Teacher Preparation: Mend It, Don't End It

Some education reformers want to cut higher education out of the business of teacher preparation and give the job to non-traditional providers. While there are numerous alternatives to traditional teacher preparation--such as residency programs and initiatives such as Teach for America--the vast majority of the nation's teachers continue to graduate from schools of education.

I recently authored this policy brief, funded by the Carnegie Corporation through a grant to my employer, the New Teacher Center, as part of its Teacher for a New Era (TNE) initiative. TNE is built upon the premise that teacher preparation can be strengthened by building upon strong teacher development partnerships that currently exist between higher education and k-12 schools. The brief makes the case that teacher development should not assumed to be over the day a teacher leaves his or her preparation program, but should be viewed as a developmental continuum spanning the entire teaching career which should include a robust induction period. It offers up some promising partnership models and example of state policies that support the development of such linkages between teacher education and school-based induction programs.

Here's are some brief excerpts:

The Carnegie Corporation’s Teachers for a New Era (TNE) initiative is an attempt to rethink teaching by building upon what works, focusing on available evidence to improve, and learning from successful reform models. In effect, it is an opportunity and a call for traditional teacher preparation to reinvent itself.

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A challenge for practitioners and policymakers alike is to envision and create a continuum of teacher support which stretches from the first days of pre-service education throughout the entire teaching career. The critical element of this challenge is to strengthen the connection between the pre-service curriculum and district-based teacher induction program and to develop mutual accountability for new teacher development among the key stakeholders. The reality is far from this vision.

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The alignment of teacher preparation and induction has been a focus of conversation among academics, practitioners, and policymakers for more than two decades. Calls continue to come from many quarters for greater action on this front. Most recently, James G. Cibulka, president of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, has vowed to use the organization as a “lever for reform,” urging institutions of higher education to build intensive partnerships with schools and districts.

Only in a select few settings have imagined reforms actually occurred. An on-going challenge is to continue to move this work forward and to create replicable partnership models and policies. Another challenge is actually demonstrating the impact of such work—not just for teachers, but also for their students and the schools they serve. Advocates of such a system, including the Carnegie Corporation’s Teachers for a New Era initiative, have made a compelling case that an aligned system of teacher development is in the best interest of the educators themselves. But does it result in more effective teachers? And does it benefit students and schools? Perhaps it does, but we don’t really have sufficient evidence to demonstrate it.

Due to the rarity of data systems that bridge the divide between higher education and k–12 schools, it has been nearly impossible to measure the impact of the small number of partnerships and state policies that have sought to create a seamless teacher development continuum encompassing both pre-service education and new teacher induction. Theoretically, if the alignment is strong, then we should see a number of outcomes as a result: greater teacher satisfaction, increased educator self-efficacy, reduced new teacher attrition, stronger teacher evaluation data, and perhaps even improved student achievement.

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Louisiana: Accountability for Teacher Preparation

An unexpected but welcomed editorial ('What Louisiana Can Teach') appears in this morning's New York Times. It focuses on Louisiana's reform of and accountability for its teacher preparation programs.

For students to learn, they need well-trained teachers. Unfortunately, far too many teacher-preparation programs in this country are little more than diploma mills. As states and the federal government consider ways to fix this problem, they should look to Louisiana’s accountability-based reform efforts.

Louisiana already has required public- and private-teacher-education programs to offer more rigorous course work, and teachers must pass licensing exams in more subject areas than before.

The most striking innovation is an evaluation system that judges teacher-preparation programs based on how much their graduates improve student performances in important areas, including reading, math and science.

For those of you who want more information on this initiative, check out the Louisiana Board of Regents web site (including the latest statewide and institutional reports), this summary from the Center for Teaching Quality, and this Southern Regional Education Board policy brief.

Reaction:
Quick and the Ed
Eduwonk
Daily Howler

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Read It Here First

Please don't confuse this blog with a breaking news operation. It's hard to be on top of everything amidst being parents, holding full-time jobs, and trying to follow the pennant races (Go Sox!). But sometimes, despite doing most of our blogging after the sun's gone down, we're way ahead of the curve.

