October 2009 Archives

Education Secretary Arne Duncan made a particular point yesterday of underscoring that teacher evaluations should be based on "multiple measures" that would include student achievement alongside other factors, such as peer evaluations.

He was speaking at conference here in Washington for state officials hosted by the National Comprehensive Center on Teacher Quality.

Frankly, the multiple-measures comment shouldn't come as a big surprise if you've been paying attention. A number of other ED officials have made the same point in other forums. But a lot of the state officials told me they were nevertheless glad to hear the message. They noted that the Race to the Top proposed criteria make a big deal about incorporating student achievement as a "significant" factor in evaluations but are silent about what other measures could or should be included.

Perhaps all of those comments worrying about whether value-added is ready for prime-time hit home at the Education Department. If I were a betting man, I'd wager that the final Race to the Top guidelines will retain the requirements that test scores be factored in evaluations, but also make some recognition of the fact that they shouldn't be the sole measure for rating a teacher.

Duncan did stress, though, that the student-achievement element is the one that's missing from most evaluation systems. "We don't look at student work at all, we're a zero there," he said.

He demurred when asked whether he could point to a model evaluation system: "I'm hesitant to call one out because people think that that's it."

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten must be doing a victory lap around her office about now. She's been expounding upon the multiple-measures theme for months.

(Weingarten's stance on this issue has developed, too. Last year around this time she was adamant that "we have a moral, statistical, and educational reason" not to use test scores in evaluations. Now, her union is helping to fund projects to explore how it might be done fairly.)

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 11:47 AM | Permalink | 9 Comments | Recommend

A study financed by the Eli & Edythe Broad Foundation shows that students taught by Teach For America teachers in Los Angeles outperformed peers who were taught by other teachers—including veterans with many more years of experience.

Initially, the study was performed for internal purposes. Having provided quite a bundle of financial backing for TFA, Broad wanted to get a sense of how its investment was paying off in terms of stronger student learning. But officials for the group said they ultimately decided to make the study public given the growing national conversation about teacher effectiveness.

California state test-score results of students of 119 second-year TFA teachers in grades 2-12 were compared with those of the students of 1,190 non-TFA teachers in the same grade levels, subjects, and schools as the TFA teachers, during 2005 and 2006.

The results are interesting for a few reasons. First of all, TFA teachers were linked to test scores that were 3 points higher overall than non-TFA teachers, even those who had been in the classroom much longer. And, they were even more effective than other teachers with similar years of teaching experience. (The scores for that comparison were 4 points higher for TFA teachers than for non-TFA teachers.)

It's important to know, though, that since students weren't randomly assigned to TFA teachers or non-TFA teachers, it isn't scientifically possible to say that TFA is the reason why the teachers were more effective. These data are certainly suggestive, but they aren't evidence of a causal link.

And with any study, there are a couple of caveats. For instance, the findings here combine reading and math, so it's not entirely clear how to interpret them for subject matter. Content area is an important distinction because previous studies of TFA have shown that the group's high school instructors had a particularly strong correlation with improved math achievement.

The folks at Broad think this type of analysis could be indicative of what will be possible once data systems continue to grow and students can be linked to teachers. One interesting feature of the study is that analysts used two different growth methodologies and found that one was much better at explaining variability in test scores. That's important because there isn't really good consensus on the "best" methodology for gauging teacher effect on student achievement.

Second, the paper is an example of the kind of analysis that might be useful for higher ed institutions and programs that prepare teachers as they consider ways of improving the effectiveness of their own programs.

TFA has already begun those efforts, as I reported earlier this year.

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Rhode Island Commissioner Deborah Gist has instructed districts to work to eliminate hiring practices based on seniority provisions when the districts' collective bargaining agreements come up for renewal this year. (Hat Tip to Eduwonk.) She wants hiring to be based on performance-based criteria instead.

So Teacher Beat asks the question: Is seniority poised to emerge as a major reform priority?

We're seeing efforts to experiment with a lot of traditional structures that affect teacher quality, like compensation, professional development, and evaluation. And even though no one seems ready to chuck out tenure, the conversations around evaluation could make the tenure-granting process a more meaningful one.

