January 2012 Archives

Part 1 of 2

Guest post by John Kuhn.

"There's a hole in the bucket, Dear Liza, Dear Liza."

At the root of the school reform debate as I see it is a fundamental disagreement about causality. No one disagrees that by any number of measures (PISA scores, graduation rates, etc.) the academic outcomes of some American students are horrendously unacceptable. On this point, even Michelle Rhee and Diane Ravitch are in perfect agreement, along with everyone else who thinks even a little bit about education.

But then the wheels come off.
When you ask the question, "What caused this?" the wheels come off.
When you ask the question, "How do we fix it?" the wheels come off.
We are all friends until we're not. And when those questions come up, we go to our respective corners and we prepare to fight for what we see as the best way forward. This is great. This is the messiness of democracy. I'm thrilled to be wearing these gloves. (I don't pretend to be impartial.)

You discover many battle lines when you survey this field of contest. Charter schools force traditional schools to get with the program vs. charter schools skim kids in order to look better. Vouchers encourage competition vs. vouchers haven't worked in Milwaukee. Merit pay encourages excellent teachers vs. merit pay destroys morale. And on and on.

But I want to use my happy visit to this blog to study my favorite battle line of all, one that I have revisited various times in past comments. First, a bit of local context that will help me advance this discussion:
In 2006, legislators in the great state of Texas--that beacon of compassion for the unfortunate--planted into statute a creation called the "Target Revenue System." Under this system, each one of the 1029 (or thereabouts) school districts in Texas was assigned a dollar amount that would be its full share of state and local revenue. No more and no less. It was to be a floor and a ceiling. Now, since school districts in wealthier areas were accustomed to a certain standard of living, the legislators decided they couldn't very well fund them at the same rate as those unfortunate suckers in the border towns, inner cities, or fading farm towns. Ergo, different districts got different Target Revenues, which to this day differ. (In essence, some of Sam Houston's children get a higher allowance than others, depending of course on how black they are.)

So, if you look at the current list of Target Revenues in Texas (published here since the Lone Star State doesn't seem eager to put it out for public viewing), you'll find that Star ISD gets $3809 per weighted average daily attendance (WADA) while Westbrook ISD gets $13,116 per WADA. (I will be using the shorthand "per student" in place of "per WADA" for clarity from here on out.) So, if both these sample school districts have an identical 1000 students, Texas policymakers will lavish upon Westbrook ISD $13,116,000 and will bless Star ISD with a slightly less generous $3,809,000. Keep in mind that both districts are required to provide the same curriculum, both are required to offer the same mandated programs, and both are required to have their students achieve identical minimum outcomes in terms of test scores, attendance rates, graduation rates, and so forth. (I wonder if the "Money doesn't matter" folks will honestly contend that Star ISD should have no problem getting the same results as Westbrook ISD with 10 million fewer greenbacks to play with. I'm sure if Star ISD would just cut some of the fat in its administration office and quit hiring so many dad-blamed assistant football coaches they could close the gap!)

So clearly, the Target Revenue System in Texas is from the devil. But I don't want to shortchange our esteemed congressmen, so let me just add here that they really, really intended to "bring the bottom up" over the past six years, but the darned economy just didn't leave them enough money to do that AND give tax breaks to luxury yacht buyers. Sometimes you have to make hard choices.

Westbrook and Star are the most extreme example of the funding gap in Texas; I want to focus on a less extreme (but no less egregious) specimen.
North of Dallas there is a well-to-do suburb called Highland Park. According to the last census "per capita money income in past 12 months" for Highland Park was $116,772 and "median household income 2005-2009" was $176,375. The median value of a home is $982,600 in Highland Park.

South of Fort Worth, there is a blue collar neighborhood called Everman. According to the same census "per capita money income in past 12 months" for Everman was $16,685 and "median household income 2005-2009" was $39,508. The median value of a home is $80,700 in Everman.

I'll ask two rhetorical questions here: 1.) should these two school districts be funded at the same level? And 2.) if not, which district should get funded at a higher clip, and why?

If you answered that Highland Park should be funded higher because rich white kids are used to nice things, you are a winner! (And on a side note, I'd like to thank you for reading the blog, Congressman.)

Now, here are some relevant educational funding facts taken from the Texas Education Agency's "Academic Excellence Indicator System". (You'll notice that it doesn't say a word about "funding excellence" anywhere.) The hyperlink will take you to the TEA's AEIS search engine so you can verify that I'm not just making junk up. (Please be aware that there are two Highland Park school districts in Texas. This Highland Park is usually denoted as Highland Park-Dallas. Also note that the state of Texas accidentally forgets to acknowledge the existence of the Target Revenue System on the AEIS report it releases as public information regarding each school district; that being the case, I have taken the target revenue information for these two schools from the link previously shared above, which contains information appropriated from the Equity Center.)

Comparing Two Districts: Everman Vs. Highland Park

Funding
Target Revenue: Everman: $4973... Highland Park: $6013
WADA: Everman: 6184... Highland Park: 6697
Allotment for first 6184 kids: Everman: $30,753,032 ... Highland Park: $37,184,392

Teaching Quality
Avg actual teacher pay: Everman: $50,491... Highland Park: $55,894
Teachers w/adv. degrees : Everman: 14.6%... Highland Park: 67.1%
Students per teacher: Everman: 15.5 ... Highland Park: 15.6
Turnover Rate : Everman: 18.0%... Highland Park: 9.2%

Outcomes
4-year completion rate: Everman: 85.2%... Highland Park: 98.1%
Met standard, sum of all tests: Everman: 67%... Highland Park: 98%
College-ready (TSI)-English: Everman: 50% ... Highland Park: 93%
College-ready (TSI)-Math:: Everman: 58% ... Highland Park: 96%

Demographics
% of student body is white: Everman: 6.3%... Highland Park: 90.4%

The one conclusion we can all agree on here is that students in Highland Park are turning out better than the students in Everman, academically speaking. But now I have to knock the wheels off our happy consensus and ask the question: "Why?"

The way I see it, there are a few possible answers.
1. White people are intellectually superior. (The KKK prefers this answer.)
2. Higher income parents have smarter kids. (Higher income parents prefer this answer.)
3. Inequitable school funding stunts academic achievement. (I prefer this answer.)
4. Everman has crappy teachers and Highland Park has awesome teachers. (School reformers prefer this answer.)
5. Everman has crappy parents and Highland Park has awesome parents. (Republicans and burnt-out teachers prefer this answer.)
6. Social factors outside-of-school in Everman are more toxic to education than factors outside-of-school in Highland Park. (Democrats prefer this answer.)

In my next posting, I'll delve deeper into causality and explain why I titled this posting as I did. I know you can't wait.

John Kuhn is Superintendent of the Perrin-Whitt Independent School District in Texas. Last year he spoke out on the steps of the Capitol in Austin, and was featured in this interview here.

What do you think of the funding of schools in Texas? How does this compare to school funding in your state?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 6:51 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

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As state after state rewrites their education laws in line with the mandates from Race to the Top and the NCLB waiver process, the teaching profession is being redefined. Teachers will now pay the price - be declared successes or failures, depending on the rise or fall of their students' test scores. Under NCLB it was schools that were declared failures. In states being granted waivers to NCLB, it is teachers who will be subjected to this ignominy. Of course we will still be required to label the bottom 5% of our schools as failures, but if the Department of Education has its way, soon every single teacher in the profession will be at risk for the label.

This revelation came to me as I read the Score Card on Education prepared by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), authored by Dr. Matthew Ladner and Dan Lips. This is a remarkable document. It provides their report on where each of the states stands on the education "reform" that has become the hallmark of corporate philanthropies, the Obama administration and governors across the nation.

It begins with a histrionic comparison between the struggle over our schools and the Battle of Britain in the Second World War. The authors write:

Britain's enemies overreached, invading the Soviet Union and attacking the American fleet at Pearl Harbor. Finally, British forces defeated the German army in Egypt, securing their hold over the strategically vital Suez Canal. Prime Minister Churchill recognized the turning point:

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. Henceforth Hitler's Nazis will meet equally well armed and perhaps better armed troops. Hence forth they will have to face in many theatres of war that superiority in the air which they have so often used without mercy against others, of which they boasted all round the world, and which they intended to use as an instrument for convincing all other peoples that all resistance to them was hopeless.

We mean to hold our own.

In 2011, America's struggle for education reform may have also reached a turning point--an end of the beginning.

In case you missed it, in this analogy, the teacher unions represent the Nazis, while the forces for corporate reform represent the doughty British and their allies.

The greatest success story cited in this report is Indiana, where the corporate reform "alliance"succeeded in passing comprehensive "reforms."

Gov. Daniels detailed the reforms to the American Enterprise Institute audience, describing how Indiana lawmakers limited collective bargaining to wages and benefits. Indiana law ended the illogical practice of LIFO (Last In, First Out) in layoffs, mandating a determination of merit-- based in part on student test-score gains--rather than simply seniority be used as the basis for making layoffs.

Readers may recall my post last July describing the role the Gates Foundation-funded group Teach Plus played in advancing this legislation. The Gates Foundation last year also gave ALEC a grant of $376,635

to educate and engage its membership on more efficient state budget approaches to drive greater student outcomes, as well as educate them on beneficial ways to recruit, retain, evaluate and compensate effective teaching based upon merit and achievement.

The report describes many other reforms enacted by the Indiana legislature, including expansion of vouchers, charter schools, "virtual schools," and a parent trigger so that parents can petition to convert neighborhood schools into charters.

But it was the introduction to the report, written by Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, that brought this into focus for me. He writes:

Prior to this session, 99 percent of Indiana's teachers were annually rated "Effective." If that rating were actually true, 99 percent--not just one-third--of our students would be passing national tests. From this point on, because of the diligence and fortitude of our reform-minded legislators, teachers will be promoted and retained based on performance rather than seniority. Teacher evaluations, which will be locally formulated, will rely on student improvement. Successful educators will be rewarded, while those whose students lag behind will be asked to find work elsewhere. Additionally, schools will now be graded on an A-F scale and they, too, will be held accountable for student advancement; and the state will not hesitate to intervene in those schools that fail repeatedly.

According to this logic, the individual teacher's accountability for student performance is absolute. Governor Daniels apparently believes there ought to be a one to one correspondence between student achievement and teacher effectiveness. This is rather incredible, but there you have it. Most systems base between 25% and 50% of the teacher's evaluation on test scores, but that is enough to make a big difference in one's career, as examples below illustrate.

Even Eric Hanushek, the economist who has done more to advance these evaluation systems than anyone, admits that teachers only account for around ten percent of the variability in student test scores. (Teachers are the largest IN SCHOOL variable, but their influence is dwarfed by factors such as family income and education levels.) But when teacher unions represent the axis of evil, I guess anything that can be done to rout them is justifiable.

According to the Wall St. Journal, as of last fall, nearly half the states now link teacher evaluations to student test scores. This week Connecticut became the latest to make the move.

