December 2011 Archives

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This year, the gloves came off, as teachers faced unprecedented attacks on our right to collective bargaining, as well as continued attempts to tie our pay and job security to test scores. Some of these attacks were blatant, as in Wisconsin, but most were veiled behind a cloak of rhetoric about education reform. Today I want to review some of the posts that attempted to bell the corporate education reform cat.

I started the year taking on Eric Hanushek, the Hoover Institute economist whose theories inform Michele Rhee and Bill Gates. I wrote this, titled Battling the Bad Teacher Bogeyman:

Leaders like Hanushek systematically lead us away from real solutions that they have decided society is unwilling to contemplate. His views are guiding the education "reformers" - you will hear him cited by Bill Gates, Michelle Rhee and Arne Duncan. Reducing class size is too expensive. Likewise quality pre-school, libraries, dental care, health care, nutrition, etc. They actively ignore the many things along these lines that their chosen role model, Finland, has done. Simply offer a bonus for higher test scores, fire the bottom five percent, and you have the perfect combination of carrot and stick. And vilify anyone, especially our teachers' unions, that say this is not the best way to improve our schools, by accusing them of protecting bad teachers.

Later that month, I took a closer look at the platform advanced by Michelle Rhee's new organization, in this post: Rhee's Plan, Students (Test Scores) First!

It is bizarre to portray this as a way of elevating the teaching profession. Under the system Rhee describes, teachers will be subject to annual reviews based on their test scores, and if these scores are unsatisfactory, teachers can be dismissed. In the absence of due process protections, an administrator can use test data to "prove" that one is "ineffective" and that is the end of your career. As has been recently shown, the "value added" methods used for these purposes are highly unreliable, and are likely to result in many good teachers being mislabeled as ineffective.

I hardly needed to do much work to uncover what Jonah Edelman's Stand For Children has been up to - he laid it all out for us in a video that should be closely viewed by anyone who doubts that advocates for corporate reform are actively coordinating their efforts. But I made sure my readers saw it, in this post, Jonah Edelman Reveals Corporate Education "Reform" at Work in Illinois.

A subsequent interview with Diane Ravitch about the Edelman video led to a request from the director of Teach Plus that we not judge her program so harshly. I offered her a chance to address my readers, but she failed to respond after I posted this critical look, Teach Plus, Astroturf in Indiana?

First, we have a heavily funded group bringing forward teachers to reinforce their policy perspective. This creates the appearance of widespread support for practices which are highly controversial within our profession.

Second, Teach Plus has embraced the practice of widespread staff firings as a wise strategy for school improvement. Experience and research do not show this to be effective. On the contrary, this takes our most challenged schools and subjects them to further trauma and disruption, to no good end.

Third, Teach Plus has attempted to create policy that would shield "promising young teachers" from the brunt of these firings. There is a great deal of evidence that teacher effectiveness, on a wide range of indicators - not just test scores - increases as teachers gain experience. Why should we embrace policies that favor "promising young teachers," many of whom may be interns who have only a two-year long commitment to the classroom, over more experienced teachers?

Fourth, the law that resulted from this lobbying by Stand For Children and Teach Plus mandates that test scores be a significant part of teacher evaluation, and does away with the professional advisory board that informs the legislature about these issues.

I carried quite a few stories related to Teach For America, including reviews of research, and commentaries from one former TFAer, and another, as well as coverage of concerns raised by civil rights groups over the concentration of poorly prepared teachers in high poverty schools. This last led to a post titled The Dialogue Heats Up over Teach For America, where I wrote:

Current education policy does not seem concerned about the issue of stability and retention, especially at our low performing schools. There is an attitude of disrespect towards teachers who work there, as if they are the reason for the low performance of their students, and thus we are better off with a situation that churns the staff. Many of the "solutions" the Department of Education mandates for chronically low performing schools require at least half of the staff to be fired or transferred. And most of the emphasis of our policies focuses on test scores. As I suggested in my post, there are many qualities of a good teacher that are not reflected in tests, that take years to develop. Designating interns with little training or experience as "highly qualified" seems to fit this pattern of disregarding the need to build stability at low performing schools as one of the conditions for improvement. And defenses of these practices that are based on the test scores these teachers achieve fail to recognize the other dimensions of good teaching that are not measured by these scores.

The granddaddy of many of these corporate reform efforts is, of course, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In September, they sponsored NBC's Education Nation, and the Teacher Town Hall event was dominated by an interview with Melinda Gates herself. I wrote about what I saw in this post, Circular Reasoning at the Gates: Education Nation off to a Confusing Start:

In spite of all the billions they have spent, it appears that the Gates Foundation is laboring under the same logical fallacy that doomed No Child Left Behind. In a way which employs circular reasoning, they have defined great teaching as that which results in the most gains on end of year tests, and then spent millions of dollars identifying indicators of teaching that will yield the best scores.

The most deceptive strategy is how they then try to pretend that these indicators are "multiple measures" of good teaching. In fact, these are simply indicators of teaching practices associated with higher test scores. In spite of Mrs. Gates' feint at the opening of her response, everything she describes, all these things that supposedly go beyond test scores - peer observations, student perceptions - are only deemed valid insofar as they are correlated with higher test scores.