So far, though, seniority has been mostly ignored. For instance, the New Haven contract is being held up by union, district, and federal officials alike as a model effort for collaborative reform. But a few people have written me to point out that, even in the "turnaround" charter-like schools, teachers would maintain their transfer rights. That means teachers who aren't rehired by their principals or choose to leave the schools after the two-year commitment can pick their bid on positions based on seniority. UPDATED: There appears to be some language in the contract that gives the board the ability to staff based on the instructional needs of the school before seniority kicks in. Working to get some clarification on what that means in practice.

And practically all districts still use the system for things like layoffs, even if they've done away with seniority-based transfers.

The argument, as it's been explained to me, is that seniority is way of ensuring that teachers are treated fairly, since there's an objective rather than a subjective method of deciding who gets raises and privileges. But the definition of "fair" is sort of in the eyes of the beholder. Seniority doesn't, for instance, take teacher effectiveness into account into things like pay or layoffs, presumably a difficult thing for teachers with fewer years of experience.

But efforts to use performance-based criteria in instances such as reductions-in-force have been quite controversial. (Witness the District of Columbia or Charlotte, N.C.)

So what do you think? Is seniority still necessary as the push continues to define teacher quality in terms of student learning? Or do we risk making things even worse in school or returning to the days when it was easier for boards and principals to play favorites?

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 10:54 AM | Permalink | 5 Comments | Recommend

The American Federation of Teachers just stepped up its effort to shut down a teacher-recruiting company that it alleges bilked more than 200 teachers from the Philippines out of thousands of dollars in fees.

It filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor on Oct. 20 claiming that Universal Placement International violated federal laws requiring such fees to be paid by employers—school districts—not by employees. And in a release, the union also said that both the firm and the school districts who employed these teachers in Louisana may have tried to circumvent federal caps on H-1B work visas.

You can read more about it on AFT's Web site here.

Contracts signed by both state-level officials and those in New Orleans' Recovery School District show that federal Hurricane Katrina recovery dollars disbursed by the U.S. Department of Education were used in part to pay for this recruiting service.

Could an inquiry over at ED be next on the list?

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Like many of you, I just finished watching Education Secretary Arne Duncan's Teachers College speech. We'll have more reaction for you later, but just to make a general point, few new policy tidbits emerged, even during the Q & A.

The genial, if always on-message Duncan didn't really say much we haven't heard before. About the third time he began answering a question with the line, "We have $10 billion in discretionary funds at our disposal," the audience started giggling.

(You've got to hand it to Margaret Spellings. As EdSec, she was ever-quotable, with her talk of Ivory soap and big-girl panties.)

I was particularly intrigued by a question from one audience member, who wanted to know whether the administration would support "incorporating a multisensory phonics-based reading program" into teacher training.

An interesting question, now that funding previously earmarked for Reading First apparently will be shifted to Title I. But Duncan didn't bite. "We're going to look to those places that are getting great results for students," he said.

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Education Secretary Arne Duncan doesn't appear poised to go easier on schools of education in remarks he's making this morning at Columbia University's Teachers College. As you may recall, his remarks earlier this month on the theme caught some flak from the teacher-ed community.

News of this morning's speech has already hit the wires, and here are some advance remarks we've gotten from the Department of Education:

"...by almost any standard, many, if not most, of the nation's 1,450 schools, colleges, and departments of education are doing a mediocre job of preparing teachers for the realities of the 21st-century classroom. America's university-based teacher-preparation programs need revolutionary change—not evolutionary tinkering."

"In my seven years as CEO of the Chicago Public Schools and in my current job, I've had hundreds of conversations with great young teachers. And they echo many of the same concerns about ed schools voiced in the Levine report and in earlier decades. In particular they say two things about their training in ed school. First, most of them say they did not get the hands-on teacher training about managing the classroom that they needed, especially for high-needs students. And second, they say there were not taught how to use data to improve instruction and boost student learning."

Duncan does seem to spread the blame for "mediocre" programs a little broader this time. He'll note that states haven't really done their part in closing down poor programs, and that universities often treat the programs as "cash cows" and direct resources to more prestigious departments. Teacher tests don't measure how well teachers actually teach, he adds. And districts often shortchange mentoring programs.

And he'll compliment the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education for its new reaccreditation standards and the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education for getting behind new models, like the teacher-residency programs. And he adds, "I am optimistic that, despite the obstacles to reform, real change is under way."

