February 2009 Archives

President Obama's budget request for FY 2010 contains a couple of interesting tidbits relating to teachers. The administration says it wants to :

--Strengthen and increase transparency around teacher and principal preparation programs;
--Implement systems that reward teacher performance, help less-effective teachers improve or, if they don't improve, exit the classroom;
--Support community-based education through the creation of Promise Neighborhoods similar to the Harlem Children's Zone, which combined rigorous education standards with wraparound support services for students.

There aren't any figures or line items, so we don't yet know if these are new programs or tweaks to existing programs. For example, the federal Teacher Incentive Fund supports principal and teacher compensation programs but doesn't really deal with the issue of remediation and removal of ineffective teachers.

We'll be sure to bring you more once we know what's what.

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

Today, the Center for American Progress released a paper about how states could work to improve alternative certification programs, and it explores the fundamental tension that such programs face: Ensuring that these programs both fit the needs of people who want to enter teaching (i.e., with flexible hours and a faster pathway to teaching), but also appropriately prepare candidates for success in classrooms.

It builds on a 2007 report from the National Council on Teacher Quality, which found that many alternative-certification programs are alternative in name only. Such programs, that report found, have similar coursework loads, don't necessarily provide stronger mentoring or clinical components, and they are sometimes even located in education schools.

There are many interesting things to be gleaned from the paper, but one that I think is most compelling is its idea that states should step up efforts to ensure that alternative certification programs are held to a high standard of quality but offer flexible ways of meeting requirements.

For instance, the report's author, Robin Chait, suggests that states set subject-matter competency requirements but allow candidates different ways of demonstrating competency. That is, candidates should be able to meet such requirements by holding a major or passing a test, rather than having to meet two or three different requirements (coursework, a major, and a test.)

"There is little to no research that shows that a major is more predictive of teacher effectiveness than proven proficiency on a competency exam," Chait writes.

UPDATE: I neglected to mention that Teach For America state-policy director Michele McLaughlin (perhaps better known as former AFT-ie blogger "one-L") co-wrote the report. Teacher Beat regrets the omission.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 12:11 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Philadelphia superintendent Arlene Ackerman recently unveiled her Imagine 2014 initiative. Part of this education-reform plan includes closing and restructuring a number of low-performing schools around instructional models with "proven track records" for success. These schools will be deemed Renaissance Schools.

One thing you might not have picked up on from local reports on this, however, is that some of these Renaissance schools will be converted to charters. As such, they'll have more flexibility in hiring staff and will not be subject to the seniority and transfer rules in the district's collective bargaining agreement.

The president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, Jerry Jordan, called the plan "irresponsible" in a news release. The district, he said, should invest in smaller class sizes, providing resources and hiring certified teachers. Its district-run reconstituted schools with these features showed improvement, he argued.

But according to my colleague Dakarai Aarons, who spoke to Ackerman this week, she thinks that progress hasn't been enough.

"There were contractual constraints that prevented them from putting teachers where they were needed," she told Dakarai. "Give me the right as superintendent the right to transfer teachers. Give me some release from the contractual constraints. In an in-district charter school, we can start all over again. The students have to stay. Everybody else has a choice.”

You'll be able to read much more on the Renaissance Schools initiative when Dakarai's full story runs. Check back soon at www.edweek.org for more.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 1:52 PM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

From Guest Blogger Liana Heitin

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an Idaho state law that bans local governments from allowing unions to collect political contributions through payroll deductions. Labor unions contended that the 2003 law violated their free speech rights. Following the 6-3 vote deeming the law constitutional, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that, "Such a decision is reasonable in light of the state’s interest in avoiding the appearance that carrying out the public’s business is tainted by partisan political activity." (See more about the case on Mark Walsh’s School Law Blog).

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation issued a press release applauding the Ysursa v. Pocatello Education Association ruling. The foundation’s vice president said, "The Supreme Court's decision makes clear what should be obvious, that union officials have no constitutional right to use government resources to line their pockets." The release also stated that a "more effective alternative would have been stopping government payroll deduction for all union dues."

Should unions be concerned about a slippery slope? Could dues really be next? The lawyer for the Idaho Education Association (the state NEA affiliate), John Rumel, is concerned that the elimination of payroll checkoff for political activities could be used by anti-labor legislatures as a means of weakening unions.