I tried to sketch out the role I see the Gates Foundation playing in this post, Bill Gates' Big Play: How Much Can Money Buy in Education?

I described what I see as the Gates Foundation's modus operandi:

Since the accountability devices in NCLB were clumsy and punitive, invent a host of new mechanisms to reward success as well as punish failure. As much a possible, target these interventions down to the level of the individual teacher and student, to ensure compliance. Redefine professionalism for teachers so that it no longer means you have autonomy and responsibility for your work. Instead, being professional means you get paid for your results, and are subject to termination if you fail to help your students achieve what the predictive models project they ought to. Since teachers have been firmly opposed to this, do not make test scores the only means by which their performance is measured. Call this one of "multiple measures." But make sure other elements that are measured also align with growth in test scores.

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, 2011 was the year that people began to awaken to the danger our public education faces. Let's hope 2012 is the year we gather the strength to de-claw this cat for good!

How did your perceptions of the players in education "reform" change over the past year? What events or insights informed your understanding?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

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A couple of weeks ago I posted a look back at 2011, with a list of all 170 of my posts to this blog. I am afraid I have spent a great deal of energy taking issue with what I see as very bad ideas being promoted in the name of reform. But I also have spent some time trying to support GOOD reform ideas, and I want to share some highlights from this year.

First, there is this report, TeamScience Tames Teacher Turnover, focused on the mentoring program I initiated four years ago. This project is a partnership with the New Teacher Center, and it pairs experienced Oakland science teachers with novices, and has helped create a supportive community of science teachers in Oakland. The project has made a real dent in the turnover rates of these teachers, and has also helped support growth in student achievement in science.

We have seen our mentors grow in their expertise, and they are true leaders in our District. And we have started to see some results in the level of turnover. In the year prior to TeamScience, 32% of our secondary science teachers were in their first year. This year, we have that portion down to 13%. Some of this may be due to hard times in the economy, so we cannot take all the credit. But we feel as if we have had a real impact, and our mentees indicate that they feel more effective as a result of our work. And while the state tests in science are not a full indicator of student learning, we have seen the portion of tenth graders proficient in science rise from 20% to 30%, and eighth graders go from 35% to 45% proficient, just in the past two years.

Next comes a report, Grassroots Teacher Convention Makes Waves in Oakland, that describes an event put on by Oakland's Effective Teaching Task Force, of which I was an active member. The report describes a bit of the process we went through to bring together this dynamic group of more than 200 teachers, and the recommendations that emerged from the event. There was a great deal of energy when teachers were given space to debate how to improve their schools, and make proposals that might be acted upon.

The recommendations were concrete and many focused on changes that can be made without great expense. Around professional development, almost every group expressed a desire to see expert teaching recognized and elevated. Teachers suggested we be given time to observe one another, and that professional development be built around reflective practices such as Lesson Study or teacher action research, both of which are already under way in Oakland. Teachers recommended we make sure principals allow their staff to participate in the decisions around selecting their forms of professional development, and that real time be set aside for this collaboration. There was a very strong recommendation that Oakland teachers be the leaders of this work, rather than the reliance on expensive outside consultants.

One of the big ideas that emerged from this teacher convention was for teachers to take on more leadership of our own professional development. Connected to this was the idea that we build on existing efforts. I sought to highlight two such projects. The first was a report from a high poverty school about the ongoing project, described in this guest post by Anna Richert, Claire Bove and Carrie Wilson -- Oakland Teachers Show the Power of Action Research -- Aija Simmons' presentation brought this to life. She explains:

My reading classroom is alive with clarifying conversations between my whole class, small groups, and even individual readers. Students are developing identities as comprehenders and clarifiers of text. I am teaching more targeted and strategic reading lessons. We are developing into more powerful readers. I say we because as this process happened I was becoming more aware of my own reading identity. Do I think I have the solution to my troubles of teaching reading comprehension? Not exactly. What I do have is a way to communicate effectively with my students about what they were thinking about a text and how they came to their conclusions. What I do have is a community of readers who no longer leery of saying, 'wait lets use a strategy because, I'm not understanding.'

In my experience (including my own experience as a teacher researcher) the process of engaging in teacher research is transformative. Looking in a systematic and careful way at students learning and one's teaching brings agency to the work of teaching and allows the teacher to act with intent. It is a relief to name the uncertainty of teaching, which is inherent to the research process that begins by framing a question about one's work and thus undo the myth of certainty that pervades our field these days. The teacher researchers I have spoken with about this report that it is liberating to know what you know and what you need to know more about so you can continuously improve your practice. Teacher research allows you to do just that. The teacher often finds herself assuming a new sense of professional authority as she becomes the author of her professional understandings. It is she who becomes the expert rather than outsiders who tell her how to think and what to do.

Then we took a close look Lesson Study, titled Lesson Study Works! An Interview with Dr. Catherine Lewis. Here is one quote from a teacher that captures the spirit of this endeavor:

Mathematically, I learned a lot about fraction concepts. I've always understood how to work with fractions but didn't understand all of the "why's" behind the procedures.

