March 2011 Archives

Unions are fighting back against bills pending in state legislatures around the nation that seek to curb or eliminate such things as collective bargaining, automatic-dues deduction, or strikes, as I report in this week's edition of Education Week. They're using a variety of tools, which include everything from lobbying to lawsuits.

One aspect I didn't have much space to write about in the story deserves some special attention: efforts in Wisconsin to recall eight Republicans.

Campaign-finance laws forbid dues money from being used for campaigns and elections; they have to come out of PACs, and union sources I spoke to noted that they're only allowed to start using those dollars after all the required signatures are in and the elections are a go. But they are closely watching the action, so expect plenty of PAC dollars if and when the elections come to pass.

And what might the impact of those elections be? Well, as they say on online-dating sites, it's complicated. For one, the law says that officials being recalled have to have served a year, which means that neither Gov. Scott Walker nor the Republicans who swept into office with him are eligible. Then there are the thousands of required signatures to be collected in just 60 days and other procedural hurdles.

Assuming those are met, of the eight Republican senators who are the targets of recall action, three—Dan Kapanke, Alberta Darling, and Randy Hopper—seem to be potentially in danger: They won their elections with less than 52 percent of the vote. Of those, only in Kapanke's district did Gov. Walker do less well than he did statewide in the 2010 election, generally a good indication of how right- or left-leaning a district is.

If all three seats go to recall and flip, and if no Democratic seats are lost (Republicans are trying to recall some Democratic senators, too) the Senate will be majority Democrat. But even then it's not likely that a bill to repeal the collective bargaining law will go through. Why? Because it would probably not pass the Republican-dominated House or be signed into law by Walker.

So if you are the Wisconsin Education Association Council (or the National Education Association or the American Federation of Teachers), why would you put money into an election without an immediate payoff?

"Really the only alternative is to wait until the November 2012 election and mount a massive general-election campaign," said Charles Franklin, a political analyst and polling expert I interviewed.

That will probably happen in any case, and so what the recall really offers is a good trial run for figuring out strategies and messaging that resonate with workers.

Polls in the state show, for instance, that a majority of the public thinks that unions should have public-sector bargaining rights, but a significant number also think public-sector workers should pay more for benefits. Translation: Running on the basis that your existence is at stake probably has a good shot of ringing true with voters, while running on a platform to preserve current benefits is probably riskier.

Franklin cautions that voter turnout is key in these kinds of elections, which usually have low turnouts. So both sides will really be mobilizing if and when they come to pass.

Looking down the road to 2012: Wisconsin isn't really a "red" state, and some of the 2010 Republican victories were relatively small. So shifting the composition of the legislature in 2012 will be a challenge, but not impossible, Franklin said.

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Former D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee says in an op-ed piece that she supports teachers' right to bargain collectively, at least on issues such as wages and professional development.

"Collective bargaining for wages and benefits is not the reason American schools fail. Even in 'right to work' states that do not have collective bargaining, we still see many of the problems that hurt our schools: bureaucratic inertia, red tape limits on parent choice, seniority-based layoffs, and fiscal irresponsibility," Rhee writes in the piece. "Overseas, many countries see teachers' unions drive high standards and expectations for all teachers."

The problem, she asserts, is not bargaining per se; it is when bargaining is used to support things like lockstep pay schedules and seniority, two issues she says aren't in students' interests.

If this isn't exactly evidence of a "softer, gentler" Rhee, it is at least a bit more nuanced than her usual rhetoric. In the piece, for example, she says that district administrators who agree to contracts bear some of the blame for such policies. Unions, she adds, have "every right" to advocate on behalf of their members.

She does reiterate, however, that some issues are not appropriate for bargaining, and that unions should not be "co-managers" of school systems, citing performance evaluations as an example of something that only administrators should get to oversee.

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The number of National Board-certified teachers in "challenging" schools has increased in Washington state, but the growth is largely due to efforts of teachers already located those schools to become certified; comparatively fewer board-certified have chosen to transfer to them, asserts a report that has already drawn criticism from the state teachers' unions and from National Board officials.

The report, from the Center on Reinventing Public Education, comes as Gov. Christine Gregoire has proposed suspending the state's National Board program, which offers base-salary increases of $5,000 to teachers who hold the credential and another $5,000 to those who work in state-designated "challenging" schools.

She has company in other state leaders: As I reported not long ago, several other states, including Georgia, Ohio, and Florida have also looked at scaling back support for National Board certification.

Among the report's findings: Only about 1 percent of NBCTs transferred to challenging schools since 2007-08, and that the teachers were no more likely to stay in such schools than other teachers.

Critics, however, noted that a report from the state's professional-standards board, found that between 4 percent and 10 percent of NBCTs each year moved. And, it also found that board certified teachers had higher retention rates in those schools.