As for now, the show must go on. According to Rumel, there’s currently a system in place for union members to make political contributions through electronic transfers after they receive their paychecks. Which begs the question: Is the deduction ban truly a threat to the unions' political voice or only a matter worth challenging on principle?

Posted by Liana Heitin at 2:53 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

If you're a teacher-policy geek like me, you'll want to check out all the teacher-related details in the completed stimulus. My colleague Michele McNeil has the scoop at Politics K-12 (disc: I helped a little).

In my view, the most important piece of this is the requirement for states to improve teacher effectiveness. The language is pretty much the first toe the government's really put into that particular (swampy) pond. As with much in this huge bill, whether or not it really means anything is going to depend on Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's following up on it.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 9:25 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The nation's smallest state certainly can't say it has a timid state education leader: Rhode Island Commissioner Peter McWalters is taking on the controversial issue of "bumping" in Providence schools.

Providence, like many other districts, operates under a collective bargaining agreement that handles hiring primarily through teacher preference and seniority: More-senior teachers can request transfers to open positions at other schools. After that, the central office slots the remaining teachers to open positions throughout the district.

Essentially, McWalters is directing the district to override this agreement. In a letter to Tom Brady, the Providence superintendent, he indicates that the district should shift hiring practices to the school level, where it should be based on student need and teacher effectiveness rather than preference or seniority. Teachers who want to work in schools would need to interview with principals, who would get to make the final say about whom they accept in their schools.

The new hiring system would occur in only 6 schools in its first years, McWalters said. "There are concerns that not every principal is ready to be the manager of his or her own [human-capital] system," McWalters told me in an interview on Friday.

Obviously, this raises some big legal questions, but McWalters thinks he has two good legal arguments.

First, a 1997 state law gives the commissioner of education progressive authority over schools' and districts' personnel, budget, and programs if schools don't meet performance benchmarks for three years. (Rhode Island had an accountability measure in place before the No Child Left Behind Act required all states to institute one.) Second, the "restructuring" portions of NCLB for districts and schools that continue to miss benchmarks requires alternate governance actions including the replacing of staff. Such actions are governed by state law.

Over time, McWalters said he's provided direction and asked the district to renegotiate parts of its agreement, but teacher turnover is still too high in the schools. "I’ve done that in very good faith for about five years in Providence ... so this is taking it to the next level, if you’ve achieved the following and there are still certain things you're not able to do," he said.

I've put in a call to Steve Smith, the head of the Providence Teachers Union, but haven't heard anything back. In a local story about this, though, Smith said the union "was not going to panic," and hoped to work with the district collaboratively. And the word on the street is that he and McWalters share a good relationship.

The local-level legal questions here are interesting, and there are even bigger implications for NCLB, where the school-restructuring language has never quite been put to this test. In fact, the national teachers' unions roundly criticized the Bush administration for floating a proposal in early 2007 to allow districts in restructuring to override collective bargaining.

"The importance of teacher assignment is obvious in the literature," McWalters said, when I asked if he was ready for potential legal battle and the resulting national attention. "If it brings us that challenge, maybe it's time for it."

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

Last week, I took a long look at seniority-based layoff policies in this story. But we also have an edweek.org poll on the topic, asking readers to vote on whether or not they agree with such methods of reducing the workforce.

Right now, it's in a statistical dead heat. Make your voice heard!

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 10:53 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

From Guest Blogger Liana Heitin

Today marks the close of a weeklong field trip for 80 British teachers who were chosen to participate in the British Council’s Teachers International Professional Development (TIPD) program.

Since its inception in 2000, the government-funded U.K. program has been sending up to 15 groups of educators per year to study alternative-teaching methods in U.S. schools. This year, groups went to districts in Los Angeles, Houston, and Raleigh-Durham, N.C., among other places, to meet with state and district-level officials, observe classrooms, team-teach lessons, and trade ideas with their host teachers. They focused their professional development on such themes as addressing boys’ underachievement and collaborating with outside agencies to improve student well-being.

And while the program is not reciprocal, this recent report on teacher-training reveals that U.S. educators could benefit from seeing how things are done in England as well. As Stephen mentions in his article, “Teachers’ lesson planning in the United States . . . averages between three and five hours a week and is typically scheduled independently. . . But in most European and Asian countries, teachers spend 15 to 20 hours a week on those activities and generally performed them in collaboration with their peers.” Is this focus on collaboration the reason the British government funds such trips in the first place?

