June 2009 Archives

The University of Chicago's Consortium on Chicago School Research has a new study out on teacher turnover in the Windy City, and it's pretty grim stuff, according to this news story.

In about 100 of the schools, over half the teaching force leaves every year, the report found. Also, small schools tend to exacerbate turnover compared to larger schools, the story says, in what could portend some problems for the city's Renaissance 2010 initiative in which smaller schools is one key strategy.

The report also examines factors such as teacher qualifications, crime and safety, levels of parental engagement, and school leadership for their relationship to rates of teacher turnover.

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The District of Columbia public schools just announced that six teachers have begun a five-week fellowship in the central administrative office. They'll be scattered among a variety of divisions, including special education, data & accountability, and human capital.

The press release says the initiative is designed to "ensure teachers' voices are always present in central decisionmaking at the central office."

I'll be interested in hearing more about these teachers as they progress through their fellowships. Will they come with some notions about the administration that will be overturned? Or will those notions be reinforced?

More than 150 teachers applied for the fellowships. The winners receive a $5,000 stipend for their efforts.

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As a reporter, it's always irritating to discover that another paper has beaten you to a story you've had in mind, in this case following a teacher through the peer-assistance and -review process. Nevertheless, this Washington Post article is a pretty thorough look at things in Montgomery County, Md., and includes a glimpse at the PAR panel that makes the call on whether to renew teachers or proceed with dismissal.

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That could have been the title, anyway, of this Web site on peer-assistance and -review programs.

Created by the Project on the Next Generation of Teachers at Harvard's Graduate School of Education, the Web site is part of an ongoing research investigation that's being headed up by Susan Moore Johnson. It is probably the most extensive resource in existence on the PAR process, and contains all the research that the team has done. (You can find a summary report in PDF format on the Web page, but if you're interested in just one or two areas, try the tabs on the left.)

The Web site serves both as a primer for those new to the PAR process and a resource for districts that are considering setting up such a system.

Moore Johnson and her team examined the peer-assistance and -review programs in seven districts: Cincinnati and Toledo, Ohio; Minneapolis; Montgomery County, Md.; Rochester and Syracuse, N.Y.; and San Juan, Calif.

In brief, PAR programs assign novice teachers (and in some cases, struggling veteran teachers) with a "consulting teacher" peer who provides direct classroom support and evaluation. The consulting teacher files reports with a PAR panel consisting of district officials and teachers. Later, the consulting teacher reports back to a PAR panel with a recommendation on whether a teacher should receive tenure (or in the case of a veteran teacher, whether he or she should be retained or dismissed).

There's really far more here than I can put into a blog entry, but here are some things from the report that I think are worthy of some additional discussion:

--Pretty much all the districts studied have some kind of professional teaching standards against which teachers' performance is measured. Typically, there is a very strong understanding about what good teaching looks like and what a struggling teacher needs to do if (s)he isn't meeting the standards. In other words, peer review probably won't work where such standards are not in place.
-- None of the seven programs requires student-achievement data to be included in the PAR reports that the panels review before making their decisions, although consulting teachers in a few districts like Montgomery County informally review the data.
--Some of the districts studied give teachers a one-person majority on the PAR panel. Others don't. It would be interesting to see if that affects the decisionmaking process or the rates of tenure-granting and dismissal.
--Some of the districts include principal evaluations in the material reviewed by the PAR panel; others don't. Again, it would be interesting to see how this affects the character of the process. One of the unions' complaints about principal evaluations is that principals can be arbitrary, so evaluations by both CTs and principals have a "checks and balance" flavor about them.
--Union officials, administrators, and CTs all say that there are more failing teachers in schools than are currently being referred to PAR. So while the programs seem successful, to some extent, they may not have "penetrated" to the point where all parties view them as a viable pathway for teacher improvement and/or discipline.
--Successful PAR programs seem not to have been "compromises" arrived at in bargaining but a reform strategy that was carefully articulated beforehand and included as a part of a labor-management collaboration.
--What do CTs do after their terms are over? They're frequently encouraged to go back to classrooms, but some districts allow them to enter nonteaching roles in schools, and others to go to administration.

Much much more on the Web site. Check it out. And lest you think PAR is old news, remember that the American Federation of Teachers is pushing hard on peer review, and Obama even brought it up in his November education speech.

