ESEA Come, ESEA Go

The chatter among the education cognescenti this week is about what is and what isn't in the bipartisan ESEA draft released by Senate education chair Tom Harkin (D-IA) and ranking member Mike Enzi (R-WY).

Let me repeat my prior contention that, politically, ESEA reauthorization is an issue for 2013 -- not 2011 or 2012. The Republican-led U.S. House is not going to give President Obama any kind of a political victory, despite the solid compromise put forth by the Senate HELP Committee. For that reason, the work currently underway is in part about laying the groundwork for a future compromise, in part a genuine attempt to get something done (despite the House), and in part political cover.

The bill itself represents a sensible step back from a pie-in-the-sky accountability goal of 100% proficiency in favor of annual state data transparency, continued data disaggregation among subgroups, and greater state flexibility over educational accountability. Personally, I am not an accountability hawk and am unswayed by spotty evidence and advocates such as former Florida Governor Jeb Bush who contends that it was Florida's accountability system (rather than its major investment in literacy and other interventions) that fueled student test-score gains. Chairman Harkin nails it by saying that the bill "focuses on teaching and learning, not testing and sanctioning." Amen to that.

Seeing as I have a day job that doesn't allow me to analyze the entirety of 800-page bills, here is my quick take on a few elements in the draft bill:

Positives

• Accountability: Eliminates AYP. Requires states to identify 5% lowest-performing schools and 5% of schools with the largest achievement gaps.
  
• CSR: Tightens up the use of Title II, Part A for class-size reduction to ensure that those dollars are directed at research-based implementation of smaller class sizes. [UPDATE: This could potentially free up some Title II, Part A dollars for teacher professional development and new teacher support.]
  
• Teacher & Principal Training & Recruiting Fund: This Fund would support state & local activities that further high-quality PD, rigorous evaluation and support systems, and improve the equitable distribution of teachers. The bill's language significantly strengthens existing federal policy language regarding the elements of comprehensive, high-quality educator induction and mentoring.

Concerns

• Equitable teacher distribution: The bill would require states to ensure that high-poverty and high-minority schools receive an equitable distribution of the most effective educators as measured by new teacher evaluation systems that must include four performance tiers. Sounds good and fair. But given that teacher working conditions significantly impact an individual educator's ability to be effective in the classroom (and garner a "highly effective" rating [see DC]), wouldn't this just create a massive game of musical chairs and major disruptions in the teaching pool unless a determined effort were mounted to improve the often poor teaching and learning conditions present in high-poverty schools?
  

Good Coverage & Analysis

Alyson Klein - Politics K-12 - Education Week
Joy Resmovits - Huffington Post
Stephen Sawchuk - Teacher Beat - Education Week
The Quick and the Ed (Education Sector)

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Unintended, Unforeseen Consequences

The challenges surrounding the U.S. Department of Education's (ED) plan to replace principals at underperforming schools across the nation (New York Times: "U.S. Plan to Replace Principals Hits Snag: Who Will Step In?") reminds me of the unintended consequences of California's class size reduction policies during the 1990s.

As the New York Times reported yesterday about the ED's $4 billion plan to radically transform the country’s worst schools by installing new principals to overhaul most of the failing schools, "[T]here simply were not enough qualified principals-in-waiting to take over."

California experienced a similar human capital problem when it reduced class sizes statewide in grades k-3. An unintended consequence of its state policy was the hiring of more emergency-credentialed and unqualified educators as a result of the additional teaching positions needed to enable smaller class sizes. As this Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning report noted, "[T]he implementation of class size reduction ... dramatically increased the shortage" of fully qualified teachers. In addition, the Public Policy Institute of California reports that it exacerbated educational inequality and disproportionately affected schools that served low-income and minority students:

CSR led to a dramatic increase in the percentages of inexperienced and uncertified teachers. In 1990, there were few differences in these characteristics by racial/ethnic and income groups. Even as late as 1995–1996, the year before CSR, schools with high percentages of nonwhite and low-income students were only slightly more likely
than other schools to have inexperienced teachers who lacked full certification and postgraduate schooling. By 1999, large gaps in teacher qualifications had emerged between schools attended by nonwhite and low-income students and other schools. For black students in schools with more than 75 percent of the students enrolled in subsidized lunch programs, nearly 25 percent had a first- or second-year teacher; almost 30 percent had a teacher who was not fully certified. At the other extreme, for white students attending schools with 25 percent or fewer of the students enrolled in subsidized lunch programs, only 12 percent had a first- or second-year teacher, and only 5 percent had a teacher who was not fully credentialed. These differences reflect the varying levels of difficulty that many schools experienced in attempting to attract and retain teachers following the implementation of CSR.

With all the current hullabaloo about wanting to fire more underperforming teachers as a chief reform strategy, the critical question is: "Who will replace them?" The belief that 'we can do better' does not necessarily make it so. We've got to attend to and recognize such human capital challenges before we put forth such policies, however well intended.

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rheeForm

Proposed education reforms that do not imagine that current and beginning teachers can become more effective while on the job should be considered null and void. This postulation, if accepted, would direct Michelle Rhee's new StudentsFirst agenda to the nearest paper shredder.

To be blunt, it is just plain naive and short-sighted to think that we can maximize teacher effectiveness purely by firing more teachers and marginally changing the cadre of incoming teacher candidates. Is supporting and strengthening the teaching practice of our veteran educators not worthy of our focus and investment?