Since the lesson study I have been much more aware of the ways in which I tend to focus too much on completing the activity or playing the game, and my...teaching has become more purposeful and focused as a result.

I am including more presentations, and problem solving. My students are thinking more. I am finding some resistance. They want the formula and to repeat back to me. But I think they are growing.

We also spent some time building a positive message around public schools, in support of the Save Our Schools protest last July. Talented film makers Tom and Amy Valens created a four part series of short videos, called Here's to our Schools, Here's to the Parents!, Here's to the Students, and Here's to the Teachers.

And last but definitely not least, a look back at the highlight of the summer, with Save Our Schools March Rocks the Capital, featuring videos of speakers Matt Damon, Diane Ravitch, and John Kuhn. And MORE Save Our Schools videos here, of Jon Stewart, Jose Vilson and Taylor Mali.

It was an exciting year for me personally. I engaged in some of the most intense activism of my life working on the Save Our Schools March, and I had my last year working with my wonderful colleagues in Oakland. I hope those relationships persist, and I look forward to more genuine education reform in 2012.

What do you think? What is your favorite story of genuine education reform for 2011?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

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Alexander Russo has done an excellent job stirring the pot with his column yesterday asserting that "reform critics" like myself are "winning" the online debate.

As I tried to point out yesterday, the online debate is rather meaningless if the real decisions about our schools continue to be made based on misinformation, bribery and political gamesmanship. I believe the online debate has been deliberately ignored by the corporate reform sector, as they see it as a battle they can well afford to lose, given the access to real power their funds buy them.

We succeeded in breaking through a bit last year with Save Our Schools, and saw some attacks on us as a result. But fundamentally, what the lopsided online discussion reveals is a broken political system that has lost the capacity for rationale democratic debate.

Online, that capacity still exists, and experienced professional educators like the people Russo mentions prevail. But in the halls of power, there is a different phenomenon. When teachers are needed to testify in favor of policies limiting teacher rights, the call goes out to a Gates-funded astro-turf group that has been grooming them. Teachers who understand that due process rules give teachers the freedom to innovate are not called.

Donations flow from the Gates Foundation to the right wing American Legislative Exchange Council, whose conference attracts legislators from around the nation. The billionaire philanthropists' foundations help write the laws that tie teacher pay to test scores, destroy due process, erode pensions, and lower standards to enter the profession.

The Department of Education directs billions in taxpayer dollars to states, but only if they are willing to implement these very same terrible policies.

The irony is that Russo suggests we critics have been successful because WE are coordinating ourselves! And the "reformers" ought to do the same! We are seeing the most coordinated, sustained and systematic campaign ever mounted in public education. Once again, if you have not done so yet, watch the video in which Stand For Children CEO Jonah Edelman drops the veil and reveals exactly how his group coordinated with other non-profits, with the Chamber of Commerce and major newspapers in Illinois to gain clout. But Russo slyly suggests that somehow those of us crying foul are the ones doing the coordinating. I think there is a term in magic for this - misdirection.

One more thing that might be pointed out related to Russo's post. In his opening paragraph he refers to those of us resisting this campaign as "traditional educators." At the risk of sounding defensive, let me point out that I am hardly that. As a science teacher, I worked at the cutting edge of instruction and technology. I worked to have my middle school students develop their own questions as the foundation for their investigations, and had them designing their own experiments. I initiated an all-girl technology class that met before school every day. I founded a mentoring program that paired experienced science teachers with novices, in an effort to overcome the high turnover we were experiencing. I was among the first in my district to achieve National Board certification. I believe in the power of Project-Based Learning - engaging students in projects connected to their lives. My advocacy has always been focused on making sure teachers have the space to be innovative, and the freedom to lead their own professional development.

The corporate education "reformers" on the other hand prize standards and test scores above all else. Scratch the surface of the obsession with teacher quality, and you will see that every metric the Gates Foundation has come up with is tied directly or indirectly to test scores. And our opposition to this mania for standardization is termed "traditional"?"

No, those of us who have raised our voices against the corporate reform juggernaut are not, sadly, winning the debate, at least not the one that counts, at least not yet. No more than Occupy Wall Street has won against the banks, even though the movement's goals enjoy the support of a majority of Americans. When a system has been deliberately broken, it will take more than dominating Twitter, Facebook, and the blogosphere to overcome the power of corporate dollars. But we will keep at it, just as long as teachers keep on teaching.

What do you think? What will it take to really win this battle?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

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Alexander Russo posted a rather provocative item today, asserting that in the online world, critics of "education reform" like myself, Ken Bernstein, Nancy Flanagan, Leonie Haimson, Caroline Grannan and John Thompson, have become dominant. (See Nancy's response here, and Ken Bernstein's here.)

First of all, we ought to qualify his assertion. The people he names are among the most visible critics of education reform, but there are many more than the short list he offers.

