January 2009 Archives

Professional development is one of the most difficult teacher issues to write about well. It sits right at the nexus of policy and practice, the research on PD is spotty, the common delivery methods ("spray 'n pray" workshops) are positively archaic, and the really good examples are so classroom-based that it's hard to talk about them in broad strokes.

So I'm excited about a report coming out next week. It's expected to synthesize much of the research on staff development, draw from other countries that have had success developing teachers, and situate the U.S.'s current efforts in the context of those findings.

Linda Darling-Hammond, who spearheaded much of the report, gave some teasers about the findings back at the NSDC conference last December. Check those out here.

There's an interesting political subtext here, and that's that Arne Duncan, the newly appointed secretary of education, will be speaking at the release event next Wednesday. As will Ms. Darling-Hammond. Will we get a staffing announcement? Perhaps an outline of Mr. Duncan's teacher-quality priorities?

Teacher Beat and Education Week are on the case, so stay tuned.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 4:04 PM | Permalink | 3 Comments | Recommend

New York City appears poised to enter the melee over teacher layoffs that's shaking its sister mega-tropolis Los Angeles right now: N.Y.C. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has submitted a budget proposal calling for cuts of more than 15,000 teachers out of about 77,000.

Not surprisingly, the United Federation of Teachers is preparing to fight tooth and nail to prevent that from happening. This afternoon, it's holding a demonstration in downtown Manhattan to protest the cuts. Yesterday, L.A. teachers did much the same thing, marching from the district headquarters to Pershing Square in downtown L.A.

All of this is practically guaranteed to make contract negotiations a lot more difficult in both cities. New York is headed for contract negotiations this fall, and it's hard to tell at this stage what the pressure points will be there. L.A., on the other hand, is already in the middle of a tough negotiation. Ray Cortines, the superintendent of LAUSD, has promised not to cut positions until the school year is over, but it's likely the district will have to do that at some point, to the union's chagrin. Still, the district can't be thrilled with the union's attempts to keep teachers employed at the same time as they press for raises under a new contract.

The stimulus package being debated on the Hill could help offset some of these cuts, but at some point one suspects something is going to have to give, and the political fallout is going to be messy.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 3:56 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

There's a lot of important teacher activity in Los Angeles these days. Don't miss this story about the local teachers' union threatening to boycott the district's use of "interim," or periodic assessments. But both The Los Angeles Times and the district attribute an increase in student achievement to the tests.

There are lot of issues to tease out here, and without knowing more about how these assessments operate, it's hard to comment on them. On the one hand, I can understand how frustrating it must be for teachers to give these tests if they're not well timed to what's being covered in class, and the article notes that that's been a problem. On the other hand, I can't help but wonder if the union is overestimating teachers' own ability to create and score formative assessments. As any teacher from Nebraska can tell you, that can be incredibly time-consuming and difficult to do, even with training.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 4:38 PM | Permalink | 3 Comments | Recommend

This morning, the Center for American Progress' Robin Chait releases a paper detailing the organization's vision for moving the federal teacher-quality agenda forward. Check it out here. Her basic idea is to use federal policy to help states create a teacher-effectiveness "framework."

This would work by 1) providing funds to help states improve their data and testing infrastructure; 2) establishing state grants to increase the supply of teachers through enhanced alternative-certification programs; and 3) creating a new competitive district and state grant program, somewhat like the Teacher Incentive Fund, for states and districts to experiment with tenure reforms, differential pay and responsibilities for teachers, and incentives to move effective teachers to high-needs schools.

As a sweetner to tackle some of the politically tricky issues latent in setting up a teacher-effectiveness framework, states and districts that agreed to participate might also be given relief from some of the No Child Left Behind requirements, she suggests.

Chait also proposes an intriguing idea for states to set up a second pathway to teacher certification based on demonstration of teaching effectiveness, rather than passing a test or completing a degree.

The paper comes with a handy chart about the major proposals for federal teacher-effectiveness policies, including those from the Aspen Commission on No Child Left Behind and last year's House NCLB discussion draft.

Most of the proposals are likely to upset the teachers' unions, and if all the drama surrounding efforts to include performance-pay in federal legislation in 2007 is an indication, these new incentive grants will be difficult to get into federal legislation. Still, with John Podesta at the helm of CAP, you can bet that they will float their way up to Obama's ears.

