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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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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Race To The Top: Under The Hood

My colleagues and I at the New Teacher Center submitted revised language during the public comment period to strengthen proposed Race to the Top (RttT) regulations. (8/28/2009: "RttT: Redefining Teacher Effectiveness".) I am delighted that most of our suggestions were adopted. Specifically, three changes I am pleased to see in the final RttT regulations and state application released by the U.S. Department of Education today are:

(1) A focus on multiple measures in teacher evaluation.

We have defined effective teacher to mean “a teacher whose students achieve acceptable rates (e.g., at least one grade level in an academic year) of student growth (as defined in this notice). States, LEAs, or schools must include multiple measures, provided that teacher effectiveness is evaluated, in significant part, by student growth (as defined in this notice). Supplemental measures may include, for example, multiple observation-based assessments of teacher performance.”

We have revised criterion (D)(2)(ii) to read, “Design and implement rigorous, transparent, and fair evaluation systems for teachers and principals that (a) differentiate effectiveness using multiple rating categories that take into account data on student growth (as defined in this notice) as a significant factor, and (b) are designed and developed with teacher and principal involvement.”

(2) A stronger focus on school leaders and the inclusion of positive teaching and learning conditions in the definition of effective principal.

We have changed the definition of effective principal as follows: (a) replaced “States may supplement this definition as they see fit” with “States, LEAs, or schools must include multiple measures;” (b) added ”Supplemental measures may include, for example, high school graduation rates and college enrollment rates, as well as evidence of providing supportive teaching and learning conditions, strong instructional leadership, and positive family and community engagement;” and (c) replaced “so long as principal effectiveness is judged, in significant measure by student growth” with “provided that principal effectiveness is evaluated, in significant part, by student growth.”

(3) Greater attention to the need for high-quality teacher induction, mentoring and professional development.

We agree that induction programs and coaching by accomplished teachers and principals can be important and effective strategies for supporting novice teachers and principals upon their entering the profession. We are revising the criterion to clarify that States’ plans in response to this criterion should provide for coaching and induction programs as supports for teachers and principals. Changes: We have revised criterion (D)(5)(i) to clarify that plans should include providing effective, data-informed “coaching” and “induction.”

We agree that professional development, including mentoring and coaching, are important aspects of teacher effectiveness. For this reason, criterion (D)(2)(iv)(a) focuses on using evaluations to inform decisions regarding developing effective teachers and principals, including by providing relevant coaching, induction support, and/or professional development. Criterion (D)(5) also provides for evaluation of the extent to which a State has a high-quality plan for its participating LEAs to provide effective, data-informed professional development, coaching, induction, and common planning and collaboration time to teachers and principals.

Sources of great analysis on the final RttT regulations here:

• Education Week (Michele McNeil): "Rules Set for $4 Billion 'Race to Top' Contest"
• New York Times (Sam Dillon): "After Criticism, The Administration Is Praised for Final Rules on Education Grants"
  
• Teacher Beat: "Teacher Elements of Final Race to the Top Guidelines"
  
• Eduflack: "Just The Race Facts"
• Eduflack: "The Race Officially Begins ... Now"
• Eduwonk: "Racing To The Top"

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Teachers' Voice

An important survey was released this week that captures teachers' perceptions of their professional working environment. The national study of 900 teachers by Public Agenda describes educators as falling into one of three groups: "Disheartened," "Contented," and "Idealists." It also raises some serious policy implications for the placement, retention and longevity of teachers based on teachers' perceptions about working conditions, why they entered the profession, and their opinions about proposed policy reforms.

But as useful as this survey may be in defining these issues at a 30,000-foot level, it does not approach the power and utility of teacher surveys that offer entire populations of educators in individual states and districts the opportunity to share their voice about working conditions, leadership support, resources, opportunities for professional learning, etc. In turn, these anonymous surveys also provide contextualized, customized summary data at the state-, district- and school-level based on the perceptions and opinions of local educators.

Teaching and Learning Conditions surveys have been led by the New Teacher Center in states such as Alabama, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina and West Virginia, and in school districts such as Fairfax County, Virginia. They provide state and district policymakers and educational leaders with powerful data to define issues that need to be addressed in school and districts that have major implications for the quality and effectiveness of teachers and principals.

Read the Public Agenda report, but also think about conducting a Teaching and Learning Conditions survey in your state or school district. What do the teachers where you live and work think?

