is of very high quality. Other programs are “pretty good,” she said, “but they could be a lot better if there were incentives and supports to get them there. And there are some that need to be put out of business.”

One of the high quality programs is at the University of Florida — where a group of teacher educators, non-profit leaders, and children’s advocates have created a Ready Schools Strategy that connects teacher preparation and professional development with health and social services in Florida’s high-needs school communities.

Last week I was fortunate to work with Don Pemberton of the UF Lastinger Center for Learning, Dave Lawrence and Ana Sejeck of the Early Childhood Initiative Foundation, and Dorene Ross of the College of Education as well as several terrific teachers. During my visit I learned a great deal about their Teacher Leadership and School Improvement Initiative in Miami-Dade and its powerful impact on Redondo Elementary, located in Homestead, Florida. Redondo serves a beautiful multi-ethnic group of Pre-K through third grade students (of which almost 50 percent are English Language Learners and over 90 percent receive free or reduced price meals).

Let’s start with what matters for the kids: In 2005 less than 50% of the Redondo’s students were proficient in reading or math. Since the launch of the Ready Schools Strategy, including a specialized master’s program for a core group of teachers, the student achievement has escalated. In 2008, over 67% of the school’s third graders were proficient in reading; over 92% in math. Rene Baly, the school’s principal, credits hard-working teachers who have learned to teach differently. He also credits working conditions, which give teachers more time to learn from each other and to work closely with health care, social work, and community outreach professionals who help connect the work of teaching to the lives of students and their families.

The school’s health practitioners see 60 students a week – treating a variety of illnesses and eye and ear problems – to ensure students are ready to learn as well as feel safe and loved. Family engagement efforts bring the school to the neighborhood, but also offer tailored training in English and parenting skills to the mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles of Redondo’s children. On a weekly basis at least 25 of the school’s parents attend sessions.

Teacher preparation and support are critical components as well. Don Pemberton’s vision and entrepreneurial skills have brought a fully-paid, job-embedded advanced degree program to the school’s teachers. The UF education school has orchestrated a set of research-focused learning experiences that cultivate new teacher skills related to differentiated instruction, data driven decision-making, culturally responsive teaching, classroom management, and leadership — while giving individual teachers opportunities to specialize in literacy or second language learners. What's most striking is that the education school program is highly adaptive. It's equally helpful to a recently minted novice who had little training in how to teach in a high needs school; an alternative certification recruit who knows her content but has few pedagogical skills that enable her to teach it to diverse learners; or a veteran teacher who needs to develop new research-based skills in literacy and assessment.

During my visit I met several outstanding teachers. They were not graduates of elite colleges or individuals enticed with bonuses and performance pay to teach in high needs schools. Instead, most were from the community and represent a new vision for “growing your own” effective teachers for challenging schools. In return for being able to earn a “no-cost” master’s degree, the teachers agree to teach at Redondo for at least 5 years.

Zolia Esteve, an 11-year veteran, says that as a result of the program she is now much more effective at teaching reading. She described a second grader “Julia” who was reading less than 20 words a minute now being able to not just read but comprehend 120 words a minute. She also has the “confidence to challenge” the administration on how to better deliver services to students. Principal Rene Baly is grateful for Esteve's newly developed leadership skills and the new ideas she brings to table.

I also met Melissa LaRosa, a finalist for Reading Coach of the Year in Florida, who spends countless hours team teaching and providing support and advice to her colleagues, who view her as a “teacher’s teacher.” For Melissa, who proudly wore her Edugator t-shirt during our visit, the University of Florida master’s degree program and its focused inquiry approach made her a better coach, providing her much needed skills in using data and understanding why students were learning or not.

Finally, I was proud to meet Cathleen Caves, another teacher in the program, who actually went to Redondo when she was in elementary school. She began her career as a teaching assistant and is now one of the school’s experts in the use of a variety of formative assessments to drive instruction. Cathleen told me that the UF graduate program "is fantastic.” Pointing to Zolia and Melissa, who were in room with us, she added: “We are more like a family than ever before.” Perhaps most importantly, she asserted, “With my salary I sure could not pay for this degree myself — and now I want to teach here for my whole career.”

The Teacher Leadership and School Improvement Initiative has just graduated its first class. Next year the University of Florida expects to serve 400 graduate students (pending funding). Don Pemberton, at the helm of Lastinger Center's Ready Schools master teacher strategy, envisions preparing and supporting – and networking – 10,000 Florida educators who are all dedicated to teaching effectively in high needs schools.

Smart teacher preparation and support may just be the solution we've been searching for to end the current maldistribution of effective teachers. If so, the University of Florida is blazing a trail that other education schools and master’s degree programs can follow if they really want to make a difference.