It is not entirely clear why the two analyses differ on these points, since they appear to draw on similar data sets.

In any case, supporters of the program say that the CRPE report essentially misses the point. "There is no language in the current law about NBCTs 'switching schools' to get the bonus," said Nancy Schwartz, a regional director for NBPTS, in an e-mail. "The overall goal is simply to increase the number of NBCTs in the state's neediest schools and, most importantly, keep them there."

Is there a difference in quality between those teachers who transfer to these schools versus those who are already in them? That's a good question without many good answers at the moment. Quite a few studies, including a much-cited one from 2008 from a National Research Council panel have concluded that the board-certification process identifies good teachers. But the empirical research is mixed about whether the process itself actually improves one's teaching. (For what's it's worth, most teachers I've spoken to think that they became better teachers because of the process.)

Some of the growth in NBCTs located in challenged schools is simply a result of the expanding designation, the analysis notes, a finding that echoes the state report.

The CRPE analysis seems to have caused some concern in Washington state, and given the budget crunch and Gov. Gregoire's plans, it's not hard to see why.

Arguably, though, all of this debate misses the policy issues laid out in the earlier state report (see p. 7 of the executive summary): Despite increases in "challenging" schools, small, rural schools in the state continue to struggle to attract (or create) board-certified teachers, and the process is an individual one, not connected to other school improvement efforts.

Such findings also reflect the issue that's become NBPTS' biggest policy challenge over the years: What is the best way to deploy these teachers?

The group's early efforts were focused on just getting as many teachers certified as possible, but lately it has put more attention into creating cohorts of board-certified teachers in schools.

And this is all part of the larger discussion about the "equitable distribution of teachers." After all, research indicates that there are already some great teachers in challenging schools. But what's the best way to keep them there, to grow a cohort of colleagues committed to improvement? Are transfers part of the answer? Is it leadership, working conditions, pay incentives, or some combination of all these factors?

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Minority teachers tend to take licensing exams later in their academic or professional careers than their white peers, findings that could partly explain their lower scores on the tests and lower passing rates, according to a report released this morning by the Educational Testing Service and the National Education Association.

The study suggests candidates who take the tests earlier in their career, regardless of race, tend to do better on it, and that efforts to improve the knowledge and skills of minority teacher candidates therefore need to begin early.

The report is a product of the two organizations' attempts to analyze why the teaching profession seems to have a hard time attracting minority candidates. Everyone from the teachers' unions to U.S. Secretary of Arne Duncan have acknowledged that the paucity of minority-race teachers is a problem, especially as the country grows more diverse every year. In addition, some research points to achievement gains when students are taught by teachers of the same race.

According to the report, about 41 percent of the public school student population belong to ethnic or racial minorities, but minorities make up only about 16 percent of the teaching force.

For the analysis, the report drew on demographic information supplied by some 300,000 test-takers who took ETS' Praxis I (basic skills) or II (content and pedagogy) test between 2005 and 2009. (The race and ethnic data are self-reported, and as a colleague reminded me this morning, the categories in the report, like "Hispanic" and "White," are in real life not mutually exclusive. Just something to keep in mind.)

It found that mean scores and passing rates on the Praxis I and 12 different Praxis II tests are lower for African-American, Hispanic, Asian and Native-American test takers than for white candidates. The gap is especially large between white and African-American candidates.

Of particular interest, non-white candidates tended to do somewhat better on the essay questions than on the multiple-choice ones on the Praxis I. But on the content tests, they had a harder time with the essay questions. The report also found that higher GPAs correlated to higher passing scores.

In sum, the report said that faculty should start early on to try to remedy deficiencies in minority teachers' skills and knowledge.

The report also includes the results from several one-day visits to teacher preparation programs that serve a large proportion of minority teacher candidates. The most consistent finding from interviews with faculty, the report notes, was that candidates struggled in the programs because they had not mastered skills in their P-12 education.

All that said, it's worth asking just how great a teacher quality measure these tests are in general. A few other researchers have found that, while there appears to be some signal of teacher effectiveness in these tests, they're not a terribly precise indicator of "effectiveness" as defined by value-added performance in the classroom. (All the usual caveats about value-added, test scores, etc., apply here.) That is, some teachers who do well on licensing tests seem mediocre on value-added measures, while others who seem to be really effective could get screened out based on where the state set the test cut-score.

The Obama administration has hoped to attract more minorities through its Teach.gov recruiting portal, and it's also looking at the teacher-training aspect. In its FY 2012 budget request, the administration proposed funding a program for teacher training at minority-serving institutions, the Hawkins Centers of Excellence, at $40 million.

