July 2009 Archives

From guest blogger Dakarai I. Aarons:

When an angry teacher confronted Chicago schools CEO Ron Huberman about a "secret" job fair the district was having today, he laughed it off and said every job fair was public.

"I can dispel the rumor,'' schools CEO Ron Huberman told the giggling crowd. "There are no secret teacher fairs. Any teacher fairs are public. Everyone is invited, and they are advertised.''

Turned out the joke was on Huberman.

Those invited, who included Teach For America teachers and members of the district's teaching fellows program, were told not to share the information with anyone else, or face not being invited to future events.

When he found out the district staff had sent invitation-only tickets, he ordered the fair opened to everyone and publicized, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

Looks like Chicago teacher recruitment staffers will have to find another way to target the relatively few jobs open this year to the candidates they want.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 3:13 PM | Permalink | No Comments | TrackBacks (0)

The New York Post has a good roundup of the latest in New York City's Absent-Teacher Reserve pool, if you can overlook the somewhat sensational headline.

In essence, the economy has forced schools to "excess" hundreds more teachers, which means they enter the ATR. They continue to pull down salaries despite lacking a fixed teaching position.

So, although about 700 ATR teachers have found placements, the influx of new teachers means that the total pool is up to 2,400 from about 1,100 in April, the newspaper reports.

Created as a byproduct of a decision to allow principals to hand-pick teachers rather than having the central office "slot" them into schools, the ATR has given way to some delicate new problems that have no clear solution.

On the one hand, these teachers—at least in theory—weren't removed due to poor performance, so the union is hesitant to accede to demands to drop them from the payroll. On the other hand, it surely does no one any good to have them draw down salaries indefinitely. (Some of the teachers do work part-time, but there is no official policy requiring them to seek new positions.)

What solution will the city education department and new United Federation of Teachers head, Michael Mulgrew, come up with?

Stay tuned...

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 10:35 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | TrackBacks (0)

It's probably the oldest narrative in our field: A program or intervention works really well in one site. Then a district tries to implement it across multiple schools and it just ... doesn't seem to take root.

Whether you term this problem a lack of fidelity of implementation, a failure to integrate reform into school culture, or my personal favorite, "scaling up is hard to do," it's particularly a problem with professional development.

The research on PD suggests that teachers do benefit from school-based approaches, such as professional-learning communities, rather than workshops and the like. This type of professional development identifies and responds to individual students' and teachers' needs, and hence is very site-specific. In other words, it's not the world's easiest thing to do across a district.

That's why a new study in The Elementary School Journal is so interesting. It essentially wrestles with this question to figure out what aspects are necessary to make these PLCs work. The answer? There needs to be a specific structure in place to guide improvement efforts and facilitators to train colleagues on how to abide by these protocols.

The study looked at over 14,000 students in 15 Title I schools with similar characteristics. Researchers separated the schools into two groups. Nine adopted a type of professional-learning community, with teachers structured into teams. Six other schools engaged in some other type of school improvement activity.

In tracking the schools over six years, the researchers found little difference between the two groups for the first two years. At that point researchers augmented the PLCs by publishing a manual with step-by-step processes to the for identifying academic problems, planning instruction, and analyzing student work, as well as training on how to use it.

These protocols didn't tell teachers how to alter instruction, but they did guide them through areas when they got stuck on how to progress in their problem-solving.

The result? More consistent meetings that focused on problem-solving, and higher student achievement. Teachers in the schools with the PLCs were more likely to say their improvements in teaching practices led to student gains than to attribute those changes to external causes, such as students' inherent academic capabilities.

A few vendors like Pearson say they have professional-development programs that are aligned to these findings. But perhaps districts could come up with similar protocols on their own by adapting performance-based teacher rubrics developed by Charlotte Danielson and other experts.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 5:09 PM | Permalink | 3 Comments | TrackBacks (0)

The blogosphere is absolutely buzzing about the data-firewall issue in the Race to the Top Fund.

The administration's position seems pretty clear, and certainly Duncan has been vocal about it over the last few days. But we're seeing stakeholders in the three states that this seems to apply to—New York, California and Wisconsin—offer arguments for why their laws aren't really firewalls and why they should be able to compete for the funds anyway.

I fully realize not all of you may be as fascinated by the complete geekiness of this topic, so I'll give you the Cliffs' Notes version of these states' arguments:

New York: "OK, our law says you can't use test data in teacher-tenure decisions, but teachers have to demonstrate how they'll use data to get tenure. Besides, the law only refers to tenure, not all those other teacher things."
California: "OK, just because there's a state prohibition on the use of this data doesn't mean local districts can't choose to include it on their own. Like, six whole districts already do!"
Wisconsin: "OK, we can't use our NCLB tests for these teacher-related purposes, but we have all kinds of other tests we could use!"

Over at Swift & Change Able, Charlie Barone thinks the real push will come in the form of stealth campaigns to weaken the language in the proposed regulations. No doubt he's remembering all that midnight horse-trading that went down during the writing of No Child Left Behind.

We live in interesting times...

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The folks over at the American Board for the Certification of Teacher Excellence have announced that their initial, $35 million start-up funding from the U.S. Department of Education sunsets this month.

ABCTE Director David Saba has indicated that the group won't seek additional federal funding and will tap into its own reserves to make up for the difference between enrollments and costs. The organization will be totally self-sustaining within four years, he projects.

To win the group's teaching certificate in an approved state, candidates must pass computer-based exams in content and pedagogy. They are given support from an outside mentor as they study for the exams.

ABCTE began in 2001 under the National Council on Teacher Quality, from which it eventually spun off in 2003. The group has had some notable successes and is now recognized as an approved route to teaching in nine states.

But it's had its fair share of obstacles, such as when California's credentialing body, in 2004, didn't pursue the option after teachers' unions and others marshaled their forces against the program. Texas officials also pulled out a year later after showing considerable interest in the program.

The research on the program is still fairly nascent. Its elementary teacher-licensing test is more difficult than the Praxis II test, a common state exam (mainly because of where those states set cut scores). A study tracking its candidates through their teaching careers to determine their effectiveness at raising student learning is still ongoing, although a much smaller internal study from a few years ago showed promising results.

I do wonder whether ABCTE's bid to be self sustaining—no small feat in itself— will be contingent on winning over a couple of additional states, or a state with a sizable population.

The Little Alt-Cert Program That Could is close to the top of the hill. What happens on the other side, though, is anyone's best guess.

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Perhaps no one but Teach For America will care about this, but a district court last week threw out an appeal in the Renee v. Spellings lawsuit over the "highly qualified" teacher provisions in the No Child Left Behind Law.

The law requires teachers to be fully certified to be deemed highly qualified, but the U.S. Department of Education's subsequent regulations allowed teachers in alternative-certification programs to be deemed highly qualified if they were making progress in their program and were on track to hold a teaching certificate within two years. A California group sued ED, lost the first round, and appealed.