But the real question is one I have been puzzling over for a while. Why is there so little real debate over education reform? Why is there little or no defense offered when corporate reformers are subjected to criticism here and elsewhere? I have been writing pieces critical of Teach For America, the Gates Foundation, NBC's Education Nation, and many other manifestations of what might be termed corporate-sponsored education reform for quite a while now. I called my blog "Living in Dialogue." I generally take a respectful attitude towards those with whom I disagree, and I actively seek to engage with them whenever possible. For example, when an acquaintance involved in education philanthropy took the time to share his thoughts about charter schools with me, I gave him space on my blog to air his views, to which I responded a week later.

But that was an unusual occurrence. Far more typical is the studied indifference that has greeted posts such as this one, taking on the Circular Reasoning at the Gates: Education Nation Off to a Confusing Start.

Similarly, the posts I have published related to Teach For America, including this rather scathing review of the "research" they claim supports their program, have been utterly ignored by the organization and its defenders.

There was a remarkable incident back in July that may shed some light on the reason advocates of corporate reform have been quiet in some venues. They are choosing as their forums places where they know they can win. Video surfaced of Stand For Children CEO Jonah Edelman speaking frankly to fellow "reformers" at the Aspen Institute, disclosing exactly how his organization had muscled its way into Illinois, supporting legislation that eroded the ability of teacher unions to negotiate over basic things like the length of the working day, and undermined seniority.

A related incident is also instructive. Since Diane Ravitch had been sharply pointing out these sorts of machinations, I asked her for her thoughts about the Edelman video, in this interview.

In this interview, Diane Ravitch said the following:

Stand for Children, like Education Reform Now, Democrats for Education Reform, TeachPlus, and various other "reform" organizations are committed to a course that is anti-education. They are not grassroots organizations. They should be described as "astroturf" organizations. Look over their board of directors, and you will see a large number of Wall Street executives, high-tech entrepreneurs, and others who have little or no experience in public education. I don't understand their animus towards one of our society's most vital public institutions, nor do I think they realize that they are responsible for creating public hostility to the teaching profession. If they understood it, why would they do it? It makes no sense. Some of these groups are funded by the Gates Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and the Broad Foundation, so what we are really seeing is a well-planned and well-executed effort to change public education by the wealthy and powerful.

A defender of Teach Plus (perhaps a staffer) then posted a comment, that said:

Just this week, in her keynote address at TEACH, Randi Weingarten bemoaned the fact that nearly half of teachers leave within five years of entering the profession. Weingarten argues, "Too many teachers are leaving before they get really good at their jobs."

The mission of Teach Plus is to reverse that trend by supporting the retention of excellent teachers in urban schools. The leadership opportunities that Teach Plus offers give teachers a reason to stay in the profession - and give them the opportunity to make their own voices heard in the creation of policies that affect their classrooms. Learn more about Teach Plus' pro-teacher, pro-child work at www.teachplus.org.

The next day, Diane Ravitch and I received an email from Teach Plus director Dr. Celine Coggins, who wished to inform us about her organization's work. I responded and invited her to offer a guest post on my blog, where she could explain their work to my readers. I especially asked her to explain the group's role in Indiana, where this story in the New York Times had portrayed them as advocates of "reforms" that undermined unions. She responded positively, and said she would send me ideas for a blog post after the weekend.

Meanwhile, I decided to do some investigation of my own, which resulted in this post; Teach Plus: Astroturf in Indiana?

In this post, I raised these four concerns:

First, we have a heavily funded group bringing forward teachers to reinforce their policy perspective. This creates the appearance of widespread support for practices which are highly controversial within our profession.

Second, Teach Plus has embraced the practice of widespread staff firings as a wise strategy for school improvement. Experience and research do not show this to be effective. On the contrary, this takes our most challenged schools and subjects them to further trauma and disruption, to no good end.

Third, Teach Plus has attempted to create policy that would shield "promising young teachers" from the brunt of these firings. There is a great deal of evidence that teacher effectiveness, on a wide range of indicators - not just test scores - increases as teachers gain experience. Why should we embrace policies that favor "promising young teachers," many of whom may be interns who have only a two-year long commitment to the classroom, over more experienced teachers?

Fourth, the law that resulted from this lobbying by Stand For Children and Teach Plus mandates that test scores be a significant part of teacher evaluation, and does away with the professional advisory board that informs the legislature about these issues.

I sent a link of this post to Dr. Coggins and reiterated my invitation to her to respond through my blog. I never heard back from her.

Clearly we had her attention. Why did she disengage? Apparently when there was a substantive debate, where her organization's strategy and results were being critically challenged, there was no interest in dialogue.

Coupling this with Jonah Edelman's description of the modus operandi at work in Illinois, one could conclude that these reformers have their strategies, which are proving quite effective. And public disclosure is likely to have negative repercussions, as Mr. Edelman discovered. Under the circumstances, there seems to be a strategy of disengagement from dialogue with critics.