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Teachers and parents hold rather different opinions about aspects of the debate over teacher quality, such as whether student growth ought to be a key part of measuring teacher effectiveness, according part two of the annual MetLIfe Survey of the American Teacher, released this morning.

In all, 92 percent of parents thought using measurements of teacher effectiveness that include student growth was a priority for improving teacher quality, but only 69 percent of teachers surveyed felt the same. The two groups also disagreed about whether this was a top priority or something that should be done only as a lower priority: 56 percent of parents said it was "one of the highest priorities," but only 27 percent of teachers did.

The two groups also differed about whether schools should have more latitude to remove teachers who are "not serving teachers well": 39 percent of teachers said this should be a top priority, while 75 percent of parents did.

As usual, it's hard to parse exactly what's beneath the surface in these findings. Teachers are the target of these kinds of reforms, so perhaps this shows that they are more aware—and more cautious—than parents about the complicated nature of evaluations and incorporation of student growth. (The survey doesn't specifically define student growth as test scores versus other measures.)

I do wonder, though, whether these findings would look different if there were something in here about professional development. After all, policy experts and practitioners alike say that the point of these evaluation systems shouldn't be (or shouldn't only be) about separating the "good" from the "bad"—they should also be part of a system for improving teachers' skills. And, it's gone largely unnoticed, but American Federation of Teachers folks almost always refer to a "teacher-development and -evaluation system," not merely an evaluation system.

I also wonder what you'd find out if you asked teachers where they would put "more parental engagement" on their list of priorities, a question that was not on this year's survey. As the scrutiny has increased on teachers, I've listened to more than one bemoan a lack of parental attention to issues like early-reading development or discipline.

The survey measured responses from 1,000 public school teachers in grades 6-12 and about 600 parents of students in those grades.

The report also has results for other topics, such as differentiation for students with different abilities and backgrounds. Anthony Rebora over at EdWeek's Teacher magazine outlines some of them.

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Teacher observations under District of Columbia's IMPACT teacher-evaluation system have been performed with relative consistency, but they only correlate modestly to value-added measures, according to a report released this morning by the Aspen Institute, a Washington-based policy group.

In addition, with about 82 percent of the teaching force in the bottom two categories of effectiveness under the system, the district should redouble efforts to use the system and the information it generates to help teachers improve, the report says.

(The group is releasing two other papers on teacher evaluation today, so make sure to check out all of them.)

If you're coming to IMPACT for the first time, read these two pieces for some background information on how the system works, because we're digging right into this report today. The basics: Each teacher gets five observations, three by an administrator and two by a content-expert "master teacher"; those ratings are coupled with a student-growth component.

For one, few systems have been subject to this level of scrutiny. In D.C., it is partly because of former schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee's goals for linking IMPACT both to dismissals and to a bonus-pay system. High stakes indeed.

The system has received praise from some teachers who view it as more relevant (if tougher) than the prior system, but it's also been attacked by critics for "deprofessionalizing" or taking professional judgment out of teaching and observations. IMPACT is also one of the first operational systems to include value-added data as one criterion in the evaluation, certainly a very contentious topic in our field these days.

This report is a veritable treasure trove of data about IMPACT. For instance, D.C. principals tended to rate teachers high on engagement with students, and low on asking open-ended questions to gauge students' critical thinking. And their ratings were, in general, very close to those given by the "master educators" with little variation, suggesting that training and calibration is pretty good overall. In fact, the report notes, most of the scoring is pretty high, with scores at about 3 on the system's 1-to-4 scale for each standard. The report also says that fewer than 1 percent of teachers had widely divergent scores, despite allegations of subjectivity.

Second, the report finds that the classroom-based observations and the individual value-added measures are correlated, but not all that strongly. Ideally you'd want improvements in teaching practices, as measured by the observations, to correlate to improvements in student outcomes, so that achievement goes up as teachers are more skilled. The report found a correlation of 0.34 between the two.

On the other hand, could these findings perhaps mean that the two measures—observations and value-added—are picking up different performance information? See the latter half of this blog item for some discussion of this tricky issue of correlations.

These are important data: Policymakers and practitioners alike have said that evaluation systems have to be carefully calibrated if they're to be used for high-stakes purposes.

The report also profiles how D.C. officials put together IMPACT, as well as its somewhat bumpy rollout. Among other things, teachers and even some principals protested the fact that there was no pilot for the system and that improvements were being made even as the system was used for accountability. And as I've noted before, many teachers didn't trust the "master educators," who were selected only by the central office.

Another point worth noting: D.C. officials have already made some changes to the observation protocol, such as reducing the number of standards and loosening some of the language to be less specific (i.e., observers no longer have to check to make sure "four out of four" students know the objective of the lesson being taught).