I do not think teachers in many states quite understand how the profession is being transformed. And our unions are, in some cases, negotiating these agreements into place. Tennessee has been ahead of the curve, and may offer us a preview of what may be in store. There, the state has had en extensive data collection system for years, and, in order to gain Race to the Top funds, implemented a comprehensive system that rates teachers using test scores.

Michael Winerip wrote about Tennessee in the New York Times:

Teachers have it worse. Half of their assessment is based on their students' results on state test scores, a serious problem for those who teach subjects with no state test.

To solve that, the state is requiring teachers without test results to be evaluated based on the scores of teachers at their school with test results. So Emily Mitchell, a first-grade teacher at David Youree Elementary, will be evaluated using the school's fifth-grade writing scores.

These "reforms" have been created to give principals more authority, so they can fire bad teachers. But even principals are questioning the new model. Carol Corbett Burris has been outspoken, and has rallied more than 1,278 principals in the state of New York to object to the new evaluation system there.

In a New York Times column posted yesterday, Principal Corbett Burris writes,

The right question to ask, however, is not whether this evaluation system is good or bad for adults, but rather whether it is good or bad for students.

Numerical evaluations of educators, 40 percent of which is based on student test scores and achievement, will damage the relationship between teachers and students, a relationship at the heart of student success.

It will accelerate teaching to tests instead of teaching to the needs of kids.

It will put teachers in the terrible position of wondering whether the performance of their weakest students on a test might be a threat to their careers.

It will make principals hesitate to lead schools where test scores are low.

This is a good summary of the bad effects of this shift. In the brave new world of teacher evaluations based on test scores, every teacher, every year, will be subject to the vagaries of chance. Every teacher will have to decide how that class of English Language Learners will affect their livelihoods. Every teacher will live in fear of being assigned special ed students, likewise difficult to move on the VAM charts. We are moving from the time when schools were blamed to a new time of the toad, when individual teachers will be vilified, their careers ruined over their scores.

To make this more real, I want to share with you some specific results from the Houston Independent School District (HISD).Houston has been evaluating teachers based on value-added student test data (calculated through a widely-used commercial system called EVAAS) for the purpose of both merit pay and dismissal.

In spring of 2011, a number of HISD teachers' contracts were not renewed, largely due to:
"a significant lack of student progress attributable to the educator," and
"insufficient student academic growth reflected by [EVAAS] value-added scores."

A recent research summary included evidence about the value-added scores of several teachers, including this one, who had been a highly-regarded elementary teacher in HISD for more than 10 years. In each year, she "exceeded expectations" across every domain in her supervisor evaluations. She was given a "Teacher of the Month" award in 2010 and a "Teacher of the Year" award in 2008.

Here are her scores for the previous four years:

Many studies have found that the scores that come from these models are subject to a great many factors, and are highly variable from year to year. In Houston, the study quoted here found that most teachers' value-added scores were lower in the years when they had a large number of newly mainstreamed English learners, a practice that occurs in grade 4, as shown in this teacher's case.

Here is another example.

This teacher certified for grades 4-8 via HISD's Alternative Teaching Certificate (ATC) program. She took a full-time position in HISD in 2006. Until 2010-11, she was rated as "exceeded expectations" or "proficient" across every domain in terms of her supervisor evaluations. Like most teachers, she had positive (3 out of 6) and negative (3 out of 6) value-added scores across the years.

In 2009-2010, when she was assigned to teach a large number of English Language Learners who were transitioned into her classroom, her value-added scores went down. This well-regarded teacher has now also left the Houston school district, while those who have stayed are increasingly confused and demoralized by this system.

These teachers report that there is no relationship between their instructional practices and their value-added ratings, which appear unpredictable. As one teacher noted:

I do what I do every year. I teach the way I teach every year. [My] first year got me pats on the back. [My] second year got me kicked in the backside. And for year three, my scores were off the charts. I got a huge bonus, and now I am in the top quartile of all the English teachers. What did I do differently? I have no clue.

These examples were drawn from the report of a policy briefing sponsored by the American Educational Research Association and National Academy of Education, Getting Teacher Evaluation Right: A Brief for Policymakers, by Linda Darling-Hammond, Audrey Amrein-Beardsley, Edward Haertel, and Jesse Rothstein. The report notes the results of a number of studies that have found wide swings in teachers' value-added ratings, based on classes and characteristics of the students they teach, the year, the test, and the statistical model used. For these reasons, this research summary points out that leading research organizations, like the National Research Council, ETS, and RAND Corporation, have all counseled against the use of these kinds of ratings for high-stakes decisions for teachers. As a letter from the National Research Council's Board on Testing and Assessment stated in a letter to the US Department of Education:

"VAM estimates of teacher effectiveness ... should not used to make operational decisions because such estimates are far too unstable to be considered fair or reliable."

Of course this is all taking place against a backdrop of rising class sizes and cuts to support services such as school libraries and health programs. But teachers alone are held accountable for the results of their students, on the narrowest of measures. How many more teachers will we lose as these policies spread? How far will this corporate reform war on our profession go? At the end of the day, this will hurt the most vulnerable students the most, as it will speed up the revolving door of their teachers and create a dynamic in which teachers with options will try not to teach in the schools and classes where poor students and English Language learners predominate.

It seems that ALEC considers itself engaged in a battle of epic proportions, yet many teachers are too busy working to even realize that their profession is being redefined in state after state. I would offer another quote from Winston Churchill:

One ought never to turn one's back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half.

What do you think? Will teachers suffer a fate similar to that of our schools under NCLB, and find themselves declared failures? Is it time to turn and confront this danger?

(tables from the report, Getting Teacher Evaluation Right: A Brief for Policymakers, used with permission.)

Posted by Anthony Cody at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

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Last night in President Obama's State of the Union address, he repeated a familiar refrain about the importance of teachers.

A great teacher can offer an escape from poverty to the child who dreams beyond his circumstance.

But it seems that it is those in power who are actually using teachers to escape from the realities of poverty these days.

President Obama offered as evidence a citation from a recent Harvard report:

We know a good teacher can increase the lifetime income of a classroom by over $250,000.

He went on to say,

Teachers matter. So instead of bashing them, or defending the status quo, let's offer schools a deal. Give them the resources to keep good teachers on the job, and reward the best ones. In return, grant schools flexibility: To teach with creativity and passion; to stop teaching to the test; and to replace teachers who just aren't helping kids learn.

There are several problems with this. As others have pointed out, if you take a classroom of 25 students, and spread $250,000 over their 40 years of earnings, this amount comes to a grand total of $250 a year per student. This is unlikely to represent an escape from poverty. (see more thorough responses to the Chetty report here, and here.)

The second problem is a glaring contradiction, a logical flaw so huge it has been overlooked by almost every journalist apparently too polite to challenge the administration on it. If you do not wish teachers to teach to the test, if you want them to be passionate and creative, then how can you insist that their performance be measured by the use of test scores?

Let us be crystal clear. The Obama administration has made the use of test scores to evaluate principals and teachers a pre-condition for federal aid. Both Race to the Top and the NCLB waivers require that states develop evaluation processes that incorporate this data. Furthermore, the administration proposes to continue to identify and target for closure or "turnaround" the bottom 5% of schools, once again based on these same test scores we are told should not be taught to.

You cannot have it both ways. You cannot tell teachers to be creative, you cannot pretend you are "flexible," when you mandate the use of test scores for teacher and principal evaluations, and continue to use them as the basis by which schools are condemned as failures.

But the biggest burn is this. Everyone now knows that many of the wealthy have abandoned any pretense of caring about the poor in this country. They use every device to cling not only to their privilege, but to obscene levels of enrichment. The answer to poverty ought to be clear to us, as it was to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. more than fifty years ago. Poor people need a living wage. People need opportunities to work. We need a tax structure that rewards people for working and producing, not investing billions in tax havens overseas.

Of course teachers make a difference. But the idea that teachers will somehow elevate the one in four children in this country from poverty is not only wrong, it is a distraction from the real sources of poverty and inequality. In short, it lets the billionaires off the hook.

To his credit, President Obama discussed a number of measures that could result in a fairer tax structure, and encourage investment in our infrastructure and manufacturing base. These things could create jobs and opportunities.

Teachers have already chosen to put our shoulders to the wheel of inequality. Those of us who work with children in poverty are making tremendous sacrifices to meet their needs. The reason child poverty has expanded over the past two decades has nothing to do with "bad teachers," and everything to do with the huge concentration of wealth, and the devastation of America's manufacturing base, as millions of jobs have been shipped overseas in pursuit of higher profits.

The drive to get rid of bad teachers for the benefit of the poor is a phony crusade. The use of test scores for this purpose ensures that students in high poverty schools will continue to wallow in year-round test preparation, even while Arne Duncan sails around telling everyone he is opposed to teaching to the test..

The only people who are escaping poverty as a result of this charade are the wealthy. By making teachers the source of salvation, the rest of society is off the hook. By claiming that "bad teachers" are the reason our students lag, we can, as a society, ignore the enormous opportunity and resource gap that condemns millions of our children to poor futures.

Enough.

What do you think? Do teachers offer students an escape from poverty? Or is it the wealthy who are looking for the easy way out?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 1:05 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

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It has been a busy week for the internet Goliaths -- education tweeters who have enjoyed turning Michelle Rhee's #sixwordessay contest on its head. Perhaps we can shift our focus to our President, whose education policies leave a great deal to be desired.

Tomorrow evening President Obama will take to the air to make his State of the Union address. Advisor David Plouffe explained that an enhanced version of this speech will be broadcast on the www.whitehouse.gov website, and the speech will be followed by a discussion where staff will respond to questions from the public. Before and after the speech, use the hashtag #SOTU. For the discussion during the speech, use the hashtag #WHchat You can also submit your questions via YouTube. See details here. On January 30, President Obama will hold a separate event where he will respond to these questions.

This is an opportunity for teachers and parents to communicate our concerns once again.

So what would you ask the President?

Here are my questions to kick us off. Please add your own below, and if you have a Twitter account, begin tweeting them as well.

1. No Child Left Behind will soon declare every school a failure. Why must states agree to use test scores to evaluate teachers and principals to get relief from this terrible law?

2. You say you don't want teachers to teach to the test. Isn't this inevitable when you make teacher pay and evaluations depend on these scores?

3. How will your administration respond to states like California that fail to apply for NCLB waivers?

4. Teachers in Hawaii have just voted to strike rather than agree to the conditions imposed by the state's Race to the Top application, in particular an agreement to be evaluated by some as yet to be determined system based on their test scores. Doesn't this raise questions about the wisdom of this approach?

5. As we go further down the road of expansion of charter schools, supported by Race to the Top and other federal policies, researchers are finding that these schools are intensifying the degree of economic and racial segregation. Does the administration plan to continue to support the expansion of charter schools?