Such was the case with the TEACH Grants. Sara was all over this issue back in April, prior to the U.S. Department of Education's release of regulations. I notice that Education Week picked up the story in the September 15, 2008 issue, six months later.

Now, Stephen Sawchuk is an excellent reporter (formerly with EdDaily), but my wife scooped you on this one, dude!!! Check out some of Stephen's blogging at Teacher Beat.

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Will The New President Support New Educators?

In yesterday's lukewarm editorial about the presidential candidates' education policy platforms, the Washington Post clearly sided with Barack Obama as the preferable option over John McCain. Not exactly a strong endorsement.

One thing is clear. Obama's presidential platform specifically focuses on developing excellent teachers--recognizing educators as the #1 school-based impact on student achievement. As a U.S. Senator, Obama has sponsored and co-sponsored legislation that would fund teacher residency programs and high-quality teacher induction programs. He's not a Johnny-come-lately to this issue.

Other than the fact that the charter-and-voucher-happy Lisa Graham Keegan (Matthew Yglesias/The Atlantic blog) (Arizona Republic article) is his chief education advisor, why is McCain clinging primarily to the tired, old right-wing focus on school structure, market-based reforms, and demonizing teachers at the exclusion of everything else? What too many conservatives don't seem willing to admit is that teachers drive results. Whether it's a public school, a charter school, a voucher school, a religious school or a home school, if a child has a good teacher he will be more likely to succeed. If teacher quality is lacking, learning is much less likely to occur. Teachers are not the enemy - they will lead us where we need to go if we support them and, yes, challenge them when appropriate to do better. But It can't be all sticks and no carrots. And It can't be done to teachers, it must be done with them.

The 'It' is what is in question in this campaign.

There is some hope in McCain's education platform. Buried within it is an interesting idea:

Provide Funding For Needed Professional Teacher Development. Where federal funds are involved, teacher development money should be used to enhance the ability of teachers to perform in today's technology driven environment. We need to provide teachers with high quality professional development opportunities with a primary focus on instructional strategies that address the academic needs of their students. The first 35 percent of Title II funding would be directed to the school level so principals and teachers could focus these resources on the specific needs of their schools.

I agree that Title II monies should be better directed at high-quality, high-impact professional development. About half of these funds currently go to class size reduction which is not necessarily the biggest bang for the buck, particularly outside the early grades. Certainly, some professional development monies are directed at low-quality, pray-and-spray, one-size-fits-all PD seminars. And some teachers are allowed to self-select PD offerings that really aren't focused on improving their teaching. I'm not saying that enrollment in Underwater Basket Weaving is rampant, but simply that districts and school leaders should have more say in -- and a better understanding about -- helping teachers improve through purposeful PD.

As McCain so often discusses, it is also appropriate to focus on weeding out ineffective teachers. But even more important is identifying the effective ones through meaningful evaluation systems [Ed Sector] [NGA] [NCCTQ], figuring out what makes them effective, and using that knowledge to transform the practice of the vast majority of mediocre-to-average-to very good teachers by improving preparation [ECS] [Edutopia] [SREB] [TNE], instituting high-quality induction programs [NTC] [AASCU] [AEE], and and designing career-long professional development opportunities [CCSR] [CCSSO] [PEN] [VA DOE] that support individualized teaching contexts.

The main problem with McCain's proposal is that he has proposed ratcheting down increases in domestic spending. That means little money to implement No Child Left Behind-related programs and fund needed teacher quality reforms. (Remember, we've got to fund those tax cuts for the rich that sickened McCain just a few years ago; oh yes, and pay for the 100-year war in Iraq.)