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The process for granting tenure should be fixed, a think-tank report released this morning says. The system as it is now doesn't include consideration of student achievement. States and districts don't invest in teacher standards or assessments necessary to make good tenure-granting decisions.

And here's the kicker: Joan Baratz-Snowden, the former director of educational issues for the American Federation of Teachers, now a consultant, penned the report for the Center for American Progress.

What's a former AFT official doing taking on tenure, you ask? Well, despite her initials, there's no BS with Joan B-S. I can recall back when she was still at the AFT and the press people used to groan when I'd ask to speak to her, because she didn't always stick to the party line. And that's what makes this such an interesting report. The perspective it offers is going to be challenging for pretty much everyone who's got skin in this particular game, both those who defend the current system of tenure and those who decry it.

For instance, although Snowden thinks the tenure process is in need of serious Band-Aids, she also thinks tenure is necessary, given the poor training of the principal force and the pressure teachers are under in the era of accountability.

Like an evaluation system, the tenure-granting process should be rooted in a common language for understanding teacher effectiveness and what the evidence of good teaching resembles, Snowden writes. Districts and teachers, through collective bargaining, should create a system based on data from multiple sources, including evidence of student learning and the quality of the school environment, and profession judgment of both teachers and administrators.

Snowden finds three examples of good tenure-granting processes: The Toledo peer assistance and review program, the Green Dot contract with its portfolio-based evaluation system, and the Minneapolis model, which requires teachers to assemble a collection of evidence of good teaching over three years.

Once you've read the report, why not write in and tell us whether and how you think tenure should be revised?

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Finally putting on the record what has to have been just about the worst-kept secret in Washington (and New York City, for that matter), AFT President Randi Weingarten announced yesterday that she'll be stepping down as the head of the union's largest affiliate, the United Federation of Teachers, on July 31.

I was a bit amused to find that the UFT press release that celebrates Weingarten's tenure (and pending departure) is more than 1,500 words long and quotes from everyone you can think of, while the AFT press release announcing her intention to work full time for the parent union is less than 100 words and quotes only from Weingarten herself.

I do wonder if running the parent union will demand some different skills from running the local. They say, of course, that Washington politics are totally different from New York City politics. I guess we'll find out.

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From Guest Blogger Lesli A. Maxwell

Nine months after opening a charter high school together in the Bronx, Randi Weingarten, the president of the New York City teachers' union and the American Federation of Teachers, and Steve Barr, the founder of the Los Angeles-based Green Dot Public Schools, announced a three-year agreement for teachers that both leaders said should be a model for more union and charter collaboration. Gotham Schools has a copy of the contract here.

The tenure-free New York contract is similar to those that Green Dot has with teachers in Los Angeles, though Barr said this week that the new contract is "shorter and even better." Barr, who has encouraged unionization in his schools, has always insisted that Green Dot's contracts be tenure-free and not mandate the length of the school day. The contract does require that principals prove they have just cause to fire teachers.

Barr, who was a featured panelist at the National Charter Schools Conference in Washington just before flying to New York to announce the contract, preaches all the time that charters and unions must work together. But his embracing of labor is still widely considered to be heresy among his charter brethren.

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Team R & R over at the Center for American Progress has a primer out on the Teacher Incentive Fund. Worth a look if you're not well versed in this federal performance-pay initiative, especially since the Teacher Incentive Fund is practically guaranteed to be one of the more hotly contested programs in the FY 2010 education budget.

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In something of a nail-biter, the Connecticut legislature passed a bill in the waning days of a special session that will broaden some of the state's certification requirements. Like other states, Connecticut officials anticipate retirements in the near future and hope to attract more young teachers, as well as professionals seeking new careers.

According to this editorial in support of the changes, there was quite a bit of back and forth on the bill.

Among other items, the bill will expand the Teach For America program in the state, allow teachers of math and science to take content tests rather than coursework in order to receive state certification, and ease reciprocity so that teachers in other states can more easily come to work in the Constitution State.

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The Washington community is abuzz about the chancellor's latest move, which is to pare another 250 teachers from the city's teaching force.

It's already engendered quite a bit of drama. Apparently, some forces within the Washington Teachers Union are seeking pro bono assistance to avert the layoffs.

But one interesting thing here, it seems to me, is that these layoffs are not aimed just at veteran teachers. One of the rumors flying around last year during the contract drama accused Rhee of firing veterans to replace them with novices hired through routes like Teach For America and the New Teacher Project. As it turns out, some of those who lost their jobs were novices from alternative routes, in addition to tenured veterans who were put on 90-day improvement plans (and presumably didn't improve.)