Near the end of his speech, he says that strong preparation programs include a "strong, substantial" field experience, a focus on classroom management, and training for candidates on how to review and make use of student-performance data. He plugs the teacher residencies, which the department just spent millions of dollars to promote.

But am I the only one that sees a little bit of tension between the thrust of this speech and the proposed Race to the Top criteria? After all, under those proposals, states would get additional competitive points for having alternative routes to teacher certification. Though alternative routes vary, many of them don't have all that long of a student-teaching component. By comparison, in the residency model, candidates aren't the "teacher of record" until after they've spent a year under the tutelage of a full-time classroom teacher.

Maybe the administration feels both routes can be successful, but this difference does seem to complicate states' abilities to hold both types of programs to the same set of high standards.

Are you a professor or dean at a college of education? Are you listening to the speech or watching it in person? Want to share your comments? Post them here, or e-mail me directly at ssawchuk@epe.org.

We'll also have a full story up for you later today.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 10:08 AM | Permalink | 15 Comments | Recommend

The New Haven, Ct. teacher contract has been approved!

You will recall that earlier this month I was a little skeptical about all this talk of it being groundbreaking given that the details on it were scant. (Reminds me of that line in William Golding's The Princess Bride about labeling your own novel a classic.)

Now that we have the details, let's take a look at what's what.

First, by all accounts these negotiations were collaborative, and both parties are talking up the results. Here's the district's take:

"The new contract transforms the role that teachers will play in our public schools," New Haven Mayor John DeStefano Jr. said. "Rather than resisting change as some teachers associations have done in other parts of the nation, New Haven teachers have chosen to make change, to help direct change, to be the change."

And Joan Devlin, senior associate director in AFT's educational-issues department, had this to say: "We really worked very hard and very collaboratively to get this done. The contract addresses teacher voice and gives the district the flexibility it needs to make this work."

Second, there's a new "turnaround school" model that will be utilized in a handful of schools that have failed for many years to make adequate yearly progress under the No Child Left Behind act. These schools will function as charter schools. The teachers in them will be unionized, but most of the current contract will be waived, aside from some provisions about teacher absences, layoff policies, and personnel files. The existing grievance process will only apply to these provisions.

Everything else, including teachers' working hours, the length of the school day, and additional compensation programs, will be set at the school level by the principal and an advisory group of parents, teachers and community leaders.

Now for changes that affect all the schools in the district. Many of these are outlined in the contract, and will be fleshed out by a reform committee formed of administrators, union officials and community members The committee will examine and recommend new ways of measuring student progress. Ms. Devlin said this committee will consider test-score data, in addition to multiple other measures.

Then, using these recommendations, a second committee will devise ways implement that data into new teacher evaluations. The data will also be used to classify schools into three "tiers," with the board exerting more control in setting the instructional program in the lowest-performing tier of schools.

You can see the AFT's fingerprints in a few of the new areas. The teacher-evaluation committee, for instance, will work to create a peer-assistance and -review program for struggling veteran teachers. Over the last few years, the union has tried to get more affiliates to institute these programs. (Read more about PAR here).

The district and union will also work out details of a differentiated compensation program to be based on schools' overall test scores, rather than individual classroom results. Teachers and principals in schools that win the bonuses will have the responsibility for divvying up the money. That structure sounds nearly identical to the program AFT President Randi Weingarten negotiated in New York City with Chancellor Joel Klein.

A few other items of note: Evaluations will differentiate among four levels of teacher performance, rather than the current two. The contract allows schools in higher-performing "tiers" to seek waivers of certain work rules in the contract, with teacher agreement.

A few other media outlets (and apparently Education Secretary Arne Duncan) seem ready to declare this a sign of increasing flexibility from the teachers' unions, partially in response to the Obama administration's pressing forward on merit pay and so on. (The new New Unionism?)

But perhaps—as seems likely with the NEA's recent promise to encourage locals to waive some elements of contracts, and with AFT's Innovation Fund—the proof of real innovation will lie in how these provisions play out and whether they result in higher quality teaching. There is clearly a lot still to be done in New Haven, with all these committees still to meet and hash out details. Devlin acknowledged that much in our conversation.

"We're really excited, but we know this is just the beginning of the hard work," she told me.

Still, this is not your mother or father's teacher contract. It deals with issues that have traditionally made teachers uncomfortable. And I, for one, am excited to see what New Haven comes up with.