Chait also hits upon an important subtext in district-level teacher-quality reform efforts, such as those in the District of Columbia's contract dispute. There appears to be a fear among teachers that a focus on teacher-effectiveness metrics will preclude ongoing professional development to help them improve. That shouldn't be the case, she argues:

"Very few rigorous, large-scale evaluations of professional-development programs are available to inform decisions about how the programs should be designed. This dearth of evidence about how to design effective professional-development programs suggests that while using data for professional development is important, it cannot be a substitute for using data to inform decisions about retaining effective teachers and discontinuing ineffective ones. We need to pursue both approaches and use them in combination, not just employ one or the other."

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 8:18 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Alyson Klein reports on the Senate markup of the economic-stimulus bill here. Like the House version, the bill would add $100 million for Teacher Quality Enhancement grants, which go mainly to partnerships between districts and teacher colleges.

But the bill does not put a dime toward the Teacher Incentive Fund, the federal performance-pay program, whereas the House put forward a preliminary $200 million figure. The House's bill hits the floor tomorrow.

It looks as though Teacher Beat may have been wrong when we predicted that the Democrats are going to carry the torch forward on performance pay. Instead, expect a kerfuffle when appointed members meet to resolve differences between the House and the Senate version, and a lot of hard lobbying in the meantime from both proponents and detractors of performance pay.

UPDATE: Mike Petrilli at Flypaper notices this too, alongside some other things that are missing from the Senate bill. He sees this as evidence that the Democratic "split" on education is back with a vengeance. Guess those inaugural cocktails wore off...

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 4:58 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The edu-policy community spends a lot of time discussing the relative merits of different routes into the teaching profession. This story from The Los Angeles Times raises what to me seems like an important and understudied question: How do alternative routes like Teach For America and the New Teacher Project affect the composition, culture, and norms of a school's workforce, especially when that workforce is made up traditionally trained veterans?

The story paints a somewhat disturbing picture of Compton's (Calif.) experience negotiating this divide, including a fair amount of vitriol between supporters of the various routes both at school sites and among school board members. One TFA teacher reports that her principal told her and a colleague point-blank that he didn't want them at his school. On the other hand, in 2005, a TFA Compton alumni wrote a scathing account of her experience that local administrators and teachers felt was uninformed and damaging to children.

One can easily imagine novices being frustrated by older peers who are wary of trying new things in their classrooms, and equally, veteran teachers being frustrated by idealistic, "bright young things" who are not always fully cognizant of the challenges of urban teaching. But perhaps we can all agree that this type of friction seems really antithetical to the goals of a close cadre of teachers who work together to learn from their experiences and share best practices, set up professional-learning communities, and strive toward common goals to improve student achievement.

So what's the secret to getting everyone on the same page?

You tell us.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 1:08 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The Gates Foundation has a must-read letter up for teacher-policy folks. Check it out.

My colleague Erik Robelen has reported on the basic contours of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's new approach to education reform here and here. But there are some really interesting tidbits to cull out from this letter. For one, it's clear that Gates is going to go whole hog on the teacher-quality issue, particularly on the teacher-effectiveness front. In the letter, Gates writes:

"Whenever I talk to teachers, it is clear that they want to be great, but they need better tools so they can measure their progress and keep improving. So our new strategy focuses on learning why some teachers are so much more effective than others and how best practices can be spread throughout the education system so that the average quality goes up. We will work with some of the best teachers to put their lectures online as a model for other teachers and as a resource for students."

Maybe we'll finally get some information on how to improve teacher effectiveness, including some of the controversial topics in that area. These include whether or not evaluations should use student test-score data or "value-added" teacher data, as in Tennessee; whether measures of teacher effectiveness include a performance-based rubric, such as that designed by consultant Charlotte Danielson or the four-tiered model now being piloted in Georgia; and whether such measures include peer review, which is advocated by the American Federation of Teachers.

For two, the letter makes a big deal about the success of certain charter school models and notes the caps that exist in many states on the number of charters. Gates writes: "Educational innovation and overall improvement will go a lot faster if the charter school limits and funding rules are changed."

The letter notes that most successful charters have extended school days, but I wonder whether the teacher-effectiveness research will also, ultimately, focus on charters. The great majority of charters are not unionized, presumably making experimentation with things like pay, evaluation and professional development somewhat easier that they would be in a school with a bargained contract.