The Washington Post says that some of the terminated were those who couldn't earn teaching licenses. So far, I can't make out whether the probationary teachers who lost their jobs fall into this category or whether they, too, had unsatisfactory performance ratings. And I'm not at all sure why the district would lose teachers on alternative routes. Don't they generally get a grace period before they have to meet regular licensing/certification requirements? That's how it's supposed to work under No Child Left Behind, anyway.

(Perhaps someone from the district can write in and enlighten us?)

In any case, the fact that this is affecting teachers across the spectrum indicates that, like the ongoing contract negotiations, there seems to be a lot going on under the surface that makes this hard to sum up in anecdotes. Whether Rhee's goals will become clearer or lead to yet more mud-flinging between the administration and the teachers' union remains to be seen.

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I'll be hitting the road over the next three weeks to do some reporting out in my home state of California.

For the first week, I'll be at the Council of Chief State School Officers' assessment conference, in Los Angeles. Look for some blog items on testing over at Curriculum Matters, in addition to posts here at Teacher Beat. I've even arranged for some guest-bloggers, so fear not: There will be plenty of juicy teacher-policy news for you.

Now, with all this recent talk of the American Federation of Teachers and Randi Weingarten, you may be wondering what happened to that OTHER union;—you know, the one with 3.2 million members. Well, we'll soon have some answers, because starting at the beginning of July, I'll be bringing you live coverage from San Diego of the NEA Representative Assembly. At this annual event, the 9,000 delegates to the RA set new policies and procedures.

I'll have tidbits for you from Dennis Van Roekel's first solo speech to the RA, the scoop on an address by Education Secretary Arne Duncan on the teacher-quality assurance in the education-stimulus bill, and, I hope, some updates on what new initiatives the NEA's got brewing.

Of course, hard-hitting journalist that I am, I'll also be curious to see whether the mild-mannered Van Roekel will dance on stage to disco hits, as his predecessor Reg Weaver famously did.

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Five EdWeek reporters sat down with American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten earlier this week over coffee for a wide-ranging conversation.

I can't say there's any groundbreaking news to report as a result, but it was, nevertheless, a substantive conversation that yielded glimpses into Weingarten's thinking, especially on the Obama administration's recent moves. Overall, she said that she's optimistic that this administration will seek to work with teachers rather than imposing policy on them, a big break from the union's perception of things under George W. Bush.

But, as always, these things come down to details, and there are a few key areas on which AFT isn't totally on board with the new administration's plans. That shouldn't be a big surprise, given that Duncan is pushing on issues that are complicated for the union—such as performance pay, charters, and data systems that link teachers to student scores—arguably harder than the Bush administration ever did.

Take charters, for instance: She appears to be a bit hesitant about the Obama administration's argument that states need to eliminate charter school caps, but be more aggressive on quality by closing down poor-performing charters. Weingarten said she feels that caps and accountability go hand in hand. "We don't believe you can decouple caps from accountability," she told us.

And she said she thinks there's more than one way to approach school turnarounds. The Obama administration has focused on closing troubled schools, a strategy Education Secretary Arne Duncan employed while in Chicago. Although Weingarten was careful to point out that she doesn't oppose such closings per se, she said it makes sense to investigate several different school-turnaround models. One idea she's been advocating is something like New York City's now-defunct Chancellor's District, in which a coterie of troubled schools got extra funding, wraparound services, and specialized curricula.

Read Alyson Klein's post on Weingarten's take on national assessments over at Politics K-12.

On another issue, Duncan has excoriated some states for outlawing the linking of student-teacher data, and has intimated that those laws could downgrade states' applications for the Race to the Top funding in the stimulus package. Weingarten conceded that "some of the [administration's] rhetoric sometimes gives me pause, but you have to look at the totality of it in six months to a year. ... Would I prefer [Duncan] didn't use the word 'firewall' [when describing data systems]? Yes, I would prefer it."

On teacher evaluation, Weingarten noted that she's now heading up a teacher-evaluation task force with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, presumably part of that nonprofit's "deep dives" into teacher quality. (Read Alexander Russo here for more dirt on possible locations.) The task force, she said, had some "great discussions," and she thinks we'll all be "surprised" by its results.