Perhaps administrators from the U.S., rather than teachers, would get the most out of school visits abroad, seeing as how they are in charge of scheduling and teacher training. Any chance there’s some money in the stimulus earmarked for travel?

Posted by Liana Heitin at 4:10 PM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

The always thoughtful Sherman Dorn thinks I jumped the gun in this post. I disagree.

Although the examples I point to are proposals and may not amount to anything concrete (and they certainly wouldn't be the first), the bigger picture is that the conversation about tenure does seem to be changing. Why? Well, districts and unions in particular are under pressure to rethink how teachers are paid, developed, and managed. Tenure falls under the last category.

Secondly, Dorn goes on to write:

"In collective bargaining agreements, there are provisions for gathering evidence that a teacher has problems in the classroom, putting the teacher in a corrective or probationary status, providing support, and then firing the teacher."

Those provision do indeed exist but, on the other hand most districts don't really have good measures or evaluations in place to give them any real meaning.

I could very well be wrong, but I suspect that in Ohio and D.C. at least, the issue isn't really going to be about "getting rid" of tenure, but about setting clear performance-based standards for granting it.

Bottom line: Although we don't have much data on whether tenure helps or hurts teacher effectiveness, I expect people to start researching it and I expect the debates on it to intensify.

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

The Washington Teachers' Union is going on the charm offensive for its contract counter-proposal to that provided by Chancellor Michelle Rhee. It is running a series of radio advertisements promoting the contract, and at this new Web site calls its own proposal "progressive, bold and comprehensive."

You've got to at least give WTU points for confidence, given that the details are still so sketchy.

The site provides just a few additional tidbits: The contract will include a "fair and expedient" process for dismissing ineffective teachers. The red- and green-tier proposal is gone, replaced with a schoolwide performance-pay model. And it looks like the union wants to start a school improvement pilot similar to the N.Y.C. Chancellor's District and Miami Zone initiatives.

It would offer compensation increases "comparable" with those in Rhee's plan but "sustainable." Rhee would have offered a 28% increase for teachers on the red-tier plan, but she's since said that the district's offer would have to be rethought given the economic downturn.

One aside: This situation is a striking reminder of how little we really know about this proposal (or Rhee's, for that matter, beyond the red/green proposals). We journalists get a bad rap for not covering contract negotiations with more nuance, but the fact is that contracts are pretty much hammered out behind closed doors, invisible to parents and students and journalists until they're a done deal.

Is the union's proposal really progressive, bold, and comprehensive? We'll find out soon enough, we hope.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 3:30 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The folks at the New Teacher Project have put out a district-level analysis of staffing policies in San Francisco.

There are a lot of interesting findings to pick through, but the section that most struck me concerns teacher evaluations. Let's start with the actual figures: According to the report, only 5 out of 1,804 teachers received "unsatisfactory" performance ratings between 2005-07, while 86 percent of teachers earned one of the top two ratings.

Now, take this finding: In a survey of 90 principals, 38 percent said that they assigned higher evaluation ratings to tenured teachers than their performance warranted. Contrast that with a survey of 950 teachers, where 34 percent of teachers thought they should have earned a higher rating.

In other words, more than a third of principals think they are not tough enough on teachers, and more than a third of teachers think that principals are too tough on them. With this disparity, it's no wonder so many teachers view their principals as vindictive.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 11:53 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

From Guest Blogger Liana Heitin

All this buzz about the possibility of creating national standards (see Stephen's post on Weingarten) has me thinking: How would national standards affect students with special needs? Could they improve the IEP writing process for teachers?

The laws governing special education are federally mandated, as you know. Every student who qualifies for services must have an Individualized Education Program with specific required components. Yet from district to district, the IEP documents can look completely different. The length, order of components, physical layout of each page, and style of writing student objectives seem to vary indiscriminately. Some IEPs are still written by hand (yes, it is true! I wrote a few by hand myself!), while others are composed with sophisticated computer programs. When a student transfers from one district or state to another, it can be difficult for the new district to decipher the previous IEP. In some cases, the teachers hold a transfer meeting simply to rewrite the document on the new district’s IEP form, a cumbersome and time-consuming process.