Finally, an aside: Gates seems close to giving up on the small schools agenda. As colleague Debbie Viadero writes here, the Foundation suspended its own research agenda on this topic back in 2006. But part me wonders what that data would have looked like, and whether it might have been useful paired with the new focus on teacher effectiveness. Why? Some experts like Eric Hanushek have argued that the missing link in the small-schools, smaller-class-size movement is that teachers need to be explicitly trained to make use of smaller class sizes or smaller schools.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 4:15 PM | Permalink | 3 Comments | Recommend

According to this story in The Los Angeles Times, the district has decided to keep all its teachers on the payroll for the time being. Earlier this month, it looked like up to 2,300 teachers could lose their jobs mid-year.

But $500 to $600 million will continue to need to be cut from next year's budget, which means jobs are still going to be on the line. Officials are hoping that 2,000 early retirements will naturally help lower the number of teachers in jeopardy of the pink slip.

The story explores a couple of interesting scenarios that suggest where districts across the country might be headed over the next few years if the financial situation doesn't improve: Teachers' union officials, the story says, have considered trying to persuade the district to fully fund schools until the state money runs out. In what would apparently be a game of "chicken" with the state legislature, the union hopes that political pressure might cause the state to step in with additional appropriations. Business leaders, on the other hand, have floated the idea of allowing the district to go bankrupt so as to weaken the power of the union contract.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 1:53 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

An Ohio philanthropic group says schools should have a freer hand in awarding tenure to good teachers and firing bad ones.

The Ohio Grantmakers Association, a group representing more than 200 private and corporate foundations that give more than $300 million to schools in the state each year, made its recommendations to the governor and legislature yesterday.

The report calls for strengthening state law to require teachers seeking tenure to demonstrate their skills, based partly on student performance. And whereas current law on dismissing teachers focuses on immoral conduct, the report recommends that the terms for dismissing teachers be made similar to those for firing other public employees.

The report also recommends getting rid of the state's standardized high school graduation tests and replacing them with other ways to gauge critical-thinking skills and readiness for college and work.

Gov. Ted Strickland is expected to discuss his educational proposals next Wednesday before state lawmakers.

You can read more about the report here, and more about the Ohio Grantmakers Forum here.

Posted by Vaishali Honawar at 2:19 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Maybe it's a little early to read the tea leaves, but we here at Teacher Beat think there might be a lot more attention at the federal level to teacher quality. Why? Well, the confirmation hearing for Arne Duncan focused nearly exclusively on teaching, while the economic-stimulus package has oodles of new funding for teachers.

The last seven years have been mostly a punching bag for the "highly qualified" teacher requirements of the No Child law. Few people would argue those provisions were perfect, but from a conceptual standpoint, Congress made a monumental decision to set a federal teaching standard. Up until that point teacher quality had pretty much been seen as the purview of states and districts.

Now, the teacher-quality discussion is focusing on much more meaty and controversial topics: performance-based pay, tenure reforms, ways of determining effective teaching and improving evaluations. So why the shift?

"Now that there is accountability in education, the attention is turning to how can you help teachers do better," Jack Jennings, the president of the Center on Education Policy, told me when I called him for some reaction to all this. "The next logical question is whether teachers are being helped to meet the demands of accountability. ... Teacher quality is the next logical addition to the debate."

What do you think?

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 10:51 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

Team R & R over at the Center for American Progress has an article that explores some of the themes Teacher Beat wrote about in this post with respect to the cost-effectiveness and impact on student achievement of laying off teachers by seniority level rather than effectiveness.

Eduwonk (and possible Duncan appointee?) Andy Rotherham picks up the thread here.

We suspect there will be more chatter about this if the financial situation doesn't improve and districts are forced to cull more teaching positions. Stay tuned.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

There is plenty of speculation over whether teacher-accountability systems should include evaluations from students. Students, the argument in favor of the idea goes, are the best and most logical judges of teacher effectiveness since they are actually in the learning environment.

If that is true, high school teachers in Providence, R.I., just got a failing mark from their students.

A student-sponsored survey in the district found that high schoolers are generally not happy with their teachers.

The survey collected information from nearly 1,700 students, or about 21 percent of the city's public high schoolers. Common complaints included: Teachers don't explain information clearly, rely too heavily on handouts and textbooks in class instead of hands-on lessons, and sometimes make discouraging comments.