StudentsFirst's "Elevate Teaching" policy objectives are limited to evaluating teachers and principals, reforming teacher certification laws, reforming teacher compensation, "exiting" teachers, and eliminating teacher tenure. Specifically, the objectives are:

• State law must require evaluation that is based substantially on student achievement. Evaluation tools should measure at least half of a teacher's performance based on student achievement, using a value-added growth model. The other aspects of a teacher's evaluations should derive from measures that align with student results, including high-quality observations and student evaluations of teacher practice.
• To avoid all teachers being ranked as effective without meaningful assessment, evaluations must anchor effectiveness around a year's worth of growth.
• State law must require principal evaluation that is based on student achievement and effective management of teachers. Districts should evaluate at least half of a school administrator's performance based on student achievement, and the remaining portion should mostly relate to their ability to attract, retain, manage, and develop excellent teachers.
• State law should give districts the autonomy to develop teacher evaluation systems apart from the collective bargaining process. Evaluations should be a matter of district policy.
• States must reduce legal barriers to entry in the teaching profession, including complicated credentialing or certification schemes that rely upon factors that do not clearly correlate with teacher effectiveness.
• State law should not be structured to penalize districts financially for recruiting teachers from alternate certification programs.
• States should adopt a clear process by which alternative certification programs are authorized, continually evaluated, and decommissioned if not producing high-quality educators.
• State law must facilitate digital learning by allowing certification for online instruction and modifying or eliminating mandatory "seat time" laws.
• State law must require pay structures based primarily on effectiveness. Teacher contracts must allow for individual performance-based pay.
• State law and district policy should not mandate higher salaries for master's degrees or additional education credits.
• State law should require staffing decisions (transfers, reductions, placements) be based on teacher effectiveness.
• State laws must prohibit forced placements and allow district control in staffing. Districts should ensure that teacher contracts require mutual consent placements. Districts should have the flexibility to offer defined grace periods, severance, or other options for teachers who have effective ratings, but do not find a mutually agreeable placement. Teachers rated ineffective should be exited from the system.
• State law should not grant, implicitly or directly, tenure or permanent contracts for PK–12 education professionals.

There is evidence (from sources such as IES and AIR) that shows that high-quality approaches to new teacher induction and professional development pay dividends in terms of student outcomes. Why would a "student first" agenda utterly ignore initiatives that work in favor of some that have a paltry or non-existent research base?

To keep it brief, please read some of my most relevant past posts arguing why a focus on teacher support and development makes sense and why it should be at the centerpiece of every education reform agenda.

• Teacher Quality: What You Need To Know
• Adding Value To The Value-Added Debate
• Positive Effects Of Comprehensive Teacher Induction
• State Teacher Policies Suck!
• Race To The Top: Under The Hood
• Research: Attracting New Teachers To Urban Schools
• Thoughts On Equitable Teacher Distribution
• Measurement Is Not Destiny
• Does Mentoring Improve New Teachers?
  

With regard to the StudentsFirst plan, to use a Twitter construct, #edreformfail.

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Silver Linings

It's probably no surprise to regular readers of this blog that I'm a Democrat. That said, in my professional life, I have worked for non-partisan and non-profit organizations committed to working with public officials of all political persuasions. And I think that both political parties -- as well as political independents -- are potential partners in improving pubic education. Nonetheless, I can't honestly say that November 2010 was an uplifting month from my (electoral) perspective.

But this is the Education OPTIMISTS blog, right? I guess I'm a little self-aware in that I recognize that a majority of my posts grouse about something or other and too few are offered in a truly optimistic vein. So here is my attempt at weaving a silk purse from an elephant's(?) ear.

Newly elected Republican governors and state legislators have opportunities to improve education in ways that some of their Democratic counterparts may not. They may be more politically willing and able to take on certain vestiges of the education status quo that may not be research-based, may not be working, and may be not be in service of student outcomes. I'm talking about things like the traditional steps-and-lanes teacher salary schedule, the length of the school day and year, and largely purposeless teacher evaluation systems. They may be able to construct new human capital systems and reform outdated school practices and processes. Certainly, these opportunities will vary depending upon numerous contextual factors, including state systems of educational governance, the intellectual and policy foundations for such work, the existence of non-governmental advocates and thought partners, existing vehicles for collaboration (such as p-16 councils), etc.

A number of past Republican governors emerged as leaders, or so-called "education governors." Some that immediately come to mind are former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, former Ohio Gov. Bob Taft, outgoing Alabama Gov. Bob Riley, and former Tennessee Gov. (and current U.S. Senator) Lamar Alexander (who also served as U.S Education Secretary under President George H.W. Bush).

That said, here's where my pessimism takes over. There are certainly members of the current Republican gubernatorial circle that are certainly not in the running for such an earned label, such as New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. With less than a year in office, he has moved in a decidedly confrontational direction. His actions and rhetoric makes him better suited for talk radio than as a collaborative education governor who needs to work with a Democratic-controlled state legislature and, yes, with teachers. Christie is casting himself as a modern-day Archie Bunker and is relishing the attention and headlines he is getting. The sad fact is that such rhetoric is what garners attention in today's media rather than the dogged policy work that actually changes the equation for students and teachers.