Alexander Russo chose to portray corporate reform critics such as myself as Goliaths who are trampling on the hapless reformers. But this analysis is a bit simple-minded. The corporate reformers have plenty of resources and personnel capable of responding. They are deliberately choosing to take their arguments elsewhere - to the corporate boardrooms, to the ALEC conference, to NBC's Education Nation, and to legislative hearings, speaking through hired lobbyists, astro-turf groups, and well-prepared and vetted experts. They are getting the job done there, if you notice. Most of these groups are seeing revenues climb, and state legislatures across the country are busy adopting more "reform" laws every month.

We may have embarrassed NBC's Education Nation into including a few voices of dissent in the mix this fall, but host Brian Williams still gushed that "The Gates Foundation (is) one of the sponsors of this event, and the largest single funder of education anywhere in the world. It's their facts that we're going to be referring to often to help along our conversation."

Diane Ravitch commented this morning on Twitter: "Are critics of corporate reform "winning" debate? Isn't that like saying Occupy Wall Street is beating the banks and equity firms? Right." So long as Congress, state legislatures and corporate media draw their "facts" from the Gates Foundation and other corporate reform organizations, there is no reason for these groups to lower themselves to debating with critics.

As Gandhi is reported to have said, "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win." Clearly we are still being ignored. It would be foolish to mistake this for victory.

Update: See more of my thoughts regarding Russo's post here.
What do you think? Are critics of corporate education reform winning the online debate? How far does this get us in the real world of our schools?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 8:38 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

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I just don't get it. A few short weeks ago, the National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel released a "Three Point Plan for True Education Reform." The first point of this plan is "raising the bar for entry" into the teaching profession.

THE FIRST STEP in transforming our profession is to strengthen and maintain strong and uniform standards for preparation and admission. More than 1.6 million new teachers are expected to enter the profession within the next decade, and we must ensure that they are effective practitioners before they are assigned as teachers of record.

The plan suggests two concrete things:

Every teacher candidate should have one full year of residency under the supervision of a Master Teacher before earning a full license.

And

Every teacher candidate should pass a rigorous classroom-based performance assessment at the end of his or her candidacy.

These would be solid achievements.

This week, Dennis Van Roekel undermined his own message by choosing to co-author with Teach For America CEO Wendy Kopp this "Column: 3 ways to improve the USA's teachers."

Here, the first item on the list has changed. No longer is there discussion of "raising the bar for entry," or a year of full residency. Here, the first item is "Use data to improve teacher preparation." In other words, judge teacher preparation programs by the test scores of the teachers they produce. Do we really want this? One more piece of leverage aimed at pressuring schools of education to tow the line and encourage their students to teach to the test? Teach For America figured this out years ago, and a visit to a TFA classroom will reveal the posters on the wall tracking student test scores, and exhortations to reach the big goal of 80% mastery.

The column states, "Unfortunately, not all teachers are getting the high-quality preparation they need to excel with students in the classroom."

Unfortunately indeed.

Does Mr. Van Roekel believe that Teach For America's five or six week long training is adequate preparation?

Teach For America is on the verge of a major expansion into new territories. We heard a month ago about concerns being raised in Huntsville, Alabama, where the school board voted to spend $1.7 million to bring Teach For America teachers to the District. More recently, we are hearing similar concerns raised in Ohio, where more than $2 million in grants will pay for "at least 30" TFA teachers. These funds will not cover the teachers' salaries, which are paid by the local districts, which also must contribute several thousand dollars per teacher for training costs.

One question I have is about the structure of these expenditures. When ideas like the residency model described in the NEA's three point plan are discussed, the objection is heard that the cost would be prohibitive. But let's consider what is being spent for these TFA teachers. If forty TFAers wind up in Ohio schools next fall, TFA will have received in excess of $50,000 per teacher. And apparently this $2 million in grants was needed over and above the $50 million TFA received from the Department of Education, and the more than $100 million received in the past year from corporate philanthropists like the Walton Family and the Broad Foundation.

If we have this kind of money to spend to get people into high poverty schools, why are we choosing a short cut program like Teach For America? Why choose people to invest in who only make a two-year commitment to our classrooms, and 80% of whom are gone after three years? Why not instead invest in people who INTEND to be teachers as a career, give them in depth training, and demand a longer commitment in exchange for support?

I could perhaps understand the reason for co-authoring a column with Ms. Kopp if Mr. Van Roekel had convinced her to sign on to a better vision for teacher preparation - such as point number one above -- raising the bar for entry. But it looks as if the exact opposite has happened. Mr. Van Roekel has signed on to the agenda advanced by Ms. Kopp, and in so doing, has lent her credibility as an advocate of the teaching profession.

I just don't get it!

Update: More questions about the Kopp/Van Roekel column have been raised as Matt Damon and his mother reject an award from NEA in protest.

What do you think? Is Dennis Van Roekel sending mixed messages about how to strengthen the teaching profession?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Guest post by Tara Kini, Public Advocates Inc.

Today marks the first anniversary of one of the most far-reaching legislative actions in education in recent memory. It was highly controversial and addressed a subject at the forefront of the ongoing debate about educational equity. But if you are like most Americans, you probably have no idea that it ever happened. And that is exactly what the measure's proponents wanted.