Now to the good stuff you've all been waiting for—the gossip! First off, let me just say that Weingarten has a SWEET office, with a seriously fab view of the Capitol. I imagine that's a good reminder to have when you're trying to push a tough bill through Congress. Second, one of my female co-workers reports (admiringly) that Weingarten has sculpted "yoga arms." Which, in addition to making her fierce, also makes her superhuman, since who has time for yoga when you're running a national and a local union?

Third, in demeanor, Randi is charming and engaging and likes to tell humorous anecdotes. She isn't above teasing Serious Education Journalists (ahem). She clearly likes working with the media much more than did her predecessor, Edward McElroy, whom I only managed to interview in person once over the course of three years. (Strangely enough, I used to see him in the supermarket all the time, thus raising fraught questions about whether it's ethical to do an interview when someone's preoccupied by broccoli. But I digress.)

On the other hand, Weingarten is much more verbose than McElroy, and has a tendency, like Henry James in his late novels, to insert multiple parenthetical thoughts into sentences. Her answers tend to be fairly philosophical—an effective tactic with the media since it's much harder to pin her down.

I imagine it's also an effective strategy at the bargaining table.

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Our guest blogger Liana Heitin has been scooped up by another publication, so we must bid her a very sad farewell. I just want to thank her for all her posts on the blog, including this terrific scoop on the latest on New York City's absent-teacher reserve (ATR) pool.

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From Guest Blogger Liana Heitin

After instituting an out-system hiring freeze, forcing principals to hire from within the Absent Teacher Reserve pool, New York City Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein may now be disclosing that he’s less than optimistic about the candidates available for hire. I recently heard whisperings that the Department of Education has begun the process of assigning ATRs to school placements, where they will be put on rosters as permanent substitutes. Why isn’t the DOE waiting until the end of the summer to see if these teachers find jobs? Since the ATRs are not assuming full-time positions, preliminary placements are not usually finalized until August.

Is this an attempt to get a jump on a long and prickly administrative process? Or could Klein be admitting that these teachers, many of whom are u-rated and have been in the pool for years, unlikely to find work?

Klein has provided incentives for schools to hire from the reserve pool, including subsidizing 50 percent of each hired ATRs salary for the first year, and has now implemented the out-system ban. Yet there’s still a possibility, considering pending budget cuts and the possible release of the freeze for hard-to-staff subjects, that the reserve pool will not diminish. And if teachers receive their assignments early, some may be tempted (or content) to stay in the pool rather than apply for full-time positions. A few months down the road, a loaded reserve pool could serve as evidence that the current ATR policy, without time limits or salary caps, is ineffective.

Despite their agreement on the hiring ban, the ATR is not an issue Klein and the unions generally see eye to eye on. This could all build an interesting case for upcoming contract negotiations.

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Here's a fascinating story out of Pennsylvania about a cyber-school whose teachers will be represented by the Pennsylvania State Education Association, a National Education Association affiliate. (The school also happens to be a charter school.)

The contract that comes out of all this could be instructive. Will it set an evaluation procedure for teachers that work totally online? What will professional development for these teachers consist of? Will there be a salary structure and due-process for dismissals?

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Cleveland has devised an interesting idea for the stimulus funds with its teachers' union and, apparently, the blessing of Randi Weingarten, who heads up the parent union, the American Federation of Teachers.

The district will avoid about 100 layoffs by paying veteran teachers' salaries for two years while they serve as substitute teachers and coaches. They must agree to retire after that to avoid the stimulus "cliff" once the two-year funding runs out.

Weingarten approves, the story says, because it's a way of tapping into the expertise of those veterans before they retire. And surely it's better for students, and more cost-effective for schools, to have veterans serving as substitutes who can quickly pick up a lesson and keep instruction on track than using the inexperienced or not-yet-licensed instructors that typically make up substitute-teaching pools.

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I'm told there was a bit of pushback on the concept of "comparability" in Title I schools at a recent New America Foundation event.

In short, Title I funds are supposed to provide additional services for disadvantaged students, so districts must ensure "comparability" of resources between their schools with low and high concentrations of poverty before the dollars flow. But the Elementary and Secondary Education Act basically lets districts exempt teachers' salaries from this calculation. And since seniority provisions allow higher-paid, more experienced teachers to transfer to wealthier schools, there can literally be a difference of tens of thousands of dollars between more- and less-affluent schools in the district. The result, say groups like the Center for American Progress, the Education Trust, and now the New America Foundation, is that Title I has the effect of filling in holes rather than providing additional services for poor kids.

