Baking Bread Without The Yeast

Among my son's favorite books are the ones in Richard Scarry's Busytown series. In What Do People Do All Day?, Able Baker Charlie puts too much yeast in the dough, resulting in a gigantic, explosive loaf of bread that the bakers (and Lowly Worm) need to eat their way out of.

The opposite problem -- a lack of yeast -- is present in Michelle Rhee's recent op-ed in Education Week. In it, she limits her call to "rethink" teaching policy to "how we assign, retain, evaluate, and pay educators" and to "teacher-layoff and teacher-tenure policies." (And she casts the issue of retention purely as one about so-called "last-in, first-out" employment policies rather than about school leadership, collaboration or working conditions.)

The utter absence of any focus or mention of teacher development either in this op-ed or in her organization's (StudentsFirst) expansive policy agenda leaves me wondering if Rhee believes that teachers are capable of learning and improving. If Rhee indeed does believe that new teacher induction and career-long professional development have value, then why does she consistently ignore it in her public statements and in her organization's strategic priorities? The alternative, of course, is a view that teachers are static beings, incapable of improvement. They are either born effective or ineffective. "Mr. Anderson's value-added score is an 18, thus he is an ineffective teacher and should be fired because his inability to teach cannot be ameliorated." We, of course, know this not to be the case. This alternative view also involves a strategy of simply trying to hire and fire our way to success. From research and international exemplars, I think most of us understand such a narrow approach to be ineffectual, albeit politically attractive in some quarters, especially among the Republican governors that Rhee is assisting exclusively.

High-quality development opportunities for teachers are like the yeast that helps the bread to rise. Comprehensive teacher induction has been shown to accelerate new teacher effectiveness and increase their students' learning. Likewise, personalized and purposeful professional development also can strengthen teaching skills and classroom impact.

It seems to me that a stated policy goal should be to ensure that as many as teachers as possible successfully pass educator evaluations being developed across the nation. Too many advocates such as Rhee appear to be eager to fire more teachers rather than make investments and restructure schools to maximize their effectiveness. A critical role for policy then would be to re-define teacher development in a way that raises the quality bar and invests public dollars in programs and approaches shown to have the desired impact on teaching and learning. Isn't that something we all can agree with?

Teachers are tremendously influential -- and we should do everything we can to unleash their full power. On teacher effectiveness, I'm unwilling to settle for half a loaf.

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Making Our Investments Count

In a few weeks my research team will release findings from our ongoing study of need-based financial aid, as we host a conference on Affordability and Attainment in Wisconsin Public Higher Education. Preparing for this event has given me the chance to think more about the things colleges and universities might do to maximize the substantial investments federal and state governments--and taxpayers--make in college students.

In particular, I propose that institutions begin to leverage their existing resources-- namely, their faculty-- to support the neediest students, those who enter with a low probability of success. While some might argue those students simply shouldn't be admitted, I take a different stance: given the labor market returns to college degrees and the widespread ambitions for college, it's incumbent upon higher education institutions to get "student-ready" -- rather than simply demanding that students get "college-ready."

I hope to begin writing about this concept of "student-ready" colleges from time to time over the coming months, but let's start with two ideas for how it could work.

(1) The Chronicle of Higher Education today highlights a program that assigned retired faculty to mentor first-generation students. Love this-- it's a win-win for all involved. Students without college-educated parents gain the benefits of having a college-educated "grandparent" of sorts who has not only attended but succeeded in college and worked at one!

(2) Here's an idea of my own. Policymakers should experiment with a new program to provide colleges and universities with incentives to place Pell Grant recipients in contact with faculty. Student-faculty interactions have been shown to enhance retention rates, and they are less common among low-income, first-generation students. A work-study type program could be a starting approach, but typical work-study jobs are located in cafeterias and libraries where students cannot form new connections with their educators. This approach should enhance the effectiveness of financial aid by supplementing it with increased faculty interaction. The federal government could begin with a trial effort using funds from the Trade Adjustment Assistance Act. The effort should be rigorously evaluated and used to inform future revisions of financial aid programs.

For sure, many faculty are overworked as it is. These kinds of things won't work everywhere and under all conditions. But let's say we tried them at four-year universities first. I'm willing to bet that even with uneven quality of mentoring, the effects on some students would be large enough as to raise persistence rates. The mentors will also benefit, and perhaps become advocates for these students and the programs that serve them. Student contact reminds us why we got into this biz in the first place, energizes us, and grounds us. We should be urged and rewarded for focusing that contact where it's most needed.

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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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Positive Effects of Comprehensive Teacher Induction

Today, Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. released the final report of its IES/U.S Department of Education-funded randomized controlled trial (RCT) of comprehensive teacher induction. It shows a statistically significant and sizeable impact on student achievement in mathematics (0.20 standard deviations) and reading (0.11 standard deviations) of third-year teachers who received two years of robust induction support. That's the equivalent of moving students from the 50th to 54th percentile in reading achievement and from the 50th to 58th percentile in math achievement.