Since IEP objectives are supposed to be based on state standards, doesn’t it make sense that national standards could one day lead to the institution of a national IEP form? Could this lead to more effective and streamlined IEP training for teachers (and more training for general education teachers)? Does a national IEP seem feasible? Advantageous? Why or why not? I’m interested in hearing your opinion on this, so please chime in!

Posted by Liana Heitin at 11:54 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

Think performance pay is the biggest teacher-policy controversy going on right now? Hold on to your hats, because it looks like the issue of teacher tenure is poised to leap onto the national scene, with at least three states considering changes to their systems for granting tenure, which grants certain "due process" rights to teachers before they can be dismissed.

In Ohio, Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland wants to grant teachers tenure after nine years, rather than the current three. (I wonder how many teachers would actually stay around long enough to earn it.) It would also allow tenured teachers to be dismissed for "just cause." Currently, teachers can only be dismissed for "gross immorality" or "inefficiency." (Hat tip to Flypaper for this news.).

In Florida, Republican legislators are preparing to submit legislation to give teachers annual contracts for their first 10 years in the classroom and then contracts of no more than five years after that. Essentially, that plan would make teachers at-will employees for their first 10 years.

And, of course, there's D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee's proposal to push tenure-granting back from two to four years and require current teachers to forgo it for a year in exchange for the opportunity to win bonuses.

Teachers' unions and other supporters of tenure say it's necessary to guard against arbitrary dismissals by principals. We've all heard horror stories about how political school buildings can be, but is there any real data on whether school administrators are typically more vindictive than other employers? And is NCLB changing the game at all? Principals are under enormous pressure to raise standardized test scores and so one would think they would want to keep the most effective teachers and lose the ones who aren't pulling their weight. But is that the case in reality?

This is a very tricky area. So let's hear your thoughts on tenure.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 11:07 AM | Permalink | 3 Comments | Recommend

Over the weekend, Randi Weingarten supported national content standards in a big Washington Post op-ed. Andy Rotherham offers a commentary on it here.

The American Federation of Teachers has supported national standards for some time but never quite this vocally. And it's interesting that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has intimated lately that he wants to move in this direction, too.

Like most other policymakers who have endorsed national standards, Weingarten doesn't mention anything about a national assessment. A national test that could be used for accountability is controversial but it seems like a topic that for pragmatic reasons needs to be addressed. As Mike Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute once told me, theoretically we could have 50 state tests aligning to one common set of standards, but at some point we'd conclude that some of those tests were of higher quality than others.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress is considered to be a very strong test, but it would be a real challenge to use it as the basis of a state accountability test. Students take just a portion of the NAEP questions, and because of this the NAEP can afford to cover a great number of topics in considerable depth. State tests have to be shorter because kids must answer all the questions, so typically they can't go into as much depth.

Weingarten also includes this important line for the teacher-policy community: "Teachers ... would need the professional development, and the teaching and learning conditions, to make the standards more than mere words," she writes.

See my colleague Kathleen Kennedy Manzo's take on this announcement at Curriculum Matters.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

From Guest Blogger Liana Heitin

Last year, the superintendent of public instruction in Arizona, Tom Horne, implemented a host of regulations concerning the instruction of English-language learners. Students not proficient in English were to have four hours a day of direct English instruction: an hour each of grammar, reading, vocabulary, and conversation. During this time, they would remain in a self-contained classroom with a "highly qualified" teacher and other students at their proficiency level.

In order to institute these new requirements, schools with a high number of ELLs (mostly urban schools) had to find and train ELL teachers, create new language curricula, buy new materials, and hire additional aides. The projected cost of complying with the standards was $275 million. Schools were allotted $40 million.

Yesterday, in his annual speech outside the state capitol, Horne noted that the ELL program has been successful, with some districts doubling the rate of proficient students. He said ELL students should have to pass the Arizona Instrument to Measure Standards test, which he wants to expand to include history standards, before moving up a grade. He also announced that the new budget for language instruction would be cut to $8.8 million dollars, a figure he deemed sufficient for maintaining current progress.