Where Teachers Are Central to Improving Schools

This morning North Carolina’s leading daily newspaper, the News & Observer, published a front page story, capturing much of the focus of the Center for Teaching Quality, where teachers are central to improving schools. The article, Durham Learns Why Teachers Quit, portrays the importance of understanding the conditions of teachers’ work as the fundamental issue in ensuring they are able to teach effectively. With all the talk (necessary by the way) of teachers being "highly qualified," if the right working conditions are not in place then the student achievement gap will not be closed.

The front page story highlighted how our web-based, population survey in North Carolina (that we conduct and analyze for the Governor’s Office and in collaboration with the North Carolina Association of Educators) is being used in one of the state’s most complex school districts. Over the last several years the Durham Public Schools suffered from horrendous teacher turnover. Today’s news article revealed how teachers have felt “disrespected by their principals” and that district leaders “did not treat them as professionals.” The survey has helped elevate their voice. The article, I am pleased to note, expressed how the district, under new Superintendent Carl Harris, is using these data to make necessary changes in teacher working conditions.

In North Carolina, over 75,000 teachers (a 65% response rate) completed answers to key questions about their use of time, professional development, school leadership, empowerment, and facilities and resources. We link these data to indicators of student achievement and teacher attrition rates, and then also offer tools so that administrators, teachers, and community leaders can work together in ensuring that teachers are not just highly qualified but well supported. We suspect more front page stories like today’s will continue to surface and fuel the kind of thinking and action critical to the future of the teaching profession and the students it serves.

I am proud to report the Center I founded some eight years ago is now also working on working conditions in Arizona, Kansas, Nevada, and Ohio, with a number of states in the cue. In these states we partner with all the groups needed to pull together to solve the problems -- governors, business leaders, administrtors, teacher education leaders, and the National Education Association. Fortunately policymakers are beginning to understand that teacher working conditions are student learning conditions.

Gadfly Gets Something Right

For those of you who know me - and my experiences as an under-prepared high school teacher (who fled the urban classroom after 3 years), a think tank analyst, and an education professor who has a passion for advancing the teaching profession in America - you may find it ironic that my first blog posting praises a "piece" from Checker Finn's Education Gadfly. (For those of you unfamiliar with the Gadfly, it is an electronic newsletter of the Fordham Foundation - a group that consistently supports private school vouchers as a means to improve public schools and short-cut routes into teaching as a means to ease the teacher shortage.)

In the September 29th edition of the Gadfly, Jim Williams, a real teacher, gets to write about the "culture shock" of his transition from his 30 years in business to a special education teacher in the public schools.

Jim's well-written editorial makes the compelling case that what ails the public schools is the lack of respect and authority teachers have in designing solutions to the problems they face. He points out that "to build high performing schools, (policy makers and administrators) need the ability to shift focus away from process and procedure and toward empowering teachers and relentlessly emphasizing student achievement." I could not agree more with Jim when he calls for our society to begin truly treating teachers as the "scarce, valuable resources" that they are. And, I am pleased to see Finn's rag recognize that point of view, and not their usual tiresome "highly qualified" teacher rants. Finn's  Fordham Foundation has been on record consistently in defining good teachers solely as those who have "a solid general education, who possesses deep subject area knowledge, and who ha(ve) no record of misbehavior" and those who "add academic value" to their pupils."

Of course good teachers help students learn (and add value to students' academic learning - and growth as active citizens of our democratic society).  But as Jim points out, teachers cannot do so if policy makers and administrators continue to "treat (them) more like hourly industrial workers from a bygone era than high-value professionals" and force them to "implement standardized curricula" driven by much of the current No Child Left Behind mandates. Indeed our own research into teacher working conditions at the Center for Teaching Quality - now growing all across the nation - is showing very strong relationships between teacher empowerment and student achievement.

Jim's erudite musings on improving teacher quality send a strong message that much more needs to be done than just implementing private school vouchers and short-cut routes into teaching.  Instead, we need to focus on stronger teacher education  and professional development to ensure that teachers know what and how to teach - and then ensure that these highly skilled professionals are able to work in redesigned schools that allow them to make the best decisions in their students' best interests.  This means teaching children, not teaching to the test. This means teaching for understanding, not for compliance. Thank you Jim Williams for your work as a professional teacher who advocates so eloquently for the teaching profession in America.

Note: The Gadfly notes that Jim Williams, a mid-career switcher, is a high school special education teacher in Virginia. Jim entered teaching through a high quality alternative route program, the George Washington University Fairfax Partnership Project.  (Surely another topic for us to explore.)