The court dismissed the appeal mostly on procedural grounds, with ED arguing that the issue isn't "redressable," since California would likely just change its own definition to incorporate these teachers if the federal regulations were rendered invalid.

The brief is worth reading, though, for the dissenting opinion, which examines arguments that teachers in alternative routes are often concentrated in high-poverty, high-minority schools. That's probably true and it's a problem if the alternative routes in question aren't of high quality. But as a lot of studies are pointing out these days, paper qualifications and the various routes teachers take into the profession are not always very strong predictors of how well teachers are going to do in the classroom.

Now, the federal government is pushing states to be more serious about figuring out how to identify effective teachers and to home in on what attributes make for successful teacher preparation.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 10:17 AM | Permalink | 3 Comments | TrackBacks (0)

If there was any doubt that the Obama administration was going to be aggressive on the teacher-quality front, it was put to rest by the Race to the Top application guidelines released today. Or, to put it another way, "highly qualified" teachers is, like, so 2001. The new federal push is clearly on ways to measure teachers' effectiveness and create systems to help them improve, all as defined by their performance with students.

You can find the finalized proposed application, along with the proposed applications for Phase II of the federal stimulus funds and the longitudinal-data-systems grants here. (Those sneaky folks at the Education Department have released them today, and here we were thinking it would just be Race to the Top stuff. Make sure you check them all out.)

Without further ado, here are what appear to be the key provisions that will affect teachers, unions, and all concerned with our nation's systems for preparing and deploying teachers.

1. The big news on the stimulus guidance, as colleague Michele "I eat embargoes for breakfast" McNeil writes, is that states like New York, California, and Wisconsin, may be ineligible because of their "data firewalls."When I wrote about this issue last October, I thought we were maybe a good two to three years away from seriously having to confront it. I was wrong.

There is now news trickling out that California is going to challenge ED's interpretation, its argument being that the state law only prohibits the state, not school districts, from using the student-achievement data. To that one must ask the question of whether most districts have the data capacity to do this. Wouldn't it make more sense economically and logistically to use a centralized system?

2. The stimulus application, for the first time, sets a federal definition of teacher effectiveness. Essentially, an effective teacher is one who moves his or her students forward at least one year or grade level's worth of academic growth. Rotherham thinks this is laying the groundwork for discussions about the No Child Left Behind law renewal.

The application also requires states to have a plan and targets for ensuring that these effective teachers are equitably distributed among high- and low-minority and high- and low-poverty schools. You may recall that all the states submitted equitable-distribution plans in 2006 and then promptly put them on the shelf and forgot about them. Back then, the distribution was concerned with "highly qualified" teachers. If the department is really serious about distributing effective, rather than qualified teachers, states receiving the RTTT funds are going to have to amp up their game. I only know of one state, Tennessee, that has even begun to conduct an analysis of where the most effective teachers are located.

Now on the other hand, the Phase II stimulus guidance retains "highly qualified" teachers for the teacher-distribution measure. Perhaps that's because only a handful of states have the technical capacity to do teacher-effectiveness calculations at this point. Still, the most recent ED figures show that 95 percent of teachers are considered HQ already. If that's so, which teachers remain to be equitably distributed?

In the meantime, Phase II of the stimulus guidance will apparently make good on the requirement that states report much more information about the state of their existing teacher- and principal-evaluation systems.

3. So you think it's all about performance-based pay? Nuh-uh. States receiving Race to the Top funds must commit to using their teacher-effectiveness data for everything from evaluating teachers to determining the type of professional development they get to making decisions about granting tenure and pursuing dismissals. And, they will also be expected to track graduates of their education schools into classrooms to help institutions figure out which pathways and courses produce the best teachers.

4. With all this teacher stuff tied to test scores, you may be wondering how the unions feel about this. The criteria ask applicants to provide evidence that union leaders have approved the application, by signing a memorandum of understanding. However, during a conference call this morning with Education Secretary Arne Duncan, I asked whether not having this endorsement is something that would make or break a state's chances. "I don’t know if it would actually make you ineligible but [having that assurance] is something we would give a lot of attention to," Duncan said.

Not entirely sure where that leaves Randi Weingarten and the American Federation of Teachers, who have pledged to make good use of the comment period on these regulations. However, I do think all this raises some big questions for the National Education Association. In a recent interview, NEA President Dennis Van Roekel told me he wanted to seek clarification from Duncan on the use of the teacher data systems before staking out his position on them. Looks like he's got his clarification now, and it will be interesting to see the union's next steps.

We'll have more reaction for you shortly...

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 2:17 PM | Permalink | 6 Comments | TrackBacks (0)

See Michele McNeil's story here.

There are tons of juicy teacher-policy elements in the proposed application criteria that need to be analyzed, so keep with us tomorrow right here at Teacher Beat as we pick through it all.

In brief, the application contains implications for policies on teacher-preparation program accountability, on the equitable distribution of teachers, and on using test scores as part of the criteria for making pay, promotion, tenure and evaluation decisions.

The teachers' unions were hesitant to comment without seeing all of the details, which will appear in tomorrow's Federal Register. We'll update you as we get more.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 11:28 PM | Permalink | No Comments | TrackBacks (0)

From guest blogger Dakarai I. Aarons:

Detroit teachers—2,600 of them—at 41 schools being reconstituted under No Child Left have been told they have to re-apply for their jobs. And they've been given just a few days to do it.

The affected teachers, who are at schools that have failed to make Adequate Yearly Progress for at least five years, received notices Tuesday saying they'd have to apply by Friday.

Robert C. Bobb, the governor-appointed emergency financial manager who is running the district, has fired 33 principals and replaced 37 others .

Keith Johnson, president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, told The Detroit News he considered Bobb's actions a violation of the union's contract with the school district and would be looking into legal action.

Look for more on this and other issues in Bobb's efforts to remake Detroit schools in the next edition of Education Week, hitting a mailbox near you the week of Aug. 12!

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 3:04 PM | Permalink | 4 Comments | TrackBacks (0)

That's right, I've just picked up a new 21st-century skill...Tweeting!

Want the short, quick scoop on all the hot teacher-policy news here and from Education Week newspaper? Then follow along on my Twitter feed here at http://twitter.com/TeacherBeat.

Can't wait to see you in the Tweet-o-Sphere!

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There are times when you know a story is going to upset a lot of people, such as this one I wrote this week on the cost of paying teachers more for earning master's degrees in education. Read the comments for a taste of the reaction, which ranges from anger (i.e., "The studies that show this are bunk because they're based on test scores"), to defensiveness, (i.e., "I paid for this degree and it made me a better teacher"), to frustration, (i.e., "OK, if ED master's don't correlate to improved student achievement, what does?!").

And it's true that is hard to paint all education M.A. degrees with the same broad stroke. Even the most vocal critics of education schools can point to some truly superb programs out there, as well as exciting innovations that are starting to come out, like teacher residencies.