And while cutbacks are inevitable these days, unions and public-interest lawyers are struggling to see the logic in making further reductions to an underfunded program—particularly one the superintendent claims is working. Why was Horne quick to hack at funding after a year of defending his decision to implement the radical instruction model? Are you seeing contradictions between ideologies and funding cuts in your area?

Posted by Liana Heitin at 2:59 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Earlier this week, education leaders from the District of Columbia honored 20 new teachers who successfully earned advanced certification through the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. That figure is quadruple what it was last year.

Both D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee and Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers, were in attendance. (It's reassuring to know that the two women can actually be in the same room together without spontaneously combusting.) Both made what sounded like conciliatory remarks about the D.C. contract situation.

"Regardless of all the issues we may have, hopefully we can find a path to navigate them that will be good for kids of Washington and that will use and be fair to the exceptional talent of educators in Washington, D.C. schools," Weingarten said.

The kinder, gentler Rhee also thanked teachers for their contributions. "We've done a bad job telling our great teachers that they are doing great things," she said.

She added that she's been meeting with groups of 15 to 20 teachers over the last few weeks in informal listening sessions. "One of the things they say is, 'You're a lot nicer than we thought.'"

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

From Guest Blogger Liana Heitin

In Curriculum Matters, Kathleen Kennedy Manzo points out that reading coaches, many of whom were hired with now-depleted Reading First funds, are being dropped from school budgets.

It’s hard to say exactly how big a role coaches play in increasing student achievement, but they’re given much credit in places like Warren County, Ky., where reading scores have shot up. Teachers there receive "spot training" on a daily basis, during which coaches observe small-group reading instruction and jump in when help is needed. As noted in this Herald-Tribune story, coaches assist instruction in a variety of other ways, too: by demonstrating model lessons, helping analyze assessment data, and finding ways to target struggling students.

However, the impact of coaches is contingent on how effectively they are being utilized. In the Arizona district where I used to teach, which was under-resourced and often understaffed, reading coaches spent most of their time filling in as substitutes and performing administrative duties. Teachers rarely saw face-time with them, though the coaches were hired for ongoing teacher training and support. Even so, pink slips produce an unavoidable ripple effect. And how do you prioritize layoffs when the end result necessarily affects students?

Posted by Liana Heitin at 1:38 PM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

This just in from my intrepid colleagues at Politics K-12: The conference agreement on the stimulus will include $200 million for the Teacher Incentive Fund, a federal performance pay initiative. Looks like the Obama administration, which supported the extra funding for TIF, managed to carry the day on this one.

In the grand scheme of the multibillion-dollar stimulus, $200 million is chump change. But that's not the case in the world of performance-based teacher pay, where the figure amounts to more than twice what TIF got in the last appropriations cycle.

One of the challenges of performance-based pay is how to secure sustainable funding, so I wouldn't be surprised if this supports continuation grants to the 34 existing TIF grantees. But perhaps the U.S. Education Department will also seed some programs that explore new and innovative ways to incorporate teachers of non-tested grades and subjects, teachers of students with disabilities, and teachers of English-language learners in differentiated-compensation programs.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 12:44 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

I think Liana's on to something when she suggests below that the economic downturn could benefit alternative certification, as newly laid-off professionals seek stable jobs and think about changing careers.

Consider alternate-route provider American Board for the Certification of Teacher Excellence, which saw record enrollments in January with 496 teachers-to-be signing on. In most months, the figure hovers at about 200. ABCTE did offer a discount on its program, which typically costs $850, but its leaders think there's more to it than that.

“The downturn in the economy could end up being a blessing in disguise for school districts looking to hire quality teachers and we’re able to provide them with rigorously-tested professionals ready to bring their real world knowledge to students," ABCTE President David Saba said in a release.

The organization has generally been considered the scrappy new player on the national alt-route scene, but maybe that will change now that enrollments are up and alternative routes seem to be passing the "first, do no harm" maxim in the profession, per this report.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 7:30 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

Despite massive teacher layoffs in California and Florida, there are some areas of the country where teaching is still considered a recession-proof profession— and, consequently, an attractive option for people hit by corporate downsizing.

According to the Omaha World-Herald, Omaha Public Schools usually have 400-500 teaching positions open in the fall, and district officials are expecting just as many for the 2009-10 school year. North Carolina anticipates needing to fill 11,000 positions over the summer. As Wendy Boyer, the V.P. for workforce development at Omaha’s chamber of commerce, said, "There's always going to be a need for educating our children."

