April 2010 Archives

From guest blogger Dakarai I. Aarons:

Another day, yet another installment in the drama over the proposed new contract for District of Columbia teachers. The District's chief financial officer told the city council this morning he can't certify the contract as fiscally sound because the city hasn't been able to prove it can pay for the contract.

And Natwar M. Gandhi, the CFO, says the $65.5 million in foundation money helping to pay for the contract cant be counted on because of conditions the foundations imposed on the money. Check out the District Dossier blog for more details and any updates this afternoon.

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The National Council on Teacher Quality's big review of 67 Texas education schools is finally out.

In what will no doubt drive headlines in the Lone Star State, the report says that eight large programs that prepare a significant number of teachers are in need of some serious attention. They are Lamar University, Midwestern State University, Our Lady of the Lake University, Texas A&M University-Commerce, Texas Christian University, Texas Tech University, and Texas Woman's University.

Lest you think NCTQ is all about criticism, the council also found four programs it deems worthy of commendation: Dallas Baptist University, Southern Methodist University, the University of Texas -- Pan American, and the University of Texas at Austin.

The council didn't rate all of the schools it studied because it felt it didn't have enough information on some of them and needed to conduct a more thorough review.

Before the report came out, school leaders blasted the study and its methodology, while 31 district superintendents commended the review. Ericka Mellon of the Houston Chronicle does a nice job summarizing all of that in her story here, so I won't bother repeating it. But the disparity is interesting to hear because groups like the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education are increasingly pushing for partnerships between districts and universities in the preparation of teachers; this suggests there's still a way to go on that front.

Absent an agreed-upon national set of preparation standards, the council created its own set of design standards. In other words, it looked at what it thought were fundamental building blocks for a good program, but did not assess the quality of actual instruction. What that means in practice is that folks are likely to quibble not just about the specific ratings but whether this set of standards is fair and appropriate.

Arguably, the study's most interesting finding is that there is a lack of agreement in these institutions about what coursework teachers should take.

For instance: In Texas schools, there are six different models for preparing teachers in mathematics. Some require teachers to take math coursework especially designed for teacher-candidates, some to take general college math coursework, others to take a combination of those, and still others to take math-pedagogy classes.

Another example: The number of biology courses required for middle school science preparation ranges from as few as one to as many as nine.

I asked Kate Walsh, the president of NCTQ, to elaborate a bit on this. "There has been an enormous reluctance, and I think it's due to a misguided sense of academic freedom, to specify what it is that teachers need," she said. "That's why I can certainly appreciate the feelings of the ed schools that say, 'Who does NCTQ think it is telling us how much coursework to have?' Because it is such unfamiliar terrain for them."

While definitely critical of the Texas schools as a whole, NCTQ names at least one or two institutions that are exemplars on each standard. It notes, also, that the schools generally do a good job preparing high school teachers in English, history, and math (if not science and social studies).

More to come on this front. NCTQ is working with U.S. News and World Report to do a nationwide look at education schools, for release, they hope, in 2012.

We'll have reaction from education schools as it comes in.

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Like sands through the hourglass! Here's the next installment in some of the top teacher dramas making their way through the newsfeed:

• The Rhode Island Central Falls situation (your favorite noun here, I'm going to go with mess) is going to court, with the teachers' union alleging that the district didn't follow state law and local-bargaining provisions on terminations.

• The District of Columbia's chief financial officer may not certify the tentative D.C. contract over concerns that the district has a shortfall and wouldn't be able to cover its share of the cost of teacher raises, and that the private funding from foundations comes with too many conditions. Bill Turque has the scoop here.

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Sens. Jack Reed, D-R.I., George LeMieux, R-Fla., and Sharrod Brown, D-Ohio, last week introduced a bill to overhaul the definition of "professional development" in the current ESEA. This may seem like peanuts compared with all the wrangling going on about school improvement and accountability, but considering that that definition is supposed to guide spending under Title I (disadvantaged students) and II (teacher quality) in the law, it's a potentially significant move.

The new definition would be much more specific than the former one in spelling out that federally funded professional development must take place during the regular school day and must focus on having teams of educators analyze evidence of student learning and teachers' classroom practices.

The bill would also add a new Part E to Title II of ESEA and authorize $1 billion in formula grants to states and districts. In addition to supporting professional development, they could use the funding to institute comprehensive mentoring programs for new teachers; craft new teacher- and principal-evaluation systems; and create new leadership opportunities for teachers.