Obama, on the other hand, has signaled a willingness to reform teacher compensation and strengthen professional development systems and ante up federal resources and target them at high-need, hard-to-staff schools and districts across the country. His focus clearly is on making teachers better with a focus on student outcomes. That's a more comprehensive approach that makes a lot more sense. I agree with the Post that he needs to go further in fleshing out his views on issues such as teacher assignment and teacher tenure, but Obama's reform-minded, student-focused teacher policy proposals are a refreshing change from the "status quo or bust" and "more money is the only answer" ethos of many recent Democratic presidential contenders.

With regard to McCain, I wish he would spend less time talking about bad teachers and more time talking about how we can learn from good ones. And enough with this voucher obsession! Let's focus on making our public schools as good as they can be. That starts with strengthening America's teaching force.

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Watch Out: TEACH grants are the new debt trap

The Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher Education (TEACH) Grant Program was established by Congress under the College Cost Reduction and Access Act, to benefit current and prospective teachers. This new grant is available as of the 2008-09 school year. It provides $4,000 per year to students willing to commit (as recent high school graduates) to earning a degree in education and then going to teach full-time for 4 years in high-poverty schools in a specific subject area.

On the face of it this looks like a good program-- incentives for more individuals to become teachers, teach in low-income communities, financial assistance that does not have to be repaid, etc.

But beware: If a student does not fulfill the terms of the grant it is automatically converted into an unsubsidized loan, with interest accruing starting when the loan began.

One can easily imagine many ways a student could fail to fulfill the terms of the grant.
Here are but a few examples:

1. The 18 year old student might change her mind about becoming a teacher (all you have to do to be eligible is to "plan on completing coursework necessary to begin a career in teaching")

2. She might not be admitted to a school of education. This is easy to imagine at a school like UW-Madison, where our admissions occur only after a student begins college and are quite competitive.

3. She might not succeed in the program (you have to maintain a 3.25 GPA each semester)

4. She might not find an appropriate teaching job in her local area and thus be forced to move away from home, or even out-of-state. (There is a clause for this: "There are, however, graduate degree alternatives for teachers or retirees with experience in a teacher shortage area" but the options aren't spelled out)

5. Once she's teaching, she could be laid off (new teachers are especially vulnerable to this).

6. The school at which she's teaching might change in composition, such that it is no longer considered "high-poverty." (It seems the criteria will be based on % free lunch)

For these reasons and many more, the student's "grant" of up to $16K might suddenly become an unsubsidized loan amounting to far more with interest included (something along the lines of $40K over a 10 year period).

Yet to sign up for the program the student only signs a simple form-- since it's not a loan there is no promissory note clearly spelling out terms and conditions. This is thus not like a loan forgiveness program.

We should be very concerned about the potential impacts of this highly misleading program on uninformed students. We should be especially concerned because the U.S. Department of Education knows, and it explicit about knowing-- and expecting-- that fully 80% of those receiving the TEACH grant will fail to meet its requirements and therefore have their "grant" turned into an unsubsidized loan!

Here is the text from the federal regs:

"As discussed elsewhere in this preamble, program cost estimates reflect data on recent college graduates entering eligible teaching fields, adjusted for the percentage of students who graduate, maintain a 3.25 grade-point-average and take out a Federal loan. (In the absence of any need-based eligibility criteria, Federal borrowing was used as a proxy for unmet financial need.) Data from longitudinal studies were used to estimate the percentage of recipients who graduated from college, were highly qualified, and taught in high poverty schools for four out of the eight years following graduation. Based on this data, the Department assumed _*80 percent of recipients *_will eventually fail to fulfill their service requirements and have their grants converted into Federal Direct Unsubsidized Stafford Loans."

The Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher Education (TEACH) Grant Program and Other Federal Student Aid Programs; Proposed Rule
[Federal Register: March 21, 2008 (Volume 73, Number 56)]


At this point, the legislation has been approved and the Secretary of Education is taking comments on the proposed federal regulations.

While grants are more attractive to students than loans, there is nothing more destructive than false promises. This needs to be retooled--quickly--into a loan forgiveness program.

Spread the word.

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