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An appeals court has deadlocked over the "unfunded mandate" lawsuit, filed by several school districts and the National Education Association, against the No Child Left Behind law. That means a lower court's decision backing the feds will stand. Mark Walsh has the scoop over on the School Law Blog.

But for you Teacher-Beat-ers, the question is whether or not the NEA and related parties will seek to appeal this decision to the Supreme Court of the United States.

As a related aside, I do wonder about the future of the provision that caused all of this commotion. It was added to several education statutes in 1994 and incorporated into that year's rewriting of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Then in 2001, it was carried over into NCLB, which is the most recent iteration of the law.

Will Congress seek to rewrite, clarify, or delete this problematic section when action on the ESEA renewal gets going again?

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The NewSchools Venture Fund, an education "venture capitalist" effort, has put $1.2 million into the New Teacher Center, a California-based group that has taken the lead in supporting intensive teacher-induction programs.

This must be good news for the NTC, which became an independent nonprofit organization in July—right before a report came out implying that intensive mentoring may not be all it's cracked up to be.

NewSchools Venture Fund's other education-related investments include the New Teacher Project, Teach for America, and New Leaders for New Schools.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

I checked in with the president of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education today to get some feedback on what her members thought about Education Secretary Arne Duncan's speech on teacher colleges. Overall, she said, her members were disappointed in the tenor of the speech and hope for a more balanced address at the next, when he addresses educators at Teachers College, in New York City, on Oct. 22.

"I think that in one sense, Arne used the [UVA] speech to review some of the perennial criticisms of teacher education. I'm hoping he'll use the speech at Teachers College to talk about some of the work that is going on in response to those criticisms," said Sharon Robinson. "I'm not asking that he avoid critique. ... I'm just hoping it will be [an address] that does more to inspire us and bring us all together to support change rather than create an angry defensive reaction out of which it's very hard to motivate people for change."

Ms. Robinson pointed to a couple of initiatives that she thinks are helping change the status quo in teacher education. The recent changes to the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education's system, she said, give universities the cover to try new kinds of reforms, rather than being hamstrung by old regulations. Closer partnerships between districts and universities result in stronger accountability for both sides. And advances in performance-based teacher assessments could lead to better understanding of the qualities of effective teaching and the extent to which specific universities produce graduates that exhibit those qualities.

States, Ms. Robinson added, should also take a stronger role in stepping in when programs aren't up to par in meeting new demands, such as working with diverse populations. After all, poor programs aren't going to close themselves.

"It should be known to prospective teachers that if a program cannot give you a good solid experience managing a classroom with ELLs, it's defective," she said. "Any institutions using public funds should be responsive to public priorities."

Be sure to check out her remarks up on the AACTE Web site.

I don't know if her arguments will convince those who criticize university-based teacher preparation. But clearly Duncan will be the one to watch next week—and his tone will set important signals about his administration's priorities for teacher preparation.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 5:28 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Up in Rhode Island, Jennifer Jordan has an excellent story about Rhode Island's move to make its initial "gateway" teacher test (the one a candidate has to pass to enter a preparation program) the most difficult in the nation.

There's the usual back and forth about whether a test is an appropriate screening mechanism, but the most interesting part of the story discusses whether it's possible to screen candidate for attributes, such as compassion, that are difficult to measure using standardized tests.

A staffer from the National Council on Teacher Quality makes an interesting observation by suggesting it's the state's role to measure things that are more easily quantifiable (such as content knowledge), while district HRs should handle other aspects.

Lest you think that's impossible, consider groups like Teach For America. Although this info didn't make it into my recent piece, the group told me it has done extensive research on the attributes that seem to correlate with its most effective teachers. TFA has also retooled its screening process to check for these characteristics, which include whether a candidate exhibits persistence or is able to find creative solutions to problems.

What sequence do you think states and districts should follow when they screen candidates for teaching jobs?

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 9:54 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Education Secretary Arne Duncan had some pretty tough words for teacher colleges at a speech he gave at the Curry School of Education, in Charlottesville, Va., on Friday:

"In far too many universities, education schools are the neglected stepchild. Often they don't attract the best students or faculty. The programs are heavy on educational theory—and light on developing core area knowledge and clinical training under the supervision of master teachers.

"Generally, not enough attention is paid to what works to boost student learning—and student-teachers are not trained in how to use data to improve their instruction and drive a cycle of continuous improvement for their students. ...