On the whole, the bill is similar to one that Reed and other senators introduced back in 2007, but there are a few additions. Of these, the most important is that grantees under the new program would now be required to engage in an evaluation to determine whether the professional development improved student learning, teacher- and principal-retention rates, and teacher performance.

One thing to keep in mind: Bills like this rarely move on their own. They usually advance only as part of a larger package. So it's a good bet that this one will be wrapped into an ESEA bill or added to it as a amendment while in committee or during floor debate.

And here's another question I have: The U.S. Department of Education never made a serious attempt to monitor whether federally funded professional development provided under NCLB aligned to the PD definition in the law. Will it be more inclined to do it if this new definition is approved?

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 12:37 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

You can tick off a few more state-union squabbles about the second round of the Race to the Top.

Indiana officials are no longer moving forward, citing the state union's opposition to the program as a factor. The Colorado Education Association, a supporter of the state's previous Race to the Top bid, now formally opposes a tenure-reform bill that lawmakers want to pass to improve their chances at winning. Support from Minnesota's state union seems unlikely, given disagreements over the teacher sections of the state's plan.

A lack of "collaboration" is the big term of art for why these unions are bowing out, and again I really wish they'd be more specific about what that term's supposed to mean. Obviously there are substantive policy differences between unions and state leaders. So does collaboration mean splitting the baby? Does it mean, shut up and do what we want? Does it mean, give a little on pay, get a little on evaluation?

You'll have to read Michele McNeil's take on whether this is a result of the common (incorrect?) narrative about the importance of "stakeholder buy-in" or just morning-after regret. But it bears watching.

Right on the heels of "musical chairs-gate" in Minnesota, there are some odd public-relations moves going on. In Colorado today, there's a union-sponsored "rally" in Denver for teachers unhappy about the tenure bill. But a union press release says emphatically that it isn't a protest! You will pardon those of us who are too dense to get this apparently significant distinction.

Surely, though, this week's Head-Scratching PR Strategy award has to go to NEA national. Earlier this week, President Dennis Van Roekel released a statement supporting the $23 billion education jobs bill now under discussion, while knocking the Race to the Top:

"Now is not the time for competition," he said. "Competition is a luxury our states should have during a budget surplus, not when they are facing record deficits and slashing jobs. Our children's future should not depend on whether their state or district receives a competitive grant."

Given that Race to the Top is supplemental funding, and that U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is trying to rally support for the jobs bill aimed right at NEA's membership, this cannot have pleased the administration.

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You'd think that people would've learned by now that appearances are nine-tenths of the game in politics.

Strangely, an official of Minnesota's state teachers' union was placed at the same table as legislators at a recent hearing on the state's Race to the Top bid, not with other witnesses. Republicans on the committee flipped out, proclaiming it a sign of the union's undue influence on education policy.

Education Minnesota chief Tom Dooher didn't ask any questions of the lawmakers, according to news reports, and claims that he didn't know where he was to be seated until he arrived in the chamber. Lawmakers, nevertheless, promptly passed a procedural rule to prevent lobbyists from sitting at the same table as legislators.

Awkward stuff because the union has been a key opponent of legislation supported by Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican, to create alternative routes to certification and make the state's alternative Q-Comp compensation system mandatory. The state's RTTT bid largely mirrored that legislation.

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The National Council on Teacher Quality hasn't released its big study of education schools in Texas just yet—it's due out later this month—but traditional prep programs in the Lone Star State are already on the defensive.

News reports about preliminary ratings have been trickling out since last fall. Now, NCTQ has an FAQ up on its Web site to put out its reasoning behind the report, its standards, and the methodology the council used to collect and analyze the information.

"During the process of conducting this study, quite a few schools started to ask questions about about what we were doing and why," said Rich Shea, the communications director for NCTQ and a former executive editor of EdWeek's Teacher Magazine. "We wanted to clear the air before the report comes out. We're trying to be as transparent as possible."

In Texas, around 70 ed school deans have already protested the study, according to this news report. And they object to the fact that the council had students provide some of the materials that were reviewed, such as course descriptions and syllabi. (The council's reviewers also went through the textbooks and readings used in each course.)

But NCTQ's main point, in its FAQ, is that state higher ed accreditation or national accreditation through the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education are not in and of themselves representative of quality.

The council feels that those bodies' standards are not high enough in some areas. Absent any other nationally agreed-upon norm for teacher preparation, it decided to craft its own list of standards. They include:

• Preparing teachers in the five components of "scientifically based reading research" identified by the 2000 National Reading Panel report;
• Preparation in key areas of mathematics such as number operations, algebra, geometry, measurement, and probability; and
• An exit examination stronger than what's generally required by the Praxis II and other common state licensing exams.