Christie seems to think that leadership consists of rhetoric rather than results. And that's dangerous if our collective goal is the creation of meaningful reform as opposed to simply talk or threats of it. Christie has attacked his own state's relatively good educational performance in order to further his demonizing of the state teachers' union, which appears to be his primary priority. He fired his first education commissioner who dared to strike a compromise with teachers around New Jersey's aborted Race to the Top application. That former commissioner said that the Governor "placed fighting with the state teachers unions and his persona on talk radio above education reform." Good luck to those who seek to thrust him upon America as a 2012 candidate for President.

My fear is that there those within the ranks of new Republican governors that are more likely to fashion themselves in the style of Christie than as "old school" education governors. Texas Governor Rick Perry's ascension to head the RGA probably doesn't help either.

With the exception of the 12 Race to the Top winners, one challenge that these new office holders of both parties will face is the distinct lack of new resources to inject into the educational system, either from state or federal sources. They won't be able to buy reforms by increasing education funding or refashion teacher pay with a major infusion of cash.

My hope is that governors of both parties will seek to work with educators to accomplish their policy objectives rather than force their desires onto them. There is good evidence to suggest that collaboration leads to more resilient and relevant policies that are likely to trickle down to actually change practices and processes within classrooms and schools. That's where the real work gets done.

I am hopeful that some quiet leaders will emerge.

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Building A Better Teacher

If you haven't been reading the excellent "Building A Better Teacher" news series in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, you should be. It really doesn't matter whether you're from Wisconsin or not, or particularly interested in this state's policy context. The series is taking an expansive look at the various issues related to human capital development, teacher effectiveness and teaching quality. And it's not quoting the same overused Beltway prognosticators to drive its points home.

The fourth installment in the eight-part series, funded by Hechinger, ran this past Sunday and was entitled "Trying to steer strong teachers to weak schools."

My main quibble with this particular article was that it gave short shrift to one of the most effective answers to the question posed: How do we steer strong teachers to weak schools? The answer: Improve the teaching conditions at those schools.

Here's the extent of what the article offered on this issue:

So what else might be done, in hopes of having more impact? A few ideas in nutshells:

• Make schools better places to work: This is both the simplest and most complex solution. The New Teacher Project report in 2007 said, "The best way to staff high need schools is to make them attractive to great teachers." But how do you achieve that?

Mike Langyel, president of the Milwaukee teachers union, listed things that would attract teachers: "A competent and fair principal is key not only in getting teachers there but in keeping them.... We're also looking at schools that are safe."

My suggestion would have been a much more robust treatment and discussion of the issue of teaching conditions. I have extrapolated on its importance in a series of blog posts, and the New Teacher Center (my employer) has unique national expertise in administering statewide Teaching and Learning Conditions surveys. The NTC has a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to administer a Teaching & Learning Conditions Survey as part of the foundation’s Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project. The Survey is being administered in select schools and districts participating in the MET project across the country.

Perhaps Wisconsin and Milwaukee, in particular, should consider administering such an anonymous full population survey to its educators -- teachers, administrators and support staff -- and see what they have to say. Why do they stay or leave a given school or district? What's working and what isn't? States and districts that have administered such surveys have used the data to improve principal preparation, rewrite professional standards for teachers and principals, and strengthen teacher mentoring and professional development. This is not data to be afraid of but data that can empower policymakers, school leaders and teachers alike.

Teaching and learning conditions are highly correlated with issues such as teacher retention and the presence of such conditions explain as much as 15 percent of the variance in student achievement between schools (Helen 'Sunny' Ladd, 2009). This stuff matters greatly in the current policy debates about teaching and student outcomes and it gets far too little attention as compared with value added, teacher evaluation and teacher pay.

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The Manifesto, Income Inequality & Credibility

On Friday, I wrote a blog item ('Misleading Manifesto') chiding a group of urban superintendents for misstating educational research in a 'manifesto' published in Sunday's Washington Post. Teacher quality *is* important -- but it does not matter MORE THAN family income and concentrated poverty.

I am convinced that too many educational reformers are happy to 'spin' the truth for rhetorical purposes. I think this is exactly what we saw in this manifesto. While this may help to simplify messaging, target solutions at a more narrowly construed problem, and focus in on what education leaders have direct control over, it carries an inherent policy danger along with it. That danger is two-fold: (1) teacher policy reforms may be set up for failure by overstating their potential impact; and (2) more comprehensive strategies desperately needed to combat rising income inequality and growing poverty in our nation may be discounted and ignored.

For me, this isn't an issue of setting low expectations for children from poverty. We must train and support our teachers to have high expectations and develop the potential in all children. But, from a policy perspective, which is the world in which I work, to not even discuss poverty and inequality -- even though the research evidence points to its preeminence -- is akin to taking it off the table as a policy priority.

Nor it is a lack of belief in the ameliorative benefits that sensible teacher reforms can have on student outcomes by expanding the recruitment pool of teacher candidates, improving initial training and on-going support of classroom teachers, improving teaching and learning conditions within schools, providing differential compensation to teachers for leadership roles, difficult assignments, shortage fields, and demonstrated effectiveness, and more....

For teacher quality specifically, as I argued in my previous post, playing fast and loose with the facts isn't necessary. There is a powerful argument to be made based on the fact that teachers are the most important school-based influence on student learning. That's exactly what my colleagues at the New Teacher Center have done. We've made careful and honest declarations about teacher quality being the most critical within-school variable, but haven't framed the issue in a way that would make us education-industry Pinocchios.