Congress stealthily slipped into a temporary budget bill last year language that allows states to label teachers as "highly qualified" before they have finished or even begun training through alternative certification programs. This measure codified an administrative approach initially adopted during the Bush years and essentially gutted one of the most central equity provisions in the No Child Left Behind Act. For now, the legislation has ended many education advocates' hopes of addressing in the near term a problem that has lingered for many years: the high concentration of untrained teachers in schools serving low-income, predominately minority students. Even worse, the provision also frees states and school districts from the obligation to inform parents that their children's teachers are not fully certified.

The "highly qualified teacher" amendment was drafted at the behest of those seeking to overturn a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in favor of low-income students and parents. The plaintiffs in that case, Renee v. Duncan, had successfully challenged the federal regulation that allowed teachers-in-training to be called "highly qualified." Teach for America, whose model centers on funneling new college graduates with five weeks of training to low-income, high-minority schools, saw this victory as a threat to their program. They successfully lobbied Congress to halt the decision in its tracks by writing the unlawful regulation into law through the 2012-13 school year.

The result? Untrained novice teachers continue to be disproportionately assigned to schools and classrooms serving the neediest students: low-income students, students of color, English language learners, students with disabilities, and those living in high-need remote areas. In California, for example, more than two-thirds of these teachers--known as interns--teach in highly segregated schools where more than 75 percent of the students are minorities, and more than half teach special education. In Philadelphia, one-third of the 800 recent new hires are teacher-trainees who are disproportionately assigned to low-income, high-minority schools.

With Congress' amendment, schools with obvious disparities in teacher quality now have these inequities cloaked by the law. It looks as though students in these schools have the same access to "highly qualified" teachers as their more affluent, white peers. But common sense--and a vast research base--suggest otherwise. Studies that compare alternate route trainees to fully-certified teachers consistently show greater student learning gains associated with the fully-prepared teachers--those who have completed traditional or alternative preparation programs. Indeed, given a choice between a teacher-in-training and one who has completed training, most parents would choose the latter.

As Shayla Johnson, a senior in a Philadelphia high school directly impacted by the amendment, told members of Congress at a Senate briefing on the issue this month, "The federal law that allows teachers-in-training to be concentrated in my school and district isn't fair and it's hurting my education . . . . No one in Congress would want this for their own children, so why is it good enough for me?" Shayla is not alone in asking that question.

The congressional gutting of the "highly qualified teacher" provision will expire on its own in 2013. But Congress can act to address this problem more directly when it reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the current version of which is NCLB. When the reauthorization does eventually proceed--which is looking increasingly less likely for 2012--let us hope that Congress corrects its mistake and finally gives students like Shayla the teachers they deserve.

What do you think? Are poor and minority students well served when novices with little or no training are labeled "highly qualified teachers"?

Tara Kini is a staff attorney with Public Advocates Inc. and a former California public school teacher. She represents the plaintiffs in the Renee v. Duncan lawsuit.

Posted by Anthony Cody at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

In Huntsville, Alabama, the school board has decided to spend $1.7 million to bring Teach For America interns to district classrooms. This has prompted an assistant professor at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, to raise some critical questions. This is the third post in this series.

Guest post by Philip Kovacs.

On the web page where Teach For America shares research, they boldly state: "A large and growing body of independent research shows that Teach For America corps members make as much of an impact on student achievement as veteran teachers." I will show this is an absurd claim simply by analyzing the reports made public on their "research" page. I will not look at or include other research which shows that TFA has negative effects on student test scores in some places, as others have already done so.

However, it pains me to engage in this analysis because it forces me to enter a conversation that I don't believe we should be having, a conversation that is undergirded by the belief that the best way to evaluate teachers is to look at student scores on tests that have been shown to be invalid, unreliable and flat out ridiculous.

When we reduce children to numbers and teachers to spreadsheet-managers we undermine education by dehumanizing the process. In our test-driven world, teachers have become bureaucrats; we've reduced "learning" to scoring, and, shamefully, we've reduced schooling to sorting, equating a slight change in a test score with "achievement." Take a moment to consider the achievements in your life...now quantify them and tell me in the comments below that the number equals the reality of that achieving moment.

Educare, (from the Latin, meaning "to draw out,") has left the building, and education today involves shoveling as much product as possible into subdued vessels followed by the obligatory weighing to see if the vessels hold more value, where value has nothing to do with the values that lead to happiness or success robustly defined.

Rather than staring at spreadsheets, myopically focused on data, I propose re-imagining educational reform by asking the question "what makes a great teacher a great teacher?" Yes, there are other questions that must be asked, but the teacher is the issue at hand, so before turning to problematizing TFA, allow me to wax poetic and imagine answers to the question, "what makes a great teacher a great teacher?"

Great teachers help children identify, access and utilize information from various knowledge systems in order to effect progressive change in a given space over a given amount of time.

Great teachers are well-organized multi-taskers who help children: synthesize ideas, evaluate and appraise work, discriminate amongst results, and critique and defend critiques.