I don't think anyone disagrees that this is a problem; the issue really centers on what would happen if lawmakers closed this loophole by requiring districts to account for teacher salaries when they perform the comparability calculation. Some groups, like the teachers' unions, think it would make things worse. Districts would forceably transfer teachers to different schools to equal out the salaries, they argue.

Others, like the Education Trust say that the differential could be made up by giving the poor schools extra dollars to hire more teachers, supplement classes with coaches, or provide more materials, instead of transferring teachers. But I'm hearing that other experts find that suggestion a bit naive. The provision of materials and resources is typically done centrally, rather than at the school level, for instance. And offering incentives to get teachers to transfer could backfire if the unions don't agree to those in contracts.

This may seem a bit far-off and wonky, but there are good reasons to think comparability is hot on the burner. For one, CAP's John Podesta is said to be fairly tight with the administration. Former CAP policy analyst Robert Gordon, who headed up a lot of the shop's work on comparability, is now at the White House. Mike Smith, over at the Education Department, also referenced the issue in a conversation I had with him about the equitable distribution of teachers.

And you can see the footprints in the recent stimulus legislation, which requires districts to report school-by-school expenditures of stimulus funds. (The Education Department was supposed to release additional guidance on this topic, but hasn't done so...yet.)

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This story seems to be generating a bit of pushback from a bunch of different sides. Some were confused by the overall thrust of the layoffs. To clarify: yes, the district appears to be prioritizing non-career (nontenured teachers), but since TFA teachers generally have fewer than four years, the amount of time it takes to become tenured in Charlotte, there are some three- to four-year teachers who most likely will be let go ahead of the TFAers.

A couple of commentators wanted more details on the cost, number, and breakdown of teachers who will be laid off. I wish I could bring that information to you, but I didn't have much luck getting anyone in the central office to talk to me. The board members I spoke to didn't have the information on hand.

And a couple of teachers wrote in to say they think I omitted an important piece of the RIF procedures that allow for "limited exemptions" to middle and high school teachers who "have a unique skill, talent, expertise or responsibility, including an extra duty, which is essential to the on-going, system-directed program of the school." The principal must make the request to the district, supported by various administrators, and the district superintendent makes the call. One of the teachers who wrote in said that the teacher's principal was basically using this provision to retain certain preferred teachers over others.

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From Guest Blogger Liana Heitin

Today marks the two-year anniversary of Michelle A. Rhee’s appointment as chancellor of the D.C. public schools by Mayor Adrian M. Fenty. Take a look back at Alexander Russo’s blog post from this day in 2007.

At the time she stepped into the position, Rhee was characterized as an “outsider” because she was entering from the nonprofit sector (also because she was young, female, Korean American, and TFA-bred, but the nonprofit angle was easier to explain away). Today, many would say the characterization still rings true, but for a different reason: Rhee makes it a point to emphasize that her loyalties lie only with the students, not with the teachers or the status quo bureaucracy. She has dismissed dozens of principals and hundreds of teachers that she deemed ineffective. Her disinterest in saving jobs has angered educators, parents, and union leaders. (Her curt manner and blunt language haven’t done much to ingratiate her either.)

And though the news media have been merciful—OK, even fawned and groveled at times—Rhee struggles to gain headway with those education players who’ve been entrenched in the D.C. game for years. It's possible she will continue to remain “outside” as long as she stays pinned to a self-imposed agenda, resists collaborating with stakeholders, refuses to sugarcoat the dismal realities of the system, and aims recruitment efforts at a “new breed” of idealists who are willing to sacrifice their personal lives to make a splash themselves. Rhee seems to believe that outside is where she has to be in order to make changes—and ultimately a name for herself. Others may see it as a futile effort.

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Alyson Klein reports that Rep. Tom Petri of Wisconsin is one of the top candidates in the running as the ranking Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee now that Howard "Buck" McKeon is headed over to the Armed Services Committee.

It's an important pick, because whoever gets the nod will ultimately be one of the key negotiators on the next version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

Here's one interesting factoid about Petri: He's been the leading House member pushing for congressional authorization of the Teacher Incentive Fund, the performance-pay program that the Obama administration wants to quadruple in the next budget cycle. TIF was created by an appropriations bill back in 2006, but it's never been fully elaborated upon in legislation.

