Yesterday the Obama administration announced more details about what it intends to do to fulfill the President's ambitions from his State of the Union address two weeks ago: "Teachers matter. So instead of bashing them, or defending the status quo, let's offer schools a deal. Give them the resources to keep good teachers on the job, and reward the best ones. And in return, grant schools flexibility: to teach with creativity and passion; to stop teaching to the test; and to replace teachers who just aren't helping kids learn. That's a bargain worth making."

In launching the RESPECT project (RESPECT stands for Recognizing Educational Success, Professional Excellence and Collaborative Teaching), Secretary of Education Arne Duncan stressed the importance of elevating the teacher voice in the effort to improve teaching: "Our larger goal is to make teaching not only America's most important profession, but also America's most respected profession" (See the Department of Education's announcement of the program here.)

Learning Forward is delighted that the Department is making these efforts a priority and that districts will have the resources to support teachers as they grow into new leadership roles. We have for some time advocated a vision of teaching and learning where teachers collaborate not only in their teaching but also in their learning. In such a vision, teachers need the kinds of support this project outlines, and they need a clear path before them that moves them into new areas of responsibility and accountability for improving student performance.

When teachers have more ways to develop and exercise their voices, they will be in positions to seek and craft the professional learning they need based on the immediate needs of their students. Including their voices in this national conversation will help to ensure that professional learning demonstrates a meaningful impact on both teacher practice and student performance.

While the Department has not announced details for implementing RESPECT, Learning Forward applauds the administration's initiative. We are particularly interested in the plans to improve professional development and provide time for teachers to work and learn together. Fortunately, there are already some school systems and schools that are successfully implementing such practices to advance both teacher and student learning. Learning Forward has documented examples of where and how such high-quality professional learning is occurring. As the Department develops plans for RESPECT, we encourage it to tap the experiences and lessons of selected school systems and schools that are pioneering effective forms of teacher collaboration and learning.

As a result of Learning Forward's longstanding efforts to improve professional development, we know there are many barriers that states, school systems, and schools will encounter as they seek to respond to the RESPECT initiative. These include limitations of time, entrenched ineffective practices, and lack of community understanding and support. The Department's leadership and assistance will be crucial in helping state and local education agencies confront and creatively overcome these challenges. Here too there are opportunities to learn from school systems and schools that are currently doing so.

As this initiative develops and resources become available to systems, states and districts will need to examine their policies so these reform efforts are possible on the ground. And, partnerships that include teachers working alongside school and system leaders, unions, colleges and universities will also be essential.

As respected equal partners, teachers will be in positions to share responsibility and accountability for all students. When teachers take on that responsibility, successful teaching practices move from classroom to classroom and school to school, giving all students access to the most effective teaching in the system.

Stephanie Hirsh
Executive Director, Learning Forward

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Last month marked the tenth anniversary of the passage of the landmark No Child Left Behind Act. Many education organizations, reformers, and commentators issued statements or wrote columns describing what a decade of experience had revealed about the law's weaknesses and strengths. Many cited what they regard as the law's unrealistic goal of all students performing at the proficient level by 2014. Others criticized the law's requirement that for a school to demonstrate Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), each student demographic subgroup had to improve its academic performance each year. The law also had defenders who praised NCLB's high expectations for all students' performance. Many commentators referenced how NCLB has caused states to produce more reliable student performance data, and prompted educators to learn how to use the data.

Most of these NCLB commentaries didn't address professional learning. This isn't surprising since NCLB had few requirements related to professional development. The law's requirement that all teachers be "highly qualified" sparked a flurry of professional development, but its focus was more about credentialing than improving teachers' performance. The law also included a definition of professional development that had been lacking in previous iterations of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, but it was primarily a list of permitted activities. The law called for such activities to be "regularly evaluated for their impact on increased teacher effectiveness and improved student academic achievement," but the Department of Education never enforced this provision, and states and school systems ignored it.