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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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Superteacher To The Rescue!

Given the recent spate of federally-funded studies showing no effect of a variety of educational innovations and interventions, my predicted answer to the question ('Can Teachers' Talent Translate Elsewhere?') posed in this Houston Chronicle story is "no."

I worry, however, that the basic premise of the federally funded Talent Transfer Initiative is faulty and builds upon the notion of teaching (as reinforced by popular culture) as an individual rather than as a collective pursuit. Can 'superteachers' walk into dysfunctional school cultures and work magic that can result in a quantifiable impact on student learning? Some surely can. (It's too bad we can't clone Jamie Escalante and Frank McCourt, isn't it?) More important to ask is, should we expect them to?

What is more desperately needed than an expensive scheme to redistribute 'superteachers' is a serious attention to teaching and learning conditions. My New Teacher Center colleague, Eric Hirsch, spearheads assessment of school culture and the training of school administrators to more effectively shape it. His and independent research (here and here) has identified that teacher effectiveness is facilitated by a positive school context, including support from leadership, the existence of a collaborative working environment, and time for professional learning.

It doesn't appear that the Talent Transfer Initiative envisions teaching and learning conditions as part of the solution, and that's terribly unfortunate. I wonder if the TTI is even collecting such data to investigate the relationship between these variables and teacher success, or lack thereof? Until we address these contextual issues in low-performing and hard-to-staff schools, we're not going to get the results that we expect and students deserve.

UPDATE (9:35 p.m.) -- Claus von Zastrow offers an excellent blog post on Public School Insights about this study as well.

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RttT: Redefining Teacher Effectiveness

My colleagues and I at the New Teacher Center have offered up what I believe to be a balanced and thoughtful series of recommendations to strengthen the teacher and principal effectiveness provisions in the U.S. Department of Education's proposed Race to the Top regulations. You can find the NTC's initial public comments -- submitted on August 21 -- here. And you find an addendum -- filed yesterday -- offering recommendations for specific language additions, here.

Generally, we are supportive of the overall direction of Race to the Top. But we feel that its focus on teacher effectiveness is too narrowly about measuring individual teacher impact at the exclusion of supporting all educators to strengthen their teaching and leadership skills and attending to teaching and learning conditions within schools that impact student success.

Here is a brief summary of our recommendations:

Improving Teacher Effectiveness and Achieving Equity in Teacher Distribution
• The RttT guidelines should include a definition of teacher effectiveness that acknowledges and
supports the development of teacher and principal practice, especially during the early years.
New teachers and principals, who disproportionately work in struggling schools, need strong
mentoring and support to become effective.

• The RttT guidelines should define ‘effective principal’ more expansively, drawing upon
additional measures of student success and data on teaching and learning conditions to fully
reflect the impact of teachers, school leaders, and school environment on student learning.

• The RttT guidelines should require states to address school leadership development and teaching and learning conditions in their strategies to improve teacher effectiveness and the equitable distribution of quality teachers.

Improving Collection and Use of Data
• RttT guidelines should specifically include teaching and learning conditions data gathered from
practitioners to help schools, districts and states better understand supports and barriers to
teacher effectiveness and equitable teacher distribution, and to incorporate this information into
their longitudinal P-20 data systems.

And here is some selected language that provides insight into our thinking around teacher effectiveness and teacher development:

Teacher effectiveness in the proposed RttT guidelines focuses exclusively on value-added student assessments. While value-added student achievement data can be used to reward and recognize certain achievements by educators, it should not be the sole method by which teachers are evaluated, observed, rewarded, and deemed “effective.” Firing the least effective teachers and rewarding the most effective alone is short-sighted and ignores the vast majority of teachers in the middle who can achieve greater success if given access to high-quality induction and professional development, strong and supportive school administrators, and opportunities for collaboration and leadership. Great teachers are made – not born. Teachers need professional support and opportunities to develop their practice, including focused induction during their initial years in the profession. It is important to measure teacher impact on student learning, but measuring impact without providing the means to help educators strengthen their practice will ultimately fail our schools.

If RttT is to be an effective reform strategy, it needs to recognize teacher development as a primary means to maximize classroom effectiveness. RttT should require states not merely to identify the best teachers, but see that their successes form the building blocks of a better understanding of effective teaching practice that can be replicated in classrooms across America.