6. Last March you said we are too often using tests to punish students or schools. You suggested we could shift away from annual tests. But your administration is moving towards even more frequent tests, with even more rewards and punishments attached to them. Why don't your policies match what you know to be sound practice?

7. The practice of labeling schools as failures has become impractical as almost all schools will soon fail according to NCLB. But the idea that we can improve education for students by declaring their schools failures, and subjecting them to closures or harsh "turnaround" strategies has not worked. Your administration's proposal to continue this practice for the "bottom" 5% of our schools will perpetuate the high pressure on test scores for student in poverty. If punishing schools for low test scores has not worked -- as you suggested last March, (and was not shown to work in Chicago under then CEO Arne Duncan) why is it being continued for any schools at all?

8. Last year Congress passed a law that allows people with as little as five weeks of training to take positions of responsibility as full time teachers. These poorly trained teachers are concentrated in areas of high poverty. Will you support efforts to reverse this law, to ensure that all students have fully qualified teachers?

9. I worked in the schools of Oakland for 24 years. We have huge problems with high teacher turnover, and part of the reason is the endless pressure to raise test scores. Why would anyone choose to teach in high poverty schools when this pressure is the status quo?

What questions do you have for President Obama? Please share them here, and if you make a YouTube video, please share the link.

Posted by Anthony Cody at 5:54 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

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Ten days ago, I shared a guest post authored by Kelly Flynn, Teachers Hold the Key. They Always Have. This morning it received the following comment:

While I wholeheartedly agree with Ms. Flynn that teachers need to become more aware and involved in the reform strategies that are shaping our profession, I wonder what the best method for involving teachers should be. I belong to a group called the Denver New Millennium Initiative. We are a varied collection of voices of teachers who have 3-30 years of experience in K-12 schools in the Denver metro area. Though we have many differences in regards to our backgrounds and affiliations, we share a desire to be active members of the educational policy sphere. Where I think I am at odds with Ms. Flynn is that we couldn't do all that we have been able to do without the financial support of various foundations. Does this mean that we are less effective? I certainly hope not. We strive to be an organization that empowers teachers to have a voice in the policy sphere, and we are completely teacher-driven in our goals and efforts. I, too, have fears of corporate powerhouses taking over public education, but I am also grateful to those funders who have provided the means for my peers and I to become powerful voices for our profession here in Denver.



--Jessica Keigan, English Teacher and Member of the Denver New Millennium Initiative

Here are my thoughts in response to this important issue.

Ms. Keigan,
Thanks for your comment. This is a tricky issue. Like you, I have participated in many projects that were funded by foundations. Without non-profit foundation support I would not have had the chance to network with others through the Teacher Leaders Network. The whole National Board project would not have happened without foundation support, and that was hugely helpful to me as well. Even Education Week, which publishes this blog and many others, would not exist without ongoing support from foundations. I am grateful for this support. I am also aware of the work the New Millennium Initiative has done, and even participated in the early stages of some of that work with the San Francisco Bay Area project.

But foundation support has, it seems to me, become more agenda-driven than in the past. And sometimes that agenda may have an influence on the direction teacher advocacy projects take.

What is the emphasis of projects that receive funding? The organizations that apply for grant funding must anticipate what the foundations want to support, and tailor their proposals accordingly. This means that even though teachers that are recruited to participate may have a voice in the work that is done, the template has been laid down even before the work has begun.

You may find that there are certain things that "the funder wants" that must appear in your final product. That has been my experience. For example, I worked on a report on teacher compensation several years ago, and while within the pages of the report we were allowed to be critical of the use of test scores for teacher pay, it was made clear to us during the editing process that our final report had to allow for test scores to have some role.

This is not a black or white issue. There are some foundations that are much more aligned in their outlook with teachers than others, and thus give projects much greater latitude. There are others who have decided to focus their philanthropy on a particular agenda, a particular set of policy goals. In this regard, the Gates Foundation stands out, both because of the magnitude of their role, and the clear agenda that has emerged from most of the projects they have been supporting. I think it is important for teachers to look closely at the stated goals of the projects they participate in, and be alert for hidden agendas as well. For example, I do not think students and teachers in Indiana were well served by legislation that was passed with the help of the Gates-funded group Teach Plus, as I wrote here.

I think Kelly Flynn's post is a reaction to this sort of manipulation of teacher voice, and a call for teachers to develop our own voices in ways that do not depend on foundation support. I think this is very important because clearly, if teachers depend on these foundations to have a voice, then we are subject to their control.

More than two years ago, many of us were intensely dissatisfied with the Obama administration's education policies, especially the squandering of billions of dollars on the Race to the Top. Would any foundation at that time have funded outspoken advocacy against these policies? I didn't think so, and did not even try for funding. Instead, I launched the group Teachers' Letters to Obama, which I think was effective because of our ability to speak truth to power - and it cost us next to nothing. Would any foundation have supported a teacher and parent-led grassroots protest at the White House, such as the Save Our Schools March? I doubt it. There are real limits to the kinds of advocacy that foundations are willing to fund.

I do not think we need to reject foundation support on principle, but we need to make sure we are not being used to advance an agenda that is not in the interest of our students or our profession, and we need to develop our independent capacity to speak out and be effective advocates without utter reliance on foundation support. At a time when public education faces unprecedented dangers, teachers need to be able to stand on our own two feet, and do what it takes to be heard.

What do you think of the role of foundations in teacher leadership? How should teachers relate to leadership opportunities funded by various foundations?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 1:55 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

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Last night I had the honor of speaking to an audience of several thousand teachers from the greater Sacramento area, at an event that featured State Superintendent Tom Torlakson, California Teachers Association vice president Eric Heins, Linda Darling Hammond and the woman who has emerged as the champion for teachers, Diane Ravitch. Nine area teacher union locals cooperated to organize the event, and in spite of driving rain, the huge Sacramento Convention Center was packed with more than 3,000 people.

This was by far the largest crowd I have ever addressed. Here is the message I shared.

I spent 24 years working in the Oakland schools, and most of the last decade of that, our district was under state control. I can tell you with a high degree of certainty that Governor Brown was correct when he said Wednesday:

"I have a hunch principals and teachers know the most" (about how to improve our schools.)

Governor Brown and Superintendent Torlakson have rejected Arne Duncan's NCLB waiver process. California is blazing its own path towards better schools.

I want to paint a picture of how schools might be improved, once we get our ship of state onto a better course.

About fifteen years ago, Bret Harte, the Oakland middle school where I worked, had major problems. We had lots of students living in poverty, lots of immigrants, lots of special ed. We had high turnover, especially among science and math teachers. So we got a grant from the state - a program that went away a decade ago. The state's Middle School Demonstration Program gave us about $30,000 a year to pay for us to collaborate, attend conferences and get some expert coaching. We paired every novice science or math teacher with an experienced colleague to give them advice and support. We met together to work on our assessments, and we observed one another teach using the Lesson Study process.

We were not intensely focused on our test scores, but they did rise. We were focused on learning together, and on understanding how to reach our students at all levels.

For the next two years, we did not lose a single science or math teacher.

We went on to spread this work across the District, [through a program called Curriculum in Focus] and Oakland now has a robust science program, with a special program called TeamScience that mentors novice science teachers in our middle and high schools.

You can guess the next chapter of my story about Bret Harte Middle School. Beginning in 2002, No Child Left Behind labeled our school a failure. We failed to make AYP one year after the next, with so many subgroups it was very hard to get them all going up at the same time. The Middle School Demonstration Program was cut, morale dropped, and a couple of years later there was only one teacher remaining from the dynamic science team we had built.

But we had learned what works.

Collaboration works. Teachers planning lessons together, observing one another teach, sharing assessments, and puzzling over what is making a difference with our students.

Reflection works. We grow when we have time to look carefully at what we have done, see what worked and what didn't, and revise. Every lesson until our last is a draft.

Experience works. Teaching is so complex, and our students are changing constantly. Experienced teachers develop a reservoir of case studies in our minds. We begin to understand how to reach students who have unusual talents, how to create that sense of community in our classrooms that brings kids out of their shells, and helps them take risks.

Assessment works when the results are immediately available to teachers and students. Teachers know their students and the curriculum, and they ought to be assessing learning on a regular basis.

Mentoring works. Careful conversations that guide and inform can help a novice learn so much more, and avoid some of the shortcuts that cost dearly in the long run.

The MOST precious thing teachers have is time with one another.

Teachers in Finland spend 300 fewer hours with students than do American teachers. And the time they spend together is not consumed with poring over test data, or trying to focus their curriculum on things that will be tested.

As Adrienne Rich said at the start of No Child Left Behind,

Universal public education has two possible--and contradictory--missions. One is the development of a literate, articulate, and well-informed citizenry so that the democratic process can continue to evolve and the promise of radical equality can be brought closer to realization.

The other is the perpetuation of a class system dividing an elite, nominally 'gifted' few, tracked from an early age, from a very large underclass essentially to be written off as alienated from language and science, from poetry and politics, from history and hope--toward low-wage temporary jobs. The second is the direction our society has taken.

That is the direction we have taken under NCLB, but we have a chance in California to make a shift. Every teacher, every parent, every citizen needs to act on what we know works, and reject what we know is poison to our schools and students.

The entire edifice of No Child Left Behind is nearing collapse. The idea that we can improve schools by condemning them as failures is bankrupt. Even Arne Duncan knows that you cannot declare 100% of the schools in the nation a failure. Unfortunately, they are working on a whole backup act, which the NCLB waivers represents. There is the possibility that they will succeed in partitioning off as failures, the bottom tier of schools.

Everyone can agree -- in fact I heard on in Diane Ravitch's appearance on the radio yesterday, the host, Michael Krasny, said "Everyone knows that the schools in Oakland are bad." So we've all got to agree that somewhere there are the bad schools that deserve the terrible things that have been done to many many schools under No Child Left Behind. And the thought that came to mind this afternoon was a quote from a famous book: "Whatever you have done to the least of these, you have done to me." I implore Superintendent Torlakson and Governor Brown. Do not sacrifice the bottom 5% of our schools in this way. Continue to lead us in a new direction.

Principals, teachers, students and parents all know much better. No Child Left Behind is dead in California. Let's get on with the work of making our schools lively communities of learning for all of us.

What do you think of the choices confronting California?

Photo by Jivon Feliciano, used with permission. Video by David Cohen, used with permission.

Posted by Anthony Cody at 9:54 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

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In his State of the State address today, Jerry Brown continues to lead education in a direction that is different from that taken by most of the nation's governors. Like few other leaders, he seems to recognize the flaws in our over-reliance on tests, and the need to shift power back to those in closest contact with our students.

You can read his entire statement here.