There were some positive findings. For instance, some students indicated that there are, in every school, effective teachers who are skilled in their craft and dedicated to student learning.

Also, youths at schools with fewer students consistently reported a higher level of satisfaction in all categories, like receiving help, teachers being encouraging, and more hands-on learning.

Read more about this here.

Posted by Vaishali Honawar at 4:58 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

The fine folks over at the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research have an interesting study up on the use of student test-score data in tenure decisions.

Of late, some economists who study the teacher workforce, such as Thomas Kane at Harvard and Eric Hanushek at Stanford, have argued that it might make more sense to see how teachers are doing on the job and then set policies to transition out ineffective teachers, rather than attempt to prescreen teacher-candidates for effectiveness. Most districts do the latter but not the former, and that process hasn't proved very successful over the years. One possibility for attempting to determine on-the-ground teacher performance is to use student test-score data over time that is linked to individual teachers.

Using a matched set of teacher/student data encompassing about 10,000 North Carolina teachers, researchers Dan Goldhaber and Michael Hansen tested this hypothesis. They attempted to determine whether this "value added" data over a teacher's first few years can predict his or her future performance, thus giving districts useful objective data upon which to base tenure decisions.

They found that the pre- and post-tenure estimates of teaching effectiveness in North Carolina were much more consistent in math than in reading. In reading, for example, 11 percent of teachers in the bottom quintile of teaching effectiveness after two years of test data were ultimately found to be among the most effective teachers; a tenure policy based solely on the value-added data would have barred these teachers from the profession. In math, however, only 2 percent of the most ineffective teachers were ultimately found to be effective.

Although generally value-added estimates are supposed to be more sound with multiple years of data, the picture didn't look much different with an additional year of data.

Perhaps these effects show that it takes reading teachers more years of experience than math teachers to become effective, or alternatively, that it's more difficult to measure teacher effects in reading than in math

What would the effect of such policies be? Well, if tenure was denied based on low performance in either reading or math, about 30 percent of teachers would not be granted tenure. But if only teachers who were ineffective in both reading and math were transitioned out of the profession, the figure would drop to about 11 percent.

The data, the authors note, are probably not going to persuade opponents of teacher value-added policies to change their minds. On the other hand, the fact that the systems do in general predict effectiveness suggests they could be one of several factors in determining whether or not to grant a teacher tenure, they argued.

But you don't have to take their word for it (or ours). Tell us what YOU think.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 4:08 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Over the inaugural weekend, I did some reporting for another Education Week blog, Politics K-12. And, of course, I had my eye out for interesting teacher-related events.

So make sure to check out details about the National Education Association's participation in the Inaugural Parade; read about the lesson the school director of the KIPP Academy of Opportunity, in Los Angeles, taught in front of the Lincoln Memorial on Martin Luther King Jr. Day; and attend a reception for Linda Darling-Hammond, whose academic career has focused on scholarly work on teacher preparation and professional development.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Here's an idea for retaining teachers who might want to move out of their jobs to administrative positions or other professions in order to make more money.

A commission created by Alabama Gov. Bob Riley has recommended a system in which teachers can advance in their careers and get higher pay without leaving the classroom.

Teachers could move from "apprentice teacher" to "classroom teacher" to "professional teacher" to "master teacher" and then "learning designer," all by meeting certain education and experience requirements.

Each designation, the commission's report says, would provide teachers with different opportunities. For instance, a master teacher might spend part of his/her day providing professional development to his/her peers, while a learning designer would help the school or system design, say, a science curriculum.

Teachers who apply for these jobs would undergo rigorous review by a panel of peers to ensure consistent quality.

The recommendation from the highly influential commission, whose earlier reports led to the creation of a mentor program in the state and new standards for teachers, will need the approval of the Alabama board of education. But it has already received the stamp of approval from the state teachers' union and the governor has said he supports it.

Posted by Vaishali Honawar at 4:55 PM | Permalink | 4 Comments | Recommend

Here's a rundown of teacher-related funding in the House's stimulus package:

$13 billion each for Title I and IDEA grants. Much of that money would support the hiring of teachers and paraprofessionals and the provision of professional development.

$100 million for the Teacher Quality Enhancement Grants (Title II of the Higher Education Act). This would be a big win for teachers' colleges, which have seen this grant dwindle steadily down over the years. It could be used in support of partnerships to improve teacher education, including the establishment of residency programs.