And this leads us directly to the question of credibility. While I am personally inclined to support elements of what the superintendents' manifesto calls for -- and inclined to support elements of broader education and teacher reform agendas -- I am disinclined to associate myself with a clarion call that is dishonest on its face and misserves the national need for a critical conversation and accompanying set of public policies to address issues of economic inequality. That need extends well beyond the education system and requires responses much broader than merely strengthening the teaching profession and overhauling human capital systems.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich recently has been banging the drums challenging policymakers -- and Democrats, in particular -- to address our nation's historic levels of income inequality and rising levels of poverty. As reported by the Washington Post's Steven Pearlstein, since 1976 "virtually all of the benefits of economic growth have gone to households that, in today's terms, earn more than $110,000 a year." Further, UNICEF reports that the United States has the highest rate of childhood poverty among 24 OECD nations -- over 20% -- and the second-worst rate (barely ahead of bottom-dwelling Great Britain) of childhood well-being in the industralized world. Further, as Walt Gardner recently noted, a September 2010 U.S. Census Bureau report showed that the percentage of Americans below the poverty line in 2009 was the highest in 15 years. And the rise was steepest for children, with one in five affected. Think this has any bearing on U.S. students' relatively poor performance on international student assessments? Uh-huh.

So, let's talk about how to strengthen teaching and its central importance to student outcomes. But let's not fence ourselves in with self-serving rhetoric. Let's be honest in our communications and expansive in our thinking about policies needed to improve the lives of American children.

It's about education -- and a whole lot more.

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Teacher Quality: What You Need To Know

Today the Joyce Foundation is releasing “Teacher Quality: What You Need to Know,” a first-of-its-kind guidebook that shows parents why we need to improve how we recruit, support, evaluate, and reward teachers in order to ensure all students get a great education. The short, easy-to-read guidebook tells the story of two teachers – one who gets the right support to help her kids succeed and the other who tries hard but doesn’t get the help she needs – and includes a pull-out “how to” guide with more information on policies, research, and a “Top 12” list of things parents can do to help.

The guidebook is geared toward parents but can be used with many audiences. Visit www.joycefdn.org/teacherquality to download the report, access other resources, and learn more about how you can advocate for change.

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Teaching and Learning Conditions

I'm catching up on education news and blogging after some well-spent time with our family in New York and Vermont last week....

Both successful Phase One Race to the Top (RttT) states -- Delaware and Tennessee -- plan to conduct a statewide teacher working conditions survey. Was this the secret to each state's victory? Well, not exactly, as the states of Colorado, Kentucky, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Ohio also built such a survey into their applications. Of course, each of those states were among the 16 Phase One semifinalists. So, maybe there is something there.

Independent of RttT, however, such efforts are in line with President Obama’s recent Blueprint for Reform: The Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which would require states and districts to collect and report teacher survey data on available professional support and working conditions in schools biennially.

Research has demonstrated a connection between positive teaching and learning conditions, teacher retention, and student achievement.

• “There is good evidence to show that teachers’ working conditions matter because they have a direct effect on teachers’ thoughts and feelings—their sense of individual professional efficacy, of collective professional efficacy, of job satisfaction; their organizational commitment, levels of stress and burnout, morale, engagement in the school or profession and their pedagogical content knowledge. These internal states are an important factor in what teachers do and have a direct effect in what happens in the classroom, how well students achieve, and their experience of school.” (Leithwood, 2006)
  
• “Working conditions emerge as highly predictive of teachers’ stated intentions to remain or leave their schools, with leadership emerging as the most salient dimension. Teachers’ perceptions of their working conditions are also predictive of one-year actual departure rates and student achievement, but the predictive power is far lower…Taken together, the working conditions variables account for 10 to 15 percent of the explained variation in math and reading scores across schools, after controlling for individual and school level characteristics of schools.” (Ladd, 2009)
• “[O]ur analysis of teacher mobility showed that salary affects mobility patterns less than do working conditions such as facilities, safety and quality of leadership.” (Hanushek and Rivkin, 2007)
• “…working conditions factors, especially principal support, had more influence on simulated job choice than pay level, implying that money might be better spent to attract, retain or train better principals than to provide higher beginning salaries to teachers in schools with high-poverty or a high proportion of students of color.” (Milanowski et al., 2009)
• A survey of 2,000 educators from California found that 28 percent of teachers who left the profession before retirement indicated that they would come back if improvements were made to teaching and learning conditions. (Futernick, 2007)

Last week's press release from the New Teacher Center goes into greater detail:

“Research has shown that understanding and improving teaching and learning conditions results in increased student success, improved teacher efficacy and motivation, higher teacher retention, and better recruitment strategies that bring educators to hard-to-staff schools,” said Ellen Moir, Chief Executive Officer of the New Teacher Center. “In the past, policymakers have not had the data necessary they need to address educators’ working conditions. Our surveys change this by putting valuable information in the hands of people who make important decisions every day that impact our schools and all those who work and learn in them.”

The New Teacher Center (NTC) assists states and school districts in administering the anonymous, web-based Teaching and Learning Conditions Survey. The NTC has a proven track record of successful administration of teaching and learning conditions surveys in 15 states. In addition to working with state stakeholders to design a customized survey, NTC provides analyses and training materials to help all stakeholders understand and use the Teaching and Learning Conditions Survey results for school improvement.