That said, though, what the report and these comments reveal is that right now this system does not seem to be working well for anyone. Attaining these degrees is expensive for teachers and doesn't necessarily make them better instructors. It's expensive for districts to pay out for the degrees and ties up funds that could be spent on other things (giving teachers release time for collaboration and in-school professional development, for instance). One could even argue that the policy ends up hurting education schools, which are not always given their fair share of resources by their parent universities because the universities know that the incentive system built into salary schedules will result in an endless supply of people wanting master's degrees regardless of quality.

The discussion about whether there's a better way to pay teachers more shouldn't just be about performance-based pay, but about comprehensive reforms.

It's what Jim Carlson, an NEA UniServ director in Wisconsin whom I quote in the story, is doing. Essentially, his proposal is to align compensation increases with practices that are correlated with student achievement: Boost pay if teachers earn degrees in content areas. Reward teachers for conducting "action research" and finding effective practices (see this story on the Teacher Advancement Program, which charges master teachers with doing this, for more details). Create a career ladder to give teachers more opportunities to help with professional development.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 3:21 PM | Permalink | 2 Comments | TrackBacks (0)

The Baltimore Sun has an important story up about a dispute over teachers' pay and working hours in one of its Knowledge Is Power Program charter schools.

In essence, the story examines a conflict between local law and the KIPP culture. In Baltimore, teachers in charter schools must belong to the local collective-bargaining unit. KIPP teachers, though they made about 18 percent more than other teachers, were working enough hours that they were eligible for about 33 percent more than their peers under the terms of the district contract. Now, the Baltimore Teachers Union is demanding that the district pony up with the extra bucks.

On the other hand, the teachers apparently were informed about and agreed to these salaries, and according to KIPP, were satisfied with them. And the BTU has only now fixed on this issue after more or less ignoring it for the past seven years, the paper reported.

Interesting stuff. Although this is a fairly localized story, the subtext here does seem germane. As more charter schools unionize, they will have to confront issues like teachers wages and working hours. Should teachers be paid by the hour and then for overtime, or should they be expected to work as long as they agree to an overall salary? And more generally, how many hours should teachers in challenging environments be expected to work?

The new Green Dot contract in New York provides one possible solution. It requires teachers to work a "professional day" rather than a set number of hours and minutes; they receive salaries that are about 14 percent over those in district public schools.

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Some interesting staffing changes out there in the many Washington-based teacher organizations.

Over at the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, which administers the National Board Certification program, former West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise (now of the Alliance for Excellent Education, a high school reform organization) will serve as the chairman of the board of directors.

According to the release, Wise supported bonus pay for teachers who earn the advanced credential from the National Board, so this appointment makes some sense given that states are scaling back on such bonuses as a result of the financial crisis.

And at the Teacher Education Accreditation Council, a small rival to the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, Mark LaCelle-Peterson has been named vice president. He was formerly the head of teacher education at Houghton College and as an academic auditor since 2005, provided input into the design of elements of the group's accreditation process.

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Kansas is one of just a handful of states that have begun to create formal standards for "teacher leaders," pathways for such teachers to earn teacher-leader certification, and preparation programs in its teachers' colleges. Now, the state is pioneering another step in the process: a teacher-leader exam.

The state will be working with Princeton, N.J.-based Educational Testing Service to develop the exam. It envisions using the test as a capstone of its teacher-leader-certification system.

No details yet on what the test might look like, but one suspects it will probably take some cues from the performance-based teacher assessments in place in California, Connecticut, and Arkansas.

Although the definition of the term "teacher leader" can vary, it typically means an experienced veteran who begins to take on some roles in the school beyond a classroom teacher, such as acting as an instructional coach or department head within a school, and who may take on some administrative roles, such as participating in mentoring and teacher evaluation. Sometimes, the positions are linked to a career ladder that provides additional compensation to accompany the added responsibilities.

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In this clip, National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel gives his take on Education Secretary Arne Duncan's teacher-quality address.

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from guest blogger Lesli A. Maxwell

Leaders at California State University, which trains a whopping 70 percent of the state's teachers, are launching a new effort to prepare their teacher candidates to work in the most challenging school environments. To do that, the ambitiously-named CSU Center to Close the Achievement Gap, has identified nearly 250 high-poverty, high-performing elementary, middle, and high schools around the state that are achieving solid academic results. Some teacher candidates will be placed in those schools for their student teaching experience to see and try firsthand how to deliver instruction and manage classrooms filled with students, who because of their family backgrounds, are often written off academically.

The new center, which is getting support from some of the state's business heavyweights through the California Business for Education Excellence, aims to become a pipeline of new teachers who are trained specifically to work in high-poverty, hard-to-staff schools, said Jim Lanich, who is the initiative's director. The public schools that have been tapped to be the training ground have been "outperforming expectations in every subgroup over time," Mr. Lanich said. The center will also place some of CSU's teacher candidates in the roughly 700 additional public schools that are also outperforming expectations based on their demographics, but aren't necessarily high poverty schools.

CSU, which has 23 campuses serving 450,000 students, is a behemoth of teacher prep. Not only does it churn out the bulk of California's teachers, its programs account for roughly 15 percent of the nation's credentialed teachers. That's why Mr. Lanich hopes the center can start to make a dent in the ever vexing problem of producing talented teachers for high-needs school.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 9:37 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | TrackBacks (0)

Here's a clip from the National Education Association convention of President Dennis Van Roekel talking about what he thinks accounted for the varied reaction to charter schools among the delegates. (See here for details.)

A couple of caveats about the video. First, Dennis' office at the RA was behind the stage and the lighting back there was terrible. Second, you'll have to ignore the "mood music"—a musician somewhere in the hall was playing Michael Jackson's "Thriller" on the piano throughout the interview.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 9:50 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | TrackBacks (0)

If unions are going to be challenged to consider uncomfortable ideas like reforms to teacher evaluation and pay, then the Obama administration must make good on its promise to involve unions in any school reforms, Randi Weingarten said this afternoon at the American Federation of Teachers' professional-issues conference in Washington.

In other words, the AFT president's speech was a bit of the inverse of EdSec Duncan's recent remarks to the National Education Association.

"Obama said he wants to work with us, not work us over," Weingarten said. "We're taking President Obama and Secretary Duncan at their word."

AFT members wore buttons saying, "With us, not to us," an echo of the promises that Obama made on the campaign trail and Duncan has reiterated in recent months.

Teachers' unions, Weingarten added, must not just react to policy but create and shape it. She gave a few more details about the AFT's Innovation Fund, saying that applications have proposed such ideas as alternative compensation plans, new pathways into the profession, new teacher-evaluation systems, and collaborative partnerships with parents and community groups to address wraparound services.

She also had this dig at those who would seek to impose reforms without teachers' input:

"I hope you’re as outraged as I am when our critics say that unions are part of the problem, not the solution; that we are only in it for ourselves; that we represent adults against kids; and that we are a selfish special interest set against the public interest," Weingarten said. "We won’t let them take away our jobs. We won’t let them cut our pay. We won’t let them plunder our pensions. And I will be damned if I let them define who we are."