Some additional interesting findings: In interviews, master teachers said they found that the system has helped to standardize performance expectations across the district, giving teachers and principals a "common language" for discussing the craft of teaching.

The interviews found areas of concern, too. Some principals were concerned about the rigor of the teaching standards. They worried that the system didn't focus enough on content-specific strategies or about specific teaching skills. (EdWeek's recent professional-development special report dug a bit into these issues, so make sure to check that out.) In interviews with teachers, some liked IMPACT's targets, some felt they needed more examples of performance at different skill levels, and some felt it was biased, lockstep, or unfair.

The report is particularly interesting coming in the wake of a Washington Post story last week that got a lot of deserved attention. In that story, the reporter profiled an interaction between one classroom teacher and one master teacher.

The story concludes with the master teacher offering some help with planning that the classroom teacher seems to eschew.

It's an interesting exchange, given that, as this report notes, the Washington Teachers' Union was careful to limit interaction between the master teachers, who were seen as administrators, and the classroom-based teaching coaches provided to schools for professional development.

Given the lack of trust between the union and the district, that separation is perhaps not surprising. But it seems to also have had the consequences of making the professional development provided by coaches less relevant to IMPACT's goals and targets.

Another finding from the report: Teachers felt it was harder to get high scores on IMPACT in troubled schools. The report has no data on this topic, but elsewhere it's been reported that a higher proportion of "highly effective" teachers are located in the city's wealthier—and more heavily white—northwest quadrant than in other areas.

This was also an important subtext of the WaPo story: The classroom teacher profiled had a class with kids who were several grade levels behind, so his lessons plans didn't always stay on schedule.

The president of the local teachers' union, Nathan Saunders, has said repeatedly that the system needs to do a better job of accounting for poverty and school context.

D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray has also suggested that changes to the IMPACT system might be in order. His transition team is reportedly taking a close look at IMPACT, too. Odds are that we have not heard the last of the changes to this system.

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With all of the bills out there to curb collective bargaining and tenure for teachers, I'm beginning to wonder if we'll see more news stories in a vein similar to this one from Idaho or this one out of Wisconsin.

The articles focus on teachers considering early (or earlier) retirement as a result of the uncertainty the bills in those two states are causing for those teachers.

It's also possible that such changes could also affect who decides to enter the teaching profession as well.

The Idaho story quotes from one superintendent who worries these changes will make the profession less attractive to new teachers. It's not hard to see why that's a concern, when you consider the combination of less union representation and job security. Will that make it harder for the systems to find new teachers—or, at least, teachers who want to stay in the systems for a long time?

On the other hand, the possibility of earning higher pay in Idaho and Florida, under new performance pay plans that accompany the respective bargaining and tenure bills in each state, might encourage a different set of folks to enter the profession.

As the profession continues to be reshaped, these are important issues to consider. Readers, what do you think?

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By guest blogger Liana Heitin

Here in New York at the International Summit on the Teaching Profession, education leaders from 16 nations came to the roundtable (literally, it was a large one) to share ideas and experiences on how to improve teaching. But while participants spoke in broad terms about improving the profession, they offered few concrete policy ideas for doing so.

The event included representatives from the usual players when it comes to international comparisons, including Finland, Singapore, and Canada. Several countries that have not commonly been part of the conversation also participated, including Estonia, Slovenia, Poland, and China. Even Japan, ravaged by the recent earthquake and tsunami, was in attendance. (An inside source said the ministers slept in their offices to make sure they didn't miss their flights.)

As expected from a series of reports released concurrent with the meeting, the mantra among participants was to "raise the status of the profession." When asked what this meant in practical terms during a press conference, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan responded that in many other countries "teachers are revered. Only the top talent is alowed to enter the profession. And the entire communities rally around teachers."

Secretary General of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Angel Gurria, said "not only is it possible" to improve the profession's status, "but it's being done in other countries." He pointed to China as one of the countries with the most rapidly improving PISA scores, saying the U.S. can learn from that turnaround model.

In all, much of the rhetoric served as a reproach to those U.S. governors who are working to pass legislation stripping unions of their collective bargaining rights. Duncan, flanked by American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten and National Education Association president Dennis Van Roekel, said he is "deeply troubled by that movement," and that "teacher voice" is a necessary part of transforming an education system.

"In Finland, Singapore, and South Korea, what you see is amazing collaboration, amazing trust...and that unions can be a part of that," he said.

In an interview, Van Roekel said, "It's obvious to the people here that high-performing countries without exception have strong unions. You have to have strong collaboration with whoever is implementing the policies."

When asked if lower performing countries have collective bargaining, he said he didn't know. "I think we have good unions in America, but we're not in the top," he said.