"In all but a few states, education schools act as the Bermuda Triangle of higher education—students sail in, but no one knows what happens to them after they come out. No one knows which students are succeeding as teachers, which are struggling, and what training was useful or not."

Yow. I haven't heard anything like that since Rod Paige was in office.

The timing was interesting, too; the speech was just a week after the department released $43 million in new Teacher Quality Partnership grants, especially for residency programs. These dollars largely went to schools of education. That's partly because the Higher Education Act requires such institutions to be involved in the funded partnerships, while it was optional for the partnerships to include nonprofit groups. Still, some of the other nonprofit groups that helped launch the idea of the residency program were left out of the funding. (Boston, anyone?) It will be interesting to see which partnerships are approved in the second slate of grants.

Duncan is scheduled to give what is billed as a "major" address on teacher preparation later this month at Columbia University's Teachers College. What else will he have to say about the schools that still prepare the majority of our nation's teachers?

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 4:16 PM | Permalink | 15 Comments | Recommend

Over at sister publication Teacher Magazine, Elizabeth Rich has a great article up about how teachers can use social-networking technologies to connect and interact with colleagues, and get new ideas for curricula and activities.

I wrote generally about social networking for teachers last year, in this story. But Elizabeth's story goes more in depth to the subject-specific implications—in this case, for English teachers. She profiles Laura Abercrombie, a Florida teacher who initially felt bewildered when she joined a social network looking for resources on how to teach Thoreau. But ultimately, Abercrombie came to embrace the online community and found the support far more extensive than what her brick-and-mortar school provided.

If you're a teacher using social networking for professional purposes, why not post a message and let us know how it's going?

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 10:37 AM | Permalink | 4 Comments | Recommend

I've really been swamped of late, but wanted to bring your attention to a handful of great teacher stories that you should be sure to check out this weekend if you haven't seen them already.

• The AFT announces its first grants under its $3.3. million Innovation Fund, including efforts to expand peer-assistance and -review programs, overhaul evaluation systems, create innovative contracts a la Green Dot, and even incorporate student achievement in compensation systems.

• Harvard University Teacher expert Susan Moore Johnson and a colleague put forth a new pay model, similar to the Teacher Advancement Program but with a few additional components. (Colleague Debra Viadero has extensive story on this that will be up on edweek.org. soon.)

• The Washington Teachers' Union sues to prevent D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee's move to lay off 388 employees, including over 200 teachers; both students and teachers protest. The union alleges that Rhee hired a bunch of new teachers to circumvent the contract language and create the need for a "reduction in force," which doesn't proceed strictly by seniority; it says veterans were disproportionately targeted.

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New Haven, Conn., is said to be close to finalizing a collective bargaining pact ... but you'll have to take teachers' union and city officials' word that it's innovative, because the details won't be released until teachers vote to approve the new contract.

According to the news story linked above, the agreement will align to officials' goals to close achievement gaps in six years. Part of those goals included some discussion of increased teacher accountability based on student outcomes, and hiring flexibility, but there is no word yet as to whether any language in the contract supports those ideas.

It's interesting to consider how few people typically know about teacher-contract negotiations until they are all but a done deal. In Washington D.C., contract negotiations have been subjected to what's basically a black market in information-gathering. FOIA requests, leaks, blog discussions all point to a cry for more information from parents and students alike.

In D.C., this apparently involves teachers, some of whom wanted the "red-green" plan to go to a vote and others who claimed that the union and Chancellor Michelle Rhee were acting in concert and leaving out crucial details about the contract in presentations to rank-and-file teachers. (Fortunately, this doesn't seem to be the case in New Haven.)

Will the increasing pressure to make educational decisonmaking transparent ultimately spill over to encompass labor-contract negotiations?

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 10:43 AM | Permalink | 1 Comment | Recommend

I've finally had a chance to take a look at Washington, D.C's new teacher-evaluation system, known as IMPACT, which generated a lot of buzz for being among the first in the nation to incorporate student test scores as part of the teacher rating. (Race to the Top, anyone?)

To be fair, IMPACT is not all about test scores: the evaluation system also includes other pieces, such as scores on a "Teaching and Learning Framework," an extensive set of observational measures similar to Charlotte Danielson's Framework for Teaching, or the rubrics used by the New Teacher Center or the Teacher Advancement Program. Teachers in the district will be observed five times before a final rating is generated, three times by a building administrator and twice by an outside "master evaluator" who is a subject-matter expert and does not report to the building administrator.

There is even a "core professionalism" component to measure whether teachers show up on time and to ensure they don't go missing without an excuse, no doubt to counteract problems with chronically absent teachers.

The Washington Post has a pretty good write-up on IMPACT here, but one thing the story doesn't really convey is that IMPACT really is more a composite of 20 different evaluation systems. There are standards for teachers who teach in tested subjects, and those who do not, standards for counselors, for instructional paraprofessionals, for non-instructional paraprofessionals, even for custodians.

So, if you're teaching in grades 4-8 in reading or math, 50 percent of your rating is based on an "individual" value-added score and 40 percent on observational ratings aligned to the Teaching and Learning Framework. But if you're in a subject without an accountability test in place, then 80 percent of your rating is based on the TLF and 10 percent is based on a non-value-added assessment chosen by the teacher, such as a unit test from an approved textbook. Special-ed teachers are rated in part according to their ability to turn out well-crafted individualized education plans. You get the idea.

Almost all of the teachers will have at least 5 percent of their evaluation based on schoolwide (not individual) growth.

The American Federation of Teachers and the Washington Teachers' Unions are already on the record as not liking this new system. It's probably worth noting that the district was not obligated to consult with the WTU in crafting it. But the AFT has expressed discomfort with using test scores beyond the building level, and research is certainly not unequivocally supportive of individual value-added measures.

Though IMPACT was not collectively bargained, Rhee did meet with a bunch of focus groups of teachers while she was developing it. In the preamble to the IMPACT guidelines, she says that the system is first and foremost supposed to provide a pathway to teacher-effectiveness growth, and not just serve as an accountability measure.

But with hundreds of layoffs going on right now—many of which the union says could have been avoided had the district not hired so many new teachers this summer— I wonder how many teachers are going to believe her.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 5:48 PM | Permalink | 4 Comments | Recommend

Although it got a bit lost in all the commotion about this hearing, the Education Department made an important teacher-preparation announcement last week. The agency awarded $43 million in grants to improve preparation programs at 28 institutions.

They're the first grants awarded under the retooled Title II of the Higher Education Act (not to be confused with Title II of No Child Left Behind, which also deals with teacher-quality issues).

Congress made some significant changes to the program during the 2008 renewal of the HEA. Now, it's funding only partnerships between districts and universities that are designed to respond more specifically to the needs of those communities. In particular, lawmakers supported teacher "residencies," in which the clinical student-teaching experience moves to the foreground of preparation and occurs for an entire year. (For the specifics of the residency model, see this story.)

12 of the new grants support the residency model exclusively, nine focus on reforms to traditional programs, and seven target some combination of both.

It will be enlightening to check in with these grantees in a year or so and see whether they've fundamentally overhauled the teacher-preparation model. And let's not forget that the new HEA includes new reporting requirements for teacher colleges designed to increase accountability, and the Race to the Top puts a premium on programs that can track graduates into their classrooms.

Will we see better results from these new programs? Stay tuned.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Over at Politics K-12, Alyson Klein notes that the Obama administration seems to favor competitive grants, rather than formula grants, in its approach to education funding.

It's a smart observation, and although I'm reading the tea leaves a bit here, I wouldn't be surprised to see the administration try to advance more such competitive grants during the upcoming reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

The big issue at work here is that in shifting from formula to competitive grants, you go from grants where everyone gets a slice of the pie to ones where there are definite winners and losers. We're already seeing that in Race to the Top: The edu-community's latest parlor game consists of trying to figure out how many states will actually receive RTTT grants.

Nearly all the cash that the feds put into teacher quality is in the $3 billion Title II state grants. Title II is less a coherent program and more of a funding stream, since states and districts can do dozens of things with their funds. Now, imagine if that money were put into discretionary, tightly tailored grants along the lines of the Teacher Incentive Fund or other competitions to support recruitment, retention, evaluation, and compensation.

House lawmakers took a crack at the idea in 2007, carving out three competitive programs in a revised Title II draft. But that proposal never gained much traction on the Hill.

In this story, I reported at length on the challenges of shifting Title II from formula to competitive grants.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 4:53 PM | Permalink | 7 Comments | Recommend