This is not to say that the NCLB has had no impact on professional learning. Because the low performance of one or more student subgroups could result in a school failing to make AYP, large numbers of schools were identified as academically deficient. This was true even for schools that had for years enjoyed good reputations because most of their students performed well while, "below the radar," the academic performance of a minority of students languished. Some school systems found problems so severe that they replaced administrators and required all teachers to resign and reapply for their former positions. But what school systems soon realized was that many teachers simply did not have the knowledge and skills necessary to enable their students to meet the NCLB's proficiency expectations. In addition, the students who were least able to perform at standard were often those whose learning was complicated by their poverty, first language, disability, or other factors, and this also challenged many teachers.

Since NCLB's passage, school systems have realized that providing more resources to schools, improving the curriculum, and assigning more talented administrators will not, by themselves, increase student achievement. Teacher performance must also have to improve. The only way to achieve this result is for educators to engage more frequently and systematically in quality professional learning.

School systems now understand that professional learning is not just a teacher benefit, a demand of teacher unions, or a state requirement. Instead, it is fundamental to increasing student performance.

Implementation exposes the limitations and unintended consequences of any legislation. As the past 10 years have demonstrated, the No Child Left Behind Act was far from perfect, but, indirectly, it did succeed in causing states and school systems to take more seriously the quality, intensity, frequency, and results of professional learning. And the next iteration of the law will certainly include more attention to increasing teachers' knowledge and skills.

Stephanie Hirsh
Executive Director, Learning Forward

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Will implementation of the Common Core State Standards lead to college- and career-readiness?

Adoption of the new standards is just a first step in ensuring student success. With efforts underway in states and districts across the country to implement more rigorous standards and assessments in K-12, those responsible for implementation and support must be mindful of the purpose for adopting the new standards: to prepare students for postsecondary education and careers.

To ensure they reach high levels of academic achievement necessary to succeed beyond pre-K-12 education, some states are developing standards in every subject area, expanding beyond the core of ELA, math, and science. Other states may follow, revising or adding academic standards in more disciplines. States moving to develop additional academic standards acknowledge that college- and career-readiness includes success in all disciplines, primarily ELA, math, science, world languages, social sciences, history, fine arts, health, and physical education. The ELA and math Common Core standards, complimented by college- and career-readiness standards, will help to define the broad areas of understanding and skills that all students must demonstrate.

College- and career-readiness, however, reaches beyond content-specific knowledge and skills, and includes critical and creative thinking, problem solving, inquiry, investigation, research, independent and collaborative learning and work skills, time management, and personal, social, and emotional well being, among others. In developing standards, assessments, and instructional units to prepare pre-K-12 students for college and careers, it will be essential for educators embed these related cognitive and practical skills as a natural part of a student's learning process. To redesign instruction and use more complex assessments, educators must engage in ongoing professional learning and continuous collaboration with peers to support one another in implementing these new practices.

Another essential step will be to engage educators, parents, community members, policy makers, and students themselves in understanding how students' learning experiences will change. Educators too will want to collaborate more closely with post-secondary education agencies and employers to create a more seamless transition from school to careers or post-secondary education, and to assess whether students' mastery of the new standards adequately prepares them for careers and post-secondary education.

Ongoing collaboration between pre-K-12 educators and post-secondary educators and employers will increase the likelihood that the implementation of new standards leads to substantive reduction in remedial-course enrollment at post-secondary institutions and increased employer-reported job readiness and success. Tracking student performance through post-secondary years will allow states and districts to determine if they are meeting their goal of college-and career-ready for all students.

Joellen Killion
Senior Advisor, Learning Forward

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Each month Learning Forward will publish an exclusive blog post from Fierce, Inc. that explores aspects of communication that encourage meaningful collaboration. To read all of Fierce, Inc.'s blog posts, go to http://www.fierceinc.com/blog/.

I missed some amazing opportunities in my career because I thought I had to figure something out on my own or I wanted to do something perfectly. I now know that perfection is counter to growth, risk, innovation and, most importantly, authenticity.

The definition of a Fierce Conversation is one in which you come out from behind yourself, into the conversation, and make it real. We know something is authentic, genuine, and real when we see it or hear it. I've been witness to the raw power of authenticity in leadership. I've learned that if I want to fully embrace authenticity, I need to be willing to make myself vulnerable.