Wowzers.

To prove she's serious, Weingarten demoed a "collaboration meter" to determine whether school systems and unions are moving from "kumbaya hot" to "I-never-want-to-speak-to-you-again" cold.

A couple of other interesting tidbits:

—When discussing the Washington Teachers' Union, Weingarten described WTU members as such: "They, my friends, have been in the fight of their lives." Hmmm. What do you think that means about the contract mediation?

—Along the same lines, D.C. City Councilman Vincent Gray got a special welcome and so forth. It's probably no coincidence that he has been among the most vocal critics of the agenda of that city's schools chief, Michelle Rhee.

—Weingarten acknowledged that AFT will probably have "our disappointments and disagreements with some of the very people we helped elect." Nevertheless, she said, had AFT not worked to elect Obama and a Democratic-leaning Congress, there'd never have been a stimulus bill.

—Weingarten has a consistent roster of districts with collaborative union-management relationships that she likes to hold up as models: Toledo, Ohio; ABC School District, in California. She threw a bone to Detroit's new leadership, too, for its joint creation of a professional-development day, although clearly the student-achievement results have yet to be seen there. It'd be nice to hear about a couple of other districts that are representative of this type of collaboration. Perhaps we'll have to wait until the Innovation Fund examples are released.

—Weingarten's been one of the supporters of keeping mayoral control in New York City, as long as it's transparent and contains checks and balances. But when a clip of N.Y.C. Mayor Bloomberg was shown, conference attendees booed and hissed.

—AFT Secretary-Treasurer Antonia Cortese got a good laugh when she promoted the union's Twitter page for the conference. "Maybe after that, someone can get me online and explain to me this whole tweeting thing." (I feel her pain. I've only just mastered blogging, and now I have to figure out how to make this Twitter thing work.)

More coming soon when Duncan and Weingarten take questions from journalists.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 4:59 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | TrackBacks (0)

Providence, R.I., will implement site-based hiring rather than seniority-based hiring and "bumping" in six schools this year, according to this must-read story in the Providence Journal (see here for background.)

Superintendent Tom Brady says that the city has over 500 applicants for just 75 positions, and many of the applicants come from private or suburban schools, the story notes.

The entire district will move to the site-based hiring system in 2010-2011. Teacher applicants are interviewed by the principal, two teachers chosen by the principal, two chosen by the school improvement team, and a teacher leader.

The New Teacher Project, which has written a number of reports about staffing in urban schools, helped train teachers on the hiring process.

The president of the Providence teachers' union, Steve Smith, has threatened to sue because the new staffing model runs counter to the contract. But that doesn't appear to have happened yet.

Brady and Smith have agreed to review hiring in the next contract.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 8:59 AM | Permalink | 2 Comments | TrackBacks (0)

The California Teachers Association is going all out to protest Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to waive Prop. 98, the minimum school funding law, to make up part of the state's $24 billion budget shortfall. See this story for details.

The union delivered 10,000 postcards to the governor this week, collected while at the National Education Association's Representative Assembly in San Diego. (Not coincidentally, about that many teachers and educational-support personnel attend the RA.)

Watch the press conference that CTA President David Sanchez held on the floor of the RA in this video.

This isn't the first time CTA and the Governator have been at each other's throats. CTA was instrumental in defeating some of Schwarzenegger's reform proposals in 2005, including one that would have rolled the granting of tenure from the second to the fifth year of a teacher's career.

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An Obama administration official has strongly hinted to New York state that it won't be getting any of the $5 billion in discretionary stimulus funding unless it does something about the law, supported by the state's teachers' unions, that prevents student test scores from being a part of tenure or other personnel decisions, reports Elizabeth Green Maura Walz at Gotham Schools (We regret the error.)

In other states, this dough is becoming quite a tantalizing carrot for states and districts who are eager to qualify for Race to the Top and Innovation funds. We're seeing some significant state action on raising charter school caps, for instance. Will the prohibition on linked student-teacher data (just don't call it a firewall) be next?

Also read this story from the NEA Representative Assembly, in which Dennis Van Roekel said he wants to get some clarification on the purpose of these data systems...

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A few wrap-up items from the NEA convention.

—A reader pointed out that I goofed up on the number of the new business item discussed in this post. It was 69, not 70. (Thanks JB.)

—Per this item, a few people have written in with the percentage of Teach For America teachers who go on to teach a third year. According to the folks from TFA, a Harvard study on corps members found that 61 percent remain in teaching beyond two years, 36 percent for more than four years. Find it here.

—Per this item on NEA delegations' T-shirts, the members of the Kansas delegation to the RA wear absolutely darling little felt sunflowers around their necks. I totally want one, but Christy Levings, the chair of NEA's ESEA Committee and a Kansan, explained that it's a tradition that only delegates from the Sunflower State get to wear them.

—Per this and this item, Mike Antonucci has more analysis on this RA's focus on NEA's role as a union. Read his coverage here, and don't forget to check out Bob Chanin's must-watch speech.

—Coming soon: Videos of a California Teachers Association press conference and snippets of an interview with NEA President Dennis Van Roekel.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 2:25 PM | Permalink | 1 Comment | TrackBacks (0)

Apparently Linda Darling-Hammond has a competitor for rock-star status, and that would be NEA General Counsel Bob Chanin.

Chanin, who retires after this RA following more than 40 years of service to the NEA, was treated to a series of speakers reminiscing on their experiences working with him.

Members of the executive committee, along with NEA Prez Dennis Van Roekel and Vice President Lily Eskelen, wore T-shirts emblazoned with Chanin's face on the front and the "amicus briefs" joke on the back. (Read more about Chanin at this NEA tribute page.)

Chanin's own speech was really something, almost impossible to summarize (thankfully, NEA is going to put it up on its Web site later). In essence, it took delegates through his entire history with the NEA, which is also the history of NEA's transformation from professional association to union.

Chanin was instrumental in helping write labor laws in various states to support collective bargaining for teachers and in providing support for early contracts.

So why is your dogged blogger bringing this up? Well, consider Van Roekel's keynote, which could be read as a formal acknowledgment of NEA's place in the organized-labor movement.

Or take the discussion over new business item 70 69, which had to do with whether the NEA should go on record in support of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers in their organizing drive of the new Delta Airlines.

"As NEA becomes a union and becomes used to being a union, this is what we must support," said one delegate in support of the item. (It eventually passed.)

Essentially, much of this year's assembly turned on the delegates grappling with the meaning of belonging to a union.

In completing his speech, Chanin pointed out that the NEA used collective bargaining and strikes to more effectively represent education employees. And while NEA should continue to advocate policies to close the achievement gap and stop dropouts and promote educational equity, it should not do so at the expense of hard-won rights, such as due process or collective bargaining, he concluded.