It’s this outlook that has victims of company layoffs turning to accelerated teaching programs. Universities such as UNC Greensboro and Omaha’s College of St. Mary offer programs that give new teachers full-licensure in 12-15 months, an appealing offer for people who’ve lost jobs in other less-stable industries. And as the demand for quick entrance into teaching increases, these programs are extending their application deadlines and expanding. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln just announced that it will open its first 14-month teaching degree program in May.

It’s all quite heartening in light of Mathematica’s recent report, saying these alternative pathway teachers are likely to be just as effective as teachers who’ve gone through traditional training (see Stephen's entry below). Could an increase in effective, qualified teachers be a bright spot in our sad economy? It’s probably a moot point if you live in Los Angeles . . .

-Liana Heitin

Posted by Liana Heitin at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

It sounds like the KIPP unionization in New York City has gotten a little rocky, per this New York Times article, with teachers that elected to join the union saying they've since felt intimidated by administrators and haven't had the same access to them.

Alexander Russo has an interesting response here in which he suggests that if this deal turns sour, it's as much a risk for the unions, who are trying to establish credibility in the charter movement, as for the school's administration and for KIPP, which risk coming off as anti-labor.

What do you think?

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

My apologies for not posting yesterday, but I return with exciting news to make up for it: A new guestblogger, Liana Heitin, will be helping me out on blogging duties and making sure that not a morsel of teacher-policy news falls through the cracks!

Some of our readers will know Liana from her work at sister publication Teacher Magazine but she also brings some great on-the-ground experience, too: she was a Teach for America teacher in Phoenix before turning to edu-journalism.

Why not take this opportunity to add Teacher Beat to your RSS feed so you won't miss any of her great posts?

Welcome, Liana!

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 10:00 AM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

Mathematica has a big new report out using a rigorous, experimental design that shows that students taught by teachers who came through alternative routes in general did as well on reading and math standardized tests as those taught by traditionally certified teachers. The study also found no correlation between the number of hours of coursework and student achievement.

One of the reasons this is a big deal is that most of the studies of alternative certification have focused on the "elite" programs like Teach For American and the New Teacher Project; this looks at a bunch of regular, state-run programs.

The study did find, however, that students of teachers in alternative routes who were also taking coursework while teaching performed slightly worse in math than their traditionally certified counterparts. Groups such as the National Council on Teacher Quality have essentially argued that alternative routes shouldn't load up new teachers with coursework.

More than 2,600 students in six states participated in the study.

My colleague Mary Ann Zehr will have more up on www.edweek.org soon, so check back.

UPDATE: Find Mary Ann's full story here.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 12:43 PM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

District of Columbia schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee turns in a must-read piece in the Washington Post, in which she tries to set the record straight: Broom aside, she's not focused on firing teachers.

"I want to be clear about something: I do not blame teachers for the low-achievement levels. I have talked with too many teachers to believe this is their fault. I have watched them pour their energy into engaging every student. I know they are working furiously in a system that for many years has not appreciated them," Ms. Rhee writes.

As part of the upcoming contract negotiations, she says, she'll ensure that teachers' bonuses aren't based solely on test scores, ensure that they will take into account the individual growth of students relative to their starting point rather than to an absolute standard, won't force tenured teachers to give up their due-process protections, won't allow principals to wield arbitrary power, and will provide strong opportunities for teachers to receive high-quality professional development, one of the components of her five-year plan.

She also explains her take on removing ineffective teachers from the classroom:

"Do not misunderstand: I do not believe that most of our teachers are shortchanging their students. But in the worst cases, we have teachers who put their feet on their desks and read the paper while students run around. Or they use corporal punishment. Or they intentionally abuse their current contract, leaving for three months at a time and returning for the one day that will keep their job active. We all agree that these people do not belong in the classroom, and we must be able to remove them expeditiously."

I don't know if this will persuade Ms. Rhee's most ardent detractors to rethink their opinions about her, but with contract negotiations soon to resume, it sounds like both sides are trying to put their best foot forward.