The discussions themselves were not open to the media, but the rapporteurs and country representatives offered summit takeaways at an open-press wrap-up session.

Several countries echoed the need to improve leadership, make the profession more attractive, collaborate with unions, and further strengthen professional development.

Ben Levin, Professor and Canada Reseach Chair in Education Leadership and Policy at the University of Toronto said the "big takeaway is that heightening teachers' professional skill and knowledge is the central challenge we have." He also said that teaching must be an occupation that "ordinary people can do well."

There was also a bit of self-congratulation about this being the the first such international summit. Susan Hopgood, president of Education International, an international network of teachers' unions, said the summit should serve as a "springboard for a global forum," and evidence that education should be a priority at the G-20.

Duncan said he might host the summit again next year, and that the Netherlands was considering hosting in 2013.

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Last year, a bill that would have eliminated tenure for new hires in Florida and required districts to pay teachers based on how well they perform went down with a gubernatorial veto.

How things can change in just a year: A very similar measure is now all but a done deal in the Sunshine State.

The bill, S.B. 736, passed the House today by a straight party-line vote and needs only Gov. Rick Scott's signature before it becomes law. He's already expressed support for the measure.

It is very similar to one that passed the legislature last year—so similar, in fact, that critics have called it "Son of Six" as a reference to last year's S.B. 6, which was vetoed by then-Gov. Charlie Crist.

Among other things, S. 736:

• Requires 50 percent of a teacher's evaluation to be based on state standardized tests or other national, local, or industry measures for those subjects not gauged at the state level;
• Requires evaluations to consider four levels of teacher performance;
• As of July 1 of this year, ends the awarding of "continuing" and "professional service" contract status (the Florida equivalent of tenure) and puts all new teachers on annual contracts;
• Permits districts to extend annual contracts only to teachers with good evaluations; those with two "unsatisfactory" ratings in a row, or two "needs improvement" ratings within a three-year period, could not be renewed;
• "Grandfathers" in teachers who now have tenure but allows them to be dismissed for the performance reasons stated above;
• Requires districts to establish performance-based salary schedules by July 1, 2014, for all new hires, and to phase existing teachers onto the new schedules as student-growth measures are developed; and
• Does away with layoffs based on reverse seniority.

There are a few provisions in here that seem to nod at professional development, such as a line that allows districts to consider peer assistance- and -review programs. But that's clearly not enough to garner support from teachers' unions, who wanted to stop the tenure-elimination and merit-pay provisions, period.

The Florida Education Association has already indicated that it plans to file a lawsuit to try to revoke or block the bill once it has been signed into law.

A number of issues remain to be hashed out about this legislation once it goes into effect.

For one, Florida has just one district in the state that has an extensive testing system of the kind envisioned in this bill and that has taken steps to align teacher evaluation and pay systems with such a system. But in that district, Hillsborough County, the testing system wasn't the result of a mandate. Instead, the assessments were the end-product of a close working relationship spanning 25 years between the district and the local teachers' union on the development of curricula and standards.

There is also a matter of costs. Leaving aside the expense of moving to a performance-pay system, creating lots of new tests and doing it well is not a particularly cheap or easy venture. And Gov. Scott has made it clear he wants to reduce state spending on K-12 education.

Republicans, normally considered more stingy with the purse, nevertheless were the force behind this legislation. Conversely, Democrats have criticized it for its potential costs. One local news story from the Orlando Sentinel outlines a lot of those tensions and quotes a Democratic lawmaker as saying that the measure "is the mother of all unfunded mandates."

FEA President Andy Ford blasted the bill in a statement. "Despite the mantra about local control and less government we hear from lawmakers, this bill reduces a school district's flexibility and authority over teacher evaluations, pay schedules and working conditions," he said. "This bill gives new power and authority to the Florida Department of Education and the Legislature. It's not good for students, it's not good for teachers and it's not grounded in sound research."

On the other hand, Republican lawmakers, as well as state Commissioner of Education Eric Smith, praised it.

"This legislation is special because it elevates the teaching profession to the esteemed level it deserves and provides us with opportunities to highlight effective teachers while promoting improvement in those who are less effective," Smith said in a statement.

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By guest blogger Liana Heitin

Two reports released today in conjunction with the International Summit on the Teaching Profession in New York highlight the lessons the United States can take from other countries' reform efforts.

The United States should make teaching more attractive by raising the status of the profession, write Andreas Schleicher, the director of education for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and Steven L. Paine, a vice president at CTB/McGraw-Hill and a former West Virginia schools superintendent. And like other high-performing OECD countries, they write, the U.S. should invest in preparing high-quality teachers, establish common educational standards (as it's on the way to doing with the common-core movement), and develop effective school leaders.