"NEA and affiliates must never lose sight of the fact that they are unions, and unions first and foremost represent their members," Chanin said.

A fitting capstone that nicely summed up the flavor of this year's RA.

There was not a dry eye on the stage. The delegates gave Chanin a five-minute standing ovation.

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I had a nice chat this weekend with Christy Levings, the chair of the NEA's Committee on ESEA (the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which is now called the No Child Left Behind Act).

Levings took the job after the former committee head, Becky Pringle, advanced to the NEA Secretary-Treasurer spot. She hails from Kansas, where she headed up the state affiliate for two terms.

We had a chance to talk a bit about her work for the committee, which is now working on helping state leaders prepare for the reauthorization of the federal education law, primarily through the NEA's Positive Agenda for NCLB (find it here).

In Levings' view, NCLB's testing requirements have gotten away from the philosophy of the ESEA. The original law, she said, was designed to expand opportunities for poor kids and widen the curriculum. Instead the law has done the opposite by squeezing out other subjects and focusing on narrow test prep, she contended.

Levings did praise the law's focus on subgroups of students, such as low-income children, children with disabilities, and students from certain racial and ethnic groups. "It's the only strong point of NCLB, in my opinion, the conversations around these children," she said. "It's unfortunate that the obsession with testing drove that to a poor spot," she added, referring to the law's requirement that a school must meet testing benchmarks for each subgroup in order to be deemed as making "adequate yearly progress."

She said she thinks the economic-stimulus bill, including the Race to the Top competitive grants to be distributed by Education Department, will help the administration take some new ideas "for a test drive," after which they might be included in the NCLB reauthorization. She thinks it's too early to tell what the administration means by the teacher-evaluation language in the stimulus guidance.

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It's interesting how a huge democratic, deliberative body can take practically anything controversial and render it palatable to the majority.

The original language of new business item 62 would have mobilized the union against the "national standards movement" out of fear that it would lead to a national testing program.

The item passed, but only after delegates substituted language that directs the union to engage in a dialogue with stakeholders about the national goals and ensure teachers are part of the dialogue. And who doesn't support that?

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I have a feeling that were Bon Jovi to show up at the Representative Assembly, he would not nearly be granted the rock-star greeting that Stanford professor Linda Darling-Hammond received when she went to collect her "Friend of the NEA" award today.

She said a number of things that the union applauded:

--"Teaching is the greatest profession because everybody who is anybody was taught how to be somebody by a teacher."

--"It’s not the people who are at fault, it’s the system that needs an overhaul. We need federal policies that support educators in doing the challenging work that they have committed to do."

---"We need a new framework for NCLB that understands that we need multiple measures of student learning, full curriculum in science, social studies, the arts, music, and technology, and we need assessments that are performance-based like those in other countries, where teachers are involved in development and scoring and design of assessments that really measure learning."

--"We need a new form of accountability. Tests and punishments will not create accountability."

She talked about the union's commitment to desegregation and civil rights, an interesting counterpoint to the report blasting the unions released today by the Citizens Commission on Civil Rights (see Eduwonk here for more).

"I get upset when I feel teachers are undervalued," she told me after her speech. "I have spent most of my professional life trying to figure out how to build the profession of teaching."

When I queried her on the Obama administration, she said she felt that the administration was committed to reforms done in partnership with teachers, not to them.

"I see their reform agenda as connected with initiatives teacher associations are already engaging," she said. And the NEA, she added, is now thinking about its work in more expansive ways.

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From Guest Blogger Dakarai I. Aarons

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten has been gathering the roses as she prepares to step down at the end of the month from her position as president of the New York City based United Federation of Teachers, the largest AFT local.

But at least one New York-based group is all too ready to see her go: editorial writers at The Wall Street Journal, who took to the pages today with a strident criticism of Weingarten's 11-year presidency (she's been a UFT staffer since the Reagan administration).

The WSJ folks say Weingarten and the UFT have blocked innovations in N.Y.C. schools, pointing to a few things Education Secretary Arne Duncan has also been critical of nationally, including charter caps and states that bar districts from using data linking teachers to student performance for evaluation purposes. Duncan's asked states to remove such rules as part of competitiveness for the $4.35 billion in "Race to the Top" grants he has to distribute.

From the editorial:

"Since taking over in 1998, she has done everything she could to block significant reforms to New York's public schools. Take her opposition to charter schools. She resisted raising the state cap on charters from 100 unless the union could organize them. (She lost, and the cap now is 200.) Ms. Weingarten was also against merit pay for individual teachers. She supported a law that bars school districts from linking teacher tenure to student test scores. In return for even the mildest pension reforms, Ms. Weingarten recently won a concession that teachers no longer need to work on the two days before the start of the school year."

The issues the WSJ raises have indeed been the source of tussle and controversy over the years, but check out this statement from Mayor Michael Bloomberg two weeks ago:

“Randi has been a big part of many of the reforms we have implemented over the past seven years—and a big part of the incredible turnaround our schools have made,” he said.

Not quite the words most of us would use to describe someone who has been an "enemy of education," as the editorial's headline states. I've got a call in to the folks at UFT for their reaction.

Just two weeks ago, Weingarten signed a tenure-free contract with Los-Angeles-based Green Dot Public Schools for a Bronx charter school, a contract both she and Green Dot founder Steve Barr said could be a model for union-school leader collaboration.

And she has agreed with Duncan that common standards are needed across the states, but told Education Week recently that the "devil is in the details" when it comes to how such standards are implemented and assessed.

UPDATE: A differing view: the New York Daily News, in a Friday editorial titled "Head of the Class," mostly praised Weingarten's leadership of the UFT and said she helped move NYC schools forward, even if the paper did not always agree with her stances on charters and firing underpeforming teachers.

From the News:

"Her tenure has been driven by a fundamental trade, one that ultimately put the city schools on stronger footing: better wages for members in exchange for movement toward accountability and school reform.

On Weingarten's watch, teacher pay rose a whopping 43%. In exchange, she surrendered seniority rules that barred principals from hiring teachers of their choice, and she extended instruction time. The moves were critical to better school performance," its editorial read.

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Once upon a time there was a writer who suffered through graduate school in English literature. Eventually deciding that theoretical terms like "logocentricism," "metanarrative," "subaltern," and "hegemony" were not his cup of tea, he turned to the more exciting, if less glamorous, profession of a Serious Education Journalist.

But every now and again the training I had in that year of grad school does come in handy, as it did in a debate that emerged at the RA today about the term "school turnaround."

"Turnaround schools is an example of language loaded with negative baggage," said a new business item sponsored by a Hawaii delegate. " 'Transform' is clean, meaningful, and powerful." (It was also the word that NEA President Dennis Van Roekel used in his keynote, rather than "reform.")

There's been a lot of theory written among English-majory types that posits that those who control language control cultural power. So in education, we constantly get different people claiming the mantle of "reform," whether it's vouchers or performance pay or more funding, for instance.