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From Guest Blogger Liana Heitin

Less than two months after Arizona school districts issued 7,000 pinks slips, in compliance with state regulations to notify employees whose contracts were not being renewed, some teachers are reclaiming their jobs. Though the state budget has not yet been passed, school officials say the budget shortfall will likely be $2.5 million less than expected and that retirements and resignations have opened up positions.

The superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne, however, interprets the recalls differently: He claims that districts overestimated the budget deficit as a political move to prevent legislators from making deeper cuts to education. Republican legislators are also criticizing districts for causing undue panic among parents, some of whom may have been chased from the public schools into privates and charters. (There are no numbers to back this up.)

The teachers’ unions and districts are defending the initial layoffs.

This is all interesting follow-up to the story in March, when legislators were pushing to extend the layoff notification deadline until June 15 and the Arizona Education Association fought to keep it in April, asserting that laid-off teachers needed time to look for jobs. In my March post, I noted that the budget wouldn’t be passed by mid-June and an extension wouldn’t have saved any pink slips. Well, it’s only June 9—looks like I was mistaken.

Or was I? If the layoffs were a political play, would some districts, given an extension, have held off until the budget was passed in July to recall pink slips? Horne has said he expects that more recalls are on the way.

At this point, whether or not the game was being played seems inconsequential. The numbers will be out in the next few weeks. Laid-off teachers are waiting, and even if they are applying for other jobs, the market is still a disaster. They certainly won’t be moving to California anytime soon to look for openings. . .

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Not long ago, I did a story pointing out that some states have passed laws that basically prohibit the linking of student- and teacher-data systems. New York and California are the high-profile examples.

Presumably, these data could inform a variety of different initiatives, both low- and high-stakes: performance-based pay, teacher evaluations, tenure decisions, professional development, and the determination of which teacher colleges produce the strongest graduates.

Now, it looks as though dismantling these firewalls might be a prerequisite for qualifying for "Race to the Top" discretionary funds, reports my colleague Michele McNeil over at Campaign K-12.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan admonished states that have prevented student-achievement data from being linked to individual teachers, apparently throwing Wisconsin's name into the mix, at a recent address at an education research conference here in Washington.

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The New Teacher Project had a really interesting study out not long ago on teacher evaluation that found that pretty much all teachers get high ratings on local evaluation instruments. This is something of a portent for things to come, since one of the stimulus assurances will probably deal with this piece of data.

See my write-up of the TNTP study for additional details and some feedback from teachers, union officials, and so forth.

One interesting element in the report that I didn't include in my story has to do with where these records are kept. Of the 12 districts TNTP examined, only five of them—Denver; Chicago; Elgin, Ill; Rockford, Ill; and Cincinnati;—keep electronic evaluation data. For most other districts, the results of evaluations basically sit in folders in the district HR office, never to be looked at again by anyone.

Imagine the possibilities if these evaluations actually meant something and districts could sort through the results of such evaluations electronically and analyze them in various ways. Not for punitive purposes, mind you, but to do a better job of offering professional development at the district level to supplement what teachers, coaches, and administrators are doing within schools.

If a lot of teachers are struggling with how to model math problems, for instance, that could be the beginning of a district PD program or even a new math initiative.

If your district does something like this, send me an e-mail! I'd love to hear from you.

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Columbus has inked a new teacher contract with a pay program that's designed to move highly effective teachers into challenging schools, according to this story (hat tip to Emmy over at Flypaper.)

After reviewing student growth data, a principal's recommendation and an application, the district superintendent will invite select teachers to work in hard-to-staff schools and receive a $4,000 annual pay bonus.

The story says that the new contract also ties bonuses under a separate performance-pay initiative to the value-added data.

I'm a little surprised to see that the local union approved this plan, since the pay raises it includes aren't astronomical. Also, for some good reasons, the teachers' unions have been hesitant to rely on value-added methodologies as an estimate of teacher effectiveness.

But Ohio has been piloting value-added data since 2006, and maybe enough teachers in Columbus have been reassured through that process that the data were valid (If you're from Columbus, why not post a comment below and weigh in?).

Given this new contract, what are the odds of Columbus applying for some of the $650 million in district innovation funding included in the stimulus bill? The new program seems like a conscious effort to address the inequitable distribution of teachers, and it appears to have strong union support.