The Teaching & Learning Conditions Survey has the longest history in North Carolina where policymakers at different levels have utilized Survey data in different ways. Local education leaders have used results at the district level to further bond initiatives. At the state level, data was used in rewriting standards for principals and teachers. The Survey initiative has been so expansive that it has supported the creation of additional funding for professional development in low-performing schools. Results also have led to the development of school leadership training which requires administrators to use Survey data in making school-level improvement decisions.

The news article ('Teacher Surveys Aimed at Swaying Policymakers') from Education Week's Stephen Sawchuk provides additional context:

Despite their differing sample sizes and specific questions, the surveys’ findings about what teachers say they need to be successful are remarkably consistent from instrument to instrument. Some of the top findings: Teachers report that the quality of their schools’ leadership, a say in school decisionmaking, and opportunities to work with their peers affect their own capacity as educators.

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Are Mass Teacher Firings A New Trend?

Per this recent Education Optimists post about teacher firings in Central Falls, Rhode Island, word comes that a Georgia high school is also firing its entire staff.

A failing Savannah high school is firing its entire staff in an effort to avoid further sanctions from the state and to make the school eligible for up to $6 million in federal money, officials said Thursday.

The 200 employees at Beach High School — including the principal — will work there through the end of the year but will not be rehired for that school, said Karla Redditte, spokeswoman for the Savannah-Chatham County school district.

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Movement on Teacher Residency Requirements

As a follow up to my post last September ("Teacher Residency Requirements"), there appears to be legislative movement in both Illinois and Wisconsin to eliminate such requirements in Chicago and Milwaukee, respectively. Both cities require teachers to be residents in order to be employed in the public schools.

From District 299: The Chicago Schools Blog (Alexander Russo), 3/8/2010:

It's an age-old question for Chicago, which is one of few big cities to require teachers to live inside the city limits. Teachers complain about it. Once in a while they get caught living outside the city and have to move or leave their jobs. The recession in making jobs scarcer and the city more expensive. And now State Sen. Steans has introduced language [Residency Bill SB 3522 (Amendment 1)] that, with the support of the CTU, would remove that requirement.

From Wisconsin State Journal editorial, 3/10/2010:

Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature and the state's big teachers union are on the same side pushing for a smart school reform in Milwaukee.

They're backing Assembly Bill 89, which would prohibit Milwaukee Public Schools from requiring their teachers to live in the state's largest city.

My belief is that, while this might be good politics or even economic policy, it is bad education policy. In urban school districts that struggle to attract and retain talented and effective teachers, such a residency policy needlessly reduces the number of qualified candidates for teaching vacancies and lowers the quality of the overall selection pool.

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Compromise in Central Falls?

The Central Falls (Rhode Island) Teachers' Union, an AFT affiliate, has approached district superintendent Frances Gallo and signaled a willingness to compromise over several reform issues that last month led Gallo and the school board to recommend the firing of the entire staff at Central Falls High School. It appears that this story is still being written. Sometimes dramatic steps are what is needed to achieve compromise.

For more, check out today's Washington Post ...

"I am pleased to reassure the union their place in the planning process," Central Falls Superintendent Frances Gallo said in a statement. She said she welcomes union input in developing "a dynamic plan to dramatically improve student achievement" at Central Falls High School.

Gallo's statement followed an overture Tuesday from the Central Falls Teachers' Union, an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers. The instructors have offered support for a longer school day, as well as more rigorous evaluations and training, among other steps.

and Providence Journal stories...

Late Tuesday, Central Falls Teachers Union president Jane Sessums made the first move in a news release that said the teachers were willing to embrace a set of reforms that were very similar to changes Gallo initially proposed.

“My heart skipped a beat,” Gallo said after reading Sessums’ proposal. “I thought, ‘They are basically saying they want what we want for the first time, with the kind of assurances I need.’ … This brings the union back with us, in the conversation about meaningful reform. It’s where they should be.”

Less than 24 hours later, Gallo opened the door with a news release of her own, saying she was excited by the prospect of reaching agreement with the teachers.

Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist, whose order to improve the struggling school sparked the mass firings, said she was encouraged by the rapprochement between the two sides.

“Our focus in everything … is how to ensure the children in Central Falls receive an excellent education,” Gist said, “and that is always going to be improved when all the adults are working cooperatively together.

Related blog posts:

Central Falls Redux (2/26/2010)
Rhode Island District Fires All Of Its High School Teachers (2/24/2010)

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Rhode Island District Fires All Of Its High School Teachers

Today's Providence Journal story reports that Central Falls, Rhode Island's "tiniest, poorest city has become the center of a national battle over dramatic school reform." Even the New York Times and the Washington Post have taken notice.

While firing the entire teacher corps at Central Falls High School is a dramatic step, the school board's and superintendent's decision was largely based on the district's track record of very poor student outcomes, the teachers' rejection of a reform plan ultimatum from state Education Commissioner Deborah Gist targeting the state's lowest-performing high schools, and accountability pressures from the federal Education Department. The decision is supported by U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who recently weighed in on the controversy, applauding them for “showing courage and doing the right thing for kids.” Nonetheless, the impact on individual teachers is great and undoubtedly places their lives into significant turmoil and uncertainty.