That report, titled "What the U.S. Can Learn From the World's Most Successful Education Reform Efforts," emphasizes that PISA scores are not a reflection of spending. "Only Luxembourg spends more money per capita on its students than the U.S., both persistently less-than-stellar performers, and U.S. spending patterns vary widely from those of more successful education countries." The United States is one of only four OECD countries that spend less per student at economically disadvantaged schools than at more-affluent schools, the report states.

A second report, from the Alliance for Excellent Education and the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education, looks to Finland, Singapore, and Ontario, Canada, for "lessons" and comes away with some of the same conclusions.

Those three high-performing jurisdictions get "the right people" into teaching and prepare them well, make the profession attractive, provide ongoing teacher support, and develop high-quality leadership, according to Linda Darling-Hammond, a Stanford University professor and co-director of the center, and Robert Rothman, a senior fellow at the alliance, who edited "Teacher and Leader Effectiveness: Lessons Learned From High-Performing Education Systems."

International comparisons are becoming plentiful. (See previous Education Week coverage of PISA results and McKinsey & Co. reports on global reform efforts and teacher recruiting.) So what's new here? As of now, it's hard to tell. But I'll be headed to New York tomorrow to catch the bit of the summit that's open to the news media. The U.S. Department of Education, which is convening the summit, says it has invited education ministers from around the world, teachers, union leaders, and members of the Council of Chief State School Officers.

Here's what I'm hoping to find out:

• What exactly does it mean to "raise the status of the profession?" What does that look like in practice? Have other countries been successful in doing this?

• How far does increasing teacher pay go toward raising the profession's status? Is that a good place to start?

• Can these sorts of "lessons" be implemented at the federal level? Or are they meant to be heeded by individual states?

• How can the U.S. reallocate spending to be more in line with the highest-performing countries?

• Will efforts to limit teachers' collective bargaining rights, such as those in Wisconsin and Idaho, affect America's ability to elevate the profession?

What else would you like these international education leaders to comment on?

Posted by Liana Heitin at 4:20 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Make time to check out a great collection of Commentary pieces on Teach For America's 20th anniversary that appear in this week's Education Week.

TFA has been a high-profile and controversial part of the education scene for a long enough time that its impact is felt not just in classrooms, but increasingly in key leadership positions. With that in mind, this package was carefully assembled by our Commentary editors to include perspectives ranging from TFA's founder Wendy Kopp, to critics, to alumni and former corps members who stayed in the K-12 education space.

Despite the recent loss of its federal $18 million annual earmark, TFA has had record numbers of applicants and placements in recent years. Debates about the program's effectiveness continue, but interest in other aspects of the program, like its recruitment and professional-development system, is also growing.

The bottom line: For now, this program is here to stay, so get caught up on what people are saying about it. Then let us know what you think.

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A bill awaiting Utah Gov. Gary R. Herbert's signature would do away with layoffs in the order of reverse seniority, otherwise known as last-in-first-out or "LIFO" layoffs.

Earlier versions of the bill were more specific about prioritizing teachers deemed low-performing for cuts, but the one that actually made it to the desk of the governor, a Republican, merely bars districts from using seniority as the default criteria for layoffs. Instead, districts would be required to consider employee performance evaluations and schools' "personnel needs" in making such decisions.

Wondering what other states have done away with LIFO policies? Arizona has barred them since 2009; Colorado and Oklahoma lawmakers did away with them last year; and in the District of Columbia, local code and a new contract require performance as a major factor, though seniority can be considered. On the the other hand, 14 states require LIFO policies at the moment. The New Teacher Project, a critic of LIFO policies, has a graphic about all this in a recent policy brief.

The fate of LIFO is an immediate issue in New York state, where a bunch of different proposals are floating around, but none has yet been approved by the legislature, as I reported in this week's edition of Education Week.

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From guest blogger Nirvi Shah:

Along with President Barack Obama , the NEA and AFT are launching their own programs to address bullying. The NEA's "Bully-Free: It Starts With Me" asks teachers to sign a pledge that says they will listen to bullied students who approach you and take action to stop the bullying. The AFT's "See A Bully -- Stop a Bully" involves posters and wristbands for teachers that provide a signal to students that they can talk to the person wearing one about being bullied.

At Thursday's conference at the White House addressing the issue, AFT President Randi Weingarten said the bullying problem hit home for her when she gave a speech a few years ago in New York, in which she publicly stated she was gay. After the speech, students who had been taunted for their sexual orientation or had been hiding it for fear of being harassed, flocked to her, some in tears.

"You have given visibility to me," she remembered them telling her. You "allow me to be out."

She said her organization has ordered 20,000 of the rubber bracelets. She told the story at a break-out session of the conference that included the parents of Ty Field, an 11-year-old from Oklahoma who killed himself last year after being bullied.