As a basis of comparison, I note that in 2004, Mathematica conducted a RCT of Teach for America (TFA). In that study, it compared the gains in reading and math achievement made by students randomly assigned to TFA teachers or other teachers in the same school. The results showed that, on average, students with TFA teachers raised their mathematics test scores by 0.15 standard deviations (versus 0.20 standard deviations in the induction study), but found no impact on reading test scores (versus 0.11 standard deviations in the induction study).

In another recent Mathematica report (boy, these folks are busy!), the authors note that "The achievement effects of class-size reduction are often used as a benchmark for other educational interventions. After three years of treatment (grades K-2) in classes one-third smaller than typical, average student gains amounted to 0.20 standard deviations in math and 0.23 standard deviations in reading (U.S. Department of Education, 1998)." In that report -- an evaluation of the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), Mathematica researchers found a very powerful impact from KIPP: "For the vast majority of KIPP schools studied, impacts on students’ state assessment scores in mathematics and reading are positive, statistically significant, and educationally substantial.... By year three, half of the KIPP schools in our sample are producing math impacts of 0.48 standard deviations or more, equivalent to the effect of moving a student from the 30th percentile to the 48th percentile on a typical test distribution..... Half of the KIPP schools in our sample show three-year reading effects of 0.28 standard deviations or more."

Is it appropriate to compare effect sizes among RCTs or, for that matter, among research in general? I am told that it is, although certainly considerations such as cost effectiveness and scalability have to enter into the conversation. Implementation issues also must be attended to. With regard to teacher induction, the issue of cost effectiveness was addressed in a 2007 cost-benefit study published in the Education Research Service's Spectrum journal and summarized in this New Teacher Center (NTC) policy brief.

Disclosure: I am employed by the NTC which participated in the induction RCT, and I helped to coordinate NTC's statement on the study.

The NTC is "encouraged" by the study. However, NTC believes that "it does not reflect the even more significant outcomes that can be achieved when districts have the time, capacity and willingness to focus on an in-depth, universal implementation of comprehensive, high-quality induction. It speaks volumes about the quality of induction and mentoring provided and the necessity of new teacher support that student achievement gains were documented despite [design and implementation] limitations to the study."

UPDATE: Read the Education Week story by Stephen Sawchuk here. And the Mathematica press release here.

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You're Fired!

I am deeply troubled to read columns like this ("Improve education, fire bad teachers") -- both the title and the content -- from a reputable source like the Center for American Progress (CAP). Much as the likes of FOX News are in desperate need of balance and breadth of perspective, so is this column.

Where is the discussion about the need to support teachers to become more effective through improved preparation, stronger induction and mentoring, and job-embedded professional development? What about more than a throwaway line about the role of teacher evaluation systems to provide constructive feedback to help teachers identify strengths and weaknesses and help them become more effective?

I don't mean to pick on CAP too harshly, for some of its prior reports (such as this one) approached the teacher effectiveness issue more comprehensively and accurately. But if all we do is focus on firing teachers, without addressing other elements of teacher quality policy, we're going to dig ourselves into a hole that we'll never crawl out of. While stricter license and tenure requirements and more meaningful teacher evaluation systems might weed out truly ineffective teachers (a small minority), it won't do anything to help the vast majority teachers become more successful without a clear focus on individualized teacher development.

Another recent example of oversimplification and the repetitive 'teachers suck' mantra appeared on the pages of Newsweek masquerading as an actual news article. (I'm glad I canceled my subscription years ago.) The authors pontificated that, "Nothing, then, is more important than hiring good teachers and firing bad ones." Um, OK. Nothing, huh?

We need a broader vision here, folks, along the lines that the Obama Administration has articulated in its initial ESEA blueprint. It is not as simple as just firing more teachers. Columns like these do not convey the complexity and comprehensiveness of the policies, practices and implementation that is needed to truly improve teacher effectiveness across the board. They simplify the problem and cast the responsibility for educational failure solely on teachers.

Speaking of balance, here are more of my thoughts....

UPDATE: Eduwonk and Claus von Zastrow make good points on this issue -- as does Diane Ravitch (here and here). Bill Maher offers his own 'new rule, raising the important issue of parental involvement.

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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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Research: Attracting New Teachers to Urban Schools

New research led by Tony Milanowski of the University of Wisconsin-Madison provides more evidence that increasing teacher pay may not be the best approach to attract new teachers to high-need, hard-to-staff urban schools. A key finding of the study -- published in the International Journal of Education Policy and Leadership -- which explored job factors important to pre-service educators was that "working conditions factors, especially principal support, had more influence on simulated job choice than pay level."

'Policy implications' include:

• "[M]oney 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."
• "[I]nduction programs and curricular flexibility are important to new teachers. The finding that induction programs are attractive, combined with evidence that such programs can be
  effective in reducing teacher turnover (e.g., Ingersoll and Kralick, 2004; Smith and Ingersoll, 2004), suggests that urban districts may want to implement high-qualityinduction and mentoring programs, especially for new teachers in schools with high proportions of poor students or students of color."

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