And on teaching and learning conditions:

In order for school leaders to attract and retain quality teachers, research shows the need for school leaders to make decisions based on data that incorporate the perspective of classroom teachers. Teacher survey data can provide insight into the school culture, how decisions are made, and the use of instructional and planning time for teachers. Such contextual data may explain differences in teacher effectiveness between schools and districts. NTC has worked with over 300,000 educators in 10 states, and collected teaching and learning conditions data from over 8,000 schools to utilize in school improvement plans. In North Carolina, the State Board of Education now requires schools to utilize the data from the biennial working conditions survey to inform annual improvement plans and strategies.

Quality teachers will seek out and stay with strong supportive school leaders; therefore, using RttT funds for salary bonuses in hard-to-staff schools would not be the most effective approach. RttT should encourage states to show how they are using data from teachers, along with student achievement and other relevant data, to develop policies for these schools, strengthen school leadership, and ensure that they are settings where the most effective teachers want to work and can succeed.

The RttT public comment period closes today and a spate of organizations have submitted comments just under the wire. They range from narrow to broad, supportive to critical, and offer everything from research-based suggested line edits to what basically look like press releases buttering up Secretary Duncan.

Visit here to review all of the public comments submitted.

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The Revolving Door of Teachers In Chicago

The Consortium for Chicago School Research today released an informative study ("The Schools Teachers Leave") of teacher turnover in Chicago Public Schools (CPS). It reviewed the personnel records of approximately 35,000 public school teachers in 538 elementary schools and 118 high schools over a five-year period between the 2002-03 and 2006-07 school years. Its primary finding is that half of all Chicago public school teachers had left their school within four years -- and more than two thirds of new teachers had. It also identified 100 CPS schools with "chronically" high teacher turnover -- losing about a quarter of their teachers annually. While these statistics are slightly worse than Illinois as a state and the nation as a whole, CPS is not a huge outlier with regard to teacher mobility. It is a problem across the board.

From an equity standpoint, teacher mobility and turnover is a particular chllaenge for schools within urban districts like CPS because of the student population they serve. Turnover has significant implications for educational equity because schools with large percentages of African-American and low-income students are more likely to be inflicted with this revolving door of teachers. These students in greatest need of access to quality education and quality teaching are the least likely to receive it. They are more likely be taught by beginning teachers and those without full credentials or relevant subject matter knowledge. This lack of educator quality feeds low student achievement, socioeconomic and racial achievement gaps, and dropout rates.

The Consortium reports offers some guidance about what relatively successful schools look like. It identifies teacher working conditions as a major factor in retention and in developing a nurturing and collaborative professional environment.

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

Thus, teachers stay in schools where the conditions are well suited for them to have the potential to be effective—where their colleagues are collaborators, school administration is supportive, parents trust teachers to do their jobs, and the learning climate for students is safe and non-disruptive. These elements of school working conditions are among the key elements needed to improve student achievement, along with a school-wide focus on improving instruction.

To address this teacher quality problem, one solution that new CPS CEO Ron Huberman has announced is to expand the new teacher induction and mentoring work of the Chicago New Teacher Center throughout the district. (Disclosure: I work for the New Teacher Center, the CNTC's parent organization.) CNTC is currently active in five CPS Instructional Areas, mostly on Chicago's South Side. Its intensive mentoring work -- and high-quality induction overall -- has been shown not only to increase teacher retention, but also to help beginning teachers become more effective in the classroom. The work of the CNTC was recently profiled in the Center for American Progress report, Ensuring Effective Teachers for All Students.

This kind of data analysis is exactly what all states and school districts should be engaged in. It's hard to fix a problem that isn't understood and it's hard to set a policy goal to address something that isn't quantifiable. More often than not, the reason this type of analysis isn't occurring is due to the lack of political will and the unwillingness to grapple with bad news, rather than the absence of data systems or human talent to conduct it. Where there's a will, there's a way. Without naming names, I've seen a 'can't do' attitude triumph again and again in states and districts. It's best to take this work out of the direct control of politicians and educational leaders who serve systems over kids. Perhaps that's why this effort ("Education Week: Chicago Group Promotes Links for Districts, Researchers") to replicate the Chicago Consortium model is a promising one. And, in this case, kudos to CPS leaders for being open to this scrutiny and their willingness to learn from it.

MORE:
Chicago Tribune coverage
Chicago Sun-Times coverage and editorial
Catalyst Chicago blog

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