Providence Journal (2/24/2010):

Duncan is requiring states, for the first time, to identify their lowest 5 percent of schools — those that have chronically poor performance and low graduation rates — and fix them using one of four methods: school closure; takeover by a charter or school-management organization; transformation which requires a longer school day, among other changes; and “turnaround” which requires the entire teaching staff be fired and no more than 50 percent rehired in the fall.

State Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist moved swiftly on this new requirement, identifying on Jan. 11 six of the “persistently lowest-performing” schools: Central Falls High School, which has very low test scores and a graduation rate of 48 percent, and five schools in Providence. Gist also started the clock on the changes, telling the districts they had until March 17 to decide which of the models they wanted to use. Her actions make Rhode Island one of the first states to publicly release a list of affected schools and put into motion the new federal mandate.

I expect that this story will be replicated elsewhere. On one hand, dramatic change IS needed in chronically low-performing schools and districts. BUT if educators and prospective educators see the wholesale firing of staff as a likely consequence in such challenging schools and districts, are they less likely to take jobs in such environments? What is the long-term consequence for such schools' and districts' ability to attract and retain high-quality teachers?

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Maryland's Taoiseach Proposes Reform

Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley and state school Superintendent Nancy Grasmick can finally agree on one thing: O'Malley's proposal to make the state competitive for Race to the Top round two.

Score one for Grasmick? Before Maryland decided not to apply in the first round of the Race to the Top competition -- making it one of only 10 states not to -- O'Malley said that no legislative changes were needed, while Grasmick insisted that they were if Maryland was to submit an application that had a snowball's chance in hell of being successful.

It looks like the Governor has come around. The Baltimore Sun reports that the Governor "wants to add a year to the time it takes public school teachers to achieve tenure and to tie their performance evaluations to data on how well their students are doing" and that Grasmick is "very happy."

A draft of the governor's Education Reform Act of 2010 shows that it includes:

•Lengthening the teacher tenure track from two to three years.

•Requiring that schools provide mentors to new teachers who are in danger of not achieving tenure.

•Making data on student growth a "significant component" of teacher evaluations, one of "multiple measures."

•Providing incentive pay (contingent upon Race to the Top funding) for "highly effective" teachers and principals who serve the bottom 5% of lowest-achieving public schools.

But will the Legislature agree? That remains to be seen, but the fact that the Governor and the state Superintendent could agree -- and that the proposal is supported by the state teachers' unions -- bodes well.

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State Teacher Policies Suck!

I'm sure glad that Kate Walsh and company weren't my professors in college. Damn! They are tough graders! With the exception of eight southern states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas) that received a 'C' and three northern states (Maine, Montana, Vermont) that received a 'F', every U.S. state received some version of a 'D' in the latest edition of the National Council on Teacher Quality's State Teacher Policy Yearbook. In grading the states, the authors look at five broad teacher quality areas (and numerous metrics within them): teacher preparation, expanding the pool of teachers, identifying effective teachers, retaining effective teachers, and exiting ineffective teachers.

While it is easy to poke holes at some of the National Council on Teacher Quality's seemingly ideologically-driven work (such as, I believe, its excessive focus on teacher pensions), much of its state policy analysis has a strong foothold in research and is one of the most comprehensive and regular analyses of state teacher policies. Like it or not, there is an increasing alignment between the NCTQ's scorecard and that employed by the U.S. Department of Education in the Race to the Top competition. The entire report should not be dismissed because of who they are (or are perceived to be). States should feel challenged by some of the analysis within the Yearbook and should consider looking to the "best practice" states identified under some of the metrics.

Here's a brief summary of the report's findings:

• State teacher policies are "broken, outdated and inflexible."
• Evaluation and tenure policies take too little or no account of classroom effectiveness. 47 states "allow tenure to be awarded virtually automatically."
  
• States are "complicit" on keeping ineffective teachers in classrooms. Only 1 state separates dismissal policy for poor performance from criminal and moral violations.
• Few states provide robust enough alternate routes into teaching.
• States' requirements for elementary teacher, middle-school teacher and special education teacher preparation are inadequate.
• There is too little accountability for teacher preparation in state policy. Only 5 states set minimum standards for teacher preparation program performance.
• States "cling to outmoded compensation structures," including the single salary schedule.
  

My primary quibble with the report is that it appears to completely and utterly discount the role of induction, mentoring and professional development in strengthening teacher effectiveness. Even if we prepare teachers better, recruit non-traditional candidates into the profession, retain them longer, compensate them differently, make evaluations more regular and meaningful, and find appropriate ways to terminate the small fraction of truly incompetent ones, it still will not be enough to maximize teacher effectiveness. There will continue to be a need for high-quality, individualized support upon entry into the profession and regular opportunities for data-driven, instructionally-focused professional development through a teacher's career. Professional development is not featured as a metric in the report at all and induction only enters as a criteria with regard to teacher retention, rather than teacher effectiveness -- which is where its most important power truly lies. That said, the evaluative criteria the report lays out about induction policy (on page 183-184 of the printed report) are worth noting and includes elements that states must attend to: mentoring of sufficient frequency and duration, mentoring provided at the start of the school year, and attentive mentor selection and high-quality training.

I won't beat this horse any further today, but check out these past posts for greater substance on what I'm getting at here with regard to the inadequate focus on the developmental needs of new and veteran teachers:

Race To The Top: Under The Hood
RttT: Redefining Teacher Effectiveness
Measurement Is Not Destiny

In other news, experts are doubting the likelihood of a 2010 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, so these state teacher policies with an added dose of Race to the Top reforms is likely to be where it's at over the next year plus.