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Alyson Klein has a must-read post over at Politics K-12. Looks like the Obama administration just ran into its first major roadblock in its attempts to more than quadruple the $97 million Teacher Incentive Fund program: Soccer-mom-turned-Senator Patty Murray, of Washington, who wanted to know whether there was evidence that TIF was effective.

Duncan doesn't seem to have really answered her question. But that's OK, because Teacher Beat is here to do it for you.

First, I'd love to know what exactly Murray was talking about when she said the word "effective." Performance-pay experts will tell you that the question about whether performance pay increases student achievement is different from the question of how such grants change recruitment/retention, i.e., the composition of the workforce.

Assuming Murray was talking about student achievement, it's true that the research on performance pay generally is thin or based on programs in foreign countries that most likely can't be generalized to the United States. ED didn't help matters much by letting the existing TIF grantees pick their own evaluation methodologies, few of which will be scientifically rigorous. (Congress corrected that for the $200 million in TIF funding for the stimulus bill.) There is a little bit of a chicken-and-the-egg problem here in that it's hard to measure the effectiveness of performance pay if you don't fund any examples. Nevertheless, the research that's been done on the Teacher Advancement Program seems supportive so far.

Fortunately, in the next few years we should have some more definitive answers thanks to this randomized field study in Nashville, Tenn., being conducted by the National Center for Performance Incentives.

Now to throw a bit of analysis in here, and that is there is definitely something political behind all this. A possibility is that Murray is positioning for when bigger pieces of ed legislation get rolling. One of the ways things work in the Senate is that when you also get a committee assignment, you also get your own pet issue that you work on. (If you look at NCLB, you can practically see the fingerprints: Every senator got his/her pet education issue into one program or another, which is why states and districts can do a zillion different things with most of the formula grants.)

Anyway, Murray's big education issue was class-size reduction. Last leg session, she sponsored a bill to restore a separate federal class-size-reduction program. Since that realistically probably won't go anywhere until NCLB reauthorization gets rolling, I would not be surprised if she'd rather see the proposed TIF increase put into ">the $3 billion Title II program, much of which supports class-size reduction. And that, by the way, is what the National Education Association wants, too.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 4:13 PM | Permalink | No Comments | TrackBacks (0)

How about that headline for alphabet soup?

I've been getting a lot of mail on two recent blog items about the hiring of teachers in difficult times, and some of the concerns that unions have. Some of the comments are worth additional discussion, so I'm going to share them here.

In this item, I asked someone to explain the logic of laying off veterans and hiring Teach For America types. A couple of people, including commentator "Chris" below, directed me to this story out of North Carolina. The story says that Superintendent Peter Gorman plans to cut about 400 teachers overall in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, while hiring 100 Teach For America teachers.

The district does not have a collective bargaining agreement, and the story says that decisions about which teachers to remove will be based primarily on effectiveness. My understanding from sources who have seen the actual proposal is that officials hope the cuts will be limited to teachers who don't have tenure.

That point leads nicely into the second item, which deals with a letter on hiring sent by the New York City education department to education schools.

There was a rumor floating about that the city was saving open teaching spots for TFA grads. The city says that isn't so, but as several sources pointed out to me after I posted the letter, it does want to keep as many TFA teachers as possible:

The teachers in these various recruitment programs are not exempt from hiring restrictions nor do they have a job guarantee. However, as these candidates have all been identified after a rigorous and highly selective screening process, we will encourage schools with vacancies to give them priority consideration

Here, the key appears to be that districts like TFA's rigorous selection process. Not all schools of education have equally strong screening processes for their teachers.

So back to Charlotte-Mecklenburg. What is Gorman thinking in making this switch in the teaching force?

Another person wrote me to offer this suggestion: Given the rigorous TFA hiring process, perhaps Gorman is counting on those teachers being more effective than the ones who would otherwise get those positions, even if TFA teachers stay in teaching for fewer years than other hires might.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 12:40 PM | Permalink | No Comments | TrackBacks (0)

Alabama teachers must be cheering.

The Yellowhammer State is the latest to discard some of its norm-referenced testing, according to the Birmingham News.

I wrote a longer story last month about this trend. Interestingly, though, I found that while states were starting to pare standardized tests that didn't count toward NCLB, districts seem to be hanging on to their "benchmark" tests—tests that they use to determine whether kids are on track to passing the end-of-year NCLB tests.

Tell us what's happening with testing in your district. Are you seeing cuts or is testing being preserved?

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 9:45 AM | Permalink | No Comments | TrackBacks (0)