She also writes about giving teachers an individual choice on earning pay bonuses, which sounds like she wants to maintain at least that aspect of the red-green tier proposals if not the tenure aspect. It's not clear whether that's still viewed as an option for the Washington Teachers' Union, per this post.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 11:53 AM | Permalink | 2 Comments | Recommend

From guest blogger Sean Cavanagh

A new Web site offers teachers the ability to look at the certification requirements, as well as the average salaries, of any in state in the county, with a few clicks of the mouse.

It's called "CertificationMap.Com, and it's a creation of MAT@USC, the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education’s Master of Arts in Teaching program, which delivered online.

The "map" would allow a job-seeker, career-changer, or educator of any sort to examine any state's requirements on skill testing, subject-area competence testing, and prerequisite coursework. It also allows visitors to scroll through various state department of education homepages.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 3:47 PM | Permalink | 4 Comments | Recommend

I'll be moderating an edweek.org chat on performance-based pay this coming Monday, Feb. 9, at 1 p.m.

We have a great panel lineup of one researcher, one district official/practitioner, and one union official. So join us, and come armed with questions.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 2:48 PM | Permalink | 3 Comments | Recommend

One of the main sticking points about performance-pay programs is that less than a third of teachers, usually around 30%, teach grade 3-8 reading and math, the subjects and grade levels that are most frequently tested per No Child Left Behind. A performance-pay system, the argument goes, should be able to offer all teachers in a school at least some (if not all) opportunities to win performance bonuses.

A new paper from the Center for Education Compensation Reform, a federally funded body that provides technical assistance to the the Teacher Incentive Fund grantees and disseminates resources on performance pay, attempts to offer some possible solutions to that problem.

Some of the solutions we've heard before: Use a schoolwide pay model, an idea that's already been embraced in certain contexts even by union officials. On the other hand, the paper also raises some ideas that could turn out to be pretty controversial. Teachers in grades K-2, it suggests, could consider using results from reading-skills inventories like the DIBELS, a test that has fierce detractors. (You can practically already hear the screams.) I can imagine similar concerns about using English-language proficiency exams for performance-pay purposes.

But overall there are some nifty ideas to explore here. Districts and schools could consider other state tests for areas like science and social studies; end-of-course tests for high schools; portfolios based on surveys, principal evaluation and other measures; individual teacher set goals (a la the Denver ProComp model); and other methods for awarding teams of teachers, such those that work together to help students with disabilities.

Let's hear from our readers out there that are involved in performance-pay plans about this topic. Leave a comment here, or drop me a line directly at ssawchuk@epe.org. Inquiring minds want to know!

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 11:16 AM | Permalink | 8 Comments | Recommend

The unequal distribution of effective teachers is cited as a major problem for the achievement gap, and also quite an entrenched one given that poor working conditions, seniority rules and other factors result in higher proportions of such teachers in low-income and minority schools. A little known provision in the NCLB law required states to have plans to address this situation.

The U.S. Department of Education made a big stink about this in 2006. But the agency has been practically silent on the issue ever since, and its own monitoring reviews show that a lot of states aren't doing much with their "equitable distribution" plans.

Both the House and Senate versions of the stimulus bill would require states' applications for the $79 billion financial-stabilization to describe how they intend to make progress on these plans.

But there's some important wording differences in the House and Senate language. For example, the House language is lifted right from the NCLB bill and requires states to address "inequities," while the Senate language requires states to "increase the number, and improve the distribution," of effective teachers and principals.

Amy Wilkins, a lobbyist for the Education Trust, which has pushed hard on the teacher-equity issue, told me her group much prefers the House language to the Senate's "amorphous" language. "Equity is a clear goal and equity's what we're after," she said. "Under the Senate bill you could improve the distribution by one teacher and be in compliance."

So what will stay and what will go? In my experience the deals on a bill of this size are hashed out unofficially long before members meet in conference committee, so the horse trading is probably going on now. Unfortunately, I'm not at all aware of the value of this horse in comparison to some of the others.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 12:41 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Here's an interesting blurb out of North Dakota: the state is considering rolling back its requirements for substitute teachers due to a shortage.

The state has some of the toughest requirements for substitute teachers out there, generally requiring them to hold a full teaching certificate and a full four-year college degree. Most states have pretty lax rules for substitutes, and the practice of putting long-term subs in classrooms and rotating them has been one of the ways states have gotten around the "highly qualified" rules in the NCLB law.