Here is what he had to say about education in California:

Next, I want to say something about our schools. They consume more tax dollars than any other government activity and rightly so as they have a profound effect on our future. Since everyone goes to school, everyone thinks they know something about education and in a sense they do. But that doesn't stop experts and academics and foundation consultants from offering their ideas -- usually labeled reform and regularly changing at ten year intervals--on how to get kids learning more and better. It is salutary and even edifying that so much interest is shown in the next generation. Nevertheless, in a state with six million students, 300,000 teachers, deep economic divisions and a hundred different languages, some humility is called for.

In that spirit, I offer these thoughts. First, responsibility must be clearly delineated between the various levels of power that have a stake in our educational system. What most needs to be avoided is concentrating more and more decision-making at the federal or state level. For better or worse, we depend on elected school boards and the principals and the teachers they hire. To me that means, we should set broad goals and have a good accountability system, leaving the real work to those closest to the students. Yes, we should demand continuous improvement in meeting our state standards but we should not impose excessive or detailed mandates.

My budget proposes to replace categorical programs with a new weighted student formula that provides a basic level of funding with additional money for disadvantaged students and those struggling to learn English. This will give more authority to local school districts to fashion the kind of programs they see their students need. It will also create transparency, reduce bureaucracy and simplify complex funding streams.

Given the cutbacks to education in recent years, it is imperative that California devote more tax dollars to this most basic of public services. If we are successful in passing the temporary taxes I have proposed and the economy continues to expand, schools will be in a much stronger position.

No system, however, works without accountability. In California we have detailed state standards and lots of tests. Unfortunately, the resulting data is not provided until after the school year is over. Even today, the ranking of schools based on tests taken in April and May of 2011 is not available. I believe it is time to reduce the number of tests and get the results to teachers, principals and superintendents in weeks, not months. With timely data, principals and superintendents can better mentor and guide teachers as well as make sound evaluations of their performance. I also believe we need a qualitative system of assessments, such as a site visitation program where each classroom is visited, observed and evaluated. I will work with the State Board of Education to develop this proposal.

The house of education is divided by powerful forces and strong emotions. My role as governor is not to choose sides but to listen, to engage and to lead. I will do that. I embrace both reform and tradition--not complacency. My hunch is that principals and teachers know the most, but I'll take good ideas from wherever they come.

I am excited that California is beginning on the path towards authentic education reform. Jerry Brown has made public statements in the past along these lines. See this report from October, Jerry Brown puts the Brakes on Test-Driven Reform, and this one from last May;California Governor puts the Testing Juggernaut on Ice.

As far back as the fall of 2009, while serving as California's Attorney General, Brown sent a strongly worded statement to Education Secretary Arne Duncan raising concerns about his Race to the Top program. Here is what he said then, in part:

The basic assumption of your draft regulations appears to be that top down, Washington driven standardization is best. This is a "one size fit all" approach that ignores the vast diversity of our federal system and the creativity inherent in local communities. What we have at stake are the impressionable minds of the children of America. You are not collecting data or devising standards for operating machines or establishing a credit score. You are funding teaching interventions or changes to the learning environment that promise to make public education better, i.e. greater mastery of what it takes to become an effective citizen and a productive member of society. In the draft you have circulated, I sense a pervasive technocratic bias and an uncritical faith in the power of social science.

I will be joining Diane Ravitch and Linda Darling-Hammond at an event in Sacramento this Friday, Jan. 20. Tickets are still available. It will be a good time to be in the state's capital. We finally have a light at the end of this test-crazy tunnel.

What do you think of the approach Governor Brown is taking? How does this compare with leaders in your part of the world?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 2:48 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

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Patrick Ledesma offers an interesting window into the world of "teacher leaders" in his post this week. I share some history with Patrick. He and I met about eight years ago when we were both members of Apple's Digital Edge project. More recently, we were both active in the Teacher Leaders Network. Last year, we exchanged ideas in a lively dialogue related to his perspective as a Teacher Ambassador Fellow with the Department of Education.

In Patrick's latest post, after describing some of the projects he has been involved in, he suggests that "teacher leadership, as a concept, remains undefined." The title of his post asks "What is Missing in Teacher Leadership? A Roadmap & Destination"

He suggests a handful of avenues for teachers to expand their leadership - but I am afraid I am still missing the destination he has in mind.

For me, teacher leadership cannot be an end in itself. The "seat at the table" will be just that, if we cannot bring about a shift in the relationships teachers find ourselves in today.

So before we begin discussing roadmaps, let's see if we can agree on the terrain in which we find ourselves.

Our schools, and the teachers who work there, are in the midst of a mammoth effort to centralize control over education. In the past decade, starting with NCLB, we have seen the Federal government intervene in every school in the nation through mandates to improve test scores. This project is now being compounded by efforts to create common national standards, and common assessments to go along with them. Federal policies are requiring states to implement these standards as a condition of receiving assistance, and likewise requiring states to create systems of teacher and principal evaluation that incorporate test score results. Even teacher preparation programs will soon be required to be judged and subjected to rewards or punishments based on the test scores yielded by the teachers they produce.

Non-profit foundations are now funding a huge array of organizations that are active in the educational sphere. Most have aligned their priorities along similar lines, and are funding projects accordingly. These priorities are also largely aligned with the policies of the Department of Education, and are also designed to enhance opportunities for the expansion of various private enterprises in the education arena, from charter school networks, to test and curriculum publishers. There is an increasing synergy across these sectors.

Meanwhile increasing numbers of our students are suffering the effects of poverty, but we have been professionally chastised for mentioning this as a factor affecting their achievement. We have been silenced as vocal advocates for equity, because this could be nothing but an excuse for our own inadequacy.

That is the terrain as I see it. What does this mean in terms of a roadmap for teacher leadership?

The most obvious and well-paved road takes an accomplished teacher in the direction of the projects described above. The organizations with funds to pay to teachers to be professionally active are drawing their support from these foundations. As I related here, advocacy of groups like Teach Plus seems to be aligned with increasing the use of test scores on teacher evaluations, and diminishing due process and seniority rights for teachers.

The more traditional road of teacher leader as active professional leader within a district still exists, but priorities at the district level are set by the test-driven federal agenda, so one is enmeshed there as well.

But these two paths assume that teachers are more or less passive participants in the system, incapable of altering the course of events. If my assessment of the terrain above is accurate, how does a teacher respond? There is a third arena of teacher leadership that Patrick somehow missed. That is the realm of teacher as a leader of social change. For me, I am thinking of leadership that encompasses both a critical moral dimension, and an awareness of our responsibility to shape the institutions we participate in.

Perhaps we might term this type of leadership "teacher leader as change agent." Unfortunately, this may not be as promising a career path as the previous two models, especially in this day and age.

Last week, my guest columnist Kelly Flynn ruminated on the reasons teachers have not been more outspoken as we have seen our schools attacked and our professionalism undermined. She offered a challenge:

The solution to the corporate takeover of the public school system lies with teachers. It always has. By not speaking up they send the message that they approve of corporate reform. For far too long they have allowed the debate to go on without them.

Silence implies acceptance.

Teachers who are afraid to speak up must remember: they have right on their side. They know what learners need to flourish in the classroom. Test prep and drill does not foster true learning. Teachers may not have the nerve to stick up for themselves, but they are rabid defenders of students.

To this I would add another concept drawn from Jon Stewart's recent interview with White House staffer Melody Barnes. Stewart asked,

Do you think ultimately we will find ourselves changing our entire model of education? I have always found with education that individuals are the ones that make the enormous difference, and the more that you're able to empower a great teacher, a great principal, a great superintendent, can make enormous differences. How do we empower the individual to have the authority and the responsibility to make those changes, and not tie them to arbitrary objective realities or goals?

This is a wonderful reminder of the principles that I believe ought to be foundational to our work as teacher leaders. I believe the most effective teacher leaders are not those who go with the flow of corporate and non-profit dollars, nor those who drive forward federally-driven mandates for improved test scores. They are those who seek the autonomy of each and every student as a unique learner, and seek professional autonomy and responsibility for themselves and their peers. They seek out others to meet this challenge, and participate in grassroots organizing efforts as well. The teachers who are agents of change are the ones I am looking to for leadership these days.

What do you think? How do YOU define teacher leadership?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 3:43 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Guest post by Jack Hassard.

The U.S. Department of Education (DOE) wants to insure that every teacher in the U.S. is evaluated on the basis on student progress on high-stakes achievement tests. To achieve this, the DOE will issues waivers on some aspects of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in exchange for a state-wide system to evaluate teachers using tests.
In this post I provide details and opinions on this development.

Waivers In the News
The NCLB waivers have become a newsworthy item. Here are links to a few articles published recently.

• Waiver ties teacher evaluation to test scores, was the title of an article in Atlanta Journal-Constitution on January 10.


• In Education Week, James Cavanagh wrote a piece entitled Some States Skeptical of NCLB Waivers.


• Will NCLB Waivers Reverse Narrowing of the Curriculum? an article in Education Week


• Huffington Post reported: No Child Left Behind Waivers may be too expensive, State officials say

ESEA Flexibility Requests

This all started when 11 states had asked for waivers, after the DOE announced they would offer a "flexibility package" from some provisions of No Child Left Behind, especially ones the states felt they couldn't reach by the target dates set by NCLB. States submitted what is called an ESEA Flexibility Request. This link will take you to a Word document which spells out exactly what should be in the request, and how it should be organized. It's really a template that all states must use to get the waiver.

Here are links to ESEA Flexibility Requests received so far:
Colorado [PDF, 65MB], Florida [PDF, 81MB], Georgia [PDF, 36MB], Indiana [PDF, 50MB], Kentucky [PDF, 25MB], Massachusetts [PDF, 18MB], Minnesota [PDF, 812KB], New Jersey [PDF, 63MB], New Mexico [PDF, 63MB], Oklahoma [PDF, 46MB] and Tennessee [PDF, 52MB] each submitted a request for ESEA Flexibility on November 14, 2011. You can read the entire request for each of these states by following the links to the states.

Flexibility is asking and spelling out the waivers that each state requests, and then assuring that they will meet the principles identified by the DOE.

Principles Exchanged for Waivers
I downloaded the 249 page Georgia Flexibility Report to find out what really is in these reports, and why some states are all for them, and why some states are very skeptical of the NCLB waivers. My comments in this section are based on an examination of the Georgia report. I live in Georgia, and am professor emeritus of science education at Georgia State University, and have had more than 30 years of experience in education in Georgia.

Georgia was a Race to the Top (RttT) winner, and has had a head start on the principles that are described below that they must implement and meet in order to get waivers on NCLB.

There are three principles that all states who request a waiver must adopt. They must detail how they will develop, and implement each of these principles in all schools by 2017. Examination of the principles exposes the sheer weight of bureaucratic rules, high-stakes tests, teacher evaluation measures, and the inordinate number of officials controlling public education far from the day-to-day lives of students and teachers.

Principle 1: Adopt College and Career Ready Standards
College and career ready standards means that the state will adopt the Common Core State Standards in mathematics and reading/language arts. In Georgia's case the GaDOE is partnering with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to support the "transition" to the Common Core State Standards. The state agrees to develop and administer annual, statewide, aligned, high-quality assessments that measure student growth.