$100 million for the National Science Foundation to support the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship program, which helps prospective science, technology, engineering, and math teachers through school ($60 million) and for the Math-Science Partnerships program ($40 million.)

$200 million to establish a performance-pay program. Per my earlier post, it would indeed be funneled through the Teacher Incentive Fund. Although the national teachers' unions are likely to be happy about all the Title I funding, this would be a bitter pill to swallow. They have never been a huge fan of TIF, and the National Education Association downright opposed its creation and continued funding. The bill, which was worked out with the Obama administration, is a strong sign that Democrats aren't going to back off performance-pay.

Our green-eyeshade readers may have noted an interesting requirement in the package directing the Institute of Education Sciences to use a randomized controlled methodology to assess the impact of the performance-pay funding. Someone must have gotten the memo that not all of the Education Department's TIF grantees are using experimental techniques to evaluate their programs, as I reported here.

Another interesting note: The bill would create a specific fund to stabilize state education costs. To receive these funds, higher ed must demonstrate that it is supporting efforts in the state to address inequities in the distribution of qualified, experienced, and in-field teachers between high-and low-poverty schools.

Of course, this is all contingent on congressional approval. Although it's likely to pass in some fashion, the Senate's version is said to be somewhat different.

See the House Appropriations Committee Web site for the bill and summary.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 4:24 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

This just in: It looks like the economic stimulus package on Capitol Hill will include $200 million or "competitive grants to school districts and states to provide financial incentives for teachers and principals who raise student achievement and close the achievement gaps in high-need schools." That sounds a lot like performance-based pay to me.

$200 million is no small figure. It's more than twice what the federal Teacher Incentive Fund, the government's current performance-pay program, gets each year.

We're trying to locate some additional details; check back here and over at Campaign K-12 for more.

If it is performance pay, perhaps the Obama administration and Congress are trying to sweeten the deal with an additional $100 million for competitive grants to address teacher shortages and "modernize the teaching workforce."

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 12:35 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

This story from the Los Angeles Times portends really tough times for that district's teaching force. The school board approved a measure to give 2,300 teachers the pink slip if the fiscal situation doesn't improve. No wonder the state is pushing so hard for operating relief in the stimulus package currently being fleshed out on Capitol Hill.

The story also indicates that the district will probably have to give up its love of smaller class sizes, suggesting that some may rise to nearly 30 students.

The layoffs, the story indicates, would be targeted at teachers with fewer than two years of experience under the belt, and most contracts do work this way, with less-senior teachers losing their jobs before veterans. But here at Teacher Beat, we have to pose the question: Is that really the fairest system? Would it make more sense to cut ineffective teachers of all seniority levels rather than focusing on novices? And for that matter, would it allow the district to keep more teachers overall (new teachers earn the lowest salaries)?

Of course, you'd need a good metric to figure out which teachers were the most effective, and that would be a battle in and of itself. But it's more food for thought for the effectiveness and human-capital-reforms-in-education debate.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 6:01 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Mike Antonucci, the union watchdog blogger at EIA Intercepts, has this contrary viewpoint to what he calls the "mass hysteria" in the media about the unionization of two New York City KIPP schools.

"All this hoohah is silly," he writes. "How many stories have you read about the 355 new charter schools that opened this year? How many of them are unionized?"

It's certainly true that a vast majority of charter schools are not unionized, and the teachers' unions have had a very hard time making inroads into such schools in the past.

Still, the fact that charters that are part of big chains like KIPP and Green Dot are organizing, and in an economy where teachers like the rest of us are worried about their jobs, we at Teacher Beat can't shake off the feeling that this just could just be a sign of trends to come. Of course, we could be wrong.

Feel free to pitch in with your thoughts, readers.

Posted by Vaishali Honawar at 6:00 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

Our intrepid colleague Alyson Klein reports on a letter ostensibly sent by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education opposing New Leaders for New Schools President Jon Schnur, Teach For America CEO Wendy Kopp, and Education Sector Co-Founder Andy Rotherham, also known as "eduwonk," as appointments for the Education Department.

The gloves are really off in this letter, which says that Kopp, Schnur, and Rotherham "have evidenced a constant and intense disregard for working with the organized education community" and that their appointments would signal "expansion for organizations that promote the revolving door of under-qualified teachers as the best answer for poor children." Sounds to me like we're back in arguments about alt-cert vs. traditional teacher preparation, even though research doesn't really show that traditional ed. programs produce better teachers than TFA and the New Teacher Project.