Apparently, a lot of the universities the council reviewed didn't agree with these standards, thought that the NCTQ review was too shallow, or wouldn't agree to submit their materials for review.

Some of the initial reviews have garnered attention because of the high profile of those schools. The much-lauded UTeach program at the University of Texas-Austin, for instance, received a low preliminary rating, which prompted this rather sarcastic response.

This isn't the first time NCTQ has been criticized for its methodology. Some researchers and teacher-educators faulted the council's study of preparation in elementary reading instruction for its focus on SBRR. At least one program studied got a grade change.

The fireworks are sure to fly when the final report comes out on April 29. We'll keep you posted.

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So just how much cash does the District of Columbia's school system actually have? Good question, and there's a big interagency fight here in town going on to get to the bottom of it.

You may remember that last year that the district's school system cited a huge budget deficit to justify the layoffs of over 260 educators. The Washington Teachers' Union claimed that the deficit was being contrived by the district, but lost a court case arguing to have those teachers reinstated.

Then, Chancellor Michelle Rhee stunned the D.C. council this week—and incensed the union—by saying that preliminary budget figures from show a $34 million surplus to help fund the performance-pay program in the district's tentative bargaining pact. The WTU took the surplus as further evidence that Rhee contrived the budget cuts, and it is planning to reopen its suit against the district.

Except that there's a new wrinkle: The $34 million surplus doesn't really exist, says D.C.'s chief financial officer, because of overspending in the district's central office. He and Rhee are now engaged in a war of words over the situation.

Clearly, the disappearance of the supposed surplus complicates the WTU's claims that Rhee's been cooking the books in order to force layoffs. But it also seems to jeopardize the public-private funding scheme for the performance-pay program in the tentative contract. After all, if two D.C. agencies can't seem to figure out the state of the district's finances, one can hardly fault folks for wondering if performance-based salary increases will be sustainable.

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The New York Post has the scoop that the city and the United Federation of Teachers plan to announce the closing of the infamous teacher reassignment centers, or "rubber rooms," for teachers accused of malfeasance and incompetence. Teachers will instead report to the central office to perform clerical duties and other assignments.

The Post takes some of the credit for the agreement, but the real nail in the coffin may have been Steven Brill's highly critical piece in the New Yorker last year.

No word yet on the future of that other pool of not-working-but-still-getting-paid teachers, the absent-teacher reserve pool. The ATR was a byproduct of the district's move to a mutual-consent placement system, rather than central slotting, for "excessed" teachers.

It's an interesting question to consider how places like Colorado and the District of Columbia will attempt to head off the creation of things like the ATR as they change seniority and tenure rules.

You can see the footprints in D.C., where the contract now on the table would allow "excessed" teachers 60 days to find a placement and a couple of other options after that (buyout, early retirement, or one year additional time to find work). But after the additional year, it would remove those teachers from the rolls.

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So reports the Boston Globe and this Denver blog.

Interesting politics going on here. Perhaps the American Federation of Teachers Massachussetts feels emboldened by the fact that the two winning RTTT applications both won support from teachers' unions. But on the other hand, it may cost them some political clout: The story quotes one of the legislature's education committee co-chairs, and a Democrat at that, as being very disappointed in the move.

In the first round, Massachusetts had an unusual requirement that all districts get a union signature in order to participate. State leaders are rethinking that requirement this time around, but they're still worried that the lack of union support will scuttle the state's chances. They are apparently going to move forward with an application with or without the union's support.

In Colorado, the Colorado Education Association is upset that state commissioner Dwight Jones is supporting a state senator's bill that would set a definition of teacher effectiveness and make some changes to the state's tenure-granting and dismissal laws.

The union argues that the bill will interfere with the collaborative process for developing such measures and is narrowly focused on boosting the state's scores on only one area of its RTTT application.

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Teachers' pension plans are underfunded to the tune of an eye-popping $933 billion, according to an analysis released this morning by the Manhattan Institute and the Foundation for Educational Choice. That's close to three times more than official state government estimates of these defined-benefit plans' liabilities, the paper states.

The authors attribute the gap to accounting rules for public pensions that permit actuaries to "discount" future obligations based on estimates of how the investments will fare over time. Unlike in private-sector plans, they aren't required to take into account how risky those investments are, and generally assume a strong stock performance. (Private pensions, the authors state, are often discounted at rates close to the yield of high-quality corporate bonds.)

If the market doesn't perform as desired, states will have to meet the gap between projections and actual benefit costs by raising taxes and, potentially, by scaling back other education services to meet the pension obligations. Think larger classes, fewer teachers, and less money for instruction.