The Common Core State Standards, which were written by Achieve, Inc., have been adopted by most states. Achieve is busy at work writing the new Science Standards, and they no doubt will be adopted by all states. But, keep in mind that Achieve is also writing the tests based on these sets of national standards, and so down the road, we will see a set of national tests. And, it doesn't matter where students live, they all must live up to this single of standards in each curriculum area.

Coming along will a new portfolio of high-stakes tests written by Achieve.

Principle 2: State-Developed Differentiated Recognition, Accountability and Support
This is a big one. The state agrees to provide meaningful information about school performance, student achievement and graduation rates, closes gaps for all schools across the state, and targets schools that need help. Priority schools (the lowest performing), and Focus schools (schools that contribute to the achievement gap) will be targeted. Reward school--you guessed it, a school that has exceptional performance. There is even a plan to compensate high performing schools.

One of the sub-principles driving each state is setting performance standards for high school and elementary/middle schools. To do this, the states (at least as shown in the Georgia proposal) use a prescribed formula to get to the Performance Targets in 2017. Here is the formula or algorithm that Georgia uses to determine annual growth that school must meet in each subject area.

Annual Growth = (100% - 2011 Proficiency Rate)/6

As an example in high school biology in Georgia, the annual growth would be: 100% - 69.1 = 30.9/6 = 5.15. 69.1 was the 2011 proficiency rate. So, if you are teaching biology in Georgia, proficiency rates must increase by 5.15 so that by 2017, the rate will be 84. It seems to me that this kind of thinking urges that teachers teach to the test to make sure that their students can answer correctly the questions on the high-stakes bubble tests. There is no theory underlying the notion of annual growth, and how these scores relate to the research in the learning sciences.

Go any state department of education website in the U.S. and you will find a treasure trove of data on student test scores by year, content area, grade level and school. At the Assessment page on the Georgia Department of Education website you will find endless Excel data tables by grade level, subject area, and school which you can download.

Principle 3: Supporting Effective Instruction and Leadership (Guidelines for Principal and Teacher Evaluation)

This principle is the one that is being picked up in newspapers, and on blogs around the country. Fundamentally, it means that teacher and administrator evaluation will be tied in some way to student progress on achievement tests. Using student progress on achievement test scores as a measure of teacher effectiveness is riddled with problems, and inconsistencies. The tests themselves are developed by testing corporations that have little or no vested interest in the local school and its curriculum, students, teachers, or parents.

The decisions being made are far removed from communities that make up the school districts, and collectively are the building blocks of the state education system. Everything that is being done is from the top-down by bureaucrats who once were part of local schools, but have moved to central command centers in the state capitals of the U.S., and from their vantage points, look out, and make decisions for thousands of students and teachers.

Okay. Here is a multiple choice question for you to consider:
DEM, LEM, and TEM are:

• 
a. Nicknames for the latest X-Box game superheroes


• 
b. Abbreviations for newly discovered planets outside the solar system



• c. Names of three new political parties in the State of Georgia



• d. Acronyms for Georgia's system wide approach to effectiveness and accountability

Well. How did you do? The answer is "d," and you can find these terms in charts and discussions in the State of Georgia's first proposal for the Race to the Top competition and in the Georgia ESEA Flexibility Request. A DEM is the acronym for District Effectiveness Measure; LEM is the acronym for Leader Effectiveness Measure; and TEM--you guessed it, is the acronym for Teacher Effectiveness Measure. All of these measures will have a significant student growth component, and of course the state will develop a "establish a clear and transparent approach to measuring student growth." Now, if you believe this, I'll sell you a bridge! You can read more about this here.

Summing Up
I have read Georgia's Race to the Top grant proposal and the Flexibility Request. What have we done? We've lost our way in the world of reform led by people who know very little about the lived world of students and teachers. To improve schooling, reform has to be led from the ground up by educators working at local levels.

I rigorously object to the Race to the Top, to the notion of college and career ready standards, and the use of high-stakes tests for making life changing decisions about students, teachers and administrators. I've written much on this, and I have summarized research and analysis in two eBooks that are available here:
Achieving a New Generation of Science Standards
The Enigma of High-Stakes Testing in Science

What do you think about the way in which states are receiving waivers? Or are they? Does complying with the principles identified above lessen the control that the Federal Government has on local education? Tell us what you think.

Jack Hassard is Professor Emeritus of Science Education, Georgia State University. He is author of The Whole Cosmos Catalog of Science, Science Experiences, Adventures in Geology, The Art of Teaching Science (2009), Second Edition, Routledge, and most recently, Science As Inquiry (2011), 2nd Edition, Good Year Books. Specialities include science teaching & learning, global thinking & education, geology, web publishing, blogging, writing, and antiquing. This essay was originally posted at his blog, The Art of Teaching Science.

Posted by Anthony Cody at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Guest post by Barbara Torre Veltri, Ed. D.

The season of giving might be behind us, but non-profits continue to target donors. Teach For America, Inc., attracts major contributions, but TFA teachers (often referred to as corp members) are raising questions about where the money is being spent. Many TFA teachers take out hefty loans to cover their living expenses as they get trained and begin their placements. These loans must be repaid within thirty days if the teachers leave the program for any reason.

Philanthropists, corporate donors and foundations view Teach For America's as worthy of significant financial support (Ravitch, 2010). The non-profit register, Guide Star, lists TFA as a "public charity."

The Heckscher Foundation for Children notes on it's web site, "We continue to support Teach for America (TFA), whose mission is to eliminate educational inequity by harnessing the talents of our nation's most promising future leaders." Teach For America's Board Members include high profile members such as Laurene Powell, (widow of Steve Jobs), Walter Isaacson, CNN analyst and Harvard Professor, David Gergen, Larry Summers, and owners of consumer goods companies: (1) Build-A-Bear, Inc., 2) Netflix, Inc., and (3) The GAP. Last fall, Apple stores convinced thousands of purchasers of new iPads to donate their old ones to "teachers in low income schools." Nine thousand of these iPads were then refurbished and distributed to Teach For America corps members.

Governors of Arizona, Colorado, Mississippi and Texas, contributed state funds to the Teach For America organization, in 2010. And, Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona stated, " I am pleased to announce the award of $2 million of my discretionary funds to Teach For America."

A significantly larger than reported operating budget was shared with an audience of donors in March 2011. Pearl Esau, then Executive Director of Teach For America's Phoenix region, stated: "Teach For America is expected to lose $21 million from its $880 million operating budget next year," (Colick, 2011).

During the 3rd and 4th quarters of fiscal year 2011 funds for TFA arrived in the form of a $50 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education, a $100 million grant from the Walton Family Foundation and an endowment of $200 million pledged by Eli and Edith Broad and five wealthy supporters. In addition to the philanthropic and corporate donors, each of the 42 TFA regions across the country including the recently added 2011-2012 sites in Alabama, Kentucky, Seattle and South Carolina, pay "finder's fees," ranging from $2,000 - $5,000 per corps member annually, to the Teach For America organization.

Any way you do the math, Teach For America raises a lot of money. And, this, in turn, raises a lot of questions. Corps members, their families, public agencies and others wonder, "Where does the money go?" It came as no surprise to me that more voices expressed concern about Teach For America's transparency in financial matters. These concerns persist across cohorts of corps members, and particularly in a tough economy, TFA interns suggest a hidden agenda that impacts financially struggling corps members and their families.

Since I wrote my book describing some of the problems Teach For America Corps members have experienced, a number of them have written or spoken to me to share their stories. The statements below are quotes from this correspondence (names have been changed.)

"You sign contracts for all these loans/grants/placement fund money, etc - it's all done online though and I doubt very many TFA-ers or their families bother to read the fine print." (Paul)

This summer, on a balmy August afternoon in Del Mar, California, a mother of a newly trained TFA corps member assigned to teach in an urban city in upper mid-west, shared that her daughter received $3,000 from Teach For America. She thought it was a grant. When I told her that it would need to be paid back, she was shocked! She assumed that Teach For America would provide the financial support (especially for travel) to incoming corps members. "How else would college grads with student loans, go from their college in California to the TFA training on the East Coast, and then to the teaching assignment in the Midwest?"

As a mom of children who incurred student loan debt in college, and one who heard hundreds of corps members experiences I appreciated her concern. An additional financial expectation was not what parents or corps applicants were expecting.

Most tell me, "TFA is going to pay for grad school." That is not true. The Ameri-corps stipend of less than $5,000 per year is provided upon completion of two years of successful completion of teaching duties with TFA. If you complete one year, and have a car accident in year two, your stipend is not a guarantee.
'
"I am having an enormous issue with Teach for America and the district after I was involved in a severe car accident. My arm was stitched in five places and I had back injuries. I was afraid to even ask for time off because after my first year, I was promoted to a unique nine-hour educational program for 5th and 6th graders that the District paid for. My principal took a gamble on this, and I was afraid to let them down by taking the needed time off. My condition worsened and I was taken to the E.R. during a school day when a lesson plan for a 30-minute period was missing. When I returned to school I was moved to a Kindergarten class! Kindergarten!

"Throughout this, my program director, and my executive director came to two meetings, one with me and one without. My E.D. (Executive Director) literally defended them and stated 'It is evident Radya is not following your directives. I will make sure she has more clear expectations, she follows them, and gets the help she needs.'" (Radya)

I learned from corps members that Teach For America's "loans" cover several categories.

"There are 'transitional loans", which are for covering unpaid summer training time/moving costs, etc. and these need to be paid back no matter what, but you have a two-year payment plan. But if you don't finish your two-year commitment for ANY reason, you have to pay them back in a month) and then there are also transitional grants, which are rarer and usually smaller than the loans and these don't need to be paid back (unless you don't finish your commitment and then again, they have to be paid back in one month), and there are also 'placement funds', which TFA gives to Corps members who aren't placed, once the school year starts (equivalent to the average teacher's salary in a region) and again, these don't need to be paid back unless you don't finish your commitment and then you have one month to pay them back" (Brandon).

Another mother funded her only child's TFA-related-funds herself. This outlay, which began in June, covered her daughter's travel (airfare) to her assigned teaching region in the South, transport of her car from their family's Southwest home, funds for apartment deposit and first month's rent, funds to setup her apartment, funds to set up her classroom, roundtrip travel (airfare) to Teach For America's Corps Training Institute in Atlanta, and funds for living expenses for four months (June-September).

"I've spent over $5,500 for my daughter so far, and she's not received her first pay check yet. We are a middle class family, but I didn't want Marla (pseudonym) to have to take out any TFA loans. I had some concerns about that." (Mrs. Jacoby).

The problem occurs when corps members receive big transitional loans/grants packages from Teach For America to cover their summer/moving costs and sometimes also get on the placement fund for a month or more. Most TFAers are not as fortunate to have parent support until their first paycheck arrives from the school district, usually one month after the start of the academic year.