Yesterday Arne Duncan, the secretary-designate of the department, was supportive of alternative-certification programs, speaking fondly of Kopp, Schnur, and other "educational entrepreneurs." But he also plugged recent reforms to teacher education that have been embraced by AACTE, such as residency programs in Boston and Chicago that offer stronger clinical experiences (see Vaishali's in-depth look at this here.) This may signal a whatever-works type of pragmatism to teacher quality: to attract, develop, and retain bright teacher-candidates from all different types of routes.

Some might wonder if is this a reaction to the battering that Stanford University professor and Obama education-policy transition-team leader Linda Darling-Hammond, AACTE's choice for EdSec, took in the editorial pages. She's rumored to be in the running for a job in the administration, possibly in the Institute of Education Sciences. If so, the "establishment" and the "entrepreneurs" are going to need to figure out how to play well together, to borrow an old-report-card phrase.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 4:23 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Florida's two experiments with merit pay in recent years disappeared like a hangover after a prolonged date with controversy.

But some state lawmakers still want to revisit the concept by spending on a merit-pay plan some of the federal stimulus-package dollars that might fall into Florida's lap.

Senate Select Committee on Florida's Economy Chairman Don Gaetz told the Associated Press yesterday that the one-time money shouldn't be used for recurring expenses such as salaries.

"We've got to build an education infrastructure that can keep giving us economic development muscle as we go forward," he said. "If we spend this money once, it'll feel good, but it'll be like a Chinese dinner: You walk outside, you burp, and you feel hungry again."

Gaetz's comments came even as Gov. Charlie Crist met with American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, who has said in the past that she is open to discussions of performance pay.

"The governor and I had a very positive, productive conversation, and we are both committed to working in a bipartisan way to get our states and our public institutions the stimulus investments they need," she said.

Speaking of performance pay, yet another state is rearing to join those that have already taken the plunge: Georgia.

Gov. Sonny Perdue says he wants to reward top principals and teachers, as well as those who teach science and math.

“Even in the economic downturns, you’ve got to focus on the things that can make a difference in the future of Georgia,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.

The price tag of $23 million is no problem right now, says the governor, because the payouts will only happen in 2010.

But here's what Tim Callahan of the Professional Association of Georgia Educators had to say about that:

“It’s sort of like the guy whose house is on fire telling you what a great deck he’s eventually going to build."

Posted by Vaishali Honawar at 2:54 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Here's a fairly big feather in the teachers' unions' let's-organize-charter-schools cap: Leo Casey at EdWize reports that a majority of teachers at a KIPP school in Brooklyn have decided to unionize and signed authorization cards with the United Federation of Teachers.

This is significant news because unions have long struggled to bring charter schools into their fold without much success. New Orleans, where the teachers' union has been struggling to survive, is one of the more obvious examples of this.

On the other hand, this is the second major piece of news in under two months on big-city charters going the union way: In November, teachers at Boston's Conservatory Lab Charter School joined up, the first charter to do so in the state of Massachusetts. Read my post about this here.

One of the theories about why unions have not been gung-ho about the charter schools movement is because it is not easy to unionize these schools: Each school has to enter into an agreement separately, and most would require a majority of teachers to agree. Stories abound that administrators at such schools by and large do not look kindly on unionization.

Of course, the AFT has sought to fight the perception that unions are unfriendly to charters by opening their own schools. New York now has two charters started by the UFT.

With more teachers and charter schools entering unions, is the tide turning slowly but surely in favor of the unions?

Time will tell.

Posted by Vaishali Honawar at 4:23 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee's confirmation hearing for Arne Duncan, President-Elect Obama's nominee for Education Secretary, is focusing heavily on teacher-quality issues. You can watch it now at http://help.senate.gov/Hearings/2009_01_13/2009_01_13.html, or check in with us later when we'll bring you more details.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

As inauguration fever grips many citizens in this nation, the two teachers' unions are giving teachers some help with bringing the Jan. 20 event into the classroom with a joint offering lesson plans on inaugural history.

The guides, available here are designed to teach students about the history of Inauguration Day, and include information about the 2009 schedule of events and background about traditional inaugural ceremonies. The guides also suggest ways to supplement the lessons with discussion topics, films, books, and other educational Web sites.