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Teacher Residency Requirements

Apart from being marginally good local politics to require city employees (including teachers) to live within city boundaries, why would an urban district create barriers that make it more difficult to attract the highly effective teachers that it needs?

Ask Chicago and Milwaukee. (Boston, too, has a residency requirement for city employees, but it excludes teachers.) Any others out there we should be aware of?

From the Chicago Tribune (9/11/2009):

The city, for its part, maintains that teachers should be contributing to the tax base that funds their schools, among other reasons.

From the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (1/24/2008):

The residency rule has been controversial for years. Some say it is unfair and MPS needs good teachers too much to restrict the pool of possible teachers. Others say it doesn't actually have much effect on who teaches overall and it's good for the city to have employees live within the city line. Efforts in the state Legislature to repeal the residency rule recently have not succeeded.

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Everyone Gets an 'A'

The New York Times editorial page opines ("Truth in Teaching") this morning on teacher evaluation, informed by a new report from the New Teacher Project. I am happy to see the Times's expansive take on this issue, not focusing purely on firing ineffective teachers, but also talking about better training of school administrators, rewarding teaching excellence, and access to better quality professional development to improve classroom practice across the board. That said, the teacher evaluation process needs a complete overhaul to serve a real purpose for both teachers and students.

Read a selection from the editorial below:

Education reform will go nowhere until the states are forced to revamp corrupt teacher evaluation systems that rate a vast majority of teachers as “excellent,” even in schools where children learn nothing.

A startling new report from a nonpartisan New York research group known as The New Teacher Project lays out the scope of the problem. The study, titled “The Widget Effect,” is based on surveys of more than 16,000 teachers and administrators in four states: Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois and Ohio.

The first problem it identifies is that evaluation sessions are often short, infrequent and pro forma — typically two or fewer classroom observations totaling 60 minutes or less. The administrators who perform them are rarely trained to do the evaluations and are under intense pressure from colleagues not to be critical. Not surprisingly, nearly every teacher passes, and an overwhelming majority receives top ratings.

At the same time, more than 80 percent of administrators and nearly 60 percent of teachers surveyed said that they knew a tenured teacher who deserved to be dismissed for poor performance. Half of 12 districts studied had not dismissed a tenured teacher in the previous five years. The study also says that teachers who need and want to improve their skills find it very hard to get help.

Until things change, excellent teachers will not be recognized and rewarded, low-performing teachers will remain in the classroom and teachers who could become high achievers if they had more support never will.

To break out of this failing system, the report says, the states will need to create effective evaluation practices. Those must fairly rate teachers’ different levels of ability. School districts must also invest in teacher development programs and be prepared to fire bad teachers who show no ability or desire to get better.

In a related story, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports ("Ackerman vows tighter teacher standards") that just 13 of 10,700 Philadelphia teachers district-wide received an "unsatisfactory" evaluation last year. It is simply not possible in any human resources system -- assuming the existence of an honest, useful and properly weighted evaluation instrument (which clearly is not the case here) -- that only 0.12% of employees are performing unsatisfactorily. And, not that it is all the teachers' fault, but this in a school district in its sixth year of corrective action! This just further highlights the problem. Teacher evaluations are neither providing informative feedback to educators to help them improve nor are they holding truly ineffective educators accountable for either improving their performance or moving onto something else.

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FY 2010 Federal Education Budget

The Obama Administration released details of the President's FY 2010 federal budget today.

Here is a fact sheet from the Office of Management and Budget.
Here is full education budget proposal.

In education, there are number of notable increases with regard to teaching and learning:

• The Teacher Incentive Fund would receive a five-fold increase and would focus on more than just teacher compensation reform, but also a broader range of activities to improve teaching quality
  
• A seven-fold increase in School Improvement Grants -- which can be used for professional development -- from $606 million to $4.5 billion
  
• A $15 million appropriation for Teach For America
• $100 million more for the ARRA-authorized What Works and Innovation Fund
• $10 million increase to the School Leadership program to expand efforts to recruit, train, and retain principals and assistant principals in high-need school districts

There are also several initiatives and programs focused on college access and completion:

• The maximum Pell Grant award is increased by $200, to $5,550. It also shifts the Pell program to the mandatory side of the budget and ties future Pell increases to the Consumer Price Index-plus-1 percentage point.
  
• $500 million in 2010 for a new five-year Access and Completion Incentive Fund to support innovative state efforts to help low-income students succeed and complete their college education.
  

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Stupid Stuff from Skoolboy

Kudos to Dr. Aaron Pallas (AKA skoolboy) for his terrific post ("It's The Stupid System") today on the Gotham Schools blog.

He takes New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein and the Reverend Al Sharpton to task for their Huffinington Post piece which implies that there is an easy achievement-gap fix -- namely value-added assessment and merit pay alone.

As usual, skoolboy’s main concern is that Klein and Sharpton are talking about effective teachers without ever once discussing what it is that they do. Reward the good ones, get rid of the bad ones, it’s all about sorting teachers–and never about actually improving instruction. Let’s suppose that Klein, Sharpton and others are right–that it is difficult to tell which teachers are going to be highly successful when they start teaching, because the instruction teachers receive prior to taking over a classroom can’t fully prepare them for the challenges of an urban classroom. Why not focus on professional development, and assisting novice teachers in learning effective practices on the job? How does giving effective teachers merit pay and dismissing poor performers actually improve anyone’s practice?