I was thrilled by Brene Brown's 2010 TEDx talk on vulnerability. Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work, and has spent 10 years studying vulnerability, courage, authenticity, and shame. She discovered that "in order for connection to happen, we have to allow ourselves to be seen, really seen... deeply seen."

She found that people who had high self-worth "had the courage to be imperfect. They had the compassion to be kind, first to themselves and then to others. They had connection as a result of authenticity. They were willing to let go of who they should be in order to be who they were, which you have to absolutely do for connection. They fully embraced vulnerability."

Often at work we revert to behavior that makes us seem invulnerable, even when we know better. We present an image of ourselves as know-it-all, or work hard in a vain attempt to know it all. And it's hard to relate to a person like this.

Having high expectations of yourself and others leads to continuous learning and improvement. However, a perfectionist mindset contributes to a culture where ego and striving for infallibility become more important than honesty, solid relationships, and the actual results we want.

Pay attention to the conversations in your team, in your school, in your district -- are people simply trying to prove they're right? Are they speaking with or to each other? Are they going into conversations willing to listen and to learn? Observe the undercurrent of these conversations. What's really going on? Find out and address it.

It takes confidence to admit you don't have the answers to everything. It's the path to real progress. Hold your own feet to the fire by asking yourself:

• Am I being honest with myself about my fears, strengths, weaknesses, about my behavior and the way I show up in my conversations?
• What am I pretending not to know? And also, what am I pretending to know?
• Whose reality do I need to interrogate? Maybe it's my own.

The most powerful thing we can do to create a culture of authenticity is to model it. Allow yourself to be vulnerable, to be transparent, and model the kind of behavior that invites others to put the truth on the table in a way that moves the relationship forward.

Let yourself be seen. You can't get the results you want without taking a risk. Confidence does not mean being without fear. It's having fear and moving through it anyway.

Embrace your imperfections. Earn people's respect by admitting and debriefing your misses in addition to your competence and triumphs. Be confident enough to say, "I don't have all the answers."

Speak from your heart, not your title. As the old saying goes, people don't care what you know until they know you care. If you achieve this, people eventually willingly receive your message, no matter how difficult the message.

In her TEDx talk, Brown says, "Give me a generation that has these qualities -- high self-worth, vulnerability, and connection -- and we'll solve today's problems." I'll add: Give us an organization, a team, a culture that has these qualities, and watch them change the world. It's possible.

Deli Moussavi-Bock
Director of Training, Fierce in the Schools

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The Alliance for Excellent Education is hosting a number of virtual events tomorrow as part of Digital Learning Day. Some 37 states, 10,000 teachers, and more than 1.5 million students will participate in Digital Learning Day, a national awareness campaign spearheaded by the Alliance and celebrating teachers, principals, and other leaders who use technology in innovative ways to help students achieve.

While a number of states will be conducting their own activities in association with Digital Learning Day, the national schedule consists of a series of live webcasts and live chats, and a live National Town Hall featuring FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. The town hall event will profile teachers that effectively use technology to deliver instruction, and focus on education innovation projects happening across the country. (Note: this event requires pre-registration.)

We will be paying particular attention to the 11:30 a.m. (EST) webcast, "Effective Teaching and Professional Learning Opportunities," which includes a discussion of technology's role in providing ongoing, job-embedded professional learning for educators. We'll report out on our takeaways from this session later in the week.

You can see a complete schedule of the national events here.

You can also check out events that are going on in your state as part of Digital Learning Day here.

Tom Manning
Associate Director of E-Learning, Learning Forward

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The Learning First Alliance has posted a number of education organizations' responses to last week's State of the Union address. As Anne O'Brien of LFA notes in her blog post, education was not one of the main focuses of President Obama's remarks (SOTU video here; speech text here), save for a call to states to keep students in school and this comment about the importance of good teachers:

"Teachers matter. So instead of bashing them, or defending the status quo, let's offer schools a deal. Give them the resources to keep good teachers on the job, and reward the best ones. And in return, grant schools flexibility: to teach with creativity and passion; to stop teaching to the test; and to replace teachers who just aren't helping kids learn. That's a bargain worth making."

The roundup of comments from the education community, including analysis from the NEA, AFT, National School Boards Association and others, is worth a read.

To these analyses we would simply add that Learning Forward is pleased the president keeps emphasizing the need to ensure that all teachers get the support they need to be successful. Great teachers do need to be rewarded, and effective professional learning is the most valuable tool we have to ensure that all teachers are effective and all students experience great teaching. We remain committed to assisting the Department of Education as it seeks new ways to ensure that all educators engage in effective professional learning every day so every student achieves.

Stephanie Hirsh
Executive Director, Learning Forward

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The Center for Education Policy has released the second report in its series exploring the state of implementation of the new Common Core State Standards.

The report, published yesterday, is based on a survey of 35 state education agencies that was designed to get updated information on state strategies, policies and challenges in the second year of transition to the CCSS.

The survey found that most states that have adopted the CCSS are taking actions to help teachers master them. More specifically, a majority of states report they are developing materials to help teachers master the CCSS (34 states) and almost as many (33) are conducting statewide professional development initiatives.

Nine states are projecting full implementation of the standards by 2013-14; 16 states in 2014-15; and one by 2015-16.

My interactions with educators in the field often centers on their concern that while teachers are interested in learning more about the standards, they are unwilling to adopt them fully as long as the current assessments are in place. Teachers are seeking assurance that if they transition fully to the new standards they will not be penalized on current assessments. They also want assurance of absolute alignment between CCSS and the new assessments. When these issues can be satisfactorily addressed, teachers will take the steps necessary for deep implementation.

I understand their position. Education leaders must strike the right balance between supporting transition to the new standards and leaving in place what is necessary for current accountability systems. This requires careful curricular and instructional planning guides. Professional learning can be designed and staged to support clear transitions in instruction, curriculum, and new assessments. Of course, this also means that states may face plans that call for longer and larger commitments to professional learning.

Several states already recognize this dilemma. According to the report, "Twenty-one survey states said that finding adequate resources to fully implement the standards would be a major challenge." Other challenges cited include providing sufficient professional development, aligning the content of teacher preparation programs with the CCSS, and developing CCSS-aligned educator evaluation systems for teachers and principals.

Once again, these challenges should not serve as deterrents; rather they are opportunities to recognize what is essential to ensure that we achieve deep implementation that transforms the ways teachers teach and students learn. Highly effective and sustained professional learning is necessary to achieve this outcome.

Stephanie Hirsh
Executive Director, Learning Forward

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Over the past decade, amazing research has been conducted in the area of school leadership. With the wealth of information out there, I often wish someone would take the best of it and put it into simple terms, describing exactly what it is that great principals do to significantly improve teaching and learning. The Wallace Foundation's recent Perspective, The School Principal as Leader: Guiding Schools to Better Teaching and Learning, is a huge step forward in granting my wish.

The report tells us that the most successful principals perform five key functions well:

1. Shaping a vision of academic success for all students
2. Creating a climate hospitable to education
3. Cultivating leadership in others
4. Improving instruction
5. Managing people, data, and processes to foster school improvement

What makes the Wallace Perspective so significant is the fact that it's informed by both research and practice. The foundation's more than 70 research reports and other publications covering school leadership provide the research based for the report's key ideas. Heavy hitters like The University of Toronto's and University of Minnesota's 2010 report Learning From Leadership: Investigating the Links to Improved Student Learning and Rand's 2009 report Improving School Leadership: The Promise of Cohesive Leadership Systems were culled and the ideas repurposed for this Perspective. The Wallace Foundation's 10+ years of active engagement with states and school districts across the country enabled the authors to have access to the very practical forces that impact school leadership. The bottom line: We all have a lot to learn from this commentary.

After breaking the five key functions down into very practitioner-friendly language, the authors did something Learning Forward members have come to expect from our publications: provide real-world examples. We are introduced to Dewey Hensley, principal of the J. B. Atkinson Academy for Excellence in Teaching and Learning in Louisville, Kentucky. During Hensley first week at Atkinson Academy, he drew a picture of a school on poster board and asked his faculty to annotate it. He asked his school team to create a perfect vision of a school, and then they all worked together to get there. Hensley was living the first key function: shaping a vision of academic success for all students. His story is woven throughout the remaining four functions outlined in the report.

The professional learning implications of this Wallace Perspective are many. For those whose work in any way involves developing school leaders, this resource will prove extremely useful. The Perspective is also an excellent resource for those already "sitting in the chair," giving those school leaders a handy tool to inform potential target areas for professional growth. The same is true for assistant principals and teacher leaders who aspire to be principals and are looking to practice their leadership skills.

Truth be told, I wish someone had handed this Perspective to me as I considered the principalship.

Frederick Brown
Director of Strategy and Development, Learning Forward

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Research consistently affirms the importance of two factors in producing the best results for students: quality of teaching and leadership.

Two foundations have stepped up to provide educators with a deeper understanding of findings from research and their application in schools. The 10-year investment in school leadership by The Wallace Foundation has led to the revision of leadership standards, development of leadership frameworks, validation of leader evaluation tools, and guidance for the development of future leaders. District staff members concerned about poor leadership or inadequate support can turn to the foundation's research for guidance.

Equally important is the emergence of research on what constitutes effective teaching. While many independent efforts have been under way for years, the intensive focus of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on what constitutes effective teaching has shone a spotlight on the issue. The foundation's website includes research, tools, and resources for building systems that lead to more effective teaching.

Translating these important findings into successful outcomes for students and educators, however, hinges on the success of state, provincial, and school district systems of professional learning. Professional learning is the only process educators have for systematically moving research findings into practice. School systems need commitment, leadership, resources, designs, and data -- in other words, attention to the Standards for Professional Learning.

Everyone has an important role to play in moving research into practice.

Policymakers must govern and regulate with expectation and support for continuous improvement as key to achieving goals. Policymakers must support the development of systems of professional learning that ensure educators understand the standards by which their performance will be assessed and the means they can access to support continuous growth.

District office staff must build systems of professional learning that are focused on supporting all students and staff members to achieve performance outcomes. District leaders do this by adopting a vision for professional learning that builds collective responsibility, supports school-focused improvement, and provides skilled facilitation for ongoing team-based learning and problem solving, using the Standards for Professional Learning to guide the work.

Principals and teachers must focus on data to determine the desired results for all students and the learning and support needed to ensure their success. Principals and teachers must organize as learning communities and assume responsibilities for the success of all students and educators; commit to ongoing learning and see that best practices spread from classroom to classroom and school to school; and document the impact of professional learning so that others understand why continued support and advocacy is essential.

Technical assistance providers must listen to their education partners to understand the help they seek in meeting student and educator needs. When designing professional learning, put the standards front and center so partners understand the body of research on which the work is based. Providers have the opportunity to be advocates for standards-based professional learning and help educators get it right, and can document results and share findings so that more schools and school systems understand professional learning's importance and support increases for best practices.

Let's get busy with the challenges at hand. We have valuable new tools to address them.

Stephanie Hirsh
Eecutive Director, Learning Forward

Posted by Learning Forward at 12:11 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

I long ago stopped making New Year's resolutions. Instead, I have one desire for myself that never changes, even as one year glides almost unnoticeably into the next.

My daily and lifelong commitment is to be where I should be, doing what I should be doing, when I should be doing it. That's it. This pledge works for me both in my personal and professional lives. What I've learned is, if I pay attention to those three simple but difficult directives, I'll accomplish much more than by making a hollow resolution that I'd likely break in a matter of days.

As my thoughts turned to the idea of New Year resolutions, I couldn't help but imagine the resolutions being made by teachers and principals as they look toward the rapidly looming end of the school year. Particularly, I can guess that the members of the Learning School Alliance are probably re-visiting their professional learning plans. No doubt, many are making vows to focus on those plans and get serious about accomplishing what they promised to do.

What I hope the LSA teams will do, though, is keep it simple. I hope they will resolve to avoid making grandiose plans and promises that they can't or won't deliver. I hope they are seriously considering where they should be, what they should be doing, and when they should be doing it as it relates to creating and sustaining professional learning teams that put student learning first.

Maybe that's a commitment we all should be making in 2012.

Carol Francois
Director of Learning, Learning Forward

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