"Of course, TFA and their recruiters generally fail to emphasize that these loans/grants need to be paid back within a month, if one drops out of the program (but of course, no one ever quits TFA, and if they do, it's their fault!)." (Rico)

"Then sometimes (as you well know) Corps members have health issues or are mis-placed or other issues come up and they have to leave the program, but then they are often stuck up a river financially (unless they have rich, generous parents)...That's the financial trap TFA sets for unsuspecting Corps members who aren't given a proper picture of the realities they will face who are often placed in grade levels/subjects they aren't expecting, etc. I've heard from many Corps members all over the country who desperately want to quit, but know they will screwed financially if they don't finish their two years' (Bryce)

The appeal of 'mission,' combined with a patriotic sounding brand name, and the image of intelligent, young, ivy league graduates teaching poor children, (although the majority of corps members hail from state universities) encourages an elite pool of donors, who desire to be part of the "movement,"(Caplan, 2007; Danois, 2011). The "service" notion entices friends and political allies of Teach For America to embrace the mission for the following reasons: (1) service doesn't require extensive training (no Education degree required), and (2) service supports a non-profit, tax exemption for donor's generosity.

Ms. Kopp, CEO of Teach For America noted that TFA was not designed to bring career educators into the classroom, but to expose future leaders to issues in education.
For corps members directly impacted by Teach For America's allocation of financial resources, this information might seems difficult to swallow.

TFA's founder, Ms. Kopp, stated in a video-taped interview with Malcom Gladwell, "TFA is not a teaching organization, but rather a leadership development organization." One of TFA's regional web sites reports,"25 TFA alums will run for office in the next two years." Guidestar's Organization report on Teach For America, Inc. notes, "We believe that the best hope for a lasting solution is to build a massive force of leaders who have the insight and conviction that comes from teaching successfully in low-income communities"

Corps members have persisted in advocating for changes to Teach For America's training, placement, and recruitment model. Now, the financial issues appear daunting.

Brandon reports, "Corps members get entrapped by TFA financially (I still pay more per month in TFA loan payments right now than I pay in federal loan payments for my entire undergraduate education)."

"TFA forces Corps members (in most cases) to rapidly pay back all their transitional loans and 'grants'/placement fund money (within a month) if they have to leave the program early for whatever reason (hence ensnaring many Corps members financially)" (Jeremy).

Unfortunately, TFA makes any Corps member who leaves the organization early pay back their often significant (this person's amount is $5,000) transitional loans and 'placement funding' within a month. Life happens, even with corps who report that they contract cancer, are in severe automobile accidents, or have been physically harmed by inappropriate placements.

I recall picking up my corps member grad students (figuratively) for university courses, which coincided with the start of their own teaching. They were grasping for any "this-works- try-it-tomorrow" strategies, as well as support from non-TFA veterans. Their facial expressions for the most part were giveaways, as glazed eyes, even on twenty-some things, betrayed their lack of sleep. Most were on financial overload too, as expenses tied to traveling from (a) their college to their assigned school district, and then (b) to their summer TFA training, and then (c) back to their school district, had to come from somewhere, because most would be working one full month before a pay check arrived from their real teaching job in the late summer/fall. So, beginning a master's degree program, from the university, added one more load onto novice TFAers, which, for most, was like trying to sop up the floods from a hurricane with a sponge.

Questions still persist
The resources to adequately prepare, place and support rookie TFAers appear to be in the coffers of Teach For America. The burden to manage financially for four months prior to a paycheck while figuring out teaching, should not be placed on mostly twenty-something-rookie TFAers, who, in spite of intelligence, resourcefulness, and tenacity, are still... recent college graduates with educational loans, travel and living expenses, that appear to not be covered by the not-for-profit donations of well-meaning donors.

What do you think of the questions raised by the author? Have you had any experiences related to this?

Barbara Torre Veltri, Ed. D. Assistant professor in the College of Education at Northern Arizona University, is the author of Learning on Other People's Kids: Becoming a Teach For America Teacher (Information Age, 2010.) She was introduced to TFA in 1999 and was the first university liaison with TFA based at Arizona State University, where she worked to develop a TFA specific master's program, that included modeling, on-site coaching and supervision in corps classrooms, presented workshops at All-corps meetings, taught courses for TFA, and developed outreach to their executive and program directors, over 7 years. After that she expanded research to visit other areas and gather corps data in three other states and of course, received documents and continues to be in touch with corps alumni and corps parents.

References:
Caplan, L. (October, 2007). Great Expectations; Why Big Donors back Teach for America. Slate Magazine.

Colick, Z. (March, 2011). East Valley program strives to bridge the gap, eliminate 'epidemic of low expectations'.

Danois, E. B. (January, 2011). Teach for America Gets $100 Million in Funding.

Kopp, W. (2003). One day all children: The unlikely triumph of Teach For America and What I learned along the way. New York: Perseus Books.

Hjalmarson, D. (April 2011). Non-profit Teach for America to place teachers in Kentucky.

Miner, B. (Spring/Summer 2010). Looking Past The Spin: Teach For America. Rethinking Schools.

Ravitch, D. (2010). The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. New York: Perseus Books

Veltri, B. (2010). Learning on Other People's Kids: Becoming a Teach For America Teacher. Charlotte, North Carolina: Information Age Publishers.

Posted by Anthony Cody at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Guest post by Kelly Flynn.

I'm intrigued by the topic of Anthony Cody's two recent blog entries, "Are Critics of Corporate Education 'Reform' Winning the Online Debate?" and "Lopsided Debate Over Education Reform Reveals a Broken System."

We may be winning the online battle, but so far, we're losing the war.

After teaching high school for almost 20 years I left the classroom to write a weekly newspaper column about education for The Flint Journal in Flint, Michigan. Because the column was published in a mainstream newspaper, I was able to inform and educate the general public about the reality of life in the classroom, and then show them -- using humor and anecdotes -- exactly why a particular piece of legislation would not work.

I began writing about the dangers of NCLB and the dismantling of the public school system in 2002. I wrote about the greed and power of textbook companies and their political allies, about the insult hurled at educators when George W. Bush accused us of bigotry, the absurdity of Bill Gates being hailed as an education expert, and about dozens of contrived "think tank" studies that painted an unflattering and untrue portrait of public education.

Every time I was asked to speak publicly, whether to a community group or teachers, I discussed the politics of education and the corporate takeover of pubic schools.

But I repeatedly met the same perplexing sentiments when I spoke to teachers: "Oh, I'm just not political" and "We're so glad you're speaking up for us." While teachers were emphatically grateful for the work I was doing on their behalf, they just as emphatically believed that it was not their work to do.

And that hasn't changed.

After Oprah Winfrey aired two wildly one-sided shows about education in the fall of 2010, I raced to her website, expecting teachers to be outraged. They weren't. Given the fact that there are over 3 million teachers in this country, and given the size of Oprah Winfrey's audience, the number of comments was pitiful.

Why is that?

No one wants to say it because no one wants to harangue teachers any more than they have been. I feel the same way.

But the problem lies with teachers. For too long they have let the education debate happen around them. Even when they came to understand the destructiveness of NCLB, they grumbled in the teacher's lounge, but did not take action.

In 2004 I watched talented veteran teachers jump through one hoop after another to become "highly qualified" under NCLB, while the inexperienced Teach for America corps expanded its reach across the country.

Why didn't public school teachers howl from the rooftops about the injustice of that?

Those of us who have taught, know why. First, teaching is tremendously time-consuming, and physically and emotionally grueling. Teachers have little time or energy left for advocacy.

And second, most teachers are afraid to "get in trouble" with building administrators, parents, or the public. They believe that speaking up will eventually come back to haunt them.

So they intentionally bury their heads in the sand. Three months after Oprah Winfrey heralded Michelle Rhee, an aggressive, anti-union corporate reformer, as a hero, I attended a holiday party with several of my former teaching colleagues. Over the course of the evening I asked each of them what they thought of Michelle Rhee's brand of reform. Not a single person knew who she was.

At another gathering a few months later, while talking with a parent about schools, I mentioned the disastrous effect NCLB had on public education. The parent was shocked. As succinctly as possible, I explained to her why NCLB failed both teachers and students. This educated woman was completely and utterly astonished that legislators would pass education policy that teachers did not like. Shaking her head in genuine bafflement, she said, "But that doesn't make sense. Why would the government mandate education policy that teachers don't approve of?"

Her naiveté was breathtaking.

And, unfortunately, it reflects the collective wisdom of much of the general public when it comes to education issues. We forget that much of the public actually reads very little, let alone seeks out education blogs to read about policy.

I was once taken to task for a column I wrote by a spokesperson for Margaret Spellings and consider it still to be one of the highlights of my writing career. But here's the thing: Margaret Spellings would not have bothered with me if I had not been writing for a mainstream newspaper, and thus had the potential to shape the views of the general public.

So if critics of corporatized education are winning the online debate, it is because we are preaching to the choir. We're talking to ourselves. I doubt that Bill Gates reads education blogs while having his morning coffee. Corporate reformers don't need to muck about in the blog arena when they own politicians and control the media.

And the fact is, the corporate reformers are winning. Dozens of state legislators are boldly pursuing legislation that will dismantle public education. The online debate is but a gnat, mildly bothersome, but ultimately easy to swat away.

But all is not lost.

The solution to the corporate takeover of the public school system lies with teachers. It always has. By not speaking up they send the message that they approve of corporate reform. For far too long they have allowed the debate to go on without them.

Silence implies acceptance.

Teachers who are afraid to speak up must remember: they have right on their side. They know what learners need to flourish in the classroom. Test prep and drill does not foster true learning. Teachers may not have the nerve to stick up for themselves, but they are rabid defenders of students.

Letters to legislators, letters to mainstream publications, social networks, blog comments, informational pickets, grade-ins--teachers' voices must be collective, constant, and insistent. And as a staff they must insist that building principals join them and support them in this work.

So while I am often impatient with teachers' passivity, I have great faith in them, too. My teaching colleagues are the most amazingly talented, organized, principled people you'd ever want to meet, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that when they put their minds to it, they will start a revolution.

After seven years and hundreds of opportunities to educate the general public, my education column became a casualty of the tanking newspaper industry in 2009. No longer do subscribers open their Sunday paper to the opinion page and read an ordinary teacher's take on life in the classroom right alongside the opinions of Cal Thomas, Clarence Page, Ellen Goodman, and Thomas Friedman.

And that's a shame. But it's not the end of the world. If Barack Obama can use social networking to win a presidency, we can likewise harness that power to beat back the corporate-reformers.

I believe in the power of the online community. But the problem is what it has always been - too few voices, speaking much too quietly.

It's time for every teacher in this country, from the tiniest island in Hawaii to the shores of Eastport, Maine, to muster their courage and combine their voices in one long, loud, ferocious rebel yell, and turn the tide on this thing.

It won't happen without them.