North Dakota's proposal would allow Title I paraprofessionals with a 2-year degree to serve as substitute teachers.

Clearly labor markets differ place to place, but the financial crisis seems to be having an opposite effect elsewhere. This story reports on a surplus of teachers in the Phoenix area.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 12:26 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The Washington Teachers' Union and the American Federation of Teachers have submitted their counterproposal to District of Columbia Chancellor Michelle Rhee.

There's probably a lot more in the actual proposal, which we apparently won't get to see anytime soon since that's a private matter between union and membership. But what stands out at least from this summary is the complete absence of the two-tiered pay proposal and any mention whatsoever of tenure. Though controversial, those ideas generated a lot of excitement about the contract, and they were apparently the reasons why private foundations were lining up with funding.

Some of the recommendations here sound more like tweaks than new ideas. There will be more on career ladders, but as Teacher Beat has pointed out before, those are already authorized under the current contract. There's a proposal for a schoolwide financial-incentives program, presumably modeled after New York City's, but D.C. already has one schoolwide pay program financed through a federal Teacher Incentive Fund grant.

There's a mention of strengthening teacher evaluations, but no additional details.

In the meantime, the proposal says it would "raise base pay," which sounds like an across-the-board increase rather than a differentiated pay structure.

Without some mention of tenure and differentiated pay, AFT leader Randi Weingarten is likely going to get her bluff called by self-styled reformers on her promise to put everything on the table for school reform. Whether that's fair or unfair, we'll leave to you to decide.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 2:00 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

The New York Times reports on the United Federation of Teachers, which is proposing to limit the number of positions on the Panel for Education, the 13-member body that approves standards, policies, objectives, and regulations for the 1 million-student school system.

This panel, the story says, is viewed as a "rubber stamp" for N.Y.C. Mayor Bloomberg, so reducing the number of appointees would likely curtail (or at least delay) his ability to set policy. The move is also a precursor to the debate that will take place in Albany as lawmakers review the 2002 law that charged Bloomberg with overseeing the schools in the first place.

As the mayor-control-in-education phenomenon grows longer legs, expect similar pushback in other places where mayors are shaking things up, sometimes to the chagrin of teachers, unions, parents, and administrators.

In the District of Columbia, for instance, Vincent Gray, the chairman of the council that gave schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee increased say over central-office hiring and firing, has been holding hearings about a number of her school reform policies, such as the 90-day improvement plans she put into place after contract negotiations stalled. Rhee was handpicked by Mayor Adrian Fenty for the top schools job.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The national teachers' unions weren't altogether thrilled by all the attention paid to teacher effectiveness in two reports released last week (see here and here for details). National Education Association Dennis Van Roekel, for instance, argued that the reports would have overemphasized standardized test scores.

"What a teacher does with her students, how she relates to them, and how she translates her subject knowledge into effective teaching practice are all the central measures of quality teaching," he argued.

AFT was equally unhappy with the reports, but the union's releases heavily promoted the "peer assistance and review" model of teacher evaluation as a promising option for dealing with ineffective teachers.

"We know that schools need to aggressively deal with ineffective teachers, and we are willing to take on the tough job of developing new systems to measure teacher effectiveness," one of AFT's statements reads.

Under a PAR system, teachers who are struggling in the classroom are referred to work with a "consulting teacher." Those who do not improve are typically referred for greater intervention and can ultimately face dismissal. Among the best known examples are in Cincinnati, Toledo and Columbus, Ohio; Rochester, N.Y.; and Montgomery County, Md.

But here's some food for thought: In any kind of teacher-evaluation system, what percentage of teachers should expect to improve with assistance? And what percentage won't improve and need to be removed from the classroom? And how long should a teacher who's on the borderline remain in a classroom with kids?

Within the existing PAR models, these figures appear to have varied quite a bit. These data from the Toledo AFT Web site, for instance, show failure rates by teachers on the PAR system ranging from 2 percent to nearly 16 percent.)

Also, despite being around for almost 30 years, PAR just isn't that popular. Some local unions, such as the National Education Association-affiliated California Teachers Association remain skeptical of the concept (see this interview with leader A.J. Duffy.)

PAR may be becoming the standard AFT response to the thorny issue of teacher effectiveness, but is it the best answer?

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 11:21 AM | Permalink | 3 Comments | Recommend