I wholeheartedly agree with Pallas's take on this. I said as much in my post on Monday ("Measurement Is Not Destiny"). The human capital challenge can't just be about rewarding the best and dismissing the worst. It must also be about a focused effort to make the vast majority of educators more effective. That will require a comprehensive effort, including high-quality, job-embedded, sustained professional development and robust induction support.

UPDATE: Corey Bunje Bower at Ed Policy Thoughts has some thoughts on the Klein/Sharpton piece as well.

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Measurement Is Not Destiny

Stephen Sawchuk has written an excellent cover story ("Stimulus Bill Spurs Focus on Teachers") in this week's edition of Education Week. It discusses the federal stimulus legislation which directs states to abide by the equitable teacher distribution provisions in the No Child Left Behind Act -- as well as to improve teacher effectiveness -- in exchange for state stabilization funds and the opportunity to apply for competitive grants as part of Secretary Duncan's "Race To The Top Fund."

With regard to teacher effectiveness, there's just one little problem. There's no definition in federal law -- let alone in state laws -- about what that actually means. From Education Week:

Several states, and some districts, now endorse performance-based teacher evaluations that define good teaching, determine which teachers exhibit such practices, and identify those who fall short for assistance. Others are reorienting professional development toward sustained school-based approaches that researchers say are more likely to change teacher behavior and improve student achievement than “one shot” workshops.

Some efforts to improve teacher effectiveness have proved politically challenging. The federal Teacher Incentive Fund, a performance-pay program, has promoted interest in using test scores to estimate teacher effectiveness. That approach has generally not been favored by teachers’ unions. The tif program received an additional $200 million in the stimulus.

Additionally, a limited number of states have the ability to match teacher records to student data, and even those with the technical capacity have not always used their data to estimate teacher effectiveness. The unions fear such links could ultimately be used to establish punitive policies, and they have successfully lobbied legislators to curb the use of “teacher effect” data in some states. ("Growth Data for Teachers Under Review," Oct. 12, 2008.)

But the possibilities of “value added” are enticing to policymakers. Officials in Tennessee, the lone state that has incorporated teacher-effect data into personnel decisions, are awaiting new data that will reveal whether efforts to attract effective teachers to the most challenged schools have improved results, said Julie McCargar, the state director of federal programs.

This is a huge issue – and it will be interesting to see if the U.S. Department of Education focuses its regulatory definition and its expectations of states – like so many others – simply on measuring and identifying and perhaps rewarding effective teachers. The logical and more purposeful next step, of course, is to look at what behaviors, characteristics, or knowledge make certain educators more effective and then determine how to scale up approaches to initial training or on-going professional development programs to help make the vast majority of teacher candidates, beginning teachers and veteran teachers better. I have no insider knowledge about the Department's thinking around all this, but I’m always astonished at the wealth of policymakers, policy organizations, and foundations that never seem to get past square one on this topic.

Measurement is not destiny.

If all we do is use value-added metrics to determine who the best teachers are and pay them more money for being better, we will be sacrificing the quality of public education for a short-sighted reform. While more money might keep some effective educators from leaving a particular school or district, or from leaving the profession entirely, it won't do anything to make existing and future teachers a whit better.

The teacher effectiveness conversation must be about more than value-added measurement and performance pay, although it can certainly include those elements. It can't be simply about rewarding the good and getting rid of the bad. Fundamentally, it must be about a concerted human capital strategy to use existing knowledge as well as future data and research to strengthen teacher preparation, induction and professional development to improve the skills and abilities of all teachers. Hopefully, the Department's focus on teacher effectiveness will impel such an effort.

We can do better -- by learning from the best teachers and finding ways to replicate their success. Now, that would be effective.

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Teacher Quality and Class Size

The Washington Post's Jay Mathews gets it right in his recent blog post ("Better Teachers, Not Tinier Classes, Should Be The Goal").

Research shows that teacher quality trumps class size. (See Linda Darling-Hammond and Michigan State's Education Policy Center.) The strongest evidence suggests that class size only makes a difference in the early grades. Smaller classes are political popular -- and often demanded by parents -- but what is most important is who is teaching the class, not how many students are in it.

Jan Mathews writes:

Let's pretend Fairfax County schools get a surprise $44 million from the federal stimulus package this summer. With that money, the school system could make each class, on average, two students smaller, or it could do what some high-achieving schools do: Keep class sizes large and focus instead on more energetic recruiting and training of teachers. Research indicates that a two-student reduction would make little difference. Why not see what better instruction could do?

Or, try this thought experiment: The principal says your child can be transferred to the school's best teacher, an imaginative and energetic motivator, but that will push the class's size up to 30. Would you decline the offer? I wouldn't.

Then, there is California's sobering experience (CSR Research Consortium Capstone Report, 2002) when it reduced class sizes across the board in the 1990s. Because smaller classes require more teachers, California's policy depleted the teacher pool so incredibly that many more students were being taught by unqualified, unlicensed instructors. Not the desired outcome, most certainly.

Here's some good analysis and implications for ESEA re-authorization hot off the presses, so to speak, from Teacher Beat.

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