Great teachers are individuals who encourage children to take calculated risks and engage passionately with work both chosen and assigned. Great teachers ask children to employ creative curiosity, to think meta-cognitively, to act patiently as deconstructive-reconstructive thinkers who question, pose problems, imagine alternatives, and transfer ideas and artifacts from one realm into another.

Finally, great teachers make a commitment to the children and communities they serve, going above and beyond classrooms to help all students develop and grow.

Unfortunately, until we move schools away from the industrial model that we have relied on for far too long, we'll continue to prevent the above from happening, talking as we do about children as numbers and teachers as producers, paying for all of it with an educational enterprise that reduces children to "mere articles of commerce". The above "great teacher attributes," un-testable, will remain ignored while we listen to philanthrocapitalists talk about an educational bottom line that they know nothing about. And when they are done talking, they'll force their reforms down our throats.

In an effort to increase the amount of light being directed towards the "research" that is being used to justify the replacement of credentialed professionals with fast-tracked do-gooders, allow me to briefly address TFA's reports, and then I will return to the often grueling but always rewarding work of helping dedicated individuals mature into great teachers.

These reports are available on TFA's "research" page.

"2010 Report Card"

This report is an apples and fruit basket comparison that relies on Value Added Measurement (VAM) and opens with the following disclaimer: "The analysis contained within this report is not based on a comprehensive set of measures upon which the quality of teacher training programs should be ranked." Importantly, a peer-reviewed study found "several logical and empirical weaknesses of the [VAM]" used in the report.

One major problem is that the TFA group is compared to the entire state rather than teachers in the same schools. Indeed, even comparing teachers in one school to teachers in the same school can be problematic, especially in schools where students have multiple teachers or in schools where some teachers are not inclined to help TFA recruits swim, rather than tread water, during their first year.

For purposes of the "Report Card," comparing the gains on tests made by teachers in low performing schools to gains on tests made by teachers in higher performing schools is problematic because it is easier and more impressive to raise scores from, for example, the 45th to 67h percentile than from the 85th to 90th, which is no doubt going on in many upper level schools and classrooms. Given that TFA recruits are only in the lowest performing schools, they are much likelier to be working with students who are easier to move, making it appear they have larger gains, on one small indicator of a child's education.

Taking this into consideration, it appears that TFA has an impact in math and reading instruction, though that is likely to disappear once discrepancies in population are taken into account. The authors' warning, the peer reviewed report arguing that the TVAAS "contains several logical and empirical weaknesses," and the "apples to fruit basket" comparison make the report problematic at best.

"Portal Report From University of NC Chapel Hill"

While TFA members outperform recent UNC graduates in 5/9 indicators, the study does not include teachers with more than 5 years of experience. This is problematic because many teachers continue to grow as professionals in multiple ways. Those who do not continue to grow do not deserve the title of teacher. Therefore we must ask ourselves, how many great teachers were left out of the comparison group?

To be fair, if you believe the VAM used in this analysis, which you should not, high school math scores show great gains for TFA recruits on this particular measurement.

One out of four middle school indicators show larger improvements for TFA and there is no difference at the elementary level, on test scores using VAM, than the control group: graduates of UNC with less than 5 years of experience.

These results are mixed but this study is also problematic for those who claim TFA has a long-term positive effect on school districts because of the documented high turnover of TFA recruits: 85% are gone after four years. And this makes the "Portal Report" not just problematic, but damning. In the report's own words:

The final and in some ways most important finding of this study is that first year teachers perform worse than those with four yeas or experience in 10 out of 11 comparisons, and in their second year as teachers perform worse in 6 out of 11 comparisons. To provide perspective, we estimated that elementary students taught math by a first year teacher lose the equivalent of 21 days of schooling when compared to similar students taught by teachers with four years of experience.

"Making a Difference? The Effects of Teach for America in High School"

This report finds TFA recruits to be better than novice teachers (less than 3 years experience) in math and science instruction.

This finding, however, is problematic by the authors' admission. They could only match 84% of students to teachers their teachers. From the "What Works Clearing House:" "...differences in performance in TFA and non-TFA classes may be influenced by differences in student ability in specific subjects. As a result, the study may not accurately measure the effect of having a TFA teacher."

From the authors, further problematizing the report (emphasis mine): "When both teacher quality and student performance are systematically related to student ability and motivation, the relationship between teacher and student performance cannot be reliably estimated."

This report also acknowledges that teachers with high performing students may have reduced effects because of the difficulty of raising high performing students test scores, an issue I pointed out in the Tennessee data.

"CMS Evaluation Based on Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC Public Schools"

TFA recruits look slightly better on math tests but no better than reading, making the report mixed.

The small sample size is problematic because the authors are comparing smaller groups of TFA to groups of teachers that are about five times as large. The larger the sample, the closer to the middle the results are going to be. And again, as with the Tennessee data and the "Portal Report," the effects of teachers working with higher performing students are going to look lower than the recruits working with lower performers.

The authors of this report come close to acknowledging issues with their own data, as they conclude with words that are hardly an endorsement. On page 46 they note (emphasis mine): "...a more focused approach in observing differences between math and reading classrooms by TFA and non-TFA-led classrooms might generate insight into why TFA teachers may show positive results with respect to math achievement and why non-TFA teachers may show similar results to TFA teachers for reading achievement."