She gave Ty's father, Kirk Smalley, one of the bands. He gave her one in return that read "I am somebody."

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New York City's now defunct schoolwide performance-pay program didn't increase student learning in any statistically meaningful way, according to a new study by Harvard University economist Roland Fryer. And a large majority of the schools decided to allocate their pay bonuses to all teachers evenly, rather than using some other set of criteria to recognize specific teachers' contributions.

The study looks at the three years of the program, which ran from 2007 through 2010. It uses a randomized experiment with about 200 schools, comparing the results from a "treatment" group of schools participating in the pay plan to a "control" group that didn't implement it.

The findings may sound familiar: They're similar to an earlier study that drew on the school randomization Fryer helped set up for research purposes. Teacher Beat reported on that study back in February. The program required a team at the school to allocate awards for hitting performance targets, and since you can read all about those details in the prior item, I won't repeat it here.

Other findings from this latest study: The program didn't raise test scores at all and may have slightly depressed middle school scores in the participating schools. The impact of the incentives on student attendance, behavior, course grades, regents test scores, and high school graduation were negligible, Fryer writes. And it did not seem to affect teacher behavior either, as measured by retention rates in the school or the district; absenteeism; or teacher perception of the learning environment.

Finally, more than 80 percent of school teams rewarded the same bonus amount to nearly all the teaching staff in the schools, meaning that in practice these bonuses operated less like a performance pay system and more like a simple raise.

The paper includes a discussion of possible explanation for the lack of effects. One hypothesis Fryer lays out is that the incentive scheme, like others in the United States, may have been too ambiguous in its goals and complex in its means to effect a change in teachers' behavior.

One important addition: This was a costly experiment for New York City taxpayers, for several reasons. The program itself was expensive, costing on the order of about $75 million over its duration. And it will continue to be costly, because the program, put in place in 2007, was made as part of a deal with the United Federation of Teachers. The district's tradeoff was in allowing teachers who agreed to pay a minimal amount toward their pensions to retire with full benefits five years earlier.

Of course, there have been moves to curb public pensions lately. But generally that's a tall order for poliycmakers, partly because pensions are legally viewed as property in some state laws. The moral of the story: Performance pay is temporary, but a pension is pretty much forever.

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As I report in this week's edition of Education Week, the U.S. Department of Education has put some markers in the FY 2012 budget request signaling where it wants to go on changes to university-based systems of teacher education.

In my story, I wrote about the proposed changes to the data collection on teacher colleges, part of the Higher Education Act. The administration would like to emphasize output-based measures like surveys of districts and the performance of newly minted teachers in the classroom.

And I reported on a proposed $185 million grant program, the Presidential Teaching Fellows, which would subsidize high-quality teacher-candidates in top-tier programs. States, working together, could establish a portable license for highly effective teachers. The idea is similar to this proposal and to another one that Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet has promoted to create a "presidential teacher corps."

The grant program is, of course, dependent on getting a congressional authorization as well as funding from appropriators.

Finally, there's a third piece to all this in the budget that I didn't have space to write about in this story: The administration has proposed funding the Hawkins Centers of Excellence Program, which was created in 2008 with the rewrite of the HEA, but never got funded or implemented.

Don't remember this program? You're not alone. Hundreds of programs exist on paper, but never get funding. But it comports fairly well with the administration's other priorities for teacher education.

Under the budget proposal, the administration proposes giving grants to minority-serving institutions that prepare teachers who partner with districts or a nonprofit organization. Among other things, it would prioritize for funding teacher preparation programs that:

• Raised their selectivity/entry or exit standards;
• Provided extensive training in "evidenced-based methods of reading instruction;"
• Required a year-long clinical student-teaching experience for candidates;
• Created a system for tracking program graduates; and
• Required at least a bachelor of arts or science, in addition to education coursework.

In the budget justifications, the administration notes that this program would help expand the pool of effective minority educators, who are underrepresented as K-12 teachers.

The proposed $40 million pales in comparison to the $185 million for the Presidential Teaching Fellows program, but all it needs to operate is for Congress to open its pocketbook—though, of course, that's no small hurdle these days.

When I spoke to the Education Department's Michael Dannenberg, whose portfolio includes teacher ed. issues, he highlighted all three levers at the administration's disposal used to craft these ideas.

"You have a group of tools being used here—regulatory, legislative, and budget," he said. "To date, the secretary's tool has been the bully pulpit. We're looking to use additional tools."

There's truth in that, when you consider that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has, on the one hand, admonished teacher ed.; and on the other hand, praised some of its ideas, like the report recently put out by a panel convened by a teacher education accreditation body.

There is no gain without pain in these uncertain times, and the budget includes casualties for teacher education in order to make room for these new proposals.

They include consolidating funding for the Teacher Quality Partnerships program, which helps groups of districts, nonprofits, and universities improve teacher training, and eliminating the TEACH grant program in favor of the fellows initiative. TEACH helps subsidize teacher training for candidates who promise to work in high-need schools, but the grant converts to a loan if candidates don't meet their commitments.

Readers, what do you make of all of these new proposals?

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Former Teach For America executive vice president for public affairs Kevin Huffman was today named the new commissioner of education in Tennessee, according to a press release from the state's governor, Bill Haslam.

The one-time Mr. Michelle Rhee served at TFA in several positions. He's an alumnus of the program and served as a bilingual teacher in first and second grades. And, he's the first TFA graduate to become a state superintendent.

As commissioner, Huffman will help implement the state's $500 million winning Race to the Top bid, including its new teacher-evaluation system.

TFA has about 250 teachers in Tennessee.

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Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton is close to approving a bill that would permit participants in new alternative routes to teach on limited two-year licenses without going through traditional preparation programs.

Under the terms of the bill, districts or charter schools, in combination with a nonprofit-, university- or college-based board-approved teacher-preparation program, would be permitted to open these routes.There are a few caveats in the bill, such as a requirement that participants have 200 hours of intensive preparation before entering the classroom. Teachers would also have to be evaluated by the district or charter school to be recommended for a standard license.

The state's failure to approve alternative routes has been cited as one of the reasons it didn't win a cut of funds under the federal Race to the Top money, which encouraged states to open up alternative teaching routes.

Not surprisingly, critics of the bill have charged that it would water down teaching standards and facilitate the placement of untrained teachers in challenging school environments. And the legislation is pretty skeletal, so it is hard to pinpoint exactly what supporters want to accomplish with it: To improve selections at districts? Get more teachers in specific subjects? Put a squeeze on teacher ed. programs?

Education Minnesota President Tom Dooher has been critical of the bill in news reports, noting that there are teachers who are already certified (and that the union presumably represents) who don't have teaching positions.

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By guest blogger Ross Brenneman

The National Governors Association's 2011 Winter Meeting (or if you work inside the Beltway, "State Awareness Week") closed on Monday with a plenary session on education led by Bill Gates.

The Microsoft founder's advocacy of teacher merit pay is well known, but he also used his NGA platform to advance another use of teacher effectiveness: determining class size.

Under the Gates model, outlined briefly in a Washington Post op-ed published the morning of his speech, a school's most-effective teachers would be given an additional four to five students, so the best teachers would teach more students. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation ran a study in 2008 suggesting that 83 percent of teachers would support increasing their class sizes for additional compensation.

Gates added that less-effective teachers could then work with smaller classes and receive professional development—or, he explained, they could find a more appropriate profession.

Pegging class size to effectiveness is not a new idea. In 2009, the Goldwater Institute released a report that also argued for tying teacher effectiveness to a higher student-teacher ratio (and a higher salary).

But the endorsement by Gates, reinforced by his NGA presentation, will presumably push the class-size proposal into mainstream thought, given the level of support shown him by his primary audience.

"You're the ultimate example of why capitalism works," proclaimed Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat.

The governors peppered Gates with both praise and questions, the latter tending to take the form of, "Can you fix my state's problems?"

In a post-plenary interview, Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, a Republican, said Gates made "a lot of sense."

"All of our students have to read at a grade-appropriate level," Fallin said. She noted that Oklahoma has embraced a pay-for-performance model, and that "social promotion" of teachers needs to end.

Yet while Gates has advocated for tying salary to teacher effectiveness, North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue, a Democrat, pointed out that no actual standard of what constitutes teacher effectiveness exists.

Now that all but seven states have adopted the Common Core State Standards Initiative, which was spearheaded by the NGA and the Council of Chief State School Officers, Perdue suggested that designing a national teacher evaluation system is the NGA's next logical step.

"I hoped very quickly to join the other governors on a common evaluation system so we all know where we're going, rather than spending the hundreds of millions of dollars we're spending in-between states on ... evaluation," Perdue said.

While Gates demurred on any specifics of an effectiveness model, he agreed that it was a "key priority."

"Right now, because you don't have a measure, so many things don't operate," Gates said. "Your schools of education aren't motivated to do anything spectacular, because they don't have a measure that would tell them 'doing this is good, doing this is not good.' "

If any of the governors disagreed with Gates, they didn't take the opportunity to debate him. Only 19 governors actually attended the plenary event, and the bipartisan group seemed largely supportive of Gates, indicating that the NGA will continue developing his proposals when they next meet this summer in Utah.

Ross Brenneman is an intern at Education Week

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