What do you think of this challenge? Are you using your teacher voice?

Kelly Flynn is the author of Kids, Classrooms, and Capitol Hill: A Peek Inside the Walls of America's Public Schools (second edition to be released later this year with a foreword by Nancy Carlsson-Paige). For seven years she wrote a weekly newspaper column about education that appeared on the op-ed page of The Flint Journal every Sunday. She taught English and journalism in a suburban-turning-urban high school in Flint, Michigan for almost 20 years.

Posted by Anthony Cody at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Guest post by John Thompson.

On the 10th anniversary of "the lost decade," produced by No Child Left Behind, we will read plenty of explanations of why the law did little good, and often did great harm to poor children of color. Ironically, the rationale for NCLB was that educators had long used poverty as an "excuse" for "low expectations." I am struck, however, by the low expectations that policy wonks had for themselves, how many excuses they are now making for the failure of NCLB, and how they minimized its unintended negative effects, as they blame others.

As long as the true believers in bubble-in accountability keep up their defense of the law, reporters have to follow the convention of saying that "the jury is still out," and that NCLB "did shine a light on underperforming minority groups," before they recount the law's failure to increase scores on national standardized tests. On the other hand, that gives us more time to appreciate the irony of "No Excuses" "reformers'" convoluted efforts to blame everyone but themselves for the law's failure.

Eric Hanushek, a senior fellow in education at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University and a longtime defender of NCLB, has admitted that it attempted to force principals and teachers to do something that they had no idea how to do - systematically overcome the legacy of generational poverty. But Hanushek, an economist, credited NCLB for, "a new attitude along the lines of 'we might not know what to do, but we've got to do something.'" As educators predicted, however, some experiments worked while others resulted in the narrowing of the curriculum, rote instruction, nonstop test prep, fabricating test score gains, and pushing out difficult-to-educate students.

Hanushek also lambasted the National Research Council's (NRC) blue ribbon panel of social scientists who estimated that twenty years of test-driven accountability only increased student performance by 0.08 of a standard deviation. Hanushek countered that those little improvements add up, and made the weird assertion that gains came at the cost of only $50 worth of testing per student per year. He condemned the panel's conclusion that graduate examinations (which were expanded during the NCLB era) increased dropout rates by 2%. Hanushek minimized the harm, replying that it, "assumes this consequence [dropping out] does considerable harm to the affected students." He then speculated that the economic losses for those types of marginal students would not be great. Hanushek then concluded that the, "takeaway message might be, '"Never rely on the conclusions of this NRC report for any policy purpose.'"

Conservative reformer Chester Finn was more upfront about the failure of data-driven accountability, and concentrated on blaming others. Finn acknowledged, "the gains we've made, though well worth making, have been meager (and largely confined to math). Reformers failed, however, because "they've been stumped, stymied, and constrained by formidable barriers that are more or less built into the K-12 system as we know it."

Interestingly, Finn advocated a commitment to education because he didn't believe that America had whatever it takes to tackle poverty. He wrote that "cultural issues, parenting issues, demographic issues, or other macro-influences on educational achievement. ... are all plenty real, but largely beyond the reach of public policy." So he advocated school reform because it supposedly had, "obstacles that competent leaders and bold policymakers could reduce or eradicate if they were serious."

Finn's excuse for NCLB's failure was that it ran into barriers, "erected by adult interests, bureaucratic routine, structural rigidity, and political stalemate." He also made the conspiratorial sounding charge that, "those barriers aren't accidents."

On the other hand, even if lawmakers had the expectation that educators would discover a solution to one of our most vexing social problems and overcome intense concentrations of poverty and kids suffering from deep trauma, should they not have taken some responsibility for thinking through their mandates, so that they would do more good than harm? Is education the only field of human endeavor where the idealism of policy theorists runs up against the foibles of featherless bipeds? Are schools the only social institution where all of the stakeholders are supposed to be selfless and rational? Those who seek to reform health care, business, defense, and other institutions must anticipate that self-interest will play a role, but apparently Finn expected educators to just obey orders, swallow their professional judgments, and go along with NCLB's theories.

Finn also blamed fellow reformers. Technology was one of the eight possible paths to transformational change, but it was, "pushed (perhaps too hard) by politically connected profit seekers who care little about academic achievement." Although it was President George Bush who spun NCLB as an antidote to the "bigotry of low expectations," Finn now asserts that the law failed because "our preoccupation with "at risk" populations and with achievement gaps defined as the distance between demographic groups has led to the benign neglect of millions of kids." (Emphasis is Finn's.)

If there was ever any doubts that NCLB was about the blame game, the anger of its true believers has put them to rest. But as Renee Moore, and other teachers, have explained, this scorched earth politics has humiliated our most vulnerable kids. The accountability hawks did not have to see the faces of the victims of failed experiments prompted by NCLB. For instance, I am haunted by the semester when NCLB-inspired "reforms" drove 40% of our students out of school. I particularly recall one brilliant push-out who would have had no problem acing the required standardized tests. He just felt so humiliated by the nonstop prepping and testing. Whenever I saw him afterwards, serving fast food, I could not get my student to stop beating up on himself.

We should reject the scorched earth tactics of NCLB and build on the law's best aspect, its dis-aggregation of outcomes by race, poverty, and disability status. The single best proposal, I believe, is Diane Ravitch's suggestion that Congress should "authorize national testing (à la NAEP), based on coherent curriculum standards, but without stakes or sanctions." The key federal role should be providing accurate information about student performance. I would also second Ravitch's assertion that we can work together to improve schools, and not be continually depending on punitive measures. Sanctions have their place, but if we must base school reform solely on the punitive, then our society has deeper problems than we have thought. We must celebrate education as a people process, and embrace a politics of inclusion to improve our toughest schools. Or as we used to say before NCLB, "you are not the problem, I am not the problem, the problem is the problem." After all, shouldn't our kids have the expectation that adults can move beyond their excuse-making to address the "Civil Rights Movement of the 21st Century?"

What do you think? Did NCLB open a Pandora's Box of discord? Did the law's architects know enough about education to recognize how people and systems would respond to its accountability regime? Is it possible to coerce educators into having more nurturing relationships? Would educators welcome a "Consumers Report" breakdown of student performance to achieve equity?

John Thompson was an award winning historian, with a doctorate from Rutgers, and a legislative lobbyist when crack and gangs hit his neighborhood, and he became an inner city teacher. He blogs for This Week in Education, the Huffington Post and other sites. After 18 years in the classroom, he is writing his book, Getting Schooled: Battles Inside and Outside the Urban Classroom.

Posted by Anthony Cody at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Guest post by Philip Kovacs.

Two months ago Anthony Cody graciously allowed me to publish the results of my investigations into Teach for America's "research." You can read those pieces here and here.

I would like to offer some closure to my investigation by providing interested parties with a brief discussion of some material left off of TFA's "research page." I need to acknowledge here that I am not the first to point out this contradictory research.

Prominent bloggers and researchers have been picking apart TFA for almost a decade. Their collective work undermines and negates TFA's claim that "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."

Larry Ferlazzo offers an extensive list of links to blogs, newspaper pieces, and magazine articles for those interested in spending a few days reading about issues surrounding TFA. My focus here, however, is on peer-reviewed work.

Unfortunately, there are not many peer-reviewed studies comparing TFA to veteran or traditionally certified teachers. A further problem, which I addressed here, is that these studies rely on student test scores as the sole determinant of teacher effectiveness.

For the record, I believe the most compelling case against TFA ignores test scores and focuses on the organization itself. Barbara Torre Veltri's Learning on Other People's Kids is a compelling expose of the organization, written using in-depth interviews with TFA corps members as well as expansive data sets including training materials and tax returns.

The earliest peer-reviewed study comparing TFA corps members to veteran teachers that I am aware of is Laczko-Kerr, I., & Berliner, D. (2002). The effectiveness of Teach for America and other under-certified teachers on student academic achievement: A case of harmful public policy. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 10 (37).

The emphases in the following quote, taken from the article's abstract, are mine:

...1) students of TFA teachers did not perform significantly different from students of other under-certified teachers, and 2) that students of certified teachers out-performed students of teachers who were under-certified. This was true on all three subtests of the SAT 9: reading, mathematics and language arts. Effect sizes favoring the students of certified teachers were substantial. In reading, mathematics, and language, the students of certified teachers outperformed students of under-certified teachers, including the students of the TFA teachers, by about 2 months on a grade equivalent scale. Students of under-certified teachers make about 20% less academic growth per year than do students of teachers with regular certification.

Three years later the same journal published Darling-Hammond, L., Holtzman, D., Gatlin, S.J., & Heilig, J.V. (2005). Does teacher preparation matter? Evidence about teacher certification, Teach for America, and teacher effectiveness. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 13 (42).

The emphases in the following quote, taken from the article's abstract, are mine:

In a series of regression analyses looking at 4th and 5th grade student achievement gains on six different reading and mathematics tests over a six-year period, we find that certified teachers consistently produce stronger student achievement gains than do uncertified teachers. These findings hold for TFA recruits as well as others. Controlling for teacher experience, degrees, and student characteristics, uncertified TFA recruits are less effective than certified teachers, and perform about as well as other uncertified teachers.

The abstract is fairly mild compared to page 18, where the authors note (emphasis mine):

...we found that uncertified teachers and those with less than standard certification--whether TFA or non-TFA--exert negative effects on student achievement relative to teachers with standard certification. Uncertified TFA teachers showed significant negative effects on student achievement in five of six estimates (and the sixth also has a negative coefficient.)

That same year MIT's journal of Education Finance and Policy released Boyd, D., Grossman, P., Lankford, H., Loeb, S., & Wyckoff, J. (2006). How changes in entry requirements alter the teacher workforce and affect student achievement. Education Finance and Policy, 1 (2): 176-216.

From the Conclusion of the study, page 212 (emphasis mine):

Our analysis of alternative-route teachers suggests that in some instances Fellows and TFA members provide higher student achievement gains than the temporary-license teachers they replace. For example, Fellows in their third year of teaching in middle schools outperform temporary-license teachers in both math and ELA. More typically, alternative-route teachers are no better or worse than the temporary-license teachers they replace. When compared to college-recommended teachers, alternative-route teachers often provide smaller gains in student achievement, at least initially, and for ELA it takes longer to catch up. As noted above, many of these differences are not large in magnitude, typically about 2 to 5 percent of a standard deviation, and the variation in effectiveness within pathways is far greater than the average differences between pathways.

The most recent peer-reviewed study is Vasquez Heilig, J., Cole, H. & Springel, M. (2011). Alternative certification and Teach For America: The search for high quality teachers. Kansas Journal of Law and Public Policy, in press. I requested and received the page proofs as part of my research into Teach for America.

This study focuses more on the legal ramifications of changing the definition of "highly qualified" teachers so that programs such as TFA can operate under No Child Left Behind, which was supposed to make sure poor, minority students received the same high quality education by middle and upper class students.