"May show"? If that is the case, TFA's claim needs the word "may" inserted. Tellingly, the authors suggest a more focused approach to observing classrooms. I support finding a more focused approach than looking at test score data. We might start by looking at children.

"Teacher Preparation Programs and Teach for America Research Study"

According to this report, TFA teachers are making a positive increase in math scores, doing about the same as certified teachers on reading scores, and doing worse with Hispanic students on both reading and math tests. The results are therefore mixed, unless the reader believes we should dismiss the Hispanic students. The study was conducted in Austin, Texas.

Rendering the entire report problematic are the words on the first page (emphasis mine): "Given data limitations and the requirements of the rider, the analyses were limited to descriptive and inferential statistics. As such readers are encouraged to interpret the findings related to student achievement with caution."

"With caution" is nowhere near "shows."

"Recruiting Effective Math Teachers, How Do Math Immersion Teachers Compare"

This report is problematic at best but ultimately contradicts TFA's claim regarding veteran teachers. From page 31 of the report (emphasis mine): "TFA teachers produce student achievement gains in middle school math that exceed those of teachers from other pathways with comparable experience." Not, contra TFA's claim, those with more experience.

Furthermore and importantly, from pages 23-24 of the report (emphasis mine): "However, this [where the "this" means gains on middle school math tests] is largely eliminated once the much higher attrition of TFA teachers is taken into account."

Said differently, when you start to consider how quickly TFA recruits abandon ship, the gain is negated. Concerned tax-payers might stop to consider why traditional routes into classrooms produce teachers who stay so much longer. Regardless, this report should probably be taken off of the TFA "research" page given the author's addendum.

"Teach for America Teachers' Contribution to Student Achievement in Louisiana in Grades 4-9: 2004-2005 to 2006-2007"

This report argues: "In all areas except for social studies, TFA corps members were statistically significantly more effective than other new teachers." The key phrase here is "new teachers." The authors do not reveal whether or not the "new teachers" contained unlicensed, uncertified teachers teaching out-of-field, as is common in poor, hard to staff schools.

When compared to experienced teachers, the authors report that there was "no significant difference" between the test data for TFA recruits and traditionally trained, experienced, teachers. Furthermore, the authors do not define what "experienced" means. Does that body of "experienced" teachers contain only teachers with three years of experience? After all, they are, by the report's own admission, more experienced than most TFA recruits because most TFA recruits leave after year three. Arguably, if the authors had used only teachers with five years of experience in the control, the results would have been significantly different.

All that being said, this is the only report, out of a total of 12 (see my previous post for analysis of the other five reports) that even remotely supports TFA's claim that "Teach For America corps members make as much of an impact on student achievement as veteran teachers."

There is simply no "large and growing body of evidence" suggesting TFA corps members make as much of an impact on student achievement as veteran teachers." In fact, there is a growing body of research suggesting otherwise, that TFA members have a negative impact on student achievement. But to treat that at length, I will have to ask Mr. Cody for another post.

A note to the authors of these reports...I don't doubt you or your methods, but I do believe your research is being misused and misrepresented. Furthermore, in all due respect, you should really acknowledge the issues with using Value Added Measures to determine student performance on tests. And all of us need to stop equating achievement with gains on test scores.

What do you think of the evidence Teach For America has presented regarding their effectiveness?

Previous posts in this series:
Philip Kovacs Takes on TFA in Huntsville
Philip Kovacs: Huntsville Takes a Closer Look at Teach For America's "Research"

Philip Kovacs is an assistant, tenure tracked professor at the University of Alabama, Huntsville.

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In my summary of the year 2010 I wrote:

This was the year of the billionaire in education. And teachers, parents and students are wondering what we need to do to make 2011 turn out a bit differently.

We figured it out alright. 2011 was the year of the great awakening. The year began with Wisconsin educators rallying to protect their rights, under attack from Governor Scott Walker. Jesse Turner had called it out even before 2010 was over - and along with a bunch of us from around the country, helped create the one of the big public education events of the year, the Save Our Schools March on July 30th in Washington, DC.

This was a year of pushing back and occasionally breaking through. In March, President Obama revealed he actually shared the views of many when he spoke of the need for fewer tests. This led to a lively exchange with Department of Education officials who did their best to pretend they agreed. We kept pushing through the year, pointing out the weakness in reforms that focus on test scores, and the strength that lies in the intelligence of our teachers, when they are given the chance to work together.

Teachers were not the only ones who decided to take to the streets. The Occupy Wall Street movement has spread across the country, and is bringing into sharp focus the oversized influence of corporations in our political process, and our public education system as well.

As the year draws to a close, the powerful are doing their best to stamp out or spray away the pesky rebels in our cities and college campuses. But we are seeing some big ideas hang on, and in California and elsewhere, the rejection of NCLB waivers offers hope that a new direction may emerge.

Here are my 170 posts from this year, organized into categories. Special thanks to all the guests and interview subjects who shared their thoughts with us this year!