I think it's not too much of a stretch to say that something similar's going on with school turnarounds. "Restructuring" sounds punitive and, under NCLB, allowed districts to replace teachers, the sponsor said. Transformation carries more of a partnership feel.

The item didn't end up passing. But the issue of branding still stands, and it's coupled with this yet-unresolved question: Whatever we end up calling it, does it work?

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If you're just joining us at the 2009 National Education Association Representative Assembly, Teacher Beat has been blogging all weekend. Here's a roundup of items you may be interested in checking out:

Van Roekel and the Media: Not entirely warm and fuzzy. Yet.

ESEA Committee Gives Report: Followed by some pointed comments by Van Roekel on the federal law.

Charters a Theme: In the wake of the Race to the Top funding, there's been a flurry of NEA action on charters.

Van Roekel's Keynote: He uses the words "labor movement" and "union" ... a LOT.

T-Shirt Madness: Those fashionable NEA folks deck themselves out.

Duncan's Speech: Not particularly new news, despite what you may have read.

But there's much more to come this afternoon, as I post details about an interview with the head of NEA's Committee on ESEA, and chat with the man of the hour himself, Dennis Van Roekel. So stay tuned!

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You can definitely see NEA President Dennis Van Roekel's inner teacher coming out at this RA. He's kept business running along at a pretty speedy clip, gently shutting down delegates who are meandering at the microphones, just as a good teacher might do to an overeager student.

That might not seem like a big deal, but consider that this is Van Roekel's first time running an RA. It is not an easy balance to strike, to keep things moving while convincing a huge democratic, deliberative body that you're committed to open dialogue.

We're now on new business item 52, and there are 87 in total, so we have a shot at getting out of here before night falls (and I have a shot at a couple hours' sleep before flying back to Washington tomorrow).

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There seems to be an awful lot of confusion among the 9,000 delegates at the National Education Association's Representative Assembly over how the Teach For America program works.

The catalyst for this discussion: A new business item that would have directed the NEA to encourage TFA to increase its corps members' commitment from two to three years and to require such members to complete a certified teacher-preparation program.

Nearly 45 minutes of discussion ensued. Some delegates asserted that the program contained a loan-forgiveness element, and NEA Executive Director John Wilson had to step up to the microphone to tell them that participating in TFA has nothing to do with loans.

Other delegates wanted to know the retention rates for corps members after their two-year commitments were up. NEA President Dennis Van Roekel put the figure at 33 percent, attributing the figure to TFA founder Wendy Kopp. (Can someone from TFA let us all know if that's correct?)

Another interesting tidbit: A Delaware delegate said that districts in his state are laying off teachers and hiring TFAers. I wrote about a similar situation in North Carolina, but hadn't heard anything about Delaware. Have you?

The item, in any case, failed to pass.

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NEA Pres Dennis Van Roekel really seems to have beef with journalists.

At least four times over the course of this Representative Assembly, he's brought up his dismay with the way the media has covered speeches by President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and their support of performance-based pay. The headlines, especially, seemed to have gotten him all riled up.

Earlier this weekend, he said that he doesn't understand why journalists seem focused on the differences between the NEA and the Obama administration's teacher plans. They should instead focus on the much better access that the union has to power players these days, and the fact that Duncan made the trip out to San Diego to talk to the union.

The latest jab came as Van Roekel was telling the RA about a call he had with a journalist. The reporter was pressing him to talk about issues on which he disagreed with Duncan. Van Roekel said he thought to himself, "If I have a bone to pick with [Duncan], I’m not telling you so he can read about it in the paper ... I’m going to tell him face to face."

I can't speak for anyone else in the field, but here's my take: Right now there are few specific policy proposals on the table from this administration, and we're pretty much getting a love-fest between Obama and the NEA as a result.

But what happens when the administration starts putting out stuff the union doesn't like? What happens when the Teacher Incentive Fund application gets released? What happens when the ED puts out a plan for renewing the NCLB Act?

Let's look back to 2007, when we saw a big blowup between the NEA and House Education and Labor Committee Chairman Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., over a performance-pay proposal. (Miller, I might add, is a very strong supporter of organized labor and key proponent of the Employee Free Choice Act.) We also saw the California affiliate of the NEA stage a march on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco office. Things got ugly, and they got ugly fast.

Politics are messy and personal and it is incumbent on journalists, especially those writing for papers like Education Week, to outline faults and fissures so that we can educate the public when they become make-or-break factors for events like the passage of an NCLB renewal.

In all, Van Roekel really seems to have a different take on the profession of the media compared to his predecessor Reg Weaver, who was constantly on the phone with reporters (although generally not very specific in his answers).

Reg has even been checking in daily with the journalists at the reserved media area at this year's RA.

UPDATE: This item seems to have ruffled a few feathers at the NEA. I didn't mean to imply that Van Roekel has been unresponsive to journalists, merely to point out that Reg and Dennis seem to have different levels of comfort with the media. I've had the opportunity to speak to Dennis several times over the past year, and, of course, I'm looking forward to doing so more in the future.

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The chair of NEA's committee on the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Christy Levings (at right) gave an overview of the committee's 2009 report today. It lists the union's activities in the 2008 campaigns, its public policy initiatives and conferences, its media outreach, and recent analytical reports on the law.You can find it here (scroll down to "ESEA Committee 2009 RA Report.")

After Ms. Levings finished, the normally mild-mannered NEA President, Dennis Van Roekel, got more agitated than I've ever seen, as he called on delegates to get involved in efforts to lobby federal officials to change the law.

"This is our opportunity with this Congress, with this president, with this Secretary of Education, to take control of our own destiny and say enough is enough on crappy politics that don’t understand what is needed every day by our own children," Van Roekel said angrily. "Get ready: ESEA reauthorization is on the way."

Yikes. Where was this rabble-rousing attitude during yesterday's keynote speech?

His words about opportunity aren't all talk. Both Mr. Van Roekel and Ms. Levings underscored the good access they've had to the Obama administration over the past six months, compared to the previous eight years under Bush. They highlighted an April meeting between the ESEA committee and key personnel from the White House, the Education Department and staffers from the House and Senate education committees.

Van Roekel added that he meets on a monthly basis with EdSec Arne Duncan.

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Regarding a new business item that just passed, I want to know if Diane Brown, the delegate who sponsored this resolution on the No Child Left Behind Act, read the law.

Her item directs state affiliates "to restore teacher control of the curriculum and its influence over Title I funds." In her introduction, Brown said that Title I historically supported parental involvement and professional development, compared with the NCLB law, which she said focuses on testing students and punishing schools.

I get the objection to the annual testing and so forth. A number of delegates have spoken eloquently on that topic. But Brown seems to have missed the fact that NCLB has a whole section devoted to parental involvement.

The law also requires a school deemed "needing improvement" set aside 10 percent of its funds for professional development. And Reading First, Title I-B of the law, put thousands upon thousands of dollars into reading professional development, which many teachers embraced.

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This morning, delegates approved an item to promote to affiliates NEA's policy on charter schools so that they can be more effective "in opposing funding for charter schools that do not meet NEA criteria for support." The criteria include the unionization of teachers in the schools, a phenomenon that's still relatively rare among the independent public schools.

This afternoon, they approved an item that called on NEA to oppose "any initiative to greatly expand the growth of charter schools."

Not terribly surprising given NEA's overall wariness about charters. But the context in which this is occurring is unique: President Obama and EdSec Duncan are pushing really hard on charters, arguably harder than the Bush administration or Republicans ever did.

With performance-based pay already of concern, I'm betting that NEA leaders want to avoid fights with the administration on charters. But they might not have that option. Delegates supporting the two items spoke with concern about the Obama administration's use of Race to the Top funding to pressure states to lift caps on charter schools. They did so despite Duncan's recent challenge to the charter community to better police its schools, which he reiterated to the RA just two days ago.

Yet even within the union, there were vocal minorities of NEA members who opposed these new items. Several delegates, especially those from Wisconsin with its dozens of unionized charters, voiced their concerns that putting further restrictions on NEA's policy around the independent public schools would prevent the union from effectively representing teachers in those schools.

And the union voted down a third charter amendment just about a half hour ago that would have organized a campaign to inform teachers and the public about charter schools' "funding, operational costs and salaries, curriculum, intrinsic problems, and corruption." Hmmm, it seems that language was too strong.

The debates revealed some interesting state-affiliation disagreements, too. All three of the charter resolutions were sponsored by Californians, where the state affiliate has been fairly hostile toward charters. That's set some folks from other states on edge.

"Much of the information you are providing to this body... is inaccurate," said a Wisconsin delegate about the charter resolutions. "This is the National Education Association, not the California Education Association. Please respect our national interests as educators."

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The 4th of July is always a relatively slow day news-wise at the RA as the delegates take an extended break to celebrate.

Gaily dressed in red, white, and blue, the delegates listened to members of the NEA's executive committee read from speeches made by civil rights and union luminaries such as agricultural organizer Cesar Chavez, slain gay civil rights leader Harvey Milk, and Barbara Jordan, the first black woman representative to the House of Representatives from the South. The NEA's chorus also sang patriotic songs.

Interesting timing, then, that a number of the bylaws debated this morning essentially turned on free-speech issues. One of the bylaw amendments would cause the NEA to take "no position" on the issues of abortion and family planning, a change that would invalidate other NEA resolutions on the issue that support women's reproductive rights.

Another bylaw seeks to prohibit the NEA from endorsing a candidate for president unless the ballot lists nominees from all seven political parties. (Right now, there's an extensive vetting process before candidates can be put before the RA, and not surprisingly, it's usually a Democratic candidate and a straight up-and-down vote.)

"That, to me, is fascism," one delegate supporting this resolution said. "Put a variety [of candidates] in front of me. Let me choose."

The bylaws won't be voted on until tomorrow.

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This year marks NEA General Counsel Bob Chanin's last Representative Assembly before he retires.

Over the years, the sausage-curled, bespectacled Chanin has attained something close to cult status at the NEA for his encyclopedic knowledge of the union's bylaws, standing rules, and resolutions, in addition to national labor law. He is frequently called upon by the NEA president and other speakers to resolve disputes over points of procedure and so forth, always to great applause from the delegates.

This year, the RA passed a new business item directing the NEA executive board to come up with an appropriate commendation for Chanin. Discussion of the item was filled with good-natured jokes. "If and when this item passes, will the honorable Bob Chanin finally show us his amicus briefs?" joked one delegate.

Initially, the item would have nominated Chanin for the NEA's Friend of Education award, but the delegates amended the language, as it would have bypassed the committee charged with nominating candidates for the award.

Something tells me the by-the-books Chanin probably approved.

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The NEA awarded New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson its Greatest Education Governor award late yesterday. This annual award goes to governors who push pro-public education reforms. What does that mean, you ask? Well, you aren't likely to see governors who raise charter caps and call for tenure reform winning this thing, let me put it that way.

Richardson implemented a statewide pre-K program, supported a tiered-licensing system for teachers, restored collective bargaining rights for teachers, and led efforts to remove junk food from schools.

But perhaps most importantly, the Democrat has been an intense critic of the No Child Left Behind Act. In fact, back in 2007, he was the first presidential candidate on the campaign trail to call for scrapping the law.

I got a few moments to chat with Richardson right before he went on stage. When I asked if he still supported eliminating the NCLB law, he said yes, but then added that "it's not realistic, it's not going to happen," which I took to be a nod toward Obama, who has said he would overhaul testing but preserve much of the law's core.

A reformed law, Richardson said, should "take out the clauses that hurt schools that are not doing well." On English-language learners: "First, we need to offer them more English-language instruction. Second, it's unfair to judge these kids at the same level as other kids [who speak fluent English]." The law should do more to invest in Indian education, too, he concluded.

He said that New Mexico will definitely be applying for Race to the Top funds with new initiatives to staunch high dropout rates and close achievement gaps. The initiatives are still being developed so he couldn't offer much in the way of details.

He also mentioned a plan to tie parental involvement in schools with the awarding of driver's licenses. That will be an interesting idea to follow.

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He may not have Randi Weingarten's yoga arms, but NEA President Dennis Van Roekel apparently does have a pitching arm. He threw out the first pitch in a Padres game last night. (I'm working on getting you the video now.)

UPDATE: Click here for the video.

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The RA just approved its first new business item, and it's an interesting one.

The item, which was proposed by the union's board of directors, would develop a plan to influence policy around the $5 billion over five years school-turnaround proposal that President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan have been chattering about lately. Among other things, the union would seek to protect the contractual rights of NEA members, develop indicators of school success other than test scores, and integrate the teaching of 21st century skills.

The item dodged a little bit of a bullet, too. California delegates pushed to include language to require the NEA to oppose the conversion of low-performing schools into charter schools, something that the Duncan team apparently supports. NEA President Dennis Van Roekel ruled the amendment out of order because it conflicted with other NEA policy on charter schools.

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"Plain and simple, you can't have a middle class without unions."

"I am asking you to organize like never before."

Those were two big lines by NEA President Dennis Van Roekel, who got his first crack at the keynote address just a few minutes ago. And frankly, for a few moments, I thought I had wondered into the wrong union's meeting.

The NEA has never exactly been fond of calling itself a union. It embraced collective bargaining somewhat later than its sister, the American Federation of Teachers. It has always clung to the refined description of itself as a professional organization compared with the AFT's proudly scrappy, streetwise celebration of the union label. It has been much more selective in who it will organize, in comparison with the AFT, which would unionize garden gnomes if it could.

Guess that's on the wane under Van Roekel, who underscored the theme with this line: "At 3.2- million members, we are the largest professional organization/labor union in America."

Behind the scenes, he's also been active in discussion about the reunification of the labor movement (see my post on that here.)