Students can, among other activities, compare and contrast the backgrounds of the two presidents from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama, examine the texts of various presidential inaugural addresses, and learn about activities leading up to and during the inauguration.

AFT President Randi Weingarten called the inauguration a "transformational moment that brings together our collective past and present, and our hopes for the future."

"It reminds us more clearly than mere words ever could that power in this country truly rests with the American people. These lesson plans are intended as tools to help teachers and their students live our rich history and build our brighter future. The AFT is proud to have been part of this important project and this historic moment."

NEA President Dennis Van Roekel said it is "crucial that our students understand that we are not only living history and making history with this inauguration, but also carrying forward the historical contributions of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his influence on our incoming 44th president.

He continued, "These important lesson plans will help students understand President-elect Obama's message of a 'sense of unity and shared purpose' into the next four years and beyond."

Posted by Vaishali Honawar at 4:22 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Here's an interesting tidbit: K-8 teachers would, apparently, like to see Barack Obama as "Principal for a Day."

Chicago-based educational publishing group Northpoint Horizons surveyed about 1,400 teachers on various aspects of education, including what supports and strategies they feel they need to be successful educators. But the question on principal for a day is indeed telling: Obama won three times as many votes as any other nominee.

The top-10 vote getters also included Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby, Abraham Lincoln, George W. Bush, Martin Luther King Jr., Bill Gates, Hillary Clinton, Benjamin Franklin, and John F. Kennedy.

There's no doubt about it, educators love Obama. One wonders, however, if Obama's reputedly deliberative and collaborative approach would really translate well to administration. Principals, it seems, are being increasingly asked to make tough calls on hiring and firing and curriculum in order to hit achievement targets.

Other interesting findings: Teachers named inclusive small groups as most important for meeting the educational needs of struggling students, far above pullout programs and extended learning time; and nearly as many teachers said the No Child Left Behind Act was important for having a positive impact on students as those who said it was not important.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 1:34 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The nose-diving economy has brought out the creative side of lawmakers trying to solve long-running problems in schools, like teacher retention.

In Utah, where a study found that more than half the teachers who left their jobs in 2006-07 have taught for less than five years, a lawmaker is sponsoring a bill that would make home-buying more affordable for new teachers, thereby giving them an incentive to stay on.

Teachers in their first five years on the job would get $15,000 loans to buy homes. They would pay interest on the loans, but the $15,000 principal would be forgiven if they met the requirement of teaching in the same district for five years, the Salt Lake Tribune reports.

The idea of giving teachers housing loans or subsidized housing to improve teacher retention is one that's been practiced by districts for a long time now, although the Utah legislature has refused to adopt bills similar to this one for the past two years. But the bill's sponsor, Rep. Lynn Hemingway, is more hopeful this time, despite a bleak budget outlook, because he says his colleagues might see it as a way to jump-start the economy.

Besides, some teachers agree, while $15,000 might not have been a big deal in the hot real-estate market of years past, it can be a substantial chunk as home prices drop.

"If [lawmakers] really want to stimulate the real estate market, this is certainly not a bad way to do it," Hemingway told the Tribune. "On a teacher's salary, it's very difficult to save enough money for a down payment."

Posted by Vaishali Honawar at 12:37 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A merger between the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers?

Now that's one we haven't heard in almost a decade, since efforts to bring the two teachers' unions under a single umbrella were quashed by the NEA's Representative Assembly.

But this week, after the presidents of 12 labor unions issued a joint call for unification when President-elect Barack Obama's transition office said that it would prefer dealing with a united labor movement, there's been some speculation over whether this might also translate into a teachers' union merger.

The New York Times had this quote from Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT, speaking about the labor-unification call after Tuesday's meeting: “It was clear that many of us felt that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and we really want to do things to help American workers get their rightful place in society.”

But does this mean she's also ready to rush into blissful union with the NEA? We'd guess not.

The differences between the two national teachers' unions may be greater at this point in time than they've ever before been.

Dana Goldstein in Tapped, the American Prospect blog, says a merger is "highly unlikely" because of the differences between the two, including on education policy. Read more about this here.

Further, over the past decade, since unification attempts crashed, the NEA and the AFT have only grown further from each other. And there has been no visible effort by the two to work together on just about any issue of common interest.

There are other strong differences that put a spike in the merger back then and would doubtlessly hinder one now: The AFT is in essence a labor union. It is a proud member of the AFL-CIO and includes many non-teacher members, including dentists, health-care workers, and other denizens of the labor workforce.