The report adjusts the calculations of teacher-pension plans' present liabilities on the basis of discount rates at use in the private sector. It also adjusts them based on the market value of current investments to reflect the last few years of economic downturn.

Based on those calculations, the authors report that the worst-funded plans are in West Virginia, which the study claims is only 31 percent funded, and Illinois, at only 32 percent funded.

Five plans are at least 75 percent funded: teacher plans in New York, Washington state and the District of Columbia, and state retirement systems in North Carolina and Tennessee that include teachers, according to the report.

It lists some recommendations for pension reforms, including the shift to defined-contribution plans and hybrids like a cash-balance plan (see this story for more on those options). But such changes have generally been unpopular among teachers and teachers' unions.

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District of Columbia Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee and Washington Teachers' Union head George Parker have apparently reached agreement on the city's much-awaited and much-delayed collective-bargaining pact. Details will be unveiled at a Wednesday morning press conference.

The Washington Post and the Washington City Paper have some of the initial details. The membership of the Washington Teachers' Union, as well as the D.C. Council, still have to sign off on it before it goes into effect.

I'm holding back on a full writeup until I have the actual language in my hands, but here are some tidbits:

• Rhee's initial red-tier and green-tier pay proposal is gone, but vestiges of that initiative made it into the final contract. Teachers would be allowed to opt into a new performance-based pay program, though they wouldn't have to give up tenure to do so.
• The contract clarifies protections for probationary teachers against "arbitrary and capricious" firings. It would also convene a joint panel to discuss revisions to the IMPACT evaluation system and create a standardized system for reductions-in-force to inject more transparency into the city's contested layoff decisions.
• Salaries would increase by about 21 percent across the board over the five-year life of the contract (the contract is retroactive to 2007) and teachers opting into the performance-pay component could to earn $20,000 or more in additional bonuses.
• Private foundations are poised to give $65 million to support the higher pay, but interestingly, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation isn't one of those foundations.

It's safe to say that this contract will be the subject of intense scrutiny given the last two years of education history in Washington. Rhee's pay proposal back in August 2008 vaulted the district to the top of the national education scene. An amazing amount of press coverage followed.

Fairly or unfairly, the negotiations were often depicted as ground zero for education reform, with the hard-charging Rhee and the equally hard-charging Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, WTU's parent union, cast in dueling roles.

We'll have a full story for you at edweek.org soon, so check back soon.

Posted by Stephen Sawchuk at 11:13 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

By now, I hope you've read my story wrapping up some of the action in Ohio, Delaware, Florida and Maryland to overhaul the system broadly known as tenure. The actual terms differ from place to place, but winning tenure generally means that teachers are granted due-process protections that require extensive documentation of poor performance before they can be dismissed.

At the end of the story, I noted that it's unclear whether other states will follow their lead. As it turns out, just this week we've seen some additional movement in Colorado and Louisiana.

In Colorado, state Sen. Michael Johnston, a Democrat, plans to introduce a bill that would require teachers to be deemed "effective" in three evaluations before receiving tenure. Growth in student test scores would be a significant part of the system, according to this Denver Post story.

It's hard to know what the chances of this measure passing are, especially since it looks like it will take on other hot-button issues like forced teacher placements. But if it did pass, it would presumably supercede the governor's council—created as part of the state's Race to the Top bid—that is supposed to hash out the Centennial State's strategy for teacher evaluation and promoting teacher effectiveness.

Tenure reform can, arguably, be divided into two specific kinds of fixes. On the one hand is the proposal to raise the bar, as I focused on in my recent story, so that only teachers who are effective clear that bar.

On the other hand are reforms to due process itself, so that it's less time consuming to dismiss chronically ineffective teachers with tenure. That seems to be the focus of the bill supported by Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican.

I didn't focus on dismissal in my EdWeek story, but several of the states are looking at it. Delaware code allows teachers with tenure to be dismissed if there is a "pattern of ineffectiveness," usually 2-3 years of ineffective ratings on the state evaluation instrument. Johnston's bill, in Colorado, would also contain a similar provision.

Am I missing any other proposals out there? Write in and tell me.

UPDATED: Ed News Colorado has more information on the Johnston bill, including about how it'll mesh with Gov. Bill Ritter's Educator Effectiveness Council.

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It's long been known that high-poverty, high-minority schools have higher rates of teacher turnover than other schools. But is turnover in such schools always a bad thing? In a new paper out from the National Bureau of Economic Research, economists Eric Hanushek and Steven Rivkin take on the issue and provide some fresh food for thought.

The researchers looked at data from an urban district in Texas from 1995-96 and from 2000-2001 in grades 4 and 8, using a matched teacher-student data set. The district has a whopping 30 percent annual "exit rate" among new teachers and 18 percent among veterans.

The researchers found that, of the "exiting" teachers, those leaving Texas schools entirely and those that sought out another school in the district were on average less effective relative to teachers who stayed in their schools in raising mathematics scores.

But when they sliced and diced the data, they found a much more complex set of factors. When the data were correlated by school type, for instance, the researchers found that the teachers who left low-achieving schools and schools with a higher concentration of black students were less effective, compared with "stayers," than teachers who left higher-achieving schools or those with fewer black students.

The one exception seems to be for novices with but a year of experience under their belts. First-year teachers who change schools or districts were significantly more effective than those who stayed, while veterans who made such switches were significantly less effective.

The findings reverse common narratives about teacher turnover: It appears that high-needs schools aren't systematically losing their best teachers. The authors add, however, that the benefits of losing weak teachers in these schools are offset by the fact that such schools often restaff with new teachers, who generally don't become maximally effective until they've been in the classroom about three years or so.

The paper doesn't take into account the disruption and low morale that seem likely to accompany an always-revolving staff door. Nor could the researchers separate out which teachers left of their own volition and which ones were encouraged or forced to leave by principals.

The bottom line of the study: Turnover in challenged schools isn't always as debilitating as it's made out to be. But the fact that weak teachers tend to leave is hardly a substitute for a human-capital strategy designed to attract teachers, help them become highly effective, and keep them in the schools where they're needed.

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Congressional lawmakers got a recent present in the form of a thick mailing from the National Education Association. It details the union's vision for the reauthorization of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act, i.e., No Child Left Behind.

Your intrepid blogger has read all 170 pages, and the documents largely align to NEA's earlier "positive agenda" for the reauthorization, but are much more detailed and even include sample legislative language. They also underscore just how starkly the NEA's stances on teacher quality and accountability differ from those of the Obama administration's blueprint, as there is nary a reference in this document to "teacher effectiveness" or "school turnarounds."

So, what does the NEA have in mind? The union has long said there's too much testing under the current ESEA, and the documents make clear that the union wants standardized assessments in just two grade spans. That's less than half of what's currently required, and it is even fewer years than required under the 1994 rewrite.

States could also use a variety of assessments and indicators to gauge student progress. They would be required to publish annual school report cards depicting, over the last three years, the growth in student learning during that period toward a target set by the state, progress in closing achievement gaps, and progress in raising high school graduation rates toward a 90 percent target. (This is one part I don't quite understand just yet. How do you have annual report cards if some of the measures aren't administered every year? I hope to have an answer for you after talking with the NEA this morning.)

The indicators would divide schools into three categories, but only those below the 25th percentile on one of the indicators would be subject to interventions. Those interventions would be determined at the local level and would reform the school using "research-based approaches" rather than the restructuring or takeover options now in place. These "priority schools" would also be subject to audits by an external review team. (This section seems to be drawn from the Broader, Bolder school-inspectorate approach to accountability.)

On teacher quality, the NEA says it supports integrating into Title II "most" of the TEACH Act, introduced by Rep. George Miller, which includes funds for induction and career ladders. I suspect that by "most" NEA means it would not support the performance-pay program in the TEACH bill that caused such a ruckus back in 2007.

The union would also disallow teachers still in alternative routes from being deemed "highly qualified" and require all new teachers to have at least 450 hours of clinical fieldwork and pass a performance-based assessment.

The NEA's proposals would also add a variety of new programs and make some legislative changes it's supported in other arenas. Among them, the union would like Congress to:

• Restore the federal class-size-reduction program, including new size stipulations for the upper grades, and establish a national database to track class sizes;
&bull Create a school construction program;
• Add a bunch of targeted school-leader, early-childhood, middle school, and high school programs;
• Increase accountability for charter schools to be certified by the Education Department;
• Create a new program supporting the development of standards, assessments, and professional development to support 21st-century skills, of which the NEA is a strong proponent;
• Repeal the District of Columbia federally funded voucher program; and
• Eliminate federal laws that withhold Social Security benefits from some teachers.

Keep an eye out in particular on the appendices, several of which are basically bills that were introduced in earlier Congresses but never advanced. They could serve as the basis of NEA-supported amendments at the committee level or during floor debate.

And as to the name of the bill, NEA suggests "The Great Public Schools for All Act of 2010." If that sounds familiar, it's because it's basically a riff on NEA's own slogan.

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