Perhaps some of this shift in theme is to be expected, given the economic conditions the country is now in and the fact that, with NCLB reauthorization seemingly on the backburner for now, passing the Employee Free Choice Act and a health-care reform bill are NEA's top priorities.

Near the end of his speech, Van Roekel did tie things back to education, asking his members to get involved in the school turnaround projects that the Education Department will be spearheading.

And he set new goals for organizing and political action that he wants the union to accomplish over the next year.

"We must be able to mobilize active members at a moment's notice, just as our opponents can do," he said. "NEA needs to have 50 activists in every congressional district by 2010. ... Whether it is health care, reauthorization of [NCLB], or any other federal legislation that affects our members, we must be able to move at Internet speed."

Will Van Roekel go down as a big labor hero in the annals of the NEA? Time will tell.

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How do you make sure you don't get lost in a crowd of 9,000 delegates? Wear your state-delegation T-shirt.

It's become something of a tradition for each state delegation to wear specially designed shirts over the course of the Representative Assembly, especially on the first day. Some affiliates opt for a political design: This year, the California Teachers Association's shirt says "NCLB: Erase, rewrite, reauthorize" on the front and "Learning is more than a test score ... and so is teaching" on the back.

The fun-loving Ohio Education Association picked bright Hawaiian-style shirts. (Given the design, at first I thought "OEA" stood for "Oahu Education Association," and a woman I chatted with said the initials are frequently confused with the Oklahoma and Oregon affiliations.)

Another delegation picked dark-blue collared shirts, which not everyone was happy with. "We look like bus drivers," joked one woman in the elevator.

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A few more thoughts after reviewing my notes and videos of Duncan's speech yesterday.

Although there were hisses at Duncan's statement that evaluation policies may need some tweaking, there was some scattered applause, too. Same story with Duncan's statement that it's "illogical and indefensible" not to include student achievement as part of compensation, evaluation, and tenure decisions. Both examples come as a good reminder that externally, the NEA may speak with one voice on these issues, but internally there are plenty of different opinions.

A good number of teachers, it seems, agree that there can be fair ways to consider student achievement in human-capital decisions. An Education Sector report came to a similar conclusion last year, finding that younger teachers were generally more open to pay reform than their peers but still strongly valued their unions.

(Also take a look at the comments to my last item; several folks pointed out their own thoughts on how teachers can be part of the reform process.)

There was almost no reaction when Duncan said that much of the coursework teachers take to get "lane" increases aren't correlated with teacher effectiveness. That surprised me for personal reasons more than anything else: I got a bunch of e-mails from irritated teachers when I wrote a story that dealt tangentially with that issue.

Andy Rotherham and Mike Antonucci, on their respective blogs, both noted the loudest protests were actually in response to Duncan's plugs for the Green Dot charter schools and mayoral control of school districts. (I'm assuming the negative reaction isn't just due to the relatively large sizes of the New York and California delegations.)

It looks like teachers are still suspicious of Green Dot, despite founder Steve Barr's apparent commitment to working with unionized teaching forces, and still not enamored with N.Y.C.'s Joel Klein.

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To answer the question I'm sure you all have: Yes. Teachers booed and hissed during some of the performance-pay portions of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's speech. And they weren't overwhelmingly happy with the talk of reform to seniority and tenure systems, either.

But some of the stories I've seen around the Web on the speech are billing this as "tough love" for the teachers' unions. There was some of that, sure, but President Barack Obama and Duncan clearly telegraphed their intentions to push hard on these issues in the stimulus legislation, and that passed months ago.

So there was an element to this whole proceeding that came off as a little bit rehearsed to me. I wonder if Duncan had prepared his seemingly ad-libbed line for when the booing started: "You can boo; just don't throw any shoes, please." And I'm pretty sure most of the delegates had gotten their vocal chords ready, too.

To me, the biggest news out of the speech is that the administration is increasingly emphasizing student achievement as one measure of teacher pay or evaluation, although not the only measure. That is a big issue, and it's one that helped sink congressional attempts to renew the No Child Left Behind Act in 2007.

Also, large parts of the speech seemed to key directly off of the stimulus legislation. When Duncan talked about seniority putting some teachers in schools and classrooms they're not prepared for, well, that gets to the equitable-distribution-of-teachers language in the stimulus. When he talked about the poor state of evaluations, well, that lines up to the language that will require states and districts to report the number and percentage of teachers scoring at each performance level on local evaluation instruments.

Check back at edweek.org soon for a full story.

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Rumor has it that EdSec Arne Duncan's big speech today before some delegates here at the National Education Association's Representative Assembly will focus on performance-based pay.

That will hardly be news for those who have been following the Obama team. After all, Obama has mentioned that two years running before this very group of educators. We also know that the NEA's resolutions do not endorse any type of incentive pay other than bonuses for teachers who earn national-board certification, so President Dennis Van Roekel isn't going to be able to go much beyond that.

Delegates are a different story, and their reactions will be interesting to watch. These are state and local folks, and they are free to experiment how they want with pay, even if it bucks the national union (just ask Denver).

Personally, I hope we'll hear more about the teacher distribution and evaluation assurances in the stimulus bill. There's been nary a peep from the Education Department about these since it released the initial stimulus guidance to the states.

It's possible, I suppose, that we'll get a few more details on whether the applications for the federal Teacher Incentive Fund will explicitly state that performance-pay programs must include student-achievement data and be collectively bargained, two hot-button issues for the teachers' union. But I'm not holding my breath.

Over at Flypaper, Mike Petrilli outlines what we definitely WON'T hear from Duncan.

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Today I head down to San Diego for the National Education Association's Representative Assembly, which begins in earnest on July 3.

What will this year's NEA assembly bring? Without a doubt, we'll see plenty of debate on internal NEA policies. We'll probably continue to see the union criticize the No Child Left Behind Act: The union's ESEA Committee expected to make another report this session. We may even get a couple of interesting resolutions that highlight the union's sense of its own purpose and mission, as we did about private pre-K providers last year.

This year also marks Dennis Van Roekel's first solo job heading up the RA. Serving as the de facto emcee carries a lot of responsibility: There's a boatload of procedural protocols to master, the president's address, and all those "new business items" that are introduced over the course of the week and that tend to keep everyone up late on the last day of the RA.

The last time I spoke to Van Roekel, I asked him how he felt about all this. "I'm nervous!" he said with a laugh. Yet there's some truth to the answer. After all, the NEA president does have the opportunity to promote new policies or set a path forward for the union during his address. And I can't be the only person who thinks that Van Roekel, who kept a pretty low profile last year, is still a little bit of a cipher. What will he have to say to 9,000 of his best friends? Inquiring minds want to know.

Don't forget to check in with us tomorrow, as Education Secretary Arne Duncan addresses a group of teachers and listens to their feedback. We've heard there will be more on performance-based pay, something that now-President Obama got booed for two years running when he mentioned it to the RA.

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