Contrast this with the NEA which believes in preserving its purity as a teachers' union and which shuns non-teacher membership whenever possible. This past summer, members soundly rejected an attempt by the union's leadership to allow private-school teachers to become members of the NEA.

We'd never say never, but it wouldn't be a stretch to guess that, at this time, a desire to please Obama—especially before he's had a chance to please them—is not going to be enough reason for a union of the unions.

Posted by Vaishali Honawar at 7:38 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

NCLB turned 7 yesterday. Teachers, for the most part, dislike the law for what they see as an overemphasis on standardized testing, the pushing of blame for school failure on teachers, and the punishment of schools with sanctions.

Underneath all that, teachers felt frustrated at not having been consulted during the law's creation in 2001, when the unions were largely left out of the negotiations. There's certainly a theme of teacher consultation and collaboration in the American Federation of Teachers' press release on the law's 7th anniversary:

"For the past seven years, NCLB has become a stand-in for real discussions about a robust education policy that prepares children for the 21st century. ... The AFT looks forward to working with a new Congress and administration to ensure that this law is retooled and reauthorized to provide real solutions for closing the achievement gap. Focusing on collaboration with teachers, parents and community partners; building capacity; and creating community schools ... are three great ways to start."

On the other hand, over at Swift & Change Able, we have Margo/Mom's take on the school- improvement planning process required of all schools that repeatedly fail to meet achievement benchmarks. She argues that NCLB actually creates opportunities for school-improvement collaboration and that parents, administrators, and —yes—teachers, are not taking advantage of them.

"In three different schools my family has been involved with since the inception of NCLB, the planning process has been obscure, unwelcoming or totally absent. ... What seems to be missing—and this is only apparent when one is close to a school—is a relationship to what happens in the real day-to-day life of the school. ... Teachers, we are to believe, live in fear of the consequences of low achievement within the context of NCLB, as well as being committed to learning. Yet, any school that reaches the dread point of “reconstitution,” or the consequence that moves teachers around (not out of employment, mind you, but out of a low-performing school to some other district school), presumably has five to seven years worth of such plans neatly filed away under 'meaningless paperwork.' "

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 7:17 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The last few months have seen a barrage of announcements on education budget cuts in states and school districts teetering under the recession. Now comes news that the nation's second-largest school district, Los Angeles, could be laying off as many as 2,300 teachers.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the state deficit has created a shortfall of at least $250 million in the school district's nearly $6 billion budget, prompting officials to propose sending layoff notices to 1,690 elementary school teachers and 600 math and English teachers in middle and high schools.

Teachers most likely to lose their jobs would be those with less than two years of service, even as tenured teachers are spared. The cuts would save the district $60 million.

Superintendent Ramon C. Cortines told reporters Tuesday that he hoped to limit the number of layoffs that might be required. But, he added, "we will be bankrupt if I do not do this."

The United Teachers Los Angeles, which has already been on the warpath in recent months over proposed cuts in health care for district employees, has promised to fight the cuts, and will hold a meeting to discuss them Jan. 13.

Stay tuned for more.

Meanwhile, has anyone heard this one? Fayette County in Georgia is asking teachers to voluntarily give up their recent pay raises to cut costs and possibly avoid layoffs.

Talk about creativity under stress.

Posted by Vaishali Honawar at 11:07 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

Hopefully by now you've checked out Much Ado About Professional Development per this Bill Turque story in the Washington Post. It must be said: The intrepid bloggers here at Teacher Beat reported Ms. Rhee's plans for PD quite some time ago.

Still, I'm glad to see that PD, generally considered a wonky and mushy topic, is getting some real attention for a change. (Although maybe this story in part reflects the current vogue for all things Rhee--everything from her clothes to her dating life has been generating attention.)

The central debate in the Post story centers on the fact that it'll take until 2010-2011 for all teachers to receive the retooled training. Depending on who you believe, this is either a good thing (to ensure quality control) or a bad thing (why's it taking so long?). But what I want to know is what the heck happened from 2004 to 2007, when the previous DC contract was in place? You'll have to root it out among the document's 80+ pages, but there are plenty of PD-related activities in the contract that could be acted on now, including PD standards, a career ladder, and daily 30 minute-common planning time for teachers.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 6:01 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend