November 2008 Archives

The Center on Education Policy has released a new study that delves deeply into the classroom-level effects of the No Child Left Behind Act. Investigators examined six schools in Rhode Island at various stages of program improvement under the NCLB Act and interviewed dozens of teachers, parents, and administrators.

Several of the findings are what you'd more or less expect, and they're issues that have already been debated ad infinitum: There is increased pressure to cover subjects on standardized tests, more attention paid to reading and math at the expense of other subjects, and a greater use of test data to make decisions about curriculum, instruction, and teachers' professional development.

Where this report really seems to add something new is in its depiction of what teaching looks like under the law. For example: Teachers in the elementary and middle schools, on average, spent 30 percent of their time on close-ended questions, i.e., those with only one answer, compared with 12 percent on open-ended questions that facilitate conversations. Interviewees attributed this to the push to get through a ton of different topics covered by the state's content standards and assessments rather than a limited selection in great depth. (It is hard to say whether, in Rhode Island's specific case, this is a "good" thing or a "bad" thing. The report doesn't give an indication of what type of teaching existed in these schools BEFORE the law was put into place. As Education Trust has pointed out, some challenged schools have traditionally given students little, if any, instruction at all.)

I do think, though, that everyone can agree in general that spending time on close-ended questions is not going to help develop some of the critical higher-order thinking skills we want students to develop. So, what does it take for a school to be able to develop a really powerful instructional program— i.e., great teaching to great curricula—that gets kids to achieve to standards, but isn't dominated by instruction that reflects close-ended multiple-choice formats?

A number of groups have called the curriculum issue the one that has basically been ignored in the NCLB era. Not long ago over at Flypaper, for instance, Mike Petrilli suggested that more investments need to be made improving the capacity of our current teachers in delivering a powerful curriculum. But this is obviously one area the federal government just can't get into given the legal prohibitions against dictating curriculum.

So aside from some of the more well-known models, such as Core Knowledge, I'd like to know what states, districts, and teachers are doing in this area.

Maybe I'll find some answers next week when I'm in West Virginia sniffing out some interesting professional-development initiatives related to the "21st Century Skills."

From all of us at Teacher Beat and Education Week: Happy Thanksgiving!

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Teachers at Boston's Conservatory Lab Charter School have joined a union, the first charter to do so in the state of Massachusetts and one of a small handful nationwide.

The news is not likely to be welcomed by most charter school advocates who look upon unionization, with its elements of collective bargaining and tenure as hindrances in the path of innovation.

But for teachers' unions, this is a feather in the cap. For years now, unions, led by the American Federation of Teachers, have focused a good deal of energy on unionizing charters, without spectacular success. In New York City, the United Federation of Teachers started two charter schools of its own.

You can read more about nationwide efforts to unionize charters from my colleague Erik Robelen.

Yesterday, Tom Gosnell, the president of the Massachusetts affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, told the Boston Globe that "it's important that [innovation] is done with teachers and not to teachers."

"Unionizing will enable these teachers to have a more persuasive voice in what is best educationally for their students. . . . I know the faculty there now likes the school a great deal, and they are interested in the school achieving and doing well," he added.

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In this era of accountability, teacher tenure has been one of the most discussed topics. Schools chiefs like Michelle Rhee in Washington, D.C., are trying to limit it and last week the president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, said she was willing to discuss tenure reform.

Stories about how hard it is to fire bad teachers from their jobs because of tenure abound, and the latest one comes from the Grand Rapids Press in Michigan. A newspaper investigation found that 17 public school districts in the state ousted 29 teachers in the past four years through buyouts or other deals for behaviors including sexually harassing students, viewing pornography on school computers, failing to keep classrooms under control, and drinking on the job.

The deals made with these teachers included letters of recommendation that stretched the truth and ignored evidence of poor teaching. Even allegations of theft were routinely expunged in exchange for a teacher's departure.

School officials in Michigan cried tenure, of course, to explain why it is so hard to fire teachers.

We can all agree that there is a problem, but where's the solution? Does it lie in a tenureless/limited tenure system where teachers get paid lucrative salaries, like the one proposed by Rhee? It may sound great, but let's not forget there's no precedent for that kind of plan, so we really don't know how it'll work. Also, a performance-based evaluation process is not bereft of its own hassles and deficiencies.

As for peer review—the union's solution—it has received good reviews from the teachers themselves and the AFT is really pushing it, but the fact that few unions have picked it up tells its own story.

Could the answer lie somewhere in the middle, or elsewhere? You tell us.

Posted by Vaishali Honawar at 2:31 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

What's the best way to make $3 billion disappear? Put it into a big wonky program, like the No Child Left Behind Act's Title II teacher-quality formula grant, that isn't a a high-profile issue for lawmakers.

The program authorizes nearly 30 activities for states and districts, including innovative practices such as performance pay or career ladders. But states and districts have mostly have put the money toward hiring teachers to reduce class sizes and funding professional development of varying quality.

Now, people are starting to ask what's happening with all this money and whether there might be a more effective use for it.

One of the tensions lawmakers will face in revising this program is whether to set a series of outcome indicators -- i.e., improvements in teacher-attrition rates -- to measure whether the funds are having any effect on local districts. Along these lines, the Alliance for Excellent Education has one set of recommendations here, and the Education Trust has another here. The Alliance recommends that districts use an index to set priorities for funding and measure progress toward teacher-quality improvements; Ed Trust would require more reporting on indicators like districts' percentages of novice teachers and attrition rates.

And let's not forget class sizes, a priority for the teachers' unions. Last year's draft NCLB bill never made it clear whether lawmakers would yank class size out of the program. It's a sleeper issue for now, but keep your eye on it.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 5:39 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Remember those excessed teachers in New York City who were twiddling their thumbs, waiting for principals to hire them, at an estimated cost of $74 million to taxpayers?

Yesterday, the Bloomberg administration and the United Federation of Teachers finally struck a deal to help these teachers find permanent placements in schools. You can read more about it in the New York Times here.

Under the agreement, Chancellor Joel I. Klein will urge principals to hire teachers who have been out of work for several months. The education department will also give schools financial incentives to hire teachers from the excessed pool.

The New Teacher Project, which recruits teachers for New York City schools, had issued a report in September saying most of the excessed teachers, who work as substitutes and other temporary replacements, are tenured. But there is no requirement that these teachers even find a job, and more than 14,000 teaching positions in New York City were filled during the period when these teachers did not find jobs.

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The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, the nation's premier accreditor of teacher colleges, today announced it will redesign the process that programs have to go through to get its nod, and will provide more options and ensure cost-effectiveness, among other changes.

The news is significant because NCATE has been often criticized for its extensive and expensive accreditation process that has scared off many teacher programs in the past &mdash some of them straight into the waiting arms of its rival accreditor TEAC, or Teacher Education Accreditation Council, which offers a less burdensome procedure for accreditation.

NCATE, which accredits just over half the nation's 1,200 teacher-preparation programs, has also been roundly criticized in recent years by teacher education experts like Arthur Levine, who suggested that the accreditor ought to be done away with and replaced by a new entity.

The new reforms are the first major news from NCATE after it recently named a new president, James Cibulka, who will spearhead the modified process and come up with a set of recommendations by spring 2009. Cibulka has signaled he intends to keep NCATE up with the changing times in K-12 and teacher education.

We'll bring you more on this tomorrow, when Cibulka will speak with reporters. Stay tuned.

Posted by Vaishali Honawar at 2:44 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

There were never any doubts that the American Federation of Teachers was going to be more proactive than it has been in recent years, under the leadership of Randi Weingarten. This coming Monday, the president of the 1.4 million-member AFT will give what the union's flacks are billing as her first speech in Washington, where she will share her ideas on education and the economy.

Introducing Weingarten, who was elected president of the American Federation of Teachers in July, will be Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City with whose administration &mdash and that of schools Chancellor Joel Klein's &mdash Weingarten has both clashed and collaborated in her other role as president of the United Federation of Teachers.

According to a statement from the AFT, Weingarten is expected to "offer her provocative brand of thinking on the best ways to strengthen public education," including continuing to invest in education during tough economic times.

We will be bringing you more about this speech on Monday, so stay tuned.

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New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein was never in any danger of being named a teachers' pet. But who knew that rumors he could be a potential pick for education secretary would set off furious online petition drives by teachers hoping to ward off the possibility?

One petition, created by a blogger from Sacramento who writes about public schools, likens Klein's administration in New York City to a "dictatorship."

Klein, the petition says, is "representative of a particular rigid approach to school change promoted by NCLB which we oppose."

"Chancellor Klein repeatedly championed and implemented policies that support corporate interests as opposed to children. The NY City Department of Education under Joel Klein has been run like a ruthless dictatorship – with no input from parents or educators. Teachers have not been respected, consulted, nor listened to. And little thought has been devoted to how the policies he has imposed on our schools have been destructive to the children and their futures."

Meanwhile, the Network of Teacher Activist Groups, or TAG, which describes itself as a national coalition of grassroots teacher organizing groups, has put out this statement on its site opposing the appointment of both Klein and Arne Duncan, the Chicago schools chief, who has also been cited as a potential education secretary pick.

"We want a person who is a professional, experienced, and knowledgeable educator, not a corporate executive such as New York City’s Education Chancellor Joel Klein or Chicago CEO Arne Duncan, who have demonstrated their vision of privatized, corporatized, and anti-democratic schools," the statement says.

By this afternoon, nearly 1,000 educators had signed the petition and the statement.

So who is it that the teachers want for the next ed secretary?

Linda Darling-Hammond. Someone, the TAG statement says, is "dedicated to equity and the education of all children with a proven track record in these areas."

Posted by Vaishali Honawar at 1:47 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

So much has been said about President-elect Barack Obama's admiration for Michelle Rhee, the chancellor of the District of Columbia schools, and we now hear that Joel Klein, the chancellor of New York City schools, is being considered as a potential pick for the new education secretary.

Which makes me wonder: How do the teachers' unions feel about all this love between the president-elect behind whose election they threw all their might, and the two education administrators they have battled most furiously in recent times?

The National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers worked hard and deployed record numbers of volunteers to help get Obama elected. Together, they raised and spent $18 million on the election, including millions for radio advertisements in key states.

At the same time, the unions and their affiliates have been engaged in furious battles with administration forces in New York and the nation's capital. Randi Weingarten, the president of the AFT who is also president of the United Federation of Teachers in New York, has clashed with Klein often and hard over the past few years. And there is now an ongoing war between the Washington Teachers Union, also an AFT affiliate, and Rhee over a radical performance-pay plan the chancellor has put forth.

As he begins his work in Washington, Obama will need to do a spectacular balancing act between working with the administrators he admires to the satisfaction of the unions to whom he surely owes some debt of gratitude.

This should be an interesting one.

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The United Teachers of New Orleans still lives. And it's trying to take baby steps toward a comeback. But can it?

According to this story in the Times Picayune, the UTNO, which was all but destroyed during the reorganization of New Orleans schools after Hurricane Katrina, has proposed a collective bargaining contract in the five schools that are still under school board control.

Very few details of the proposed three-year contract are available, such as that it does not include raises for teachers in the first year, but does include $500 bonuses for national-board- certified teachers.

But here's the hitch: Four of five freshly elected board members want the contract delayed until they arrive on board in January. Apparently they are against such a contract because of the district's current financial state. And since they would make up a majority on the seven-member board, any chances that the contract would survive seem slim to none.

The historic union, the first in the deep South to win collective bargaining in 1974, has so far managed to stay afloat with considerable financial help from its parent, the American Federation of Teachers. It also helped that former AFT secretary-treasurer, Nat LaCour, was emotionally invested in UTNO, which he led several years ago.

But the struggle has been long and hard. Although its membership dropped to just a couple of hundred immediately after Katrina, it has since increased to about 1,500. Still, it remains well below the 5,000 members it boasted pre-Katrina. It hasn't helped at all that many who now hold the strings of the city's education system see the union as a hindrance above everything else.

The UTNO will likely survive, even if this contract falls through. But a union without collective bargaining rights is, well, a tiger with paper teeth. Or an "association."

I, for one, don't see the once fiery union being happy with that designation, especially given its history. But does it have any options left?

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The Center on American Progress' new analyst Raegen Miller has an interesting paper out on teacher absences here. Andy Rotherham offers his take on the issue here (read the comments, too). The thrust of the paper is that absences appear to follow patterns, and that the different levels of government (federal, state, and local) can use this information to better craft incentives to address teacher absences.

One of the challenges here seems to be that, like many other aspects of teacher-quality policy, teachers' leave policies are set differently by state legislatures and in local contracts. You can read a little bit about this issue in my story here, or wait for Mr. Miller to seek out examples of promising state and local initiatives to tackle this problem through the National Council on Teacher Quality's collective bargaining database.

The federal government hasn't done a whole lot yet on the absent-teacher front, but there does seem to be interest in a related issue: substitute teaching. (And it's no wonder why: Substitutes cost schools $4 billion a year, according to federal statistics.)

One interesting proposal, by Rep. Donald Payne, D-N.J., would create a $5 million fund to improve the quality of substitute teachers and direct the education secretary to study the issue. The proposal was rolled into the No Child Left Behind Act "discussion draft" last year.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

I had a couple of follow-up thoughts on the concept of Reciprocal Accountability from the Nov. 5 session here in D.C. (See my previous two posts.)

One is that these comprehensive systems of teacher support seem to implicitly recognize that teachers have different strengths, weaknesses, and competencies. In other words, one teacher might need P.D. on diverse learners, another on classroom management. They also seem to recognize that not all teachers are going to be equally effective.

Yet most salary schedules don't address such differences. In fact, one could make the case (and certainly some have) that today's system of scatter-shot professional development is exacerbated by the fact that pay is linked to getting masters' degrees and so forth, which may or may not be aligned to the teaching standards, instructional goals, or areas in which teachers need help.

That was the question I posed to the panelists: How should salary schedules be rethought in a comprehensive system of teacher supports?

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten offered this response: "The reason teachers have steps and lanes is ultimately because when these were negotiated, they served as proxies for the things were are talking about right now [i.e., a comprehensive system of teacher supports]. There are lots of us willing to look at these things in a new way, but it has to be a system that pays people decently [before differentiating pay.]"

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 1:17 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The forum on teacher support I attended on Nov. 5 raised some interesting ideas about how to improve teaching quality. In this post I'm going to attempt to make a little bit of sense of them.

A comprehensive system for teacher support, the panelists said, starts with a clear definition of high-quality teaching. Supports are built around how to foster it and bolster it, how to determine whether teachers are practicing it, how to offer teachers who are struggling opportunities to ask for and receive help, and ultimately how to build additional professional opportunities for veterans that feed back into this system.

Policywise, they indicated, an optimal teacher-support system would include these pieces:

1) Standards for high-quality teaching
2) Teacher evaluation tied to these standards
3) Peer review and assistance to support struggling teachers, again keyed to standards, ending in dismissal for those who repeatedly fail to improve
4) Establishment of professional learning communities
5) Differential pay based on evidence of high-quality teaching and student learning
6) A career ladder for the best teachers to take on mentoring and support roles for other teachers.

A couple of panelists, such as former Prince George's County, Md., superintendent John Deasy, said such systems build on the concept of "reciprocal accountability." In other words, the supports for teachers are set up and only then are teachers held accountable to high standards.

Now to the political subtext. Last night's forum was heavily attended by teachers, parents, and administrators who say Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee is focused only on the teacher accountability piece.

So I went back through Rhee's recently announced five-year plan to see what her goals were for professional development. They include a comprehensive system for setting performance goals and benchmarks; a career ladder; and school-based coaches. Additionally, George Parker, the president of the Washington Teachers' Union, told me the last contract included professional development standards and provisions allowing for a career ladder, but these were never acted upon by Rhee's predecessor, Clifford Janey.

I don't follow the D.C. negotiations closely enough to know what the discussions are like on these proposals. But the foundations seem to be there. Now let's see if the officials in charge can act on Randi Weingarten's advice and find some way to make them work.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

I attended a forum on D.C. teacher professional development last night sponsored by this group and I'll be writing a few posts on it this week. But first I wanted to report what I thought was the most interesting observation of the evening, made by none other than American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten.

Panelists were asked by one member of the audience (on an index card, so I can't say who it was) how D.C. could agree on a system of teacher supports in the place of what the questioner described as the "punitive" system of teacher-effectiveness evaluation that schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee is instituting. Essentially, this system allows principals to put teachers on 90-day improvement plans, after which they can be dismissed.

"I'm going to take a huge risk here and then I'm going to shut up," said Ms. Weingarten, who mostly has refused to comment on the D.C. contract negotiations. "I think with the election of a new president who's going to want to see D.C. present us [with] a model for what can happen, there's probably an opportunity to look at this afresh."

She said the forum discussion, which was meant to stimulate discussion of a "broader" approach to D.C.'s teacher-quality system, might help the district and union leadership find areas to compromise.

"There's an opportunity here, and I would urge you to urge both parties to find that opportunity," she told the group.

Washington Teachers' Union President George Parker was sitting in the front row during all this. I chatted with him briefly after the forum. He said he and Michelle Rhee are still talking through different things, and the contract hasn't gone to impasse yet.

A couple of interesting tidbits: The red-green tier pay proposal (which would allow teachers willing to forgo tenure for a year the opportunity to win bonuses) isn't dead, and discussions are ongoing about how to institute systems for getting teachers the professional development they need.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 11:55 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

Ever wondered how teacher performance-pay plans might fare in these tough economic times?

Already, we've had lashings of bad news from districts around the country as they cut down on teacher jobs and teacher salaries and revise pension plans.

Just today, a report in the Orlando Sentinel said that three months into the school year, most Florida teachers are working for the same salaries they made last year, because of stalled budget negotiations in many districts.

Florida has a projected $3.5 billion revenue shortfall for its coming fiscal year, and some expect worse news when economists issue their next forecast this month.

Florida last year put its controversial and much-revised performance-pay plan on ice because of funding problems, with plans to revive it when money becomes available. But given the state's financial woes, that possibility would appear rather remote right now.

In Minnesota, Gov. Tim Pawlenty's plan to impose mandatory performance pay has been dismissed by key legislators who say there just won't be the money to implement anything so radical and expensive.

These past few years we've been inundated with news of other performance-pay plans in the making in states and school districts. But will anyone be able to move on these plans any time in the near future? Or will legislators and administrators find ways to fit them in at the cost of other programs?

Let's wait and watch.

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