This peer-reviewed piece appeals to me and to my city in particular because Huntsville, Alabama, is under a federal desegregation order and one of the Department of Justice's specific complaints is inequitable distribution of teachers. Given that TFA members are only going to Title I schools, it seems to me that this particular inequity is going to increase, especially in light of the peer-reviewed pieces cited above. The authors of the last piece agree. From the Conclusion, page 410 (emphasis mine):

While it is essential that classrooms be led by well-educated, competent, and high-quality teachers, low-achieving students are often taught by teachers who are less qualified and less effective than are high-achieving students. Poor and minority students are also disproportionately assigned less qualified and less effective teachers. This inequitable distribution of effective teachers further compounds the disadvantage that high-poverty and high-minority students are faced with in school. Children most in need of strong teachers are being denied what arguably might be their most invaluable resource--teachers, which is reinforcing the inequalities.

If you are a parent reading this blog and Teach for America is operating in your school district, the above findings should make you more than uncomfortable. On a purely economic level, if you pay federal taxes, you should feel the same way, as TFA receives massive federal funding, though this year that may be cut.

On a moral level, we should all be ashamed that our country continues, despite 10 years of No Child Left Behind, to under-serve poor, minority children. Americans like to talk about equality of educational opportunity, but that has simply never been the case, and it never will be if we continue to deny children strong teachers.

How TFA can continue to make the claim that they produce corps members who make "as much of an impact on student achievement as veteran teachers" despite evidence to the contrary is a fairly simple matter. Thanks to massive grants and payments from school districts around the country, TFA has quite a war chest, and they can afford a massive public relations campaign that includes directly lobbying the federal government using your tax dollars.

Why there are so few peer-reviewed studies looking at TFA is a more interesting question. Perhaps it is because TFA doesn't want them. Discussing why TFA doesn't release information on how its corps members perform, CEO and founder Wendy Kopp was rather candid, "We just don't feel it's responsible to show," Kopp said. "There are so many flaws in our system."

What do you think? If there are so many flaws in the system, is it worth the price paid by students, school districts, and tax payers?

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

Posted by Anthony Cody at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

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Guest post by Chuck Olynyk.

Readers of this blog may recall Chuck Olynyk's guest posts here starting two years ago, when he gave us all front row seats to witness the dismantling of a "failed" high school in Los Angeles. Today, from his new classroom at Roosevelt High, he shares his thoughts about the latest scandal to hit the schools. This was originally posted at his Remember Fremont blog.

A few days ago, I complained about Sandra Day O'Connor and her iCivics, grousing about "lesson plans in a box".

Yet what do I finally suggest to folks? A website, run a some sort of cooperative (What's that noise? My parents rolling over in their graves because they'd label me a communist? Yeah, probably...), where teachers could go to find how-to articles on doing living history in the classroom, as well as resources and... wait for it... downloadable lessons. I just realized I was advocating another set of lesson plans in a box.

Maybe I'm enough of a hypocrite to think that it's okay as long as I build the box, eh?

We also like to commend thinking outside the boxes.

Here's the ultimate box. It was purchased by students at Corona del Mar High School in Newport Beach. The contents of the Box were "...test banks, which provide chapter-by-chapter questions for tests, which textbook publishers provide to ensure teachers craft exams that properly assess student learning..." and purchased by approximately ten students who, in turn may have sought to sell said material to some of the other 170 students taking the class.

The take?

One outraged parent called it "a program fail." It is not clear to me whether she is blaming "the System" (please define that for yourselves) or "the School" or perhaps the teacher. A district official, however, called the publisher to make certain Amazon no longer offers the test bank for sale online.

Principal Tim Bryan said "If you have the test questions in advance, you're cheating... They altered the conditions of the test. It's a really big issue for us..." So big, in fact, that it hasn't been decided IF the students will be disciplined.

IF.

And from the gallery of commenters on the article, what does John Q. Non-Educator Public think?

This is not cheating. Instead, these students are to be commended for conducting topic research, resourcefulness, targeting and learning what is considered the most important content and their desire to succeed. All through Jr High, HS and college, teachers frequently said 'this will be on the test!' These teachers rightfully communicated that the content is deemed so important, they ensured we studied and learned it. Thus, we knew the test question in advance. Also through the school years, we were encouraged to learn the content from additional sources beyond the formal classroom books (aka recommended reading and other). These students did just that...

Jeez, maybe we can recycle the dialog from Clint Eastwood's "Heartbreak Ridge": (during war games) "Your man cheated!" "He adapted. He overcame."

Or we can go to the Otter Defense from "National Lampoon's Animal House": Otter:

Ladies and gentlemen, I'll be brief. The issue here is not whether we broke a few rules, or took a few liberties with our female party guests - we did. " [winks at Dean Wormer] "But you can't hold a whole fraternity responsible for the behavior of a few, sick twisted individuals. For if you do, then shouldn't we blame the whole fraternity system? And if the whole fraternity system is guilty, then isn't this an indictment of our educational institutions in general? I put it to you, Greg - isn't this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but we're not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America. Gentlemen!

[Leads the Deltas out of the hearing, all humming the Star-Spangled Banner]--"National Lampoon's Animal House"

After all, an esteemed educational leader, Dr. Beverly Hall, late of Atlanta Public Schools, used that defense in August: "Beverly Hall: The Scandal Is Not the Whole Story"

IF the students will be disciplined. Folk in that district will have some weighty issues to decide upon. Do they want to discipline the students and potentially face a lawsuit from angry parents? Will they have to prove this was cheating? The principal said so, but that definition may change the higher up the food chain one goes. The parents could have an attorney argue that all the students did was purchase a legal product online. How will this affect the teacher who reported the cheating? Was the cheating going on for a while? What about that teacher's grades. After all, in a place like Fremont, where one has to justify every "Fail," having ten more students doing better might make the teacher look more effective.

Or... you can remove the problem. No, not by calling the publisher. Again, I'll write what I did in August:

You want to eliminate the problem? Change the test. For years we'd been told to get away from multiple choice testing. Even the Secretary of Education says this out of one side of his face. 'Come up with project-based lessons.' My students haven't taken a multiple-choice test in years, save for the standardized tests. They are given essays to write, both as a means too express themselves--and I evaluate them on an individual basis--and to improve the writing skills. I can get a lot closer to seeing the "whole child" and what they have learned than any damned 'drop-the-pencil' test ever can.

It won't just be ten students who learn a lesson based upon what the principal of Corona del Mar High School and the district decide to do. It will be the other students on campus and other school districts.

Let's just hope it isn't the wrong lesson.

What do you think? Are students who purchase test banks to prepare for tests cheating? How about teachers who work backwards from test blueprints and released questions to prepare their students for high stakes tests?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

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The decision by Dennis Van Roekel to co-author a column with Teach For America director Wendy Kopp continues to generate negative reaction among educators, the latest being the decision by Nancy Carlsson-Paige and her son Matt Damon to reject the union's Friend of Education award. The response by the union has been defensive. Van Roekel's statement said,

I believe NEA should talk to those who support public education, even if we don't agree on everything, and work together to serve students. Wendy Kopp and I agree that students will benefit from stronger recruiting and teacher preparation. NEA isn't going to quit fighting for students and our members, or for stronger teacher preparation. In fact, better teacher preparation is part of our 3-point plan on Leading the Profession that was released last month.

I have no desire to prevent Mr. Van Roekel from talking with anyone he likes, even if they do NOT support public education. Talk away.

I do, however, wonder about the substance of his agreement with Ms Kopp regarding teacher recruitment and preparation. Specifically, does Mr. Van Roekel agree that it is a good idea to recruit people who have no desire or intention to become teachers for a two year commitment? Research has revealed that 57% of the people who enter Teach For America do not intend to become teachers, and lo and behold, three years after they start, 75% of them are gone. [Be aware that TFA fudges these numbers by tracking the number who remain "in education," which includes the many TFAers who become staff members or work in other parts of the non-profit and for-profit educational landscape.]

I wonder how it is possible to fight vigorously for a minimum one-year residency program and simultaneously praise someone whose recruitment model features a five week summer training course, and targets people who do not even wish to become teachers?

Regarding teacher preparation, I have an even greater concern. Valerie Strauss connects Mr. Van Roekel with Wendy Kopp at an event hosted by Arne Duncan last October. Secretary Duncan made it clear how he believes teacher preparation ought to be improved. He said:

We seek to create more accountability in teacher preparation programs, better prepare teachers for the classroom, boost student learning, and foster systems of continuous improvement. Unlike today's teacher preparation system, we want to reward good programs, improve the middle, and transform or eliminate consistently low-performing programs.

Duncan explains how this works:

Both Louisiana and Tennessee now have statewide systems that track the academic growth of a teacher's students by the preparation program where the teacher trained.

For the first time, teacher preparation programs in Louisiana and Tennessee are able to identify which of their initiatives are producing effective teachers and which need to be strengthened or overhauled.

It turns that there is a big difference between a strong preparation program and a weak one. Just as teachers are not interchangeable widgets, neither are the programs that prepare them. In fact, the variation between programs is stunning.

After controlling for student differences, the most effective preparation programs in Tennessee produce graduates who are two to three times more likely to be in the top quintile of teachers in a subject area. The least effective preparation programs produce teachers who are two to three times more likely to be in the bottom quintile.

How are these finely tuned quantitative judgments possible? By the use of the most detailed systems that track student test score data. What is the effect of rewarding and punishing teacher preparation programs based on test scores alone? Obviously this is one more pressure point, one more set of stakes that can be raised to get teachers and those who prepare them for the profession to attend to these scores first, last and always.

And what was the first of the "3 Ways to Improve the USA's Teachers" that Van Roekel and Kopp agreed upon?

Use data to improve teacher preparation. In Louisiana, a state aggressively tackling the question of teacher quality, studies have found significant differences in student outcomes based on where their teachers trained.

Then we get the "multiple measures" sop:

"States such as California and Maryland are evaluating programs based on multiple measures, including student, principal and alumni surveys."

If these multiple measures are anything like the ones described by Melinda Gates at the Education Nation Teacher Town Hall, they are validated only insofar as they correlate back to high student performance on tests -- and thus we have still have a test-centered system, with a bit of window dressing. If we are to stand for the interests of our students, we must take a strong stand against the unrelenting pressure to increase test scores.

Forgive my cynicism here, but we have been caught in this whirlpool for the past decade and more. We will not get out of it without some very steady hands at the helm, and some clear principles by which to navigate. My concerns about Dennis Van Roekel's position here are not reflexive or "knee-jerk." They go to the heart of what we believe, and how we take a clear public stand for our principles.

(see my first post on this issue from two weeks ago: NEA President Sends Mixed Messages about Teacher Preparation.)

What do you think? Do (or should) NEA and Wendy Kopp have solid common ground here? Is this a real concern for teachers - or are some of us